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.

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Pub Quiz Poll Results: Day of week

While the Ones That Got Away are still on holiday as we continue our tour of the UK, here's a rundown of the results of the latest Pub Quiz Poll: when do you most often attend a quiz?

While not the largest sample size (currently 77 votes) a three-tier structure seems to be emerging. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are the most popular evenings for a quiz, with Friday and Saturday predictably quiet. Sundays and Wednesdays, meanwhile, make up something of a middle ground.

It's surprisingly hard to find good data on when pub quiz nights are held. I've only managed to dig up one source that offers a day-to-day breakdown, but that's from eight years ago and based on just 230 Scottish pubs. In that survey Thursday was by far the most popular night for a pub to host a quiz, with Wednesday the least popular of the Sunday-Wednesday options. It's hard to say how strongly pub quiz attendance will correlate with which nights pub quizzes are on offer (market forces would perhaps suggest they should match up pretty well, at least), but it's certainly difficult to draw many conclusions from such limited data.

My own answer to this poll would have been Monday, but mainly because that happens to be the day of the week when our preferred Montreal quiz takes place. Back in the UK we would regularly quiz on Mondays and Tuesdays, with Wednesday a very occasional treat, so there at least my own experience matches up with the poll results.

As always, thanks to those who voted - a new Pub Quiz Poll will be up very soon!

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