Possibly The Worst Tie Break.....

Since moving I have been trying out a whole range of new quizzes in the South Tyneside area. Some better than others. Living in Sunderland I got into something of a routine of attending the same quizzes week in week out (nice to have a good round of quizzes to attend...).

Last week I tried out a new quiz in South Shields. I will be mentioning the quiz itself as part of my Quiz Trek 2015, but suffice to say a quiz out of 100 points has 40 points available spread across two music rounds which cost us massively. We must have won the actual questions but the lead wasn't strong enough to beat the bigger teams, who clearly knew more about music than us and we ended up 3rd.

Anyway, the story here does not really concern my quizzing, but the fact that the Tie Break round was something original. A lot of you have been quizzing a lot longer than me but even in my years of quizzing it is rare nowadays I see something new. The Tiebreak round was announced as a "Who Dares Wins Round".....(based on the lottery "list" show).

Expect it wasn't,.....the whole idea of the Who Dares Wins show is that the rivals bid on how many they "think" they can get. This Tiebreaker involved a given subject and the contestants had to give an answer each until one couldn't get an answer......Sounds good?

Well it could have been but the host announced that a) Each contestant had 30 seconds to think of an answer each time and that b) the subject was Kings and Queens of England since 1066. Oh dear....

Cue two men rattling off the answers..."Henry I" "Henry II" "Henry III" etc etc. It seemed to last an age, the pub was emptying as the two winning team members kept on going. As it got past the obvious they began to use their 30 seconds.....what a boring end to the quiz.

Now this is not a terrible idea in premise but the host has to be clever enough to think of subjects where maybe there are only a dozen or so answers, and also get rid of the 30 second rule!

In saying that, his comments after the quiz should tell you all you need to know......He mentioned this was only the second time he had to use a tiebreaker. On the first occasion he used Countries of the World.....