The Unstoppable Quiz: A Conversation With the Host of Paddy O'Shea's WeChat Pub Quiz

The last time there was an actual, physical quiz at Paddy O'Shea's was at the beginning of February. The pub has (mostly) managed to stay open throughout the pandemic, but big events are a no-go. 

As they say in the drunken trivia industry, however, “The quiz must go on!” If people can’t make it to the quiz will come to them – or, rather, to their phone. The quiz is now being held through WeChat, with the hosts asking questions and subsequently being barraged with answers from dozens of participants.

Players can still win shots at the bar for winning the round, although if they aren’t actually at the bar they can donate them to few who have actually made it into Paddy’s. As for the overall prizes, individuals can win vouchers to the likes of TRB and Sherpa's.

To learn more about how a pub quiz would work outside of the pub, we talked Jason Crawford, who hosts the quiz every other week, alternating with co-hosts Grant Mitchell and Randy Dioneda. These days, Crawford doesn’t usually attend the quiz either – the last time he did, he had just gotten out of quarantine. Though he had heard of similar online quizzes happening back in his home of the UK, this is, as far as he is aware, the first online pub quiz in Beijing.

How did this online quiz get started? 
It started with Paul, the manager, who asked in our WeChat group of Paddy’s quiz hosts if we could still do something or other. That led to Grant suggesting an online quiz, so we decided to have a trial run within that WeChat group to see how that would work.

Paddy’s already had a WeChat group for people to take part in the quiz and learn what the topics would be ahead of time, so the idea was just to use that group in order to do the WeChat quiz. Of course, when we started doing that, a lot more people joined that group.

How weird is it to have a bar full of people on their phones?
I’ve only been in once to see it, and that was before the new regulations came in – because as of this week, Paddy’s was told by the local government that they can only have one person per table now. So there have been pictures of a half-dozen people all stacked in a semi-circle for the quiz, but each of them is at their own table. But we do the quiz as an individual contest now, so at least it doesn’t affect things in that regard.

But it is curious to see everyone at the bar looking so intently at their phones. The quiz is quite intense when it’s happening, so everyone just kind of shuts everything else out.

It seems that people are still having drinks during the quiz, even if they are playing from home. Do you?
I’ll have a beer, yes. But that’s a beer, as opposed to several beers that I would have otherwise.

What’s the main difference in planning and overseeing a WeChat quiz vs. a real pub quiz
Normally the quiz is six rounds, but we’ve reduced it to four for this in order to simplify it. Also, one of the rounds we usually do is a music round, which we can’t really do that through WeChat, but people missed it, so I did add a music-themed round last quiz. 

The other thing is that it has to be played by individuals, not by groups or teams. Then there’s the problem of how many people should get points? We eventually decided that the first two people to give the correct answer will get points. If you go beyond that, it could be that positions three to five don’t really know what the answer is and they are just copying it from the previous answers.

I’ve also had to alter some questions to fit the format. The most obvious version of that would be multiple-choice questions, which you can’t really do in a quiz like this.

At first, we had an issue with people saying “no I got it first” and sending screenshots, so we had to set a rule where we always go by the host’s screen. As always, the standard quiz rule is, “the quiz master’s always right.” 

Overall, it seems to work okay, although it can be a bit frantic – for those asking the questions as well as answering them. There are over 100 people in that group, so there can be a message every second.

A pub quiz is really a social event. Have you found that this has been a social outlet for people stuck in their homes?
I think some of the people who have enjoyed it the most are the ones actually participating from quarantine. I think they were very grateful for the distraction.

There is a lot of interaction in the group, so it is quite social in that way, but with the added element of competing against a hundred other people.

If you would like to participate in the online pub quiz, follow Paddy O'Shea's on WeChat (ID: paddyosheasbeijing) and ask to be added to the group.

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Images courtesy of Paddy O'Shea's