Quibbles May Arise: An Interview with Spencer Spencer

Quizmaster Spencer Spencer has run a monthly pub quiz at The Geese pub on Southover Street in Brighton for twelve years. On 2 July 2024, the quiz included a specialist round devised using Webster’s Timeline History: Secrecy, 393 BC–2007. Sally O’Reilly quizzed the quizmaster on how the evening played out. Curious readers can read Spencer’s quiz questions and answers here.

CABINET: What is your quizmaster modus operandi?

SPENCER SPENCER: Now that we live in a time when people can rummage for answers online while popping out for a puff or nipping to the loo, quizzers can’t be policed. Add to this the fact that answers found (even by the question setter) will often vary, depending on the reliability of the source, and the difficulties start stacking up against the quizmaster.

Therefore, I am a totalitarian. There can be no grey area; there must be true or false, correct or incorrect. Quibbles may arise, thankfully not too regularly and, so far, not more than once in a single evening. When they do, my persona will magically transform: the warm host becomes a bossy schoolteacher that takes charge of the rabble. I will loudly declare myself to be the quiz wizard, master of ceremonies, swift crusher of the mirthless heckle, and, critically, sovereign adjudicator of right and wrong within the borders of my realm—the pub.

Which sources do you frequently turn to when composing and compiling questions?

Wikipedia is great for subject matter that’s static, mostly immovable, or very slow or unlikely to change: scientific facts, geography, sports data, bibliographies, discographies. It’s less useful for subjective topics like history. History might well be written by the victors, but it’s edited by corporations, shadowy puppeteers of the Metaverse, and fanatics of every imaginable stripe and flavor.

Certain subjects have a huge public interest and thus warrant dedicated channels, which can be goldmines to quarry. IMDb has thorough, indisputable data on films and their casts, which prompted me to dedicate an entire round to cinema, and drastically improved the efficiency of my prep. Not only is it a popular round, with a varying number of teams pinning the actor, it is one that has never been aced by anyone, and probably never will be. I’m pretty chuffed with that format.

How do you select the subject matter of a specialist round?

The specialist round was born from my own needs rather than those of my punters. Having a specific topic to research can swiftly generate a good number of questions, rather like providing an artist with a brief instead of an oppressive blank canvas of infinite possibilities. It’s a round of six extended, multipoint questions on a surprise subject that’s pretty niche.

My inspiration might come from documentaries, reference books, a 3 am internet rabbit hole. Tourism pullouts from the Sunday papers are quite good, I find. Sometimes it’s nice to walk the aisles of a library till a book catches my eye and imagination. It’s key, though, that I later check online to see if the knowledge gleaned is up-to-date and quiz-worthy.

What were your first impressions of the Webster’s Timeline History book?

I got in one evening to find the envelope waiting for me. Bobbing it up and down in my hand, as if gauging the heft of an unfamiliar vegetable, it was a little lighter than I had been expecting for a tome that claimed to be so very thorough. Then, unwrapping the book, I marveled at the cover, its oddity. Who would enjoy the photoshopped antique clockface and its motion-blurred Roman numerals? There is a sinister air to this stylized whizzing of time, which give the impression that the book has an unhinged sort of Doctor Who–scale ambition. Within these pages, cities will rise and crumble to dust; lives, legacies, entire dynasties will bud, blossom, and rot with each turning leaf.

Did you read it from beginning to end, or start but then give up; did you skim through, or open the pages randomly, etc.?

Of all the peculiar topics available, we had agreed that Secrecy might be the one with the most intrigue and pizzazz, and that would make some vague sense as a theme. The books on other topics such as Pancreatitis or Cup-Shaped or Dow Jones Industrial Average seemed as though they’d be just too weird or dry or dull for the punters on their night out.

I dipped in for a skim; before long, a slight concern was raised, intensifying with each flick of a few pages. There soon followed a more rigorous (though panicky) search before a hopeful dive to the back of the book, where, thank Webster, I found an index.

What was the concern?

Well, for starters, nearly every entry was bite-size and brief, a clipping of quite miserly length. Plus, most felt quite disconnected from each other—with no real tie to anything. To plough through search engines for some backup source, some richness, some relevance to anything my teams might be able to delve down for, seemed as though it would be extremely arduous and, in a number of cases, quite futile. It will probably reveal my impatient nature to admit that, in the initial five minutes of riffling through, I was already drawing what I thought was a conclusion: that only the entries toward the end of the book, pertaining to the twentieth century and first eight years of the twenty-first, were going to be anything close to usable. There was so little anyone was likely to have heard of prior to that.

Though I must not entirely blame the book for that particular shortcoming. We actually picked a very tricky subject for question composition. How do you pose a question about a fact that has been deliberately kept a secret?!

Many of the book’s entries were mentions of secrecy being employed, but no actual revelations of what had been hidden. Great care and tactical thinking would be required to overcome this oxymoronic task, this fool’s errand possibly never before undertaken in all of quiz history! Pancreatitis suddenly seemed a more attractive option.

You reported a successful quiz, however, so how did you proceed? What, if anything, ended up being useful about the book?

Well, sadly, it was war that saved the day. Of the entries that would make sense to my teams, covert operations related to military history have been reported on at length. The greatest wealth of these, near the back of the book, were concerned with the Bush presidencies and the oil wars in Iraq.

I decided that it was too soon and certainly too grim to base a quiz around the Iraq invasions. Plus, in Webster’s sources, Western views outnumber—in fact they drown out—perspectives from the rest of the world. It felt distasteful, and so I rolled up my sleeves and delved back into the two world wars and earlier.

After warfare, it seemed that the Catholic faith and its upper ranks were the most-referenced source of secrets. Two leads sprang forth, including the one I’d make my opener: a list of true-or-false statements about the shadowy Knights Templar. Few would know any answers for sure, but given enough statements, say ten, a Dan Brown nerd would find their edge translating into a three- or four-point lead at the start of the round.

And so I went on, occasionally finding a glimmer of possibility, but more often than not, being reminded of something related, checking the index, learning it wasn’t there and then, concerned about the deadline, going online to spend further time weighing the patriotic bias of whichever wiki page I found myself clicking on.

How was the secrecy round received on the night?

I briefly revealed the nature of the experiment—and that it would be published in Cabinet magazine—to the amassed teams. I had worn a shirt and tie for the occasion. Though there was confusion and wonderment regarding the Webster’s book as I presented it, a spontaneous round of applause spread through the room, and for a moment I really did feel like their beloved dictator. I think that they were pleased for me that our night had received some recognition of sorts, and proud that their regular cerebral workout was being validated in some way as an activity beyond just a get-together with pals. The halftime tally had shown that people hadn’t been struggling too much and were actually landing points, which was a relief because up until then, they had been very quiet. A couple of planted puns had fallen flat and I fidgeted as the tumbleweed rolled. So, on seeing healthy scores, I playfully scolded them for making me think they were suffering. As we proceeded, my hunch that some Da Vinci Code geeks would excel paid off, and the puerile mention of Churchill’s Little Willie tank also entertained, predictably. My three Operation Mincemeat questions needed many explanations and repetitions, but again, a good percentage of the teams had someone at the table who had seen the recent Colin Firth film or the lengthy documentaries made once the fifty years of military classification had been lifted. The Freedom of Information Act legislation that brings these secrets to light reveals not only classification as a policy employed during covert operations, but also how declassification is an instrument of history, of truth, of politically spun truth, of fiction. It has brought peace of mind to many veterans (disenfranchised or not), surviving loved ones, campaigners for justice, and now, I can attest, a quiz wizard yelling across a pub with a rum and coke in his hand. In all, I can confirm, the mission was indeed a success, the answers dispatched in a satisfactory manner by each squad present, and all in good time before tackling the Nerds vs. Oldies round that followed.

Are these books for pub quizmasters? If not, who might they be for?

No, they’re not for quizmasters. My guess is that they are written by a robot for other robots whiling away downtime when waiting on a system update, or perhaps to peruse while recharging after a hard day of translating video stills into Captcha grids of buses, motorbikes, and traffic lights. I don’t think I’ll ever need to pick up another from the series, and honestly, I’m not sure who in their right mind would be inclined to collect them.

Read Spencer Spencer’s quiz questions from this evening at The Geese pub here.