You should never arrive at a party too early which is why I’ve waited until edition #148 to begin taking part in a monthly online beer chat called The Session. This month Laura Hadland wants us to tell her about The Ultimate Pub Quiz Round.
For anyone who knows me, you’d expect me to be predictable and say my topic would be the broad canvasses of sport or music – maybe even independent breweries of Northern Ireland. If you did suggest any of those subjects, you’d be way off the mark as enter stage left comes my 14 year old son – he’ll have a pint of blackcurrant cordial please, bartender. I’ll then take the usual five minutes to decide what I’m drinking, if I’m in a decent pub with decent beer. We wait for the Ultimate Pub Quiz Round to begin – flags of the world. Oh yes, eat my dust, suckers.
Actually not my dust but his – as this is where a certain teenager becomes an incredible tour de force. Over the past few years I have been educated by, and astounded at, one young person’s encyclopaedic knowledge of this topic. Who knew so many country flags looked similar? Do you know the difference between the flags of Monaco and Indonesia, or Senegal and Cameroon? Did you know the flags of Romania and Chad are exactly the same?
Do you know the flags of Benin, Dominica or Palau? See the images below if you don’t, and I don’t expect you do. I never even knew the Western Pacific island of Palau existed for goodness sake! However, sat in a pub for a quiz round on flags I would be rubbing my hands with joy, as this incredible young man sat beside me would have the question answered in a heart beat. Bring it on.
Modern day flags? He’s completed it, mate. Why stop the learning when you know every country? He can give you historical flags, flags of countries no longer in existence and even proposed flags that never quite made the cut. It’s hugely impressive.
While we’re on the subject, one of the best quizzes I attended last year was in Blackbird in Derry/Londonderry. Mrs W and I happened to enter the pub just as the quiz was about to start and when the quizmaster asked if we would like to join, he presented us with iPad-style tablets. Questions pop up on the pad and you’ve a set time to answer each one. There’s no pen or paper, no shouting “what’s question number four again?” – and because the quizmaster doesn’t have to mark thirty pieces of paper, the results of each round take a matter of seconds to be compiled. It’s the way forward.
There’s usually a good selection of draught indie beer at Blackbird – recent taps have featured Boundary, Bullhouse and Verdant while there’s nearly always the perennial favourite, Kinnegar’s Scraggy Bay.
Thinking about it now, I need to enter more pub quizzes. There’s really only one pub in my home town which has a quiz and serves beer I like to drink – Ownies pub in Carrickfergus has a quiz every month and a sole indie offering of Scraggy on tap. I haven’t attended any quiz since Blackbird last August, so thanks Laura – because of your topic, Ownies will now sell a few more pints of Scraggy Bay. Cheers!
