How the games are run
Each game involves two teams, a quizmaster provided by the league, and optional food and beer. A game consists of 10 rounds with 10 questions in each round. Each question is first posed to an individual player: if he or she gives the correct answer, the team gets two points. If the individual player doesn’t get the answer, the whole team can discuss the question, and if they get the right answer the team gets one point. If the team gets it wrong, it’s a dead question (although at that point, someone on the opposing side will typically shout out the answer – just for bragging rights).You have 60 seconds to answer, individually or as a group. The next question in the round is posed to a player on the opposite team, and so forth. Except on round 10 (see below) one team can’t “steal” from another team that misses the answer; there is no penalty for guessing a wrong answer.
If you think your answer was right but was ruled wrong, you can declare a protest, asking the question-setters to reconsider it. Be prepared to back up your answer.
At the end of the game the scores are tallied. We also keep track of how many two-point questions each player gets.
The Artful Dodger is the unoffical league headquarters, and players often congregate there after the games to complain about how hard the questions were.
The type of questions we get asked
Each round (with one exception) has a particular theme or category: these roughly follow the Trivial Pursuit categories, history, geography, entertainment, sports & leisure, science, and literature, with the addition of current events (always the first round), audio (always the fifth round; each question is based on a music or other type of audio clip), Canadiana, and a special round called the “challenge” (or “individual”) round (always the tenth round).
The "Challenge" Round
The challenge round is always the tenth round and works differently from the others. First of all, there are six categories of questions, with two questions per category. Each player gets to pick the category they want (unless that category is used up). You have 30 seconds to answer (for two points) but if you don’t get the answer the question goes to the person opposite you on the other team. He or she then has 20 seconds to answer for one point.
The Season
The Canadian Inquisition traditionally has had two divisions, named the Torquemada and the Jaworski Division. This season we are resuming this structure. During the schedule each team will play all the other teams in their own division, and enough teams from the other division to make a total of 10 games (as we only have 12 active teams at the moment, that works out to mean all but one of them).
The Final
The final pits the top three teams with the best win-loss records against each other. There are still 10 rounds of questions, but normally each round is divided into triplets with a common theme under a more general theme such as “science” or “geography”. There may be a video round, and sometimes we see more imaginative question formats such as identifying objects or substances, or interpreting a hand gesture.
Question not answered by the competing teams are thrown out to the audience where the ad hoc groups compete for the most correct answers. An “audience” cash prize is given to the winning group.
Also, the Finals are the occasion to present cash awards for:
- the Canadiana Prize – goes to the team with the best score in the designated Canadiana rounds throughout the regular season
- the Stinker Prize – goes to the team that got the most points in the most difficult round from each regular season game
- the Fewest Zeroes Prize – to the team that had the fewest zeroes during the regular season (to recognize their collective knowledge)
Housekeeping
Oh yeah, money. Each player pays $5 a game. (It varies from season to season). This covers the league’s expenses — photocopying of questions, a small stipend for the quizmasters, and catered food for the season final.
The point of it all is mostly fun (though the occasional person gets carried away). Have a drink or three to keep the pubs happy; have some yuks.
The material rewards are few: the championship team and the season’s best player get trophies (you have to give these back the next season but your name gets inscribed!)) and a small cash award for the various Prizes (see The Final, above).