When Schmucks Strike: A Slightly Disgruntled Recap of Wednesday Night Trivia and The Folly of Dastardly Cheats.

Wednesday is a holy day in my world.

I wake, I work, I fit in a bit of gym and/or yogz if I can, and then I prep for the evening ahead.

That is, I have a ritual on Wednesday Eve: to crush, to the best of my ability, the local trivia night.

In the UK, and parts of the world touched by the pale, colonial hand, they call it 'Pub Quiz'; and even though the rules may differ from one public house to the next - and while the point-schemes will certainly vary - every Trivia Night has a core essence that rings true.

We Quizzers are drawn to this ideal...this pursuit of challenge.

We fraternize and indulge (sometimes too much), whilst putting our over-priced college degrees to the test. We want to escape the inescapable monotony of the Monday-to-Friday existence, and we want to taste success, however fleeting.

Sure, that means winning. And we obviously want to win; who doesn't? If it happens, we shall rejoice. Perhaps the organizers even reward our efforts, with a free pitcher or gift-card (for deliciously crispy pub-offerings), but it doesn't really matter. We just want our effort to be recognized.

So it is amazingly offensive to me and my fellow quiz-mates when an individual/s shows up to partake in our cherished Wednesday Ritual, and blatantly pisses on it. I am talking about Cheaters.

Cheaters come in all shapes and sizes, and all colors and sexes. They often think they are being particularly sneaky, covering their cheating tracks, but in reality they often stand out like a white supremacist at a pride parade; there's just something not right about their presence and their score...

Now I'm not exactly sure what propels one to cheat, or what happiness you attain from filling in answers via Google (or Shazam as the case was this evening); is it pride? Is it for attention? Are you impressing that hooch across the table from you and hoping for a drunken lay?

Take tonight for example.

A new team in the mix. A new group of faces. We play with a limit of 6 people per team (with a -2 pts per extra, up to 8).

| And an aside, more numbers aren't necessarily a good thing by the way |

However, a new team, of only 4 people, will likely struggle. They don't know the game. They don't know how the host picks answers. They don't know the round progression, and they don't have a sense of how much the Final-Jeopardy-esque wager, at the end, impacts the score.

Enter Team Bonehead, not what they actually called themselves, but completely fitting. They looked out of place. They spoke out of place. And they sure as hell acted it.

| Another aside; team names are sacred in Pub Quiz. The more relevant, yet questionable, the better. My team went with '"Come Visit My Shithole" tonight. I think my favorite of the season so far, though, is "Wine'em, Dine'em, Harvey Weinstein'em" |

After being visibly uninterested and BOMBING the first 2 rounds (Round 1 is usually Current Events and is a bellweather sign of how informed teams tend to be), this gang of muppets decided that getting 7/7 - ie: 100% - on the next 2 rounds would be completely and utterly normal.

GTFO.

In fact, between racing to the washroom to snort rails and querying Google for answers concerning the Patron Saint of Skövde, these cretins must have used up their entire data plans, simply to "pull the wool over our eyes".

Now you might ask why we didn't stop it. Nip it in the bud, so to speak. And you're right. We should have.

We have rules in place like no phone use at the table, but it is probably overkill for someone to follow another person into the shitter to make sure they don't use their phone.

The host and server, to their credit, do their best to spot cheats, but with a full house, other jobs need tending.

And we all tend to know and trust each other, so even when one of us errs and checks a t-bomb, it is accepted and we move on.

So it is hard to notice the act until it is done.

THEN it becomes obvious.

The Boneheads proceeded to claim 14/14 on Round 5, which is always the Sound Round. Shazam much?

In this case, the theme was Protest Songs : 1 pt for artist, 1 pt for song title.

To get Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land and Bruce Springsteen, American Skin after failing to realize Donald Trump received a medical (from Round 1) makes me pay attention. Especially when the BEST TEAMS fail to get those right.

To then get the final wager correct, "what small-dog breed is named after the Vicar of Swimbridge?", when the lot looks more likely to give your furry friend a swift kick to the face, makes me a disbeliever.

|If you know the answer, post it below...unless you just googled it |

And it is here, at the very end, where the true Cheat inevitably exposes his/herself. Any spot of doubt is met with nose-turning impudence.

Gone is the subtle modesty of the honest victor; replaced, instead, by the cringe-worthy "stunting" one expects when there is a distinct lack of ability...

Ay, and there's the rub: the innate defensive maneuver employed by all cheats - from Lance Armstrong to Charles Ingram, who cheated the UK version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire - to hide the reality of being too inept to actually win, and being too proud to admit it, invariably gives them away.

As the old adage goes, you've made your bed, now you gotta lie in it

As for the cheats we encountered this evening, it is hard to say whether they will come back again. I like to give people credit, and hopefully they can't be so stupid as to think they'll get away with such garbage next week, but you never know. I would hope they know they have been blacklisted, and then have to play honestly, which in turn would out them as cheaters anyways (as their performance will be drastically worse). I'd probably just stay away myself... /Rant