Pub quizzes became the saviour, and then the great enemy, of lockdown.
Initially, they helped us escape the boredom of staying at home all day. But as days turned to weeks turned to months, suddenly they were ALL we had.
By summer, when we could go to real pubs if we really wanted to, or at the very least, the park, the words, “fancy a Zoom Quiz?” became synonymous with the horrors of being stuck indoors for the entirety of spring.
Understandably, we were wary of going near them – until we started swapping notes and these five rounds breathed fresh life into the pub quiz as we know it.
Incorporate this lot (tried and tested by Huffpost staffers) into your next friends or family quiz and thank us later.
The ‘Whose Fridge?’ Round
The best thing about the fridge round is that “can you take a picture of your fridge please?” sounds rather innocuous at first – and the bewilderment at such an odd request usually confounds them long enough to do it without thinking too much about it.
But you can learn a lot about someone from the contents of their fridge. They are a totally honest and open reflection of the person to whom they belong. Tesco’s Finest range – extravagant. Liquid breakfast shakes – too busy/lazy to do breakfast properly. Everything uniformly stacked and arranged in dated Tupperware – psychopath.
Chris York, senior reporter, HuffPost UK
The Crisp Logo Round
I’m a visual person, who has a photographic memory for the stupidest and most pointless things – like did you know in The Simpsons they have a small green star sticker on their dishwasher? Anyways, I digress. Normally, I ace picture rounds which isn’t actually that uncommon in most pub quizzes.
In the first lockdown, like the rest of the country, I was well into quizzes and spent a ridiculous amount of time photoshopping picture rounds and carefully cropping friends faces over movie stills. My magnum opus is my crisp brand picture round, which I’m sure during this lockdown there’ll be a part two of.
Angela Hui, life reporter
The Spontaneous Dress-Up Round
“Put on your best vintage clothing, go!” yelled my mate from uni down Zoom early in the first lockdown. We had two minutes to frantically root around the house and pull out out finest (read: tattiest) vintage garbs, essentially remnants of old uni dress up nights that somehow had clung on, deep in our wardrobes.
Glow sticks, neon socks, pink headbands – our look two minutes later felt very ‘new rave’ inspired (remember The Klaxons?) This is the sort of tat you have lying about if you’re bad at throwing stuff out and went to uni 10 years ago.
Adam Bloodworth, features writer
The Masterpiece Round
Another dress-up round, this one, but you don’t need Tate membership to ace it, just some silly props and the bottom of your makeup bag. Especially if the artwork you’re being asked to copy is a Frida Kahlo self-portrait, as it was when I first encountered this round in early lockdown. My extended family were hosting and it was the first time they’d met my boyfriend – if only on Zoom. He and I proved quite the team, bagging top points. Competitive, much?
Other paintings that work well: Grant Wood’s American Gothic (grab a fork); Rene Magritte’s Son Of Man (APPLE!); Andy Warhol’s Marilyn (lashings of pink lippie); or for the ultimate lockdown mood, Edward Munch’s The Scream.
Nancy Groves, head of life
The Facebook Status Round
Like many other people, I am properly over Zoom quizzes (don’t invite me to one, I won’t come). However, one round I’ll admit I enjoyed playing in the first wave of their popularity was created by my friend Will, who scoured back through the Facebook pages of our group of friends to play Guess The Status.
He basically blanked out who was responsible for writing the embarrassing comment, cue hilarity from the rest of the group who had to work out who was responsible for them. Cringe. I later borrowed this idea for a quiz I had to make, and also went a step further inventing another round based on old Facebook pics from nights out, where people had to guess the context of a picture. Lots of fun, but definitely one to play only with people you know really well.
Ashley Percival, entertainment editor