Pub quizzes and more

Three days after moving into our London flat, my husband and I visited our new neighborhood pub, the Kings Arms, for their weekly “Quingo” night,  a combination of a pub quiz and bingo.

(picture source – Kate Pugh, http://www.flickriver.com/photos/kake_pugh/2843764951/)

The pub was crowded. Turned out the “pub quiz” portion was the first 3 hours of the night, and the bingo portion was the last 15 minutes. The quiz was led by a trivia master/announcer who would read all the questions into a microphone. You’d record the answers onto a sheet of paper and at the end of every round turn in your answers, which would all be totaled up at the end and ranked.

The first round was “pop culture”, meaning British TV, British game shows, etc. We were only living in the country two weeks as of this point, so we failed that category completely.  About 40 minutes in, the trivia master discovered we were Americans. The rest of the 3 hour pub quiz, he told every American joke he possibly could think of, at which point the whole crowd in the pub would look at us and laugh. What made it worse was when we heard what the 4th round category was – Monarchy….naming the century that each monarch reigned. We failed that one, too.

At the end, the trivia announcer read out the scores and…not surprising….we came in last place by a very big margin. I think at this point his comment was, “What they say about the Americans and their trivia knowledge is true!”

There was a last place consolation prize.  Jim stood up to retrieve it, but the trivia announcer said “No! Not you. Send the BIRD up.” The British slang term for “girl”.  I reluctantly walked over to pick up our prize, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.  He asked me to pronounce the name of the sauce into the microphone, probably thinking I’d say wor…chester…shy..ire.  But I didn’t. I pronounced it correctly “Wuss..ter..shear”. That at least stopped him from making another American joke.

After the quiz ended we met some really nice British people at the table next to us, who admired the fact that we stayed through until the end.  Yes – we completely failed the pub quiz,  but I’m confident we passed the real test.

That night was our hazing and initiation ceremony into London life.

I have counted that there are at least 15 quiz game shows on British TV. They like their quizzes over here.

I always used to hate Trivial Pursuit. But living in England has changed me. When I move back to the US, I’m going to be filled with lots of useless (and some occasionally useful) facts and tidbits.

February 2012