English PEN Quiz 2013

Here are a few snaps from last week's English PEN quiz, held at RIBA and hosted by Clive Anderson. We Brain Men get involved by writing the quiz and twiddling the technical knobs, ensuring that 250 writers, authors, literary agents and journos have a splendid evening, and empty their wallets for a good cause.

This year's winners were The Telegraph, scoring a whopping 60 out of 70, with The Guardian/Observer and The Literary Review both narrowly pipped to second place on 59.

Quiz News

A lot's been happening since we last updated these pages!

First off, here at Brain Men we often assist charities with their fundraising events. So we're proud to be associated with Help for Heroes and their upcoming Big Hero Quiz. You can find out more by clicking here, although please note, the questions we wrote for them are quite a bit harder than the examples they've used on their website!

And earlier this month we held a quiz at Goldsmiths College in London on behalf of the Association of University Engineers. Our Quizmaster was Chris Pollikett, who fired off six rounds of ten questions over the course a couple of hours. Appropriately enough, this year's winners were called Last Year's Winners! Here are a couple of snaps:

 

Symantec/Norton Quiz Tests Journalists' 'Wetware'

Six teams of technology journalists joined battle at The Old Explorer off London's Oxford Street last week in our latest bespoke Brain Men quiz.

The quiz marked the launch of the 18th Norton/Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR). Fittingly enough, the quiz was won by a team calling itself The Brian People. They pipped Brewster's Minions and The Pink Paperclips into second and third respectively!

Why not book us for your next fundraising quiz? Contact us via our website, or email stephen@brainmen.co.uk.

Brain Men Brain Quiz For Brain Awareness Week

Our latest Brain Men bespoke quiz raised oodles of dosh for Brain Awareness Week and the RHN (the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability). Congrats to the Taylor Thinkers for coming top of the form at the Haberdashers' Hall in Smithfield!

Why not book us for your next fundraising quiz? Contact us via our website, or email stephen@brainmen.co.uk.

Original Thinking

That was what was required at the Origin Asset Management Charity Challenge 2013 last week, where 70 of the City's best brains gathered to do battle with our fiendish quiz questions for the chance to donate £2000 to a charity of their choice. Mercer FSJeeves were the winning quiz team, with an impressive score of 78 out of a potential 80, donating their well-deserved winnings to Save the Children.

The Origin quiz followed hot on the heels of Brain Men's first ever intercontinental simulquiz - a four round challenge for staff at a well-known financial institution, held simultaneously by the miracle of modern technology in both London and New York!

First Annual SVC Quiz

We thought we'd share a few snaps with you from one of the last quizzes we did before Christmas - for the Sadhu Vaswani Centre in Cricklewood. 15 teams enjoyed an evening of quizzing frivolity in aid of raising funds for the SVC, with Quizee Rascals finishing in poll position by a massive margin of 17 points.

Our thanks to Deepu and the rest of the SVC committee for making us feel so welcome. Apparently bookings are already coming in for the 2013 quiz!

Hardeep Is Your Quiz?

Broadcaster and comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli was the quizmaster for this year's Four Colman Getty English PEN Quiz, now in its 11th year and one of the highlights of the pre-Christmas season. The questions were devised by our very own Marcus Berkmann, with further Brain Men back-up running the big electronic scoreboard.

240 journalists, writers, authors, publishers and PR people enjoyed a fantastic dinner six spectacular rounds at The Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place, culminating in one of the tightest results we've had. The Daily Telegraph and The Times drew for first place, and drew again on the tie-break! A second tie-break was called into play, with Education Secretary Michael Gove, representing The Times, pipping the opposition to the answer.