Pointless, Innit: How I Got a Whole Pub Quiz Disqualified With One Enigmatic Brow

Thursday night in a back room that smelled of chips and ambition. I had been invited to join a pub quiz team, which in Britain is less an invitation and more a test of whether you can keep your mouth shut while someone else gets the capital of Burkina Faso wrong. I arrived in full Renaissance get-up, because I am a professional, and because the team name was already ‘The Smug Chiaroscuro’. We were going to win. Or we were going to be disqualified. In the end, we managed both.

The Team Name Is the First Round

In British pub quizzes, the team name is not a name. It is a weapon. You are competing against ‘Quiz Team Aguilera’, ‘Norfolk and Chance’, ‘Let’s Get Quizzical’ and a group of teachers calling themselves ‘The Mark Scheme’. Our name, ‘The Smug Chiaroscuro’, was a bold choice. It suggested we knew what chiaroscuro meant. It also suggested we would be insufferable about it. Both were true.

The quizmaster was a man called Dave in a fleece. He had the weary authority of someone who has seen every possible variation of ‘the answer is on the tip of my tongue’ and no longer believes in tips of tongues. He explained the rules: six rounds, no phones, no shouting out, and ‘no funny business’. I made a mental note to have some funny business.

Round One: General Knowledge, Zero Facial Cues

My plan was simple: answer every question with enigmatic silence. If my team needed me, I would raise one eyebrow. If I knew the answer, I would raise the other. If I didn’t know the answer, I would do the Mona Lisa smirk, which could mean anything from ‘I know’ to ‘I have transcended the concept of knowing’.

This worked brilliantly for approximately four minutes. Then the questions started. ‘What is the capital of Burkina Faso?’ Our team looked at me. I raised an eyebrow. ‘Ouagadougou,’ someone whispered. ‘Are you sure?’ I raised the other eyebrow. We wrote down Ouagadougou. It was correct. I had no idea. I had simply looked mysterious. That is the power of Renaissance branding.

The Picture Round Mutiny

The trouble started in round four. The picture round. Dave put up a slide of a familiar face. It was the Mona Lisa. The room turned to me. I gave the tiniest eyebrow. A man at the next table — let us call him Barry — stood up and said, ‘That’s not fair. She’s literally the answer.’

Dave said, ‘She’s not the answer. The answer is the painting.’ Barry said, ‘She’s wearing the painting.’ Dave said, ‘That’s not against the rules.’ Barry said, ‘It’s against the spirit of the quiz.’

And then I smirked. I did not mean to. It was an involuntary muscle movement, the same one that fires when someone says ‘I’m not being funny, but’ and then is definitely funny. The room saw the smirk. The room interpreted the smirk. The room decided the smirk was a confession.

The Disqualification

Dave came over. He looked at our answer sheet. He looked at me. He looked at the smirk, which was still happening.

‘I’m going to have to disqualify you,’ he said. ‘Not for cheating. You haven’t cheated. But you’re making everyone feel stupid, and the pub quiz is supposed to be fun.’

I wanted to explain that I was not making anyone feel stupid; I was simply existing as a 500-year-old painting with a complicated relationship to attention. But I was in character, so I said nothing. I gave him the smirk. He wrote ‘disqualified’ on our sheet with the grim satisfaction of a man who has finally found a use for the red pen.

The Burkina Faso Incident

As we were leaving, a woman from ‘Norfolk and Chance’ stopped me. ‘Was it really Ouagadougou?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘I only knew because my sister married a man from there,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been so glad to have a niche family connection.’

This is the unwritten rule of British pub quizzes: nobody actually knows the capital of Burkina Faso, but somebody always knows somebody who does. The quiz is not a test of knowledge. It is a test of social network. And the picture round is not a test of art history. It is a test of whether you can look at a famous painting without making it weird.

The Pub Quiz Power Rankings

1. The team name that makes everyone groan — essential.
2. The person who says ‘I think it’s Ouagadougou’ with total confidence — a hero.
3. The picture round — always a trap.
4. The quizmaster’s red pen — the true villain.
5. The moment someone says ‘it’s on the tip of my tongue’ — we have all been there.

We did not win. We did not come last. We came nowhere, because we were disqualified. But we did learn something: the British pub quiz is not about knowing the answers. It is about knowing when to keep your smirk to yourself. I have not learned that lesson. I am booked in for next Thursday.