Pen and paper against phones

Pen and paper is the real competitor. An honest comparison: what paper is genuinely better at, what the marking costs you every week, and when to stay on it.

Paper is the real competitor

Not other software. The overwhelming majority of quiz nights in the country run on a photocopied answer sheet, a biro and somebody marking at the bar, and they have done for forty years.

There is a reason for that, and it is not inertia. Paper has genuine advantages that nothing else does, and any comparison that skips them is selling rather than informing.

What paper is genuinely better at

It cannot fail. No connection to drop, no phone to run out of battery, no screen to go blank at half past eight. In a cellar bar with no signal, paper is not the compromise, it is the correct answer.

It includes everybody. Nobody is excluded for not having a smartphone, not wanting to use one, or not being comfortable with it. In a members' club with an older crowd that is not a minor consideration.

It costs almost nothing. A ream of paper and a box of biros against a monthly subscription is not a close contest on cost alone.

And it allows answers software cannot mark. A round where teams draw something, list ten things in any order, or write a sentence is easy on paper and hard or impossible on a phone.

	PubTrivia	Pen and paper
Marking	None. Scores settle as each question closes.	Somebody marks every sheet between rounds, while a queue forms.
Dead time between rounds	None, the standings are already up.	Three to five minutes per round. Over six rounds that is half an hour.
Arithmetic errors and disputes	Totals are computed; the per-question record settles arguments.	Addition by hand, at the bar, at speed.
Works with no connection	Needs the room to have a working connection.	Nothing to connect to. This is paper's strongest card.
Includes people with no smartphone	Team mode needs one phone per table, not one each.	Completely.
Free-form answers and drawing rounds	Multiple choice and true or false only.	Anything you can write or draw.
Cost	A monthly subscription.	Paper and biros.
History after the night	Every session saved with its leaderboard.	The sheets go in the bin.
Setup each week	Pick a pack, press start. Codes are already on the tables.	Photocopying, and writing the questions in the first place.

The number that decides it

Everything above comes down to one figure: how long you spend marking, times how many weeks a year you do it.

Four minutes a round, six rounds, is twenty-four minutes a night. Fifty nights a year is twenty hours of somebody standing at a bar doing arithmetic instead of serving. That is the thing you are buying back, and whether it is worth it depends entirely on what those hours are worth to you.

It is also the reason quiz nights stop. Almost nobody gives up because the crowd left; they give up because the person doing it got tired of the preparation and the marking.

Stay on paper if

The room has no usable connection, and cannot get one. Nothing else on this page matters if that is true.

Your crowd genuinely will not use phones. In some clubs and some rooms that is simply the case, and a quiz that fights its own audience loses.

Your format depends on written or drawn answers, and you do not want to change it.

Or somebody enjoys the marking, which is rarer than it sounds but does happen.

And if you are staying on paper, take the scoresheet

We give away a printable answer sheet and score grid: set your rounds, questions and teams, and download the PDF. No account, nothing to install, and no catch.

It is the thing our own product exists to replace, and a decent answer sheet is better than a hand-ruled one whichever way you end up going.

Or try the other way once

One free session, up to ten tables, no card. The cheapest possible way to find out what twenty hours a year is worth to you.

Start free, no card needed