Pub quizmaster sparks huge mystery after outing cheating team – but refuses to name them
A pub quizmaster who caught a cheating team red-handed sparked a huge fuss after refusing to name the culprits.
Mark Rackham, owner of The Barking Dog in Urmston, Greater Manchester, said the rumors had been non-stop since he exposed the team on social media, but he had kept their identities secret.
The gang were caught “whispering on their smartwatches” and “using Shazam” for the music tour in a bid to get their hands on a £30 pub voucher.
But since Mr Rackham revealed the pub quiz had been rigged, the team have not returned and have gone “in hiding”, leaving punters guessing who they are.
“Within an hour of posting it on social media I had four messages asking who had done this and the next day I was at a council meeting about a pretty serious local issue and people were coming up to me asking what was going on with the exam,” Mr Rackham said. Independent. “It was pretty funny.”
Mr Rackham, who has run the Wednesday night quiz for eight years, said a few weeks ago staff noticed a particular team had won a lot and answered fairly vague questions correctly, forcing him to “get tough” and ban phones.
He later received an anonymous tip from a disgruntled contestant who quit the test.
“Someone rang the pub and didn’t say who it was but told us the name of the quiz team who were cheating,” Mr Rackham said.
“They said that as a result of this, testing teams stopped coming to test. This is what prompted us to post about it online, because I never thought it was this serious, but when I heard that we were losing some customers as a result of this, I thought we should try to get those people back,” he added.
On the night of the quiz, Rob Hardy, who hosted the event, stayed near the cheat table to keep a close eye on and keep a close eye on the suspects. That’s when he noticed them whispering into their smartwatches.
The embarrassed team immediately pleaded guilty and were banned from the exam. They have not been seen since.
After receiving his evidence, Mr Rackham posted on social media that the bar was aware of the cheating and hoped it would bring test takers back, but instead it sparked huge speculation.
“There’s a lot of gossip going on online and a lot of messages being sent to me and other people working in the bar. It’s become a local farce,” he said.
The scandal sparked so much publicity that it even inspired a new round of this week’s quiz: “Celebrity cheats.”
“I’m sure there will be people who look at their phones from time to time and who aren’t systematically cheating the entire exam like this team did. But I’m hoping it will also stop little opportunistic cheating,” Mr Rackham said.
