Pub quiz cheat entrapment. Questions that Google to a distinctive, obscure, wrong answer

I’ve been at bar trivias where they require everyone to put their phones in a basket in the middle of the table, and that seems to work pretty well.

Would it be too much trouble to set up an unsecured WiFi network with a custom DNS server that directed requests to google.com and wikipedia.org to fake websites?

To take a picture of someone using their smartphone you need to…use your smartphone. I’d just offer a 10 point bounty to people catching others, and threat of being disqualified for cheating. Mangetout - is this during work hours? Will saying “absolutely no smartphones, PDAs or other devices are strictly prohibited from even being out” be possible?

I just ask them to put their phones, etc in their pockets during the round, call them out publicly if I see them out (in that case, they always look guilty but want to show me the screen, “See? I was just texting. I forgot!”), and inform them from the beginning that if they are actually caught cheating they and their team are disqualified. Also, I threaten to find their mom on facebook and tell her she raised a cheater. For some reason, I think that stupid jest makes people go along with it more easily - they can sort of chuckle about it instead of getting fussy.

I wouldn’t offer a bounty for turning in cheaters, though. Certain people will take that as an invitation to get annoyingly intrusive on their neighboring teams.

Good luck!

You seriously can’t just watch for cell phone usage? And disqualify them from that question when you see one?

I am in a weekly bar trivia league. Everyone knows (and it is announced) anyone caught using a cell phone will not be eligible for points from that round.

It is literally never a problem.
mmm

You could choose something that is really famous for one thing but ask something different about it. For instance the shuttle Challenger. It did more than blow up but I bet the first few pages of google hits will be about that.

Use questions with terms that are common in porn. People will have to wade through hundreds of sites and will have problems finding any useful for the quiz. On the plus side, they may find lots of useful sites for … other things. :stuck_out_tongue:

Or questions about things that are essentially Google-proof. Like questions about the band The Band.

If the building you’re in is somewhat 4G/3G proof, it might help to shut off the local WiFi network. That might make the reception spotty enough that people will give up trying. Also, if people are in good spirits, maybe you can get them to just turn in their phones for the 10 minutes it’ll take to play the game. Either that or just say “All phones have to be put away, if I see a phone out, you (your team?) get disqualified”

Install a Faraday cage. Easy Peasy.

My pub quiz local does this too - I agree that quashing phone use is going to be more effective (and fun for everyone who actually wants to play) than boobytrapping questions.

Thing is, it depends on the location- I go to a local pub quiz, and it’s in an old building, with lots of corners where you’re really not visible from the bar. I don’t think we have much of a problem with people on smartphones there though, possible because the prizes are silly in that place, and it would seem a bit pathetic to cheat to win a home-made cake or a bag of kiddie sweets.

It also has questions like ‘what links these four words?’, as well as picture rounds and word puzzles. All pretty tough to google surreptitiously on a mobile.

The goggles, they do something!

At our trivia night, if anyone has a lighted cell or open laptop, the entire team is disqualified. There’s been only one team disqualified in all the time I’ve been going there.

You could start a mock thread in Cafe Society with the thread title being a bogus movie title and the first couple replies commenting on a bogus actor in the title role. If the movie title is obscure enough any google search will lead them right here.
(Of course i’d get the okay nod from a mod first)

The most effective anti-echeat system I’ve seen at a pub quiz required everyone to put their phones on the table and if anyone touched theirs during a round that team was disqualified. Of course you need decent sightlines to all the teams to do that.

I’ve always wanted to play bar trivia, because I know everything and it sounds like fun!
But, since I don’t drink, and therefore don’t hang out in many bars, I was unaware of the rules and protocol. Ok, there’s one thing I don’t know. :smiley:

A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with my son at a little joint near his college dorm, and the bartender - in another room, far away, out of sight - got on the PA and started up the trivia questions. We didn’t know if this was an actual game for money/wings/status/whatever - and never found out. Turns out there were about 5 or 6 teams, and they wrote down answers and turned them in.

We didn’t. We just sat eating our burgers and answering the questions to each other.
As we looked around, we saw 3 different tables of college kids and adults frantically searching on smartphones for answers. I was very disappointed - not because I thought anyone was cheating -but because the questions were so simple. Like what’s-your-middle-name kind of easy.

At some point as our waitress was refilling our drinks, I pointed to a table and jokingly said - “they’re cheating!” in my best tattle-tale manner. She just laughed and went away, and Large Drinking College Dude looks at me and says “not cool, dude!” while hiding his iPhone under the table.

I had no idea what to say or do. I wasn’t really tattling, because, well, everyone was doing the same, and I didn’t know that there were some kind of stakes involved. Steaks, for all I know.

Judging by the results, all the teams missed at least 2 or more questions while my son and I missed none. Guess we’ll sign up next time we go!

There are many ways to run bar trivia. Sounds like you encountered one of the bad ways.