The Train Wreck Quiz
Added: 07 Nov 2023
Author: One Stop Trivia
It happens every so often, luckily it was only my 2nd in 5 years of hosting (on my 5th anniversary of starting hosting quizzes no less!).
Some quizzes have a small issue, or a bit of a hiccup. This was a train wreck!
The problems started well before the quiz though.
I was hosting a big quiz over the weekend, plus a number of other commitments. My regular quiz night is a Tuesday from 6.30pm. Given the busy weekend, and the new job I was starting on Monday, I got most of the quiz done on the Thursday, and finished it on the Sunday evening. All good (or so I thought!).
Tuesday morning, 2nd day at the new job, and they are aware I'll need to head off about 30 mins early, as this was a commitment that I couldn't get out of on the short notice. I'd done my printing the night before for my tabletop round as I wouldn't have time to do it today. Around 11am I'm running through quiz stuff in my head to make sure I'm on top and it dawns on me when I did my printing the night before I had printed the sheet with the answers in error. D'oh! As my new job has furnished me with a laptop, my own was at home, with all my quiz gear on it. I had to quietly grab one of the sheets with all the answers, jump onto Word and knock up a new version, then contact the bar and see if they will do the printing for me. Luckily they would. Crisis averted! (Or should I say, first one averted?!).
Just as I'm about to leave for the quiz, I realise something, my music round was on my old laptop and I did not have time to go home and get it. Bugger! Oh well, not the end of the world, especially as the music round I'd done this week could probably be done manually from my spotify account with a bit of extra curricular activity on my work laptop via the web player. When I got o the bar, I quickly knocked together a spotify playlist with the songs I wanted. Crisis averted.
The quiz starts. 17 ppl in attendance, split across 6 teams. Not the end of the world, as it is the end of the low season out here (we are usually about 30-40 ppl). $51 going to charity isn't something to be sniffed at, especially when we only had 4 ppl the previous week and had to cancel the quiz. I go through the usual pre-quiz spiel, but as the players are all regulars, I skip most of it as I am already shattered!
Round 1 is 12 questions on general knowledge, or it should have been. Turns out when I thought I had finished my quiz, I hadn't quite finished. Had to knock up another question on the fly. Luckily ppl weren't too bothered as they were also doing the (now properly) printed round as well, which I had forgotten to hand out with the answer sheets. I usually give a little more time on word play printed rounds as we quite often have players whose first language isn't English. Anyway, as the round is going on, I can tell from reactions that it is quite easy, and ended up with 2 perfect scores, and mostly other high scores too.
Round 2 actually goes smoothly, it is the entertainment round. There are 12 questions as there should be! It was just giving me a false sense of security. More high scores all around for a too easy round.
Round 3 is the print out round. If it was just pictures, I'd normally hand it out now. As it was a wordplay round, I gave them another 5-10 mins to complete it (while I wolfed down a grilled chicken wrap - yum!). I took a walk around to see how teams were doing, and I can see it has been too easy and I shouldn't have given them the extra time. 4 perfect score, and 2 nearly perfect scores later proved my point.
After the printed round, we have an individual round where there are a 1-2 free drinks vouchers up for grabs. This is done in the form of a true/false round most weeks. Opening the round, I find another empty question slot, but still have 6-7 others so that should be enough. 5 questions in, 3 players standing, I make the decision to give an extra voucher to stop the possibility of running out of questions, and also make up for previous delays/issues. They are happy. When we eventually located the vouchers, I couldn't remember who the winners were and nearly gave one to the wrong person. Luckily he was honest and let me know!
Round 4 was science and technology. After making the first few rounds too easy, I balanced it by apparently making this too hard! A few difficult tech acronym questions, some weird biology questions, and some geometry thrown in for good measure. No-one got more than 5, apart from the team with the physics teacher/head of science in the team!
Nearly asleep now, but onto the music round, I explain I will be manually doing the music round (rather than a single clip with all the correct timings etc that I normally do. I load the spotify playlist, go to test the sound system using the new laptop, and no sound comes out. Starting to panic, until I eventually realise the volume needs to be turned up on the laptop! I announce the round details. This week, instead of artist and song, I want the artist and the name of the movie the song was Oscar nominated for. Easy right? After a number of songs, one of the teams wants to confirm if it song title and movie name, as that is what they are certain I said. For the life of me I couldn't remember at this time what I had said as I was so tired, so to try to be fair, I announced I would accept either artist or song name, plus the movie. This got a few other teams riled up, but at the time I couldn't really do much else. Thinking about it later, I think I didn't say about song title, as they weren't the most attentive players at times! Oh well. Half way through the round and the rain starts to come down. Didn't I mention, our quiz is outside in a beer garden! There are coverings for a lot of it, but there is still a good chance of getting wet if you have to move about. And I am using my new work laptop, hooked up to a sound system, all plugged into the mains, outside in the rain! I managed to get most of it under cover, but I was still holding a mic standing in a growing puddle of water! Just gotta hope for the best. It is pretty humid here most of the time, so it is not unknown for me to get zapped by the mic if I get too close while there is even a little rain/drizzle. But I am a martyr to my quizzers! Finally read the answers out, trying to remember the song titles off the top of my head as they aren't written in my answers as I didn't expect them to be needed (although I would normally have included them anyway).
Finally it is time for the gambling question where, from a single multiple choice question, teams can win or lose 1, 3, or 5 points, depending on how confident they are (or chose to play tactically, as we have a prize for our 2nd last placed team). And of course I have these printed on their own little sheets, so I have to go into the rain to hand them out. I would have ditched it but there was only 4 points between the top 4 teams, so there would have been protests if I tried that. Eventually, 1 team got it right gambling 5 points and came from 2nd place to win at the very end!
Despite all the issues (and I'm sure there were more, I just can't remember them all!), luckily the players still had fun and we managed to do a little good for charity too.
We will be back next week. Hopefully it goes smoother!
