Pub boss calls time on cheating quiz team caught whispering into their smartwatches
A pub quizmaster was forced to ban a team who were caught red-handed whispering into their smartwatches for the correct answers.
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Mark Rackham, who owns the Barking Dog in Urmston, Greater Manchester, 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.
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.
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“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 and so he deployed his quiz co-host to spy on them.
It turned out the team were whispering into their smart watches for answers, and using 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," he said.
Mr Rackham 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.