Are Smart Phones Killing The Pub Quiz?

Anyone who is a fan of The Office will be familiar with the pub quiz episode, where the obnoxious David Brent and Chris Finch team-up for their annual assault on the Wernham-Hogg pub quiz title. With things not going to plan, Brent’s evening is interrupted by a phone call from the nursing home that houses his father, informing him that his old man has taken a turn for the worst. To say that Brent is unperturbed is an understatement, but he doesn’t miss the opportunity to ask the doctor one quick question: “You don’t know who sang ‘In the Summertime’ do you?”

While the viewers should be outraged at Brent’s flagrant disregard for his father’s well-being, there is something else about this scene that bothers us more – Brent is cheating in the pub quiz, and he’s getting away with it!

In the end Brent and Finch get what they deserve. They are beaten in a tie-breaker and lose the coveted title that they have held for 6 years. The viewer is left satisfied that the cheats haven’t won, and morality has triumphed. But outside the realms of fiction, cheating in pub quizzes is becoming more and more of a problem for quiz-masters up and down the country, and the root of the problem is the smart phone.

With most phones nowadays coming with internet capabilities as standard, and most decent pubs and clubs boasting Wi-Fi, many pub-goers now arrive at quiz nights equipped with the ability to quickly and discreetly find out the answer to almost any question in the world at the click of a button.

“How many number ones did the Beatles have?” “What is the chemical symbol for Zirconium?” “What is the capital of Madagascar?” Questions that might once have drawn blank looks and instigated intense debates around the table can all now be answered simply by utilising Google on your smart phone. While some people would object to such underhand tactics on the basis that it ruins the quiz for everyone, others are more likely to be influenced by the prospect of a significant cash prize for the winners. If strategically nipping off to the toilet to look up an answer is going to win you some money, the moral dubiety of it all suddenly doesn’t seem quite as deterring.

Jody Jamieson runs a pub quiz in the County Inn in Peebles, Scotland, and he agrees that the ubiquity of smart phones in modern society is definitely a growing problem for Britain’s quiz masters.

“In my experience it's so easy to cheat as the pace of the questions in pub quizzes can be rather slow” he laments. “I tend to batter through it as quickly as I can for the most part. We also turn the Wi-Fi off in the pub, but it doesn't really make much of a difference with the way technology is nowadays.”

Jamieson admits that he has taken to walking around the pub during quizzes to try and deter people from taking out their smart phone, but there is only so much he can do. “People tend to get a bit offended if you start looking over their shoulders when they're texting,” he says, “ but it's not my fault the minority are spoiling it for the majority.”

With cheating apparently on the rise then, is there a real and serious danger that the pub quiz as we know it could die out? Probably not. But quizmasters are having to be more and more ingenious with the questions they devise in order to beat the cheats.

Speed rounds are one potential solution, where you have, for example, only 30 seconds to come up with a list of answers before the paper is taken off you. Another idea is to ask questions where you need to establish a link between certain items, places or songs, for example – a task that would not be as easy to use Google for.

Whether the pub quiz can survive or whether it is destined for the scrap heap is a matter for all publicans, and one which landlords up and down the country are bound to keep a close eye on