How SpeedQuizzing defeated the Google cheats

Long before Google, using just pen and paper, John and Alan Leach were always dedicated fans of the pub quiz. At the Old White Swan in York they used to compete in at least three every week: the Crazy Quiz hosted by Big Ian, Music Monday and General Knowledge on a Wednesday. Eventually Alan started standing in for Big Ian. It was the golden age of pub quizzes. Then the bubble burst. “It all went downhill,” says John, “everyone was cheating!” So they came up with SpeedQuizzing to defeat the cheats.

They both had an edge on Music Monday, being musicians. They played in a band called Shed Seven, part of the Britpop scene of the Nineties in the era of Blur and Oasis. “I’m a dropout and a drummer,” says Alan, sitting at a semi-electronic drum set that can have the volume turned down so as not to annoy the neighbours. “And I had zero qualifications.” On the other hand, he has the rare claim to fame of having done stand-up at the Edinburgh Fringe combined with quizzing.

John worked in a music store after school but then the shop shut down. His mother, who worked in a shoe shop, told him he needed to find a job, but then she found one for him. “The shoe shop want you to make a website for them.” He’d only done one for a music tech company till then, but he gave it a shot, got lots more jobs on the back of it, and set up a digital agency in Leeds at the end of the Nineties. But after a decade in the business he was “getting sick of websites: everyone wanted them cheaper and cheaper”.

Which is when Alan and John started talking about speeding up the old pub quiz. At the beginning, in 2005, Alan presided over quickfire rounds like a TV host and everyone sat around tables equipped with a big buzzer device. “I bought this system from the States,” says Alan. “It was very basic. We made it more hi-tech.”

When smartphones came in, around 2009, they were already ahead of the game. “We had been practising for it, accidentally,” says Alan. All they had to do was ditch the buzzer and create the software. “It had to be on smartphones. There was no additional hardware involved. And it was cheaper. It revolutionised the game.” In 2011 they set up SpeedQuizzing as a limited company. “It showed signs,” says John, “of not being a hobby.”

But they were almost too visionary. Not everyone had smartphones. “They all said we were insane,” says Alan. “It was very slow at the beginning. Successful at a local level, but really quite disappointing for the first couple of years.”

Now it’s taken off. Over 5 per cent of pubs have taken up SpeedQuizzing, some 23,000 across the UK – including the Old White Swan in York – and they’re aiming for 50 per cent. Thursday is the most popular night. “We always said this will take over from pen and paper,” says Alan. It is being played in over 40 countries and is nearly as big in the US as the UK. “The pandemic hasn’t done us any harm.” They’ve come up with a purely online system, SpeedQuizzing Live, that can be played over Zoom. “We make more money in pubs, but we’ve extended the possibilities.”

In its online form you can often have over 100 players at a time all over the country, 200 if you include all the families. It’s ideal for parents with young children who can’t get out, especially on a Friday or Saturday. The brothers say they don’t mind if the virtual quiz goes into a decline. “We want to see it back in the pubs where it belongs. We’re all about bringing people together.” SpeedQuizzing has been able to support some pubs during the dark times. Some of their feedback includes, “Thank you – you saved the pub!”

Alan has been writing the questions for years. “It’s amazing how much better you get at quizzes,” he says. “Some of it sticks.” He reckons that anything can be turned into a question. “Look at the electric toaster – I could find five facts about the toaster. Or a packet of crisps.” He completely floored me with the question, “In what year was ‘Monster Mash’ written?” (Answer: 1962.)

Alan and John used to say that cheating was impossible with SpeedQuizzing. You only have 10 or 15 seconds to answer (or, so it seemed to me, up against John, Alan and their operations manager Phil, more like two seconds), whereas in the old pen-and-paper days you could always go back. “But it’s like throwing down the gauntlet,” says Alan. “Kids have got so much faster at typing.” Voice recognition has apparently made it easier to cheat, particularly when linked to Siri. “We don’t say impossible any more, but it is very difficult. And it’s harder to get away with in a pub.”

The SpeedQuizzing quizzes are something of a fusion between the brothers’ musical background and the pub quiz tradition because they use a lot of audio. A team will often identify itself with a clip of a pop song. Meanwhile, Alan and John’s old band, Shed Seven, has reformed, looking a bit older and definitely wiser. “We’re on tour for six weeks a year,” says Alan. “The rest is quizzing.”

PS in a tight final round in which I think I came last, I got the question about which country “Patna rice” comes from (answer: India). I was just too slow on the EastEnders questions.

@andymartinink