Why are we so obsessed with the pub quiz? Here's what Irish quiz masters have to say

Quiz nights are filling up bars and pubs on traditionally quiet midweek nights. What is their enduring appeal? Ali Dunworth finds out

Anthony and Jessica Thompson using the quiz tablet and app at Tradehouse Central in Ballincollig. Picture: Noel Sweeney.

Kevin Conlon was bitten by the quiz bug at a young age. In fifth class, he joined his Mallow primary school’s Credit Union Quiz team, and they went on to place fifth in the All-Ireland final. He tells me this from Australia, where he now lives with his husband — a move they were able to make after a big quiz win on RTÉ’s The Money List.

“I was on season two with a retired nurse called Phyllis. We managed to win €81,000, which is still the record on the show to this day.”

Kevin Conlon on The Money List

It was years of pub quizzing that honed him for that win. After the early school success, he got back into quizzing when he started college in Cork in 2012 and set up a team with a few friends, the Tequila Mockingbirds. They became fixtures at a weekly quiz run by “The Quiz Guys”, Pat Ahern and Colm Lougheed. Conlon reckons he has been to around 200 of their quizzes over the years. Along the way, the quizmaster and punter became friends, and Conlon brought the Quiz Guys to Malta for his wedding, where they DJ’d and hosted a quiz the next day.

Kevin Conlon did a quiz at his wedding

When I talk to quiz host Pat Ahern about Conlon, what he talks about most is not the quiz scores but the support. As a paediatrician, Conlon was on hand with advice when Ahern first had children. This is exactly what has stood out as I’ve delved into Ireland’s world of quizzing: getting the answers right is always great, but what seems to keep people coming back is the community that grows around them.

Pat Ahern has been growing his quiz community around Cork and beyond for more than 15 years. From the start, they set out to shake things up. “We wanted to move away from that stereotypical idea of an old man sitting at the top of the bar reading out random facts and questions. We wanted to add to it, make it a bit more exciting.”

Quiz host Patrick Ahern reading the questions from his computer at Tradehouse Central in Ballincollig Picture: Noel Sweeney.

It caught on, and these days Ahern and his team specialise in speed quizzing using smartphones. “We pay for the quiz software, get new questions sent every week, and make our own music rounds.” Teams use an app, but only have ten seconds to lock in answers. “That’s a killer for some people; old-school quizzers don’t always like the format, but lots of people love it.”

Despite teams being on their phones, he says it’s hard to cheat. “People still try to get a calculator for the maths questions or Shazam songs, but it never works out for them.”

 A tablet with the Speed Quizzing App installed. Picture: Noel Sweeney

Ahern says all the tech in the world doesn’t matter as much as a good host: “You can teach anyone to use the software, but hosting is 90% of it.” For most people, the camaraderie and entertainment are the draw. “The quiz is secondary to the social side of it and the fun.”

That social pull is what drives publican Seáneen Sullivan’s quiz at L. Mulligan Grocer in Stoneybatter, Dublin. Their monthly quiz is as much about the meet-ups as it is about filling seats. “It’s usually on a night when it’s a little bit quieter. The atmosphere that it creates is so joyful; it creates a really nice liveliness on an otherwise quiet night.”

Her quiz hosts are enthusiastic regulars who have day jobs and do the quiz as a hobby. The prize money from each quiz is donated to a charity chosen by the winning team.

“I want to lean into the pub as a third space,” Sullivan says.

I think it’s important to be more than just slinging drinks. I really believe that pubs have an onus to provide hospitality.

"And then there’s the entertainment of it. The quiz creates an opportunity for people to socialise in the space that isn’t just focused on alcohol.”

When they moved the quiz online during the Covid pandemic, Sullivan said it really showed how important being in a room together is. “It was really revealing because it didn’t feel the same. You miss the camaraderie of being together, people gathered around the table. You know, someone being adamant that they know the answer, and the highs and lows of then finding out that you’re wrong. It just didn’t translate, not being in person.”

It’s a similar story across Dublin in Rialto, where Colin McKeown hosts the quiz at the Circular. A filmmaker by trade, he started hosting back in 2019, and his first outing in a Temple Bar pub drew just twelve people and cost him €40 in prize money. But it didn’t deter him.

“Even if you’re only a few people, it’s the talking back and forth, it’s affirming — a shared experience. A community.”

By early 2020, he was running a dozen quizzes a month in different pubs and doing corporate gigs too. Until covid shut everything down.

His regulars pushed for online quizzes, but like Sullivan, he said the life had gone out of them. Without the shared room, the shared joke, the shared tension, it just didn’t land the same way. “There was no feeling in them.”

Quiz Master Patrick Ahern during the pub quiz at Tradehouse Central in Ballincollig. Picture by Noel Sweeney Sweeney.

McKeown’s format is part of what makes his nights special. It’s pen and paper, but he doesn’t stand and read out every question. The rounds are introduced by the hosts, then the questions appear on a big screen. “It’s hard to describe unless you’ve done it.” He says he thinks of creating the two-hour quiz as he would a film. “I’m thinking about the communication, what’s going on in the back of the audience’s head. We want the audience to be able to talk their way through and argue and comment. I love setting up the theme, having something oddball or funny and then returning to the theme throughout the night.”

It works, and he’s earned a loyal following from it. “We’ve built a community of people, some who’ve been coming since our early days, and they now know each other, and they recognise the team names.”

One of his favourite memories is a Doctor Who quiz, where fifteen separate teams arrived as strangers and, by the end, had pushed their tables together into one big group that stayed on drinking and chatting.

Alongside his regular night at the Circular, he runs a monthly music quiz in Whelan’s, a movie quiz in The Parnell on Parnell Street, and has just added a weekly Monday quiz at The Woolshed nearby.

At a time when many pubs seem to be struggling, the pub quiz seems to be a sure-fire way to get bums on seats and the till ringing. At The Circular, where McKeown’s quiz sells out most weeks, publican John Mahon says the night doubles their trade.

“It’s down to Colin. He gets lots of regulars. It’s steady and buzzy and funny, and the questions are always thoughtful — it’s really well-rounded.”

Over at The Glenside in Churchtown, publican Paul Mangan says adding a quiz turned Tuesdays from a ghost town into a full house.

“It was like a dead duck. Nothing was happening at all apart from the odd match.” They added a smartphone quiz run by JC’s Quiz and now pack out forty tables. “Now the pub stays full for the evening. It’s a lovely mix of people, and it’s brought more local use of the pub.”

That’s an added win for the pubs — getting people back in and building community. Our pubs should be part of the community, and the booming business of quizzes seems to be a good gateway. But not all quizzes are created equal, says Bantry-born Elizabeth Farrelly, an avid quiz-goer.

Avid quiz-goer Elizabeth Farrelly

“It can be a very inconsistent world,” she tells me, and since moving to Kilkenny a few years ago from Dublin, she keeps up to date with local quizzes by following the Irish Quiz League’s Facebook page — although she says it’s hard to beat McKeown’s quiz at the Circular, which she’ll come back for a few times a year. This summer, she won one week with her team Excalibur Cottage, which she says is “a deep Alan Partridge reference”. As winners, they are invited back to compete in the yearly Quiz Champions League in December.

Farrelly has loved quizzing for as long as she can remember. Her first quiz, she reckons, was probably in primary school. She started getting into it properly about 10 years ago. It’s a world away from her day job running a busy beauty business, which is part of the appeal. 

It’s a way of learning and engaging with the world.

Like Conlon, Farrelly was also a contestant on RTÉ’s The Money List. Although she didn’t leave with a lump of cash, she still praises the show, and quiz shows generally.

“They introduce the idea of quizzing to people, and I love to see that spread and people getting more into quizzing because it’s a great hobby. It’s really good fun. It’s social, you can learn a lot, and it keeps people switched on and interested in the world, and I think that’s a very valuable thing.”

So if you’re eyeing your local quiz, how do you prep? Knowing a little bit about a lot of things is what most quizzers will say. Farrelly’s advice is to pay attention to “Current affairs, sports, history — be interested in everything.”

Patrick Ahern Hosts at Tradehouse Central in Ballincollig, Henrik Foerster rents the table quiz tablet to use its quiz app from quiz Master Patrick Ahern at Tradehouse Central in Ballincollig. Picture: Noel Sweeney

Pub owner Seáneen Sullivan says don’t fret too much; the right quizzes will keep things accessible. Being a know-it-all — or thinking you are — is part of the appeal, so a good quiz shouldn’t be too obscure. “You don’t want too many niche areas of expertise. It’s really, really important to have a wide breadth of questions and different levels of difficulty. You don’t want it to be overly challenging.”

She says there are often classic pub quiz questions that show up because they stir up debate, which is what you want. “Asking what country drinks the most Guinness per capita and has St Patrick as a patron saint? Try Nigeria. Or name five places in Dublin that end in ‘O’, and people fight about Phibsborough or Phibsboro. It’s so funny. What animal are the Canary Islands named after? It’s not what you think. If the questions make people second-guess themselves, it’s great fun.”