A shire pub trivia player has admitted to secretly changing the answer to a question before handing over her team’s answer sheet for marking at the end of the round.

“Carol has brought this new guy along who insists that Geneva is the capital city of Switzerland and it was easier just to agree with him and cross the answer out when he went to the bar rather than argue with the prick,” said Marilyn Bartlefrere, designated answer writer for Taren Point pub trivia team Camillas In The Mist. “The worry is that he was so confident about Geneva that I’m now concerned that some of the other answers that he was so sure about might also be wrong. Maybe Nigel isn’t the name of Mandrake the Magician’s evil twin brother?”

“Pub trivia teams are a complex society and the arrival of a newcomer, especially one who challenges the authority of the dominant answerer, can be very disruptive,” said Professor Davis Meharry, head researcher of trivia team anthropology at Sydney University. “To avoid conflict, the dominant answerer will often allow the challenger to supply the answer to a question that he or she is not too sure about themselves. In this case I observed that Ms Bartlefrere allowed the newcomer the satisfaction of saying that the song ‘Safety Dance’ was performed by The Pookah Makes Three when she herself was uncertain of the answer.”

“I’m not competitive at all and love playing pub trivia just for the fun of it,” said new team member Tony Woodroffe. “Then again, I don’t see the point of writing down obviously wrong answers such as when Marilyn wanted to put down that Marconi invented radio when everyone knows it was Thomas Edison. She is cute though. I wonder if she’s single.”

* Bern is the capital of Switzerland. Mandrake the Magician does have an evil twin brother called Derek. Men Without Hats sung Safety Dance. Alexander Graeme Bell invented the radio.

Peter Green

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