TQA Quiz Trek 2013 - #4

 #4

Chesters, Sunderland

Tuesday Nights

I found out about the Chesters Pub by accident. Being relativley new to the area still I am still working out where pubs are and which ones may have a quiz. As it happens when I enquired at the Chesters it turned out to be a Tuesday Night (and a Sunday) but with Tuesday being one of the days when there are not many quizzes locally, last night was an ideal time to try it out.

Its a nice little pub, I actually ate a lovely mixed grill before hand, with a good range of real ale, plenty of parking space and a nice friendly atmosphere. The quiz kicks off 8.30pm with the pictures being handed out. 18 in all and they all seemed to be people who had been in the news recently which helped with guessing I suppose on a few I had no idea on.

20 General Knowledge questions follow but there are more than one part to some questions. Some involving listing 5 of one thing, others are four answers all with the same initials. (This lead to a really off putting clue about Lynsday Davenpot....clue given was "An 80's and 90's tall tennis player who didnt really do much...more on that later). All in all it was a good section and I really enjoyed this round.

The quiz rounds off with 15 music tracks. There was a nice range here but the quiz master felt the need throughout the whole quiz to apologise to younger players. I am not a huge fan of large music rounds. I prefer artisit and track rounds of perhaps 5 songs but here we had what seemed like a never ending 15 tracks and artisits to identify. It was fun in part I suppose and plenty for each of us to pick up points on.

The prizes on offer were beer cheques for round winners, chas prizes for the top 4 teams and with 11 decent size teams it seems to be a popular. The questions were clearly written by the quizmaster and he was a very good host. He seemed to have a handle on cheating and it was a fair quiz but...

The two downsides maybe for me were the picture rounds and music rounds which were worth more than the GK round. Just a personal preference. The quiz master also "marked up" which is very common in pub quizzes. This means he makes sure the quiz is close to the last round. I can see why quiz masters do it as at the end of the day thier job is keep the pub full. We knew we had missed 5 of the music tracks yet our score was somehow 14/15. I don't like when this happens as it means if you have a really good week you never know who has been scored up.

At the end of the day though my quibbles are only minor and everyone seemed to enjoy the quiz, including me. I can see myself going back as the GK questions were very entertaining. Worth a look for drinks, food and quizzing.