The Ultimate Book of Pub Trivia is a well written collection of quiz and trivia, including question rounds (with answers)
written by 12 time Jeopardy champion Austin Rogers. Due out 22nd Feb 2022 from Workman Publishing, it's 336 pages (print format) and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. It's
worth noting that the ebook format has a handy (partially) interactive table of
contents. I've
really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This
is such a fun book. The introduction covers the
basics: who, what, where, how, when, and why. There are more specifics
about venues, cover charges (if any), drinks & snacks, acoustics,
scoring, and, really, all the info needed to run a quiz night in the third (final) section of the book. In between the two are the questions, set up in quiz rounds. The answers are given on the same page with the question rounds, upside down (but still easy to read - this could be a drawback in some situations, if visibility and accidentally seeing the answers are a problem. I noticed flipping through the book that I accidentally (?) stumbled over the answers whilst pondering the questions. I was actively trying not to "cheat" but still saw the answers. Since an eARC was the format I was using, it's not really practical (but it *is* possible) to cover the answer key area with a card or piece of paper.
The
bulk of the book is taken up with the questions. They're hugely varied,
concisely written, and definitely not all easy. I pride myself on being
a trivia maven and these weren't a walk in the park. I liked that the author specified some things which I've noticed about pub quiz nights in real life. So many rounds are so specific and esoteric as to be annoying/boring for almost everyone, and the only person having fun is the one who just happens to strike lucky and be the only one in the bar with a ridiculous knowledge of obscure 14th century Coptic fiber-arts techniques... everyone else is annoyed and/or bored. He also raises the salient points that a really exciting quiz night should have the possibility of different teams in the lead at different points during the evening and that nobody really knows ahead of time who's going to win, as well as pointing out that offering small side-prizes for particular rounds (free drinks, meals, etc) will increase engagement and excitement.
Four stars. This is a one-stop resource for planners of trivia nights. It will be a solid resource for trivia fans as a study guide also. There are some repeat answers, but I didn't see any repeat questions.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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