Trivia Vagabond: Murphy's Irish Pub

Last night, Seattlest checked out the quiz at Murphy's Irish Pub in Wallingford. This evening, we were playing with a full team of 5 members.

Quiz: Three separate quizzes of 20 questions, divided into two 10-question rounds each devoted to a particular category. The first quiz last night, for example, included authors and history. Teams are required to buy in at the beginning of each quiz, and a pot is given away at the end.

Entry fee: For each quiz, entry is $1 per person on your team, with a $4 per team minimum.

Scoring: Swap your answer sheet with another team after each 20-question quiz.

Prize pool: First place team wins the pot, minus $10. Second place wins that $10 for a pitcher of beer.

Difficulty: Easy to moderate. Our team handily won quizzes 1 and 2, and came in second for quiz 3. Questions ranged from "Where is Gettysburg?" to "Volunteer Park is named in honor of volunteers for which war?" to "The group Band of Horses was formed from the ashes of what Pacific Northwest band?" A nearby team was surprisingly impressed that we remembered not only that Geena Davis was in Tootsie, but that she played the woman who exercises in her bra and panties in Dustin Hoffman's dressing room.

(Answers: Pennsylvania, the Spanish-American War, Carissa's Wierd. We didn't know the third one.)

Where and when: Tuesday nights starting around 8:00 at Murphy's, 1928 N 45th Street in Wallingford.

The takeaway: If last night was typical, Murphy's quizmaster puts together a decent quiz, but needs to be a little more polished. A couple of times he couldn't read his own handwriting, so had to figure out the question (he insisted for a while that the band was called Band of Forces). A couple of questions he just gave the answer because he realized they were poorly worded. ("For number 1, just write 'the 19th amendment.'") And at least one question was just surreal: "Butter or margarine?" (The correct answer: butter. Don't ask us why. Even though we got it right)

The quiz structure produces an interesting twist: because you can enter three different times, the number of teams playing varies throughout the evening. We're pretty sure the pot for quiz #2 was the largest and #3 was the smallest. There was a lot of confusion about how the entry fees worked -- several teams thought it was $4 for the team plus $1 per person.

Some of that confusion may have arisen because the sound system is terrible. While Seattlest heard most of the questions, we had to translate for three other people on our team. Despite what we told them, they're not deaf -- it was just really hard to decode the quizmaster's words. Once he asked a question about classical music, and we all turned expectantly towards our classical expert -- who hadn't realized that a question had been asked. Luckly, he caught the repeat, and we got it right.

The menu pretty much defines Irish pub. We had the fish and chips, which was quite tasty -- much better than the George & Dragon or Old Pequliar, on par or a little better than the Irish Emigrant. The fries were good, of varying thicknesses, though not as amazing as those at The Jones. One of our teammates wondered why the beer batter was red, but we didn't care -- it was tasty. One odd thing: another teammate ordered teriyaki chicken wings -- which were served with ranch dressing?

A plus: They do have cider on tap. Blackthorn. Yum.

Our team left knowing that we wouldn't be making Murphy's a weekly ritual (probably good news to the other teams playing), but we'll be back, as one person said, when we need an ego boost.