Bonus question: Pub quizmaster sparks huge mystery after outing cheating team – but refuses to name them

A pub quizmaster who caught a team of cheats red-handed has sparked a huge “whodunnit” after he refused to name the culprits.

Mark Rackham, who owns The Barking Dog in Urmston, Greater Manchester, said the gossiping has been relentless since he outed the team on social media but kept their identities anonymous.

The team were caught “whispering into their smartwatches” and “using Shazam” for the music round in a bid to get their hands on a £30 bar voucher.

But since Mr Rackham revealed that there had been cheating at the pub quiz, the team have not returned and have “gone into hiding”, leaving punters to guess who they are.

“Within an hour of putting it on social media, I had four texts asking who did it, and the next day I was at a council meeting about quite a serious local topic, and people were coming up to me asking what’s going on at the quiz,” Mr Rackham told The Independent. “It was quite funny.”

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Mr Rackham, who has run the Wednesday night quiz for eight years, said that a few weeks ago, staff noticed a particular team winning a lot and getting pretty obscure questions right – forcing him to “get strict” and ban phones.

He later received an anonymous tip-off from a disgruntled competitor who had since quit the quiz.

“Somebody rang the pub and wouldn’t say who they were, but told us the name of the quiz team that was cheating,” Mr Rackham said.

“They said their quiz team had actually stopped coming to the quiz as a result of it. That’s what prompted us to put something online about it, because I didn’t ever think it was that serious, but when I heard that we’d lost some customers as a result of it, I thought we need to try and get those people back in,” he added.

On the night of the quiz, Rob Hardy, who was hosting the event, stayed near to the suspected cheats’ table to keep a close ear and eye on them. That’s when he noticed them whispering into their smartwatches.

Embarrassed, the team admitted their guilt straight away, and were barred from the quiz. They haven’t been seen since.

Once Mr Rackham had his evidence, he posted on social media that the pub was aware of the cheats, and hoped it would bring back the quiz-goers who had left, but it has instead sparked huge speculation.

“There’s been a lot of gossiping online, and a hell of a lot of messages sent to me and other people who work at the pub. It’s turned into a local whodunnit,” he said.

The scandal has led to so much publicity that it has even inspired a new round in this week’s quiz – “Famous cheats”.

“I’m sure there will still be the occasional person who has a glance at their phone, who doesn’t systematically cheat the whole quiz like this team. But hopefully this will stop little opportunist cheats as well,” Mr Rackham said.