The Beacon Thursday Evening Quiz Night - About Us
About Us and the Thursday Quiz
Welcome the "About Us" page. We decided a few years ago that it was about time we showed our faces on the site, as most of you have seen yours on here already. So here are pictures of John and Chris. You'll notice that our pics are with "celebrities", so if you have pictures of yourselves with celebrities, and would like them posted here, please email Chris. Click HERE to read Notes / House Rules for the Thursday Quiznight.
Hi, and thanks for reading these notes about our Thursday Quiznight at The Beacon. Although now at a new Venue, the quiz has been running for over 12 years, and is one of the longest established quizzes in the Milton Keynes area. Quizzes were held every Tuesday evening at the old venue (Shenley), but have now moved to Thursday evenings at The Beacon, with breaks for Christmas and New Year. Other events (such as Euro 2000 or The 2006 World Cup) may also mean that a Thursday quiz will be cancelled. There was also an enforced eight-week break during 2004 due to venue refurbishment, as well as an enforced 10 week break due to the World Cup and change of venue in 2006.
Here's how the quiz works (Thanks to Neil for writing the basis for this a few years back.) :
There is a fee of £1 per team member to take part in the quiz, and a maximum of eight people are permitted in each team (although we are slightly flexible, and do appreciate that there may be the very occasional exception due to miscommunication etc). The £1 entry fee funds the Jackpot / Cashpot Quiz at the end of the evening.
How to Play
The quiz is split into a number of sections / rounds :
Main Quiz (5 rounds of 10 questions each)
Starter Round (Table Quiz - usually a "Top 10" list)
Picture Round (Table Quiz - usually pictures of celebrities, but can
be films or other subjects)
Bonus / Gamble Round (A mini connection round - link up to five clues
/ answers for bonus points)
Jackpot Round (6 "Millionaire" style questions for the evenings
Cashpot - always played after the main quiz)
With effect from Thursday 10th August 2006, the Main Quiz
will start at approximately 9pm at The Beacon, but you
can start working on the Picture Round and Starter Round as
soon as you have registered your team, paid your entry fee and received your
quiz pack.
We will ensure we are there ready to hand out
the quiz packs from around 8:30pm. If there are no major delays, the quiz
should finish by 11pm, although slight over-runs will not be a problem. The
Beacon has a licence until Midnight, if necessary....
Please ensure that you hand your completed Starter Rounds in as soon as possible following the end of Round 2 - this will enable to keep on-top of the marking. After round 3 in the main quiz, there is usually a ten to fifteen minute interval. During this break, you should hand in your answers to the Picture Round and the first three rounds of the main quiz.
Before each of the 5 rounds in the main quiz, you will hear a Bonus/Gamble clue to a common link (this could be five clues to a place, famous person, or common connection), with Bonus point values decreasing on each clue. Hand in your Bonus/Gamble Round answer as soon as you are confident enough to do so - the sooner you hand it in, the more bonus points you earn, but remember that you only have one chance. If your answer is incorrect, you receive no bonus points.
You should ensure that your team name is written on all answer sheets when you hand them in. Please also try to make your answers as easy to read as possible, as we will not be able to award points for any answers that are unclear or illegible.
The winners will be the team with the highest overall score (Main Quiz, Starter Round, Picture Round and Bonus/Gamble Round). Vouchers are awarded to the teams finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd, as well as a consolation prize for the team finishing in last place.
In the event of a tie, the team with the highest score in the Main 50-question quiz will be declared the winners. If this does not produce a winner, teams will declared joint-winners and prizes split accordingly. The same rules apply to teams who are tied for 2nd, 3rd and Last places (With the exception that Last place will be decided on the lowest score in the Main 50-question quiz).
There are also two spot prizes each week - these are always a nearest-the-number answer, and we ask these after questions 30 and 50 of the main quiz. The team nearest the answer wins a spot-prize, and in the event of a tie, the team who handed their answer in first wins the prize.
Jackpot Quiz :
The £1 entry fee paid by each player funds the Jackpot
Quiz. This round will start after the answers to the Main Quiz have been
read out and the final scores and positions announced. The Jackpot Quiz
consists of 6 multiple-choice questions. You should ensure that your answers
are written in full - we cannot accept 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D' as answers.
The jackpot amount will be announced at the start of the quiz and you will
win the Jackpot outright if you are the only team to answer all 6 questions
correctly. If 2, 3, or 4 teams get all 6 correct, the Jackpot will be shared
between them. If more than 4 teams score 6 out of 6, a tie-break question
(see below) will decide who wins.
If no team score 6 out of 6, the team with the most correct answers will win
at least half of the quiz entry fees received that evening. The remainder
will added to the Jackpot pool (or the back-up pool if the jackpot has
reached its limit). If more than one team share the highest score (5 out of
6 or less), then the cashpot winner is decided on the tie-break question -
see below for details.
Tie-Break Question - The tie-break question is now
asked as part of the Jackpot Round, so all teams should ensure that their
Jackpot sheet includes their guess for the tie-breaker. Should the tie-break
question be needed, the team nearest the answer will win the pot.
UPDATE 6th April 05: In the
event of a tie (i.e two tie-break answers are equidistant from the correct
answer), the cashpot will be split between winning teams.
If the tie-break question is not needed (when there is an outright winner of
either Jackpot or Cashpot), then a small prize will be awarded to the team
nearest the tie-break answer (Outright winners excluded).
Some House Rules :
Please ensure that the entry fee has been paid for all members of your team.
We realise that it is only a fun quiz, and we have not seen any instances for a number of years now, but please note that any team caught cheating, including using mobile phones, diaries or any other reference material in order to gain an advantage in the quiz, will be disqualified and will not be welcome at future quizzes. This is common sense - just try to think how you and your team would feel if you were cheating out of winning yourselves.
Naturally, we to try to ensure that the quiz is as
accurate as possible, but we do occasionally make mistakes. Please feel free
to query any answers that you feel are incorrect, but note that due to time
constraints we cannot guarantee that any reported errors will be corrected
before the scores are added up and the winners announced.
Although most quiz players do understand these
basic rules or guidelines, then - generally - the Quizmasters decision on
any given night is final. In the event that we are unable to resolve any
query to everyone's satisfaction on the night, then any dispute that cannot
be resolved satisfactorily on any given quiznight, the Quizmasters will
withhold any prizes until full research and clarification has been gained
and all parties have been notified and are happy with the decision.
Apologies for this, but based on a recent news article about this subject, we are sure you will
understand the need for this additional caveat in the rules.
To gain entry into the record books / statistics, teams must complete an evenings quiz. Entry into the yearly stats is subject to completion of 5 quizzes, and entry into the all-time stats in subject to completion of at least 15 quizzes - one of which must have been within the previous 12 calendar months. Entry into Top-10 records is subject to completion of a quiz, and in the event of a team not completing a quiz, entry into Top-10 records may be awarded to the next placed team (dependant on actual scores, of course).
Feedback :
We try to be as broad and as fair as possible when setting the questions, but we do welcome feedback. If you would like to see a certain subject included in future quizzes, please let us know and will do our best to accommodate your suggestions - please use either the feedback sheet on a Thursday evening, or Email Chris with your comments.
Thanks for Supporting the Quiznight at The Beacon,
Chris & John.