A new venue for a pub quiz?  YES!  And it’s awesome, with plenty of space for lots of teams, fabulous food, and a beer list that will take months for me to get through.  Talk about a warm welcome and a fun way to start what I hope will be a long and hilarious weekly event at this terrific burger bar / taco lounge.

I have low expectations for opening nights.  But last week I dropped by to scout the location in cognito.  While chatting up Tyler the bartender, I learned that they had a crowd there for the quiz, but had to tell them, ‘Sorry guys, it starts next week.’  I do hope all of last week’s Sooners came back this week for the actual start of Chillers pub quiz.

I walked in excited.  Like first date excited.  I could hardly wait for the hoards to gather, the teams to huddle, and the quiz to start.  I even looked forward to scoring the rounds – would anyone break 70 in the first night?

We had a modest but encouraging opening.  One team wandered in smack in the middle of round one and still placed!  Another team that did really well was actually a team of one person – talk about playing with heart.  I’d like to say new alliances were formed.  The bar staff was really enthusiastic about the game.  They made sure players had a good experience, and from the prizes to the sound, everything was in order.  Novices caught onto the rules pretty easily – it’s not a hard concept, but people have been drinking.

Round one started off fairly tamely, with some fact checking of historic events.  Then came the audio round which one team jokered and scored a whopping 15 points.  Incidentally, that is the way to use a joker folks: on a 16 point round when you know you’ve nailed it.  Drinko Supremo had a commanding lead which they subsequently held on to the rest of the night.  We then had two rounds with one common question / theme – Hixploitation.  And one highlighting exactly how backward some wedge issues are, but I repeat myself.  Round 6 did afford one opportunity I couldn’t pass up – giving a hint to the crowd that Tyler’s exercising his constitutional right thanks to the same amendment in the question.  While one team did answer the 14^th amendment (Tyler is, after all, the bartender), most teams got that was a reference to his arms, and therefore the second amendment.  Seriously ladies, I’d order a cocktail just to watch him shake it.  Sorry, that was wildly inappropriate, but true!

Tonight’s visual round was a real Geek treat.  I mean it – the Periodic Table is absolutely a brilliant thing, especially when one pauses to consider that at the time it was arranged, scientists didn’t know about the various orbitals of electrons.  They just recognized similarities and organized the columns out of the numeric sequence.  But I digress.  I was, however, ecstatic to see Ballin’ Shot Callin' get a perfect round on that one.

Round 7 seemed rather more challenging than was necessary for easing in a new venue.  It was really a colo-rectal exam into musicals.  No one came out unsoiled.  Thankfully there was redemption with round eight, in which several teams did very well, but only Pucker Fish had the good sense to joker it.

I do hope everyone had as good a time as I did and will be back next week with their friends to make this great bar the new trivia hotspot!