12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: LANGUAGES
Thursday, January 31, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: ALTERNATE & SUBTITLES OF FAMOUS BOOKS
Monday, January 28, 2013
This week's Subject round subjects
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: LANGUAGES
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Spring term quizzes resume this Thursday at The Draught Horse
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: VOCABULARY
Tenth (!) term beginning this Thursday at Temple.
Thursday, January 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: 2012: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2013: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
The annual quiz in which I ask questions about what's happened already this year & what's been scheduled to happen for some time.
Thursday, January 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TBA
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Actual quiz happening at 12 Steps this week, I swear
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2012: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
It's just been an awkward calendar iteration for Wednesdays at 12 Steps the past couple of weeks; first the day after Christmas in a freezing rain and then January 2nd, which in South Philly is pretty much like a bar night on the night of January 1st anywhere else. We should finally be able to get a proper game in tomorrow night. While I appreciate the die-hards showing up the past two weeks we simply didn't have critical mass for real quizzes. I did enjoy getting a couple of mellow nights to talk with people for a change.
Thursday, January 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TBA
Monday, December 31, 2012
Happy New Year quiz geeks!
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2012: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Owing to a paltry Boxing Day turnout last week I'll be reloading the planned Subject round all the regulars missed.
Thursday, January 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TBA
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Another last minute update - final quiz of year
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2012: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Thursday, January 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TBA
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
12 Steps Down quiz tonight; Spring term begins at Draught Horse January 24
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 1980s NEW WAVE / POP
... which you're listening to on the stereo there all of the time anyway, right?
Thursday, January 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TBA
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Final quiz of Temple term at Draught Horse this week
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ALTERNATE & SUBTITLES OF FAMOUS BOOKS
Thursday, December 13, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: ALTERNATE & SUBTITLES OF FAMOUS BOOKS II: THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL
Owing to the unusually early starting and ending dates for Temple's Fall term, this will be the last quiz of 2012. I'll try to get a start date for the beginning of next term in time to announce it during this quiz.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Back to Draught Horse after a little hiatus
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: EUROPE
Thursday, December 6, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH K
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Guest host Thursday night
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ASIA
Thursday, November 29, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: ?
Hey Temple people - for the first time in 5 years I need to take the night off. I'm doing some other-work-related travel. Quizmaster John will be filling in for me using a quiz he wrote in the same format. QJ is my go-to understudy, has played my quizzes since the beginning and has twice been a member of teams that have scored the highest scores ever in my format. I expect you to give him the same general lack of attention and respect you give me. I should be back at the helm - and with that room set up it seems literal - next week.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Gobble up some quiz
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round:THE AMERICAN COLONIES
Thursday, November 22
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
NO QUIZ - THANKSGIVING - BAR CLOSED
Unlike the Detroit Lions, you get a day off from losing.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Upcoming subject rounds
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FAMOUS SIDEKICKS
Thursday, November 15, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Explore trivia this week
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: EXPLORERS
Thursday, November 8, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: BIOLOGY
Life imitates The Simpsons here in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Voting Machine Changes Obama Vote to Romney
We really shouldn't even have voting machines. Paper ballots would be superior in any number of ways, and far cheaper. Ireland just sold theirs for scrap.
At least the sensible Jill Stein button still works. Also allow me to recommend Ms. Marakay Rogers for Attorney General, a great, gutsy and fair lawyer who helped me out pro bono several years ago when we were both filing papers in the same Harrisburg office. I walked in the door not knowing her, she saw some state workers jerking me around and automatically volunteered herself as on the spot counsel. Now that's service! She should be behind a desk in Harrisburg.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Halloween brings a set of spooky, scary trivia questions
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SPOOKY SCARY HALLOWEENY-TYPE QUESTIONS
Thursday, November 1, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
Monday, October 22, 2012
Letter-specific subject rounds this week
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH Q
Thursday, October 25, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH Z
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Weekly subjects
Wednesday, October 17, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: GEOMETRY
Thursday, October 18, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: FICTIONAL REALMS
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
A few words on how cheating is handled
I'd just like to remind folks that it usually becomes evident to me after the fourth round who might be cheating. It doesn't look like I'm doing much about it but that's by design.
The whole idea of the quiz is to fill seats and encourage people to stick around, presumably buying food and drink. It's therefore my policy to let cheaters cheat without comment and continue conducting the game while the cheaters think they are doing well. They get eliminated at the end of the quiz and the bar still gets their money, which is transferred to honest winning teams in the form of prizes, and to me in the form of... their money.
Sometimes it becomes evident a team has cheated on a few answers and isn't really very good or very motivated at that activity either, and won't be finishing in the prizes anyway. Those people I just leave alone.
It's also an aim of mine that people who enjoy the challenge should feel that they aren't being cheated, and of course neither the bars nor I appreciate our honest customers getting ripped off. Thus I'd just like people to know that I take a hard line against cheating, I do like to know when it's happening, and although it's mostly unspoken something is happening to defeat it.
Fortunately it's generally evident when a team is cheating. People who underestimate the rest of our abilities to determine when they cheat are usually not bright enough to pull things off well either. Signs include:
- Teams who get 5 correct in the first round and then 8 in each of the last few. Possible but very unlikely.
- "Knowing" a difficult answer and then misspelling it, especially when it's not a difficult item to spell. This is clearly happening when one person is looking up the answer and a different person is writing things down. I tend also to have more confidence in sheets written in different handwriting, as team members slide the sheet around to the person who knows the answer, and who doesn't want to say it out loud. Cheating teams generally assign one person - usually a female if they have one - as a scribe. We are after all talking about lazy people.
- Always doing better at the beginning of the round than at the end, because there was less time to look things up at the end. Again, these are lazy people, and if they were better at looking things up they'd have a skill set which might include knowing them offhand from the start. Sometimes I deliberately make the last couple of questions in a round the ones that are more difficult to Google, and often this results in a team who was looking things up turning a sheet in earlier than other teams, there being no point in trying to brainstorm an answer, with all their correct answers front-loaded.
- Teams that get some difficult questions correct and then leave others in the same round completely blank - just no attempt whatever at an educated guess - make me suspicious.
- In the case of a generally younger crowd such as we have at the Draught Horse, getting a 1980s TV question correct but not a contemporary one. Again it is possible but it draws my attention.
- Only getting the straightforward questions correct and never getting the complex ones correct that'd be difficult to Google. An example of a straightforward question in this sense would be a sports record holder, or a capital. Easily researched, and if I'm asking it there is generally one definitive answer. If your team gets all of those correct, no matter how obscure, and can't answer anything correctly requiring multiple elements, or requiring a plot element from any book or movie... I'm suspicious.
- Getting most of the answers correct in the Secret Theme round but not even attempting to propose a Secret Theme. This is especially the case when the questions were difficult but the theme more obvious should you have them to work with. That one's a big red flag and usually these teams will miraculously go on to get 8 answers correct in the final round.
Most cheating teams do a combination of all or most of the above. Usually they might as well just stand up and announce that they are looking up answers.
There are likely a few other things I'm forgetting. Most of the time I'll just skip over a team name when giving the final scores when it's obvious cheating occurred. And most of the time this takes place no one bothers to follow up with me about it, which is another sign that they did dirty.
Rarely people will have the temerity to challenge me on de facto accusing them of cheating, and this is usually easily handled by asking them simple follow-up questions - simpler ones in fact - about their answers. An example from life would be asking a team who "knew" what Huck Finn's hometown was what primary character Huck was with during his raft journey. When the team didn't know Jim after multiple guesses it was clear they didn't know the book.
Your weekly subject rounds
Wednesday, October 10, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: LESS FAMOUS WORKS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS
Thursday, October 11, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: MUSICALS
Monday, October 1, 2012
This week's quiz subjects
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Wednesday, October 3, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ORIGINAL PLACE NAMES
Thursday, October 4, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES
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