Bubble Tree Quizzes - Interview

You may have noticed last week's site of the week was Bubble Tree Quizzes, a fantastic resource for finding and buying pub quiz questions whatever your needs. The site can be found HERE and Gary, the  owner of the firm, has taken some time to answer a few questions about the company and quizzing in general.

What was the idea behind setting up Bubble Tree Quizzes?

Rather appropriately, the idea for Bubble Tree Quizzes came about when I was taking part in a pub quiz!

It was a Sunday night back in 2005 at our local pub. Martin, one of my teammates, had been involved for many years in compiling and running monthly quizzes for another local pub, while another, Alex, had just been put in charge with running a one-off quiz for his golf club. So the pre-quiz conversation was centred around what makes a good pub quiz. Martin was confident that the quizzes he compiled were better than the quiz we were about to take part in (which the pub bought in rather than compiled themselves). However, he did say that his quizzes took a look of time and effort and sometimes when he was running out of time, but still had one or two rounds to do, he would use some questions from his stash of quiz books or even buy a quiz from the web just to use a few rounds . After the quiz we also had a chat with Paul, the landlord of the pub we were in, and he explained how he had tried compiling his own quizzes using free quiz sites on the web, but that it too long as they would often contain errors and he would have to spend a lot of time checking them.

My day job was in IT and in my spare time I had recently set up an e-commerce site for another friend to sell baby clothes, so we talked about the possibility of setting up a similar site. Rather than sell physical goods, this would sell quiz material that customers could download, print and use in their pub quizzes.

I spent the next few weeks getting advice from a variety of experts and once I was confident that it would be possible to turn our basic idea into a reality, we spent a few months working out our business model. Having a colleague who already ran a pub quiz was ideal to try out various ideas, and we soon came up with a basic format for our weekly quiz that proved very popular. We also came up with the idea of grouping a number of quiz rounds of the same type together and selling these as quiz packs, which we thought would be useful for customers like Martin who like to compile quizzes to their own format, but often need a few extra rounds when they were running out of time. Finally, we knew that we would also be able to provide custom quizzes to order, so a customer with a requirement like Alex's quiz for his golf club would be able to contact us to tell us what they want and we could quote them a price.

It took a lot of time and hard work and there were a few false starts, but we were always confident enough in our quiz material to be able to see things through. After going part-time with my other job, our website went live in the summer of 2006 and we haven't looked back since.

When did quizzing first appeal to you?

From a young age, I was always a fan of solving puzzles, right back to watching TV shows such as The Adventure Game. I enjoyed watching TV quiz shows through my teenage years, and as soon as I was of legal age (!) I was taking part in pub quizzes at least once every week.

Do you prefer setting or answering?

It's difficult to say as I really do enjoy both and the satisfaction of setting a good question is actually very similar to the satisfaction of answering one.

Setting a good quiz question involves spending time researching a subject and then working out how to turn an interesting fact into a question. Just like answering a good question, it involves the same "Eureka" moment, and if pushed, I'd have to say I prefer setting questions. It really is very satisfying when you come up with an interesting and challenging question that you know pub quiz goers will be spreading around the office the next day.

Earliest quiz memory?

Thinking back to my early days of taking part in pub quizzes, there weren't many victories to mention, but there is one that stands out.

Every Tuesday night we would turn up to the same pub quiz and on the few rare occasions we finished as high as mid-table, we'd be congratulating ourselves for days to come! However, one night we got off to a great start, confidently coming up with answers to the first few questions without any hesitation. It didn't take us much longer to realise that the quiz was exactly the same as a quiz we had taken part the previous week in another pub in a neighbouring town! Did we do the honest thing, own up to this and withdraw our team from the quiz? Unfortunately not! As pub quiz novices who had never even come close to winning, we seized our opportunity with both hands and won by a landslide! Smart phones hadn't been invented yet, so the puzzled looks on the locals faces were something to behold, though we did feel a bit guilty when walking up to collect the beer tokens that were awarded for first prize.

Another early pub quiz memory is being asked "What is camponology the study of?". I knew the answer, but a teammate, who I knew did this when she was younger didn't. I told her that she should know this as she used to do it and without any hint of irony, she replied "It rings a bell, but I really don't know"!

Any TV quizzing experiences to share?

Not for me personally, but one of my colleagues, Duncan, has appeared on Fifteen-to-One twice. He puts his early exit on his first appearance down to being "nominated to death", but on his second appearance a few years later, he made it to the final three. Unfortunately, he only came third, though he's still very proud of his photo with William G. Stewart and his fellow finalists!

Why should customers choose Bubble Tree?

I could bore you by going into detail on things like our customer service, our low prices and our huge variety of material available. However, I think the main reason that customers keep coming back to Bubble Tree Quizzes is simply the quality of our product.

All of our quiz material is produced by genuine quiz enthusiasts who know exactly what it takes to compile a good quiz. From small details such as obtaining a suitable graphic to illustrate a handout round to large scale decisions such as deciding on the format of our weekly quiz, we always spend time and effort to make sure our quiz material is to the highest possible standard both in terms of content and presentation. 

If you were on Mastermind what would your subject be?

An embarrassing answer to finish with, but I'd have to say the Eurovision Song Contest! I only had a passing interest in it when I was younger, so I'm sure the time spent researching it and setting questions on it has built up my fascination towards it and even though this a bit tongue-in-cheek, it's still my number one guilty pleasure!