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Fancy Five Quiz Questions Every Friday?

For almost fifteen years now we’ve been running our Friday Brain Teasers on Facebook. Five fab, fun quiz questions to get your teeth into – perfect for decompressing with a cuppa on a Friday afternoon!

Now we’ve created a YouTube channel to give you something extra for the weekend. Five additional questions from our unique, thoroughly researched and checked quiz database that will get your brain cells sizzling over Saturday and Sunday. Why not try them out on your friends?

Just head over to https://www.youtube.com/@BrainMenQuizzes

And don’t forget to like, comment and subscribe!

‘Tis the season

It’s November 2022, which means that in a few short weeks virtually every quiz team name will be ‘Merry Quizmas’!

Here at Brain Men, we specialise in quizzes for the festive season. We’ve been spreading Quizmas cheer for more than a decade, and our experience and professionalism when it comes to entertaining clients and colleagues at this time of year is second to none.

We know what it takes to keep a lively, festive crowd amused and engaged. None of our quizzes are ‘ordeal by questions’, they’re all aimed at competitive fun. And that’s even more true at Christmas. Our Christmas quizzes are designed to spread good cheer and leave everyone with that warm, fuzzy feeling that’s a quintessential ingredient of the yuletide.

So, book Brain Men for your Christmas quiz now. We promise it won’t be a turkey!

Booking A Quiz Venue

We’ve run quizzes in venues from simple pubs and bars or small private dining rooms to community halls, all the way up to marquees and swanky ballrooms in posh hotels, and there’s no strict rule you should follow when you pick a venue for your quiz.

That said, we’d always recommend booking a private area, for example a separate room above, or annexed to, a restaurant, club or pub, so that the general hubbub doesn’t interfere with your quiz. There’s nothing worse than teams not being able to hear the questions! Our Quiz Masters always use a sound system, and we can bring a portable PA should your venue not provide one. But a pub full of punters might not be quite as enthusiastic about hearing how your teams are doing, so it’s best to hold your quiz in a completely separate area. Or book the entire bar exclusively for the night!

Small restaurants are often happy to be booked exclusively for lunch or dinner, and most venues will hire their spaces out for free in return for a guaranteed spend on food and drink. We’ve quizzed at many venues in central London and can usually advise on suitable spaces in your area if you ask us when you book your quiz. It’s friendly, free and impartial advice – we don’t get paid by venues to recommend them and never take a percentage of the venue fee if you book with them.

If you’re going to be hosting one of our Gold Package quizzes, which includes on-screen questions, film and TV clips and leaderboard updates, a large TV or projector and screen is essential. Most venues already have these, or will hire them in for you. Or you can ask us to quote for hire. A screen can be rented for as little as £100 a day and we’ll take care of all the technical bits for you.

In terms of the room layout, we find round tables are best for facilitating team discussions. But rectangular tables also work as long as they’re not too big. Don’t forget, we’ll also need a table for our laptops and quiz materials – you’d be surprised how often that gets left off the list!

Our quizzes typically take anything from one to two hours, but we’re happy if you want to run them longer, for example with an extended break in the middle for food. However you prefer to design your night, we’ll work with you to fit the quiz around it.

So call or email Brain Men today! We’re backed by fifteen years of venue experience and guarantee we can run one of our fantastically fun quizzes practically anywhere!

London And Brighton Based

Being primarily a London based quiz company with an outpost in Brighton, you’ll mostly find Brain Men running quiz events in those two cities or somewhere in between.

We regard Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire as our quiz ‘stomping ground’. But we’ve also presented our fun and competitive quizzes in The Midlands and Welsh Borders. We’ve even questioned an audience comprised of 28 nationalities in Poland!

And with our online quizzes now available around the world, we’ve entertained folk right across Europe, the USA, Canada, The Middle East, South East Asia and Australia.

So if you’re looking for a quiz company with global experience and an understanding of the cultural differences a multi-national audience demands, you’ve definitely come to the right place!

A Brief History of Brain Men

Our Quiz Masters are used to being called ‘Brian’ at quizzes, but occasionally they’re also asked where the name ‘Brain Men’ came from. Here’s a potted history…

Back in the dim, dark days of the 2008 global recession, three quiz-obsessed eccentrics wondered if there wasn’t a niche for corporate entertainment that cost a lot less than the traditional guest speaker, who generally charged a ton of money for 30 minutes of recycled gags and anecdotes.

A quiz, we figured, would provide a lot more entertainment bang for the corporate buck. That was the genesis of Brain Men.

But what to call our nascent outfit? Like coming up with a team name, that was the difficult part. All the names we thought of, which did what they said on the tin, were achingly dull. Then inspiration struck. One of our number had published a book called Brain Men – The Insider’s Guide To Quizzing, which had sold quite well and had gained some recognition as a ‘go-to’ for quiz fans globally.

So Brain Men it was!

In the fourteen years since then, we’ve run almost a thousand professional quizzes and evolved into a fully-fledged ltd. company. We’re no longer three blokes with a dream, nursing our pints in the corner of a pub. 50% of our shareholders are women, as are our Quiz Masters and Quiz Producers, and we embrace diversity and inclusion, as we always have.

We’ve kept the name because today we’re recognised as one of the UK’s leading providers of professional quiz nights and quiz event services.

And, to be honest, we find it quite amusing that we get called ‘Brian’.

What’s In A Name?

What to call your quiz team is probably the most difficult question in any quiz. Unless you’re pub quiz regulars with an established team name, there are often anxious minutes at the start of proceedings discussing your terrific team moniker. How heated it becomes is frequently a foretaste of things to come!

Here at Brain Men we’ve presented close to a thousand quizzes professionally, and we’ve heard every team name in the book.

There are the sensible types who don’t waste their grey cells on something they deem too trivial. They’ll be ‘Team Dave’, ‘The Red Team’ or ‘The Team in the Corner’. After all, why expend any energy when you need all your reserves for the battle ahead?

Then there are the team names that we’ve heard hundreds of times. These tend to be based on chart toppers, shows, or well known people. ‘Let’s Get Quizzical’, ‘Quizteam Aguilera’, ‘Quizee Rascals’, ‘Agatha Quiztie’, ‘Les Quizerables’, ‘Universally Challenged’ and ‘Simple Minds’ are in this category. During lockdown, when Zoom quizzes were a thing, popular favourites included ‘Professor Quiz Whitty’, ‘Set Pfizers To Stun’, ‘Nerd Immunity’ and ‘You’re On Mute!’.

But occasionally teams will try to impress the Quiz Master and the rest of the room with their creativity by coming up with an ingenious name that’s original and amusing. It’ll take longer to think of, and it has the potential to fall flat on its face, but if you hit the mark everyone will be impressed with your intellectual prowess. It won’t win you any bonus points, not in our quizzes at least, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing you’re the cleverest folk in the room – at least when it comes to thinking of team names!

Here are the top five team names that have tickled our pickle:

Norfolk ‘n’ Chance (read it aloud and you’ll get it)

Single Brain Cell

Our Drinking Team Has A Trivia Problem

The Question Heirs

What’s Our Team Name

And The Winning Team Is… (who invariably come last)

There are cruder examples, but we’ll spare your blushes.

So, whether you want to bond by choosing a witty team name, or just haven’t got the inclination, it’s up to you. Whatever your strategy, if you have a professional team like Brain Men running your quiz event you’re in for an evening of fantastic facts and fabulous fun!

Five Top Tips For A Successful Quiz Night

We’re often asked: ‘What makes a successful quiz night?’ We usually answer by saying: ‘Hire us, and we’ll show you!’ But besides great questions, great rounds, and a great Quiz Master, all of which we provide, here are five top tips to help you prepare for a fantastic evening of fun and entertainment.

Tip 1: Make sure you hire the right venue. A good venue will have an Events Manager who will talk you through all the options, including food, drink, table plans and any technical aspects. For example, in order to run some of our quizzes we’ll need access to a large screen. There should also be a senior member of staff from the venue in attendance on the night to deal with any queries. If you’d like to talk to us before you book, we’re more than happy to advise you on the basis of our experience with hundreds of venues across London and beyond.

Tip 2: Book early. During busy times of the year, such as the run-up to Christmas, we get booked up very quickly, as do venues. So plan in advance. If you get in touch in late November for a quiz the following week, we’re more than likely to have to turn you down (although we might have cancellation slots at short notice, so it’s still worth getting in touch). This is because at that time of year we’re frequently running multiple quizzes every day. So make sure to book early to avoid disappointment!

Tip 3: Customise your quiz. We customise all your quiz materials with your branding – handouts, answer sheets, slides and more. It’s all included in our price. We can even add some custom questions for you. Fancy a picture round with baby photos of the senior management team? We can do that! Want to include some personalised questions for a significant birthday quiz? We can do that! Want to play a rousing, fundraising video before the quiz starts? We can do that too! Just let us know a week or two before your quiz and we’ll take care of it.

Tip 4: Keep in touch. We love communicating, so the more you tell us about your quiz ahead of time the better. Let us know if you want any special touches or fun elements, like a Quiz Master in a cape and Dracula teeth for a Halloween quiz or sporting a Santa Claus beard and hat for a Christmas quiz. Our Quiz Masters are friendly and fun, and they love dressing up! If your quiz has a fundraising element, have a chat with one of our friendly and experienced Quiz Producers who’ll be able to tell you, based on more than a decade of experience, how you can maximise the cash with special rounds and sponsored questions.

Tip 5: Don’t forget the prizes! We always remind you to think about prizes ahead of the quiz, but you’d be surprised how often they’re the last thing on an organiser’s mind – when it’s the first thing on the mind of the teams! Of course, you don’t have to offer prizes, just the kudos of winning a Brain Men quiz is often enough for competitive types. But we frequently see inexpensive items such as small trophies and medals, which can be easily and cheaply sourced from e.g. eBay or Amazon, for the team that comes first, and the occasional, traditional wooden spoon for the team that comes last. Chocs, e-vouchers and fizz are also popular.

We’ve got loads more ideas based on 13 years’ experience of running great quizzes. So email or call us now, and let us take the strain off your brain!