About the Quiz at Trials Pub

Trials Pub, San Jose

Most of this blog focuses on a weekly quiz I attend at Trials.

Trials is a pub in the northern part of Downtown San Jose, California.
The pints are large and tasty, the food is good, and the staff is excellent. Kudos to Dave and Russell.
And on Mondays, 8pm, there's a quiz. I've been attending this quiz since December 2011.

Format

A sample quiz from Trials.  February 17, 2014

The quiz itself is fairly simple. Groups forms into teams, with a maximum of three players per team.
There is only one set of twenty questions, and twenty minutes.

After the time, we exchange papers and grade them. Then the quiz master takes all the papers and grades them again (as everyone has been drinking).

First place wins $30 bar bucks. Additionally, every four weeks, the team with the highest aggregate score will win an additional $60 bar bucks.

Ties are broken by "fewer players on the team", then a numerical question.

Quiz Master
The Quiz Master is an acerbic gentlemen named Matt. He is not a jolly, convivial host, and that's fine. Matt runs a quiz fairly and efficiently, can deal with any number of drunken idiots, and knows how to put people in their place. If you're in the UK, he's roughly about "Jeremy Paxman" levels of warmth and intelligence.

Most of the bar trivia options in the Bay Area seem to rely on a standard quiz service. This would be fine, except most quiz master rarely review the questions and just read things out by rote (and are useless when there needs to be an adjudication).

Trials is the only exception that I've seen. Instead, Matt sets the questions himself. (Occasionally, he will pull some questions from a reference, but this is a minority of times). Since he knows the background for the questions, he can give extra details, or can explain why alternate answers are accepted/rejected.

This is a rare thing that I've seen in quizzes, and something that I've grateful to have.
This is why it is the only quiz I regularly attend.

Topics
Like most good quizzes, the topics vary. However, there are a lot of recurring themes.

• Shakespeare. There is usually one Shakespeare question per week. (If people complain about skipping Shakespeare, then the week after will have two Shakespeare questions). Normally, they're about guessing the play from the characters, but it could be from a quote, or even the opening scene.
• Sports. I know you're not supposed to play the Quiz Master in these things, but Matt is a fan of hockey and baseball. In the winter months, there's often one hockey question. In the summer months, there's typically one baseball question per week. Occasionally, there is a football question in there, but that's expected. Yes, there is a bias towards knowledge on the local sports teams (San Jose Sharks, San Francisco Giants, San Francisco 49ers) but questions on other teams aren't uncommon.
• Obscure Music. The bane of our group. There seems to be one question every other week involving a 70s punk band, early 90s rap, or 50s-60s rock and roll. Barring that, The Beatles, or British Punk tend to come up often. It's probably a reflection of the host, which isn't a bad thing at all.
• Not Reality TV. Surprisingly enough, there has been no questions on reality TV in the times I've been there. Even more broadly, there is rarely any tabloid-style celebrity gossip questions, ever. I like to think this is because of Matt's taste in setting the quiz, and I refuse to believe otherwise.
• Map Geography. Part of the standard rules is that we "are not allowed to use the bookshelf or the game cabinet, but are allowed to use anything on the walls of the bar." This includes a map of the US, and a map of Europe. While geography is so broad as to be expected, we have missed our fair share of US/Europe map-based questions.

There's a few teams of regulars, so it is possible to set of quiz to easily favor one team or another. But, of course, this would take the fun out of it.

Anyway
That's all the Trials Pub quiz is: a short simple quiz, but it's fun. And a good reason to hang out with friends. If you are in the Bay Area on a Monday night, give it a try.