131 Water

I'm told this is no longer an active quiz. Requeiscat in pace.

Where: 131 Water. Located at, uh... 131 Water, in Gastown. You'll find the quiz being run upstairs.

When: 7PM on Wednesday. Runs weekly. 

Web Presence:  A facebook group that is ostensibly about the restaurant, but mostly about the quiz. 

Registration Fee: Nope! This one is gratis.

Team Info: 5 Players per team, maximum (I think)

Prizes: A pitcher of beer. I think you have to take it the next week, but somehow I have my doubts on how this will be enforced.

Format: 3 Rounds, the first being a general knowledge round, 20 questions, worth about 30 points or so. The second round usually consists of a video clip, some pictures, and a matching question, and the third is an audio round. Expect to name that artist, identify the movie, identify the TV show, et cetera.  It also contains a unique (to Vancouver quiz nights, anyways) question at the end of each round. It is an 'exploding' question, which means it is worth 5 points if you get it in the first round, 2 in the second, and one in the third, with the clues becoming more and more revealing. In between rounds, the quizmaster marks all the quizzes himself.

Food and Drink: The food's pretty good, not too expensive either. The beer list is nothing special, but you can get cheap pitchers if you're a student.

This is a fairly new quiz. I'm not sure if it has been running any longer than 3 or 4 months, and even that might be a stretch. But it is the first decent one I've found in Gastown. Although, I guess that isn't saying too much. The quiz is hosted by a nice bearded gentleman named Steve, who I believe works there. It is pretty fast paced quiz, doesn't take much longer than 2 and half hours on average. It is still smoothing out some kinks, but on the whole it seems to be running fairly well. Turnout is modest, but every time I've been there I've seen at least 5 or 6 teams. I've heard reports of only 2 teams showing up sometimes, which is too bad. Steve marks all the papers himself between rounds, which enables the exploding point value question (or at least, immediate vindication if you get it right). It is the only quiz night that does that where the marking doesn't bring the night to a colossal standstill. We'll see how this strategy scales, when more people show up.

It seems to have a good mix of questions, some good history questions and is probably the most liberal with sports related questions of any in Vancouver. The matching questions are usually pretty good (more interesting than the standard quiz night phobias/capitals/etc that you see all over the place), and have on occasion been impressively hard - matching Soap Operas to their settings. Holy shit. If you know a lot about pop culture, specifically TVs and movies, you'll be helpful in the audio round. Spontaneous pitchers have been awarded, for particularly enthusiastic dancing, as well as hilariously wrong answers. I can live with that. Sometimes the questions tend towards "filler" questions (guess the percentage, multiple choice that is improbably difficult, but it never gets too bad.

Long story short, a pretty good quiz to go to.