Greetings, Daily Candy readers! What you should know about this site and how to play the free quizzes

In anticipation of a flood of traffic from DailyCandy.com's kind listing of this blog on their Philadelphia page, I've put together a quick guide to the quizzes and blog. I've dated this post a few days ahead so that it's the top post for a bit.

My pub quizzes are free and take place at two casual, cheap, & legendary bars in Philadelphia: Dirty Frank's at 13th & Pine Sts. in Center City and Ray's Happy Birthday Bar near 9th & Federal Sts., at the southern end of the Italian Market. Both start roughly 9pm and finish shortly after 11, Frank's each Wednesday and Ray's each Tuesday . First, second and third place winners get generous gift certificates good at the bar and/or other prizes I provide, often out of print trivia- or entertainment-oriented items. You need no sort of reservation to play; just show up!

I also run very reasonably priced quizzes for private groups/parties by arrangement. Contact info is on the upper right-hand side of the blog; feel free to email or call. I can easily tailor a quiz to your age group and/or interests.

I provide answer sheets and pencils. Teams are 1-8 people, and there are 6 rounds of 10 questions each. I ask the 10 verbally via amplification, you then consult with your team and write the answers. After each round I mark papers and update scores, then wash/rinse/repeat. Sometimes I also give out additional prizes shouted out by individuals after the regular game is over.

Quiz questions are (in no particular order) on movies, TV, history, geography, sports, literature, science and general Americana. For detailed info on my sources and qualifications as a professional researcher, read the FAQ post.

The first round are Easy questions worth 1 point, the second round are 50/50 questions that you always have a 50% chance of answering correctly at 2 points each. The third round is a Speed round in which I ask only one question with more than 10 correct answers; your challenge is to give me as many as you think are correct, up to 10 for 3 points each, usually in 90 seconds. The fourth round is the Subject round, 10 4-point questions on one topic I announce on this site ahead of time each week (scroll down a bit). My favorite, the Secret Theme round, is fifth. I ask 10 unrelated, more challenging 5-point questions on various topics which have a theme known only to me running through the answers. You get 8 bonus points for writing down the theme. The sixth round is billed as Unreasonably Difficult, and questions are 6 points each, sometimes with multiple answers that break those 6 points into something more manageable.

And that's that. We have a drink, we joke, we have fun and distribute prizes. There's time between rounds and questions to socialize. What more could you want? I think it beats the hell out of staying home and watching the tube. People sometimes walk in knowing no one, join up with a team or start a friendly rivarly and make new friends just like that.

This blog is used to post each week's upcoming Subject rounds, photos of winners and everyone's scores, both of the previous week's Secret Theme rounds in their entirety (I put a few days in between posting the questions and answers) and whatever else of note I feel like posting. It gets updated a few times per week, and you can send me an email at chris [at] quizmasterchris [dot] com in order to join my email list, which sends you a weekly update. Frequent features here are great obscure music videos and news items of note, trivia-related or not. All posts are open to your comments, and I read, and respond to, all.

Enjoy the blog, and I hope to see a lot of fresh faces at both quizzes; I write two distinct ones so you can play twice in the same week!