A Pub Quiz
The Tenaya Creek Pub quiz has been running since the summer of 2013. Born out of a conversation between bartender Mia and regular TJ, how I became involved is attributed to sheer chance: I was sitting near by.
Initially my ears perked up at the quiz idea because I knew I had all the equipment to run it. Never did I think I would actually be the one hosting it. I had not even played a pub quiz before, so right away I was dismissing any idea of me pulling the duty. Mia and I set the date to try it out and now I had to learn how to write a quiz.
The first show was rough. I started it off with about 5 minutes of stand-up on a Saturday afternoon. Aren’t you glad that segment was tossed away? A scattershot quiz with no themes to speaks of but instead a compilation of questions that happened to be in my head when I wrote it. By the end though we knew there was something there. The day and time was not right. However we were on to something.
140 quizzes later, I have improved since that first attempt. Since moving to the new place downtown it has felt a bit like starting over again as the muscle memory of the old place had to be shaken off. Round one will always be our current events rounds. All questions come from the last week in the news. Once a quizzer told me that round 1 is a public service I do for the community. I guess it is like getting all your news from The Daily Show.
Round two involves random knowledge comprised of questions from arts, science, math, pop culture etc. No subject to obscure in this round, those playing with the max team count of six benefit greatly with a larger memory pool.
In our round three we call it the themed round. This could be as specific as The Big Lebowski night where robes were encouraged, or a 50/50 round where I read a quote and you decided if Bernie Sanders said it or Joseph Stalin.
Finally we finish with the everybody’s favorite: the music round. Ten songs chosen within a theme for which twenty points are available. We have seen last place teams go to first in the final round. Past music round themes included: Top overplayed songs for that week in history, cover songs where you name the original artist and song title, and sometimes a mini game within the game where you have to finish a song lyric I play. It tends to make teams sing out loud.
At the end we give away a 25$ gift certificate for first place and 10$ for second. Teams really get a thrill if their team name is chosen by Brian and I as best team name for that night. Come up with a name that is relevant to the time, pithy, a turn of phrase or just clever on it’s own and that might just be what we are looking for that night. Win that honor and you get four bombers of Tenaya Creek beer for your enjoyment.
The Tenaya Creek Pub Quiz runs every Wednesday starting at 7:30pm finishing around 9:00pm.
Follow @tenayacreekquiz on instagram and twitter for quiz updates.
