Is the answer "VENIZIA!!??"?

The Monday one at the Swimmer on Eburne Road is good. They also do really great food. If you're feeling brainy the hardest quiz in London is at the Prince of Wales in Highgate.
I like the quiz at the Fullback, a good mixture of people join in. Keep meaning to go to the one at the Dairy as it could also be combined with snacking on the lovely scotch eggs, but I keep forgetting to check which day it's on 'til it's too late.

There's one in The Park Tavern, can't remember which night, possibly Thurs.

@Andy
Blimey, you must have a crack team of quizzers - it is generally acknowledged as London's hardest quiz

Wowzers, you did get lucky - one of our rounds was on Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Well, my experience of the Dairy has always been that they can't run a pub, so being unable to run a pub quiz either seems par for the course.

Re: large teams, I once went to a quiz in Crouch End (think it was the Queens) where you were penalised by a point for every player over (iirc) four. Which seems like a sensible handicapping system.

Hi all can anyone remind me when the FF pubquiz starts? is it 8pm or 9pm? thinking of wandering along tonight...

TIA

I didn't know that the Stapleton hosted a quiz. Might give that a whirl next week.

@GPN - any idea what time it's on? Think it may be time to wheel out our two-man quiz team. We came last in the Park Tavern quiz and got a can of Heinz Tomato Soup as the wooden spoon prize. The joke's on them, because it was actually rather nice!

@ GPN 10-man team wasn't me, I didn't make it.

If the Stapleton comedian is anything like the stand-up on their opening night, I'll give it a miss.

Any idea if there is a team size limit?

@Arkady - unknown. I may bring a stick to whack team over 6.

I am a man of small and petty values.

@ShaunG - "Tour de Farce". We at most have 4 usually, but where down to 3. We tend to perform er....moderately. We're the Pub Quiz equivalent of Blackburn Rovers.

did anyone go to the stapleton quiz last night? if so, what did you think?

i'm going to be restrained and just say it wasn't as much fun as i'd been led to believe it would be. partly because they weren't doing food, and it was freezing cold despite the fire. but otherwise the pub seems nice, i'm just not sure about the quizzers (edit: i meant the quizmaster, not the participants).

FYI the quiz there is apparently not a regular monday thing. next monday event is on the 1st of november, which is a comedy night featuring "all professionals, no amateurs, and definitely some people off the telly". the best name they came up with was mark "roy walker's son" walker.

oh i'm so glad you asked.

the game show format was non existent. except for two questions at the end where two people had to stand up and hold up a card with a letter on it. the comedian was just a man with an unnecessary microphone. he didn't make a single joke, so i can't judge whether he would be funny or not. in questionmaster terms, he was mean and jobsworthy. he was factually incorrect on a number of questions and was not even willing to give half points. i know it must be hard for quizmasters to stand their ground, but really, he should be flexible if he is wrong. in one round we missed out an answer on the sheet and so had the rest of the questions in the wrong boxes. so i asked him if he could read some of them out so that we could sort it out. and he just read out the last four (question we missed was the one before) then said he wouldn't read any more and we had to suffer. and he specially went to get his microphone to say this.

he didn't even tell us where we had come in the ranking, he just read out the top two. we asked him afterwards, he asked for our team name and we had changed it slightly (to be hilarious) but it was still clearly recognisable and he said, oh well that probably affected your score then, and just left it.

he had a computer gimp who changed the slides on the powerpoint presentation. every question was on a big screen, rendering the host pointless. the slides were really nicely presented, but for me this just isn't in the spirit of a pub quiz.

he said that next time they would have some kind of automatic scoring system on the screen. he also said that it was working up to being filmed for digital channels and that they were testing the format. and eventually it will be on itv. whatever. it's not a proper quiz.

positive points: 1) it was free. 2) there were 9 rounds of 20 questions i think: one music (modern stuff eg. j. bieber, k. perry, t. tempah), one logos, one police mugshots, loads of pop culture & current celeb gossip/news, very few general knowledge. 3) the prize was a £50 bar voucher

my main complaint: it was stressful and it didn't make me feel clever, even when we got them right.

If they're aiming for ITV, that would explain the air of mean-spirited rubbishness and the utter lack of satisfaction.

You would absolutely love the quiz at the Prince of Wales in Highgate, it fulfils your criteria exactly. Andy clearly caught it on a lowbrow night (see above) it's usually very pretentiously high brow and requiring all kinds of arcane and obscure knowledge.

The Swimmer is my favourite local one but if you want to try a bit further afield the quiz at the (Sir Richard) Steeles in Belsize Park is fun. I think it would be your cup of tea. http://sirrichardsteele.com/

@miss annie bog off.

@sophie - to be honest I haven't been for nearly a year. Is it still done by the fat Christopher Hitchens wannabe? I loved that guy.

Only been to the Swimmer quiz once, it was presented by an anarchic Australian - great fun. I may propose a return to the Shaftesbury with my team.

Perhaps we should field a StroudGreen.org team.

@Sophie I was there with GPN. We took in to account your out of order answers and marked accordingly. :)

All I can say is I'm glad it was free!
I get the feeling the quizmaster has never been to a pub quiz before. The questions were almost as bad as the Kings Head quiz we went to a few years ago, in that they were all 'pop culture'.
It could get better, but I'm not holding my breath.

Still love the Stapleton though, even if we did have to pop accross to the Dairy for food before the quiz (why host the quiz on the one night you don't serve food and on the same night as the Fullback?)

Er, I wasn't saying that glasses on pumps looks dreadful. It's not the best look ever, but if there's been a sudden rush on a given product (and one can never 100% predict custom, so that happens to even the best pubs *occasionally*) then it is a lot better than no indication at all that a given pint is off. I could take your assurances of a new efficiency at the pub a lot more seriously if you hadn't just made such a slipshod misreading of my complaint.

I can, incidentally, confirm that the Swimmer quiz is top fun, though the only time I've been I was already pissed when I turned up so I may not be too clear on the specifics.

@Jenowl I really enjoy it. Its a mix of current affairs, general quiz questions, a picture round (but not perhaps in the usual sense), audio questions on movie quotes, music questions....and the tin foil round, where you can win bonus points for creating a sculpture on the weekly theme. I believe this is the sole reason why people turn up. Its amazing what can be achieved in a 1ft x 2ft sheet. There's normally around 10 teams, it starts at 8pm, all over by 10-10.30pm, quid a player, and the host is a nice guy. He will give you clues if you ask too, when he comes around the tables. Top prize is dinnner for 4, second some booze, boobie prize some chocolate. Think it must be different to the previous one.

I would like to think that I'd win the tin foil round. I once made scale models of The Simpsons from the wrappers on the after dinner mints at a friends wedding.

Didn't you win a stick of sprouts for your efforts Misscara?? Jolly well done.