Pandemic diary 67: The Artefact Quiz – pandemic edition

Aka a sort of triumph of technology over lockdown isolation. Here's what went down in our beloved Artefact café's end-of-the-month quiz with "eternal Quizmaster and all round bodacious babe, Sebastiaan Ros". There were 29 teams – which is about 23 more than usual, tuning in from around Birmingham and beyond.

Here's the play:

Facebook event notification that The Artefact Quiz 'Stay-at-home pandemic edition" was on (see top photo). Excited!

WhatsApp group of Stirchley people organises quiz group made up of five households. Sets up separate WhatsApp group.

Email to get instructions.

Discuss and agree on best video conferencing software to confer on answers – Zoom, Skype or Jitsi. Set up tech in living room.

Open up Jitsi for the team play. Ruth and Neil share their screen and audio to Fran who has a dodgy wifi connection tonight.

Open up Twitch.tv to hear the grand quizmaster Seb and join live chat.

Mirror Twitch over Airplay to television and turn up to 100 as volume is so low. Plug earphones into telly, one in my ear, one in Pete's to hear questions.

Quiz begins: we listen, confer on Jitsu, mark ourselves (honestly of course) and type scores into the Twitch live chat. There are book/TV/song, dead or alive celebrities, music on a theme, video observation, 'where's Dominic' castle pictures, TV theme tunes and a cat round.

Half way through, our dinner was ready so we just watched the amazing observation round (video to follow on YouTube – here it is!) with tuna and baked spuds. Can you do it? Watch twice then see how many weapons and players you can name. I think we got 5.

The cat round involved taking a photo of a cat within two minutes (or drawing one if you don't have a cat) and uploading it to Instagram with the hashtag #theartefactquiz. I drew two cats and Pete ran to take a photo of the rabbit, who may or may not identify as a cat. No idea how that one was scored.

Finally had a quick video catchup chat with fellow team members on Jitsu.

Quite everything then noticed a different household unit in Kings Heath was messaging me on Facebook Messenger to compare score notes.

And now it's time to blog it here on WordPress.

Twitter missed it – it was too busy flagging Trump's tweets as potential fake news or glorifying violence.

Today I am thankful for all the tech! Or am I? I'm quite tired now. Anyway, here are my cat pics for your amusement.


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