Game if you are

It's playtime for grown-ups at Green Room
and Pub Quartier Latin

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

How many hearts does an earthworm have? Who was the first man to be murdered live on TV? What's the speed of sound?

If you were at Pub Quartier Latin (318 Ontario E.) this past Easter Sunday, you might remember the answers to those questions. They were among the stumpers dished out by Gary "Troubleman" Tremblay, regular QL DJ and mastermind behind the swank yet welcoming downtown pub's inaugural Quiz Night.

Although quiz nights at Montreal bars are a common scenario (McKibbin's and Brutopia have them as well), it was an English-style pub in France, where he spent three months last year, that got Tremblay hooked on the idea. "It helped to break the dreaded ice between people," Tremblay recalls.

Unless you're angling for a career in invertebrate cardiology, that's really the reason one would sign on for an evening of rapid-fire interrogation, song identification and snapshot recognition. Tremblay's justifiably proud of the way a quiz session can bring together a crowd as demographically diverse as the bunch of beer-addled brainiacs assembled on that first night. "Good man-woman ratio, 20 to 40 years old - one of my pals actually brought his folks down. I want the crowd to be as mixed as possible, which permits me to dig deeper for questions than, say, if everybody there was 19 and didn't know who Steve McQueen was."

"The general formula for quizzes in England and elsewhere is, the money from the fee to play goes to the winning team, but Quebec is too uptight for that. I think you can't give away money unless you get this crazy permit and shit. So sadly we had to give up on that, but we came up with some fun stuff, like giving the winning team a chance to pour as many pints as possible in one minute."

Get on board

For grown-ups out on the town and eager for a little more than small talk and stale jokes, the quiz is only one of the communal playtime possibilities available. Up at Green Room in the Mile-End district (5386 St-Laurent), staffers Sefi Amir and Sabrina Leblond-Murphy can expand the list almost indefinitely. "Scattergories, Trivial Pursuit, Boggle, Scrabble, Balderdash, Mastermind, yahtzee, Jenga, Cranium, Operation, Monopoly, Twister...," Amir rattles off just some of the games on tap at Green Room's weekly Wednesday Game Nights. "We still don't have a chess board, though, believe it or not.

"Sabrina is a board-game fanatic - read: nerd - and has an impressive collection, which we had been bringing out for evenings at home with friends for awhile. Booze and games proved to be a good combination for us when entertaining at home, so we thought we would try it out at the bar."

The drink-and-think double-up, while somewhat oxymoronic, has worked its magic beyond the ladies' living rooms, and has them plotting ambitiously. "We're planning a couple of theme nights. One is a high-school party night, with spin the bottle, truth or dare, drinking games - the tamer ones that don't end in violent puking - and appropriate music. We're thinking about a Super Nintendo tournament, maybe Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit tournaments too."

Tremblay's looking at expanding the scope of his soirées as well, the next of which takes place this Sunday, April 24 (9 p.m., $2.)

"A major booze distributor gave us a bunch of rad packsacks and jackets to give out on the first night, so we did bonus games. For example, we asked a member of each team to put 10 quarters on their elbow and try to catch them in their hand - we had a blast with that one. Next time I think we might have an air-guitar competition, or maybe some mini-golf putting. There are so many possibilities, it's crazy."