Pub quizmaster who caught regulars cheating using smartwatch reveals how he snared team

Bobby Bruen, who runs the quizzes at the Barking Dog in Urmston, Greater Manchester, told LBC News's James Hanson that he launched a scheme to catch the cheater after suspicions were raised over their high scores.

Mark Rackham, owner of the boozer, revealed on Tuesday that he had caught a team “cheating red-handed” - but refused to name and shame them online.

The landlord shared the news on social media, sparking frenzied efforts to identify the group.

Speaking on Wednesday, Bobby said: "They started coming in about 18 months ago or so and at first they were doing well, high scores, but we just assumed that it was all trustworthy and they were intelligent, small team, we thought nothing of it.

"And then we strangely got a couple of complaints from some people close to the pub that they'd seen them cheating, but I hadn't seen them cheating so I couldn't really say anything."

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After his suspicions were piqued, Bobby launched a trap to snare the cheaters.

"The alarm bell started ringing. So especially with the music stuff, we do a round of connections. And there'd be some rogue ones which, from their appearance, you wouldn't expect them to know," Bobby said.

"There's songs from 50s rock music to 80s hip hop to 2010s pop and they'd still be getting every song title, every artist, even the producers that aren't even listed on Spotify.

"So, weirdly enough, after suspicions were pretty much at the peak, I got a staff member to pretty much stand next to their table because they have the same table every week.

"And I got someone to stand next to them whilst they're doing the quiz, not to make them feel uncomfortable, just to make sure they knew they were being watched. And he came back to me and said, I know they're cheating but I can't tell how, I can't see it.

"So in the following week... I got my other colleague Rob... to go deeper and he did it by going outside of the pub and looking through the window behind where they were sitting and saw that they were using their smart watches underneath the table."

Bobby added that the team was using popular app Shazam to identify songs, but also found that they were using a smartwatch to feed questions into artificial intelligence (AI).

Despite being caught red-handed, the group still protested its innocence, according to the seasoned quizzer.

Shaming the cheats, a message on the pub’s Facebook page states: “We are disappointed to say that there has been a team cheating in our quiz.

“There have been suspicions for a while but no concrete evidence.

“This unfortunately may have cost us some genuine custom.

“Last night we caught the team red handed and they have been banned. We hope that any of our genuine quizzers we may have lost, come back.

“Although some might think it’s not that serious, we know other teams had stopped coming because of them, due to suspicions they had been cheating for a while.”

Mr Rackham said: “We kept having a repeating team winning, and who were getting the obscure answers right.

“That then led us to having to put a complete ban on people having their phones out but we’ve never thought we’d have to enforce that because most people enjoy the spirit of the thing.”

He said they received a tip-off about one particular team, so he deployed his quiz co-host to spy on them.

It turned out the team was whispering into their smart watches for answers and used an app to identify songs in the music round.

"He caught them red-handed and, as a result, we've banned them from taking part in future quizzes," Mr Rackham said.

He said said he wouldn’t be naming the disgraced team of cheaters - but added they could still come back to the pub for drinks, but not take part in the quiz.

"It takes some of the fun away when you know people are cheating,” he added.