Trivia Night Shenanigans

The following is a hazy and at best only moderately accurate recollection of being a quizmaster for a night.

While killing some time on the interwebs yesterday arvo, a message pops up on msn.

(2:51:34 PM) Tony: oi
(2:51:35 PM) Tony: need your number
(2:51:41 PM) Tony: need to call you
(2:51:49 PM) Paul: 1234 5679

"Phone Rings"

Paul: Hello
Tony: Are you going to the trivia night?
Paul: Yep, will be there.
Tony: Do you mind hosting it? George Triantos is sick.
Paul: No problem mate, do we have the questions?
Tony: Nicki has them, I think it's six rounds of ten questions.
Paul: Do we have a prize?
Tony: Yeah, a signed ball. What time can you be there?
Paul: I can be there, by 7:00, 7:30 at the latest (senses this is not the best answer to give)... actually I could be there at 6:30, 7:00, not a problem...

Anyway, you can use your imagination for how the rest of this plays out. I rock up to the club at about 7:00 or so, after the South Melbourne Corporate Challenge is over (apparently a success). I've prepared some of my own ballbreaker questions in the few spare hours I had before showtime, and a gimmick round on Australian Prime Ministers, because I've been asked to stretch it out as much as possible. And it was a good thing I did too, because when I get my first look at the questions, there's only 52 of them, with no numbering. I spend some time doing that myself, breaking them up into five rounds, plus my gimmick round.

Heading back out to the social club, the turn out is not looking too flash. There's enough for about 5-6 teams, provided we make them no less than 3 and no more than 5. I manage to rustle up an assistant, we scrounge around for some more prizes - how they thought they were going to split a ball between several people is anyone's guess - Dangerous Dave gets a laptop to help us keep track of the scores, and with an internet connection to help deal with the inevitable challenges to the provided answers. We call for team names, some of them bland, two of them unmentionable in polite society, and one given some thought. And therefore All The President's Men got the bonus points for best name, and Chereka Boys and Shaven Balls pleased themselves with their childish antics.

After some initial microphone problems, the evening went rather well. The lead swapped a few times with the President's Men holding the lead for much of the contest, and the South Women's contingent doing ok until they had to answer questions about Australia. Then we get our our first challenges to questions. "What city is known as the 'pearl of the Adriatic'? Most teams had written Dubrovnik, but the answer provided was Venice. A quick check up of that on the net cleared up that situation in favour of several of the teams. The President's Men also got an additional point for having baseball down as a 1956 Olympics demonstration sport in addition to Australian Rules.

Just as everything seems to be going swimmingly, the cheating allegations start. Accusations are made that one team has too many players and is googling answers as well. The judging panel decides to delay any response until after the contest, hoping one of the other teams can win and save us some grief. After the fifth round, we hastily put together a 7th round of 15 South Melbourne related questions. The Chereka Boys do everyone a massive favour by coming out on top and not requiring us to make a difficult decision in regards to the cheating allegations. A good night had by all... I just wish more people had come. Thanks to Dave, Tony, Dubs, everyone that came and had a go, especially the winning Chereka Boys and the rather silly Shaven Balls crew.