2002 Treasure Hunt Report

2002 Independents Day Treasure Hunt - The Aftermath

It's Sunday, the 7th of July, it's pouring down outside and I'm nursing a hangover. Yep, yesterday was Treasure Hunt day and we've been asked to put together a quick review. Odd that us, the organisers, should be saddled with this task, but we'll try our best to remain honest and unbiased.

Despite the threats, the weather stayed dry, which probably helped the excellent turn out. Nineteen teams, around seventy people, set out on the Bar Trek, and most of them made it back at the end. The popularity of this event seems to grow each year, and we thank everyone who made the time to come.

The reasons for the change of venue to the Marble Arch have been discussed enough that we need not go into them here. The new location, if straining a little at the seams, coped with the mass of people reasonably well. It was a bit of a tight squeeze when it came to the announcing of the winners (we missed the luxury of the size of the Beer House's upstairs room) but just think of it as "cosy".

It was a tough quiz (more on that in a moment) but the teams rose to the challenge admirably. The final victors were the 2000 winners, the Castle Knights, who won themselves ten pints, a 12-month ownership of the trophy, and the pleasure of setting next year's challenge. Despite their insistence that they were not out to win, they were first out of the traps, and back a good twenty minutes before the other teams. They are obviously a team at the peak of their game!

In second place were Two Dead Goldfish, another previous winner (and last year's joint-second) who went away with six pints for their trouble. This team are obviously chomping at the bit for another win, and we look forward to giving them a run for their money next time. Not that we're overly competitive or anything...

Getting back to the difficulty issue, the general consensus seemed to be that the quiz was hard, but still just about do-able. This was intentional as we had the impression that many people had found the previous year perhaps a little too easy. There was one (rather rude) gentleman who obviously found it tougher than he would have liked, and made his point publicly clear, but the rest of the feedback we received was generally positive. Bear in mind that it is a quiz, and not just a pub crawl (although you could treat it as one) we feel a certain level of complexity is warranted.

It is, however, difficult to assess just what people will find hard. Some of the questions we thought difficult were answered correctly by almost everyone, yet some of what we'd thought were simple questions went over some teams' heads. Tellingly, though, there were only two questions that no teams managed to solve. Many teams got over half correct, and seven teams passed the 70% mark. The winning team missed only four of the thirty-five questions (88% using our scoring system) although we have been accused of being on similar wavelengths - a thought probably as frightening to them as it is to us!

We would not presume to tell the Castle Knights how to set next year's quiz, but we personally hope that they don't go too far the other way when setting their complexity level. As we said, it is a quiz, and it's nice to have the brain challenged on occasion.

Before we finish, we'd like to thank Phil and the rest of the staff of the Marble for being so helpful, and the other pub landlords and landladies for being so understanding (although we suppose a lot of them are getting used to it by now).

At the end of the day people seemed to have enjoyed themselves, which was all we set out to help make possible. We hope they enjoyed the pubs, and more importantly, enjoyed the beer. After all, that's what it's all about, really, isn't it?

Mike and John (the Raving Mad Bastards).

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This page was last updated on 18th July 2002