Thursday 23 July 2015

Pub Quiz Poll: Strangers joining your team

After my last fairly unexciting poll about when people quiz, I thought I'd ask about something a little more exciting this time: stranger danger!

Melodramatic, perhaps, but at a quiz in Montreal earlier this year a never-before-seen event interrupted our evening: someone asked to join our team.

I'll admit, we were both caught completely off guard, and in our painfully British attempt to work out what to say the unwitting invader quickly decided (or, rather, worked out) we were a pair of weirdos and that maybe they were better off finding a more normal group to ask. Nevertheless, we were staggered: the idea of asking to join a random team seemed unthinkable, and we put it down to North American friendliness (or, perhaps more accurately, British stand-offishness) and got on with the quiz.

Still, I wanted to know if others had had this experience, and if so, what they do about it. The poll below presents a few options, so do please take a moment to select the one that applies to you. What's more, if none seem quite right there's a free text 'other' field for all your descriptive needs.

6 comments:

  1. You might potentially need another poll for whether anyone here has been in the position where they were the stranger asking to join a team. I've not done that as an individual, but at the last pub quiz I went to my wife and I joined up our team of two with another team of three who we didn't know before we got there.

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    1. I had considered including options for that sort of thing too, but it was getting a bit out of hand :) Glad to hear your experience was better than the poor person who stumbled across us!

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  2. Me and some friends once won a pub quiz thanks to two elderly ladies who were sharing our table, and gave us the answer to a question about a 60's tv series (they weren't taking part in the quiz). We offered them a share of the prize - bar tokens, I think - but they refused.

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    1. Excellent. That reminds me of another poll idea I've had rattling around, watch this space...

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  3. In a holiday environment (on a cruise ship) it's happened both way (we've asked to join and been asked to join, and have done so)

    Back home I'd never ask and don't think I've been asked. If I were asked, I'd consider things like our team size versus the maximum, and what areas we didn't have covered ("you guys any good at pictures?")

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    1. Ah yes, I do think these things are a little context-dependent. For instance, the university runs a quiz night which is rather more social than your typical pub environment, so that sort of thing is rather more common.

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