Once a month “The Artefact”, which is an Art Cafe Co-operative in Stirchley, hosts a pub quiz. I am a big fan of Artefact and usually attend their quiz.

Weird and Wacky quizzes

The biggest reason for me liking the Artefact Quiz is the abstract nature of the rounds. It has been an inspiration for my own Wellington Pub Quiz hosting. Rounds have varied from bizarre names of monarchs to pictures of South Park characters. On the flip side, there is always a film music round, which my team always fails at.

Birmingham

A common theme in pub quizzes hosted in Birmingham is to have rounds about our beloved city. In this instalment there were two Brum based rounds. A picture round of famous Brummies and a question round on the city. The team of Emma and I did reasonably well on these two rounds. We identified Geezer Butler by photo and that Boudicca was buried below the McDonald’s at Parson’s Hill. We were well on our way to achieving our goal of finishing “anywhere but last.” There was also a picture round on East Asian cinema, which Emma did quite well on based on her knowledge of Studio Ghibli.

We predictably fall apart

More rounds followed. There is usually an “either round” where you get a choice of answers. This time round, the choices were about ways that people died in London in the 1600’s. Did more people die “suddenly” or because of “teeth?” The answer is teeth. We always enjoy this round as the randomness is fun and it is a leveller for all the teams involved. The next round was a round on lists. We knew our English Counties but not the potential Democratic Presidential candidates. We had also not watched a Wes Anderson film between us.

One of our major weaknesses is film knowledge. I watch films occasionally and usually only once. Every Artefact Quiz has a round on film music. We got 0 out of 12 on this. We guessed some of the films, but not to the correct song. Woe be us. On top of this, there was a second music round, where I instantly recognised a Take That song, but not a Pantera song. As a metal head this brings great shame to Shaz. By this point we were now failing in our mission to not finish last.

The final round.

By this point a group of people looking for a beer turned up at Artefact. This was a problem because now we could not here the Quiz Masters reading out the questions or the answers. Despite this annoyance, we carried on in our quest not to come last. The final round in the quiz is a wipeout round. If you answer all the questions correctly than you get bonus points, but if you answer one wrong than you get 0 points for the round.

We always take a gamble and the gamble always goes wrong. In this case we thought that a sonnet has 12 lines rather than 14. Our good work in knowing Homer Simpson’s middle name and that Croatia has a bigger population than Lithuania meant nothing. We wiped out, we came last. There were only two of us on the team. If we had more friends than the safety of mid table could beckon. On this occasion though Emma and I trudged home in last place. Our team name of “anywhere but last” was a false prediction from us.

Before the next Artefact Quiz, I should either find some new friends or learn about music films. Watching films would be too time consuming but there must be websites that have this knowledge on it, that I could learn from. I always enjoy the Artefact quiz for its randomness and as long as people don’t randomly turn up and talk really loudly during the questions and answers, whilst the quiz is going on, I will continue to go to the Artefact Quiz. You should go too. It’s usually on the last Friday of the month.