It’s Bother’s Bar’s Christmas Cash-In Book Club

It seems every quiz on the planet (three of them) has a Christmas cash-in book coming out so we thought we’d have a look at them. We’ve looked at the Kindle versions of each book, looking at it using the Kindle App on an iPad. This may or may not be the way the book is intended to be played or read, but we’re still waiting for a quality tablet quizmaster app so you can look like how they do it on the telly so I want to know if it works decently as a surrogate.

Also if you click through any of the links I’ll get a cut, because why not. Prices are as of at time of writing.

• The Chase: The Greatest Chases
  £11.99 Hardback
  £9.99 Kindle

  If you bought the first book and were a bit disappointed that it only included the multiple choice questions you may get on better with this one, featuring as it does effectively fifty games worth of questions, ten each against each of The Chasers. Each game includes four rounds of seven multiple choice quizzes followed by the contestant’s half of The Final Chase (with a bit of background to explain why that Chase was so memorable), around 25 questions, so you’re getting around 2,500 questions for your money written by some of the finest in the business – but be aware that they come directly from the show so if you’re a very avid viewer they may seem familiar. A pity. Also a pity is that this version seems to be a step back from the first book in terms of quizmaster fiddliness – the first book effectively had all the content printed twice, the second time with the answers in bold, deliberately designed so you could play it by yourself or with friends. This one requires you to click on links to flick to the answers (and then doesn’t give you a link back) so if you want to recreate a Final Chase it’s going to be irritating.

• Think Tank: Can You Bank On The Think Tank?
  £14.99 Hardback
  £9.99 Kindle

  A little bit of effort has gone into the layout of this one – the quizzes are interspersed with pictures of smiling Bill Turnbull and assorted Think Tank members. There are enough questions here for thirty games (interestingly I can’t work out if they’ve been directly taken from the show or not) laid out in such a fashion you can play a game *a bit* like the show – round one with the eight different reponses, round two a straight set of nine general knowledge questions, round three a set of either/or questions (if you’re playing with chums you’re encouraged to argue for an answer like the Think Tank do on the show). The fourth round are Questions: Impossible meant to be done as a head to head which looks like an amalgamation of the way the final rounds work but without the listing of the wrong answers to guide which is a bit of a confusing measure given how the rest of the book seems to ape the show pretty well. It even works quite well on Kindle, it uses links but helpfully there’s a link back with each answer (it’s not like Think Tank is a quickfire quiz anyway).

• A Pointless History Of The World
  £11.99 Hardback
  £8.99 Paperback
  £9.99 Kindle

  Right I can only claim to have flicked through this one, but after the last two money-for-old-rope books of mainly quizzes it looks like Armstrong and Osman have returned to a book style more similar to the first two – lots of humourous two-page-ish essays on aspects of history followed by a quick Pointless board or question. We may come back to flesh this out a bit later.