Brain of Dublin

Latest update November 2023: After a 4-year gap, we hope to run Brain of Dublin again in early 2024 in conjunction with the new season of Dublin Quiz League – watch this space.

Held for the first time in 2019-2020, Brain of Dublin is an individual quiz tournament which runs in parallel with the Dublin Quiz League. Here’s how it works:

  • The tournament is open to anyone (you don’t have to be a Dublin Quiz League player)
  • Teams are not involved – this is an individual tournament, so every man or woman for themselves!
  • The tournament takes place over multiple months, starting with a qualifier (next qualifier will be sometime in 2021)
  • Entry fee is €5 per person, payable on the qualifier night.
  • The qualifier is be a written quiz of 50 questions to be completed in 30 minutes. The top 32 scores will qualify for the tournament proper.
  • The remainder of the tournament will take place in monthly heats held on the same night as Dublin Quiz League matches (either before or afterwards) in the same venues.
  • The first three heats are each be a quiz match between 4 players, with the top 1 or 2 scorers going forward to the next round.
  • That then leaves 4 players to contest the grand final, with cash prizes for both the winner and runner-up!

If you’d like to take part in the next tournament in 2021, email league@quizireland.ie to be added to our mailing list.

Brain of Dublin 2020 results

Qualifier round

The qualifier round was held in two parts, on Nov 4th & 12th 2019. We had 46 entrants altogether, each of whom had 30 minutes to tackle the 50-question written paper. The top 32 qualified for the Brain of Dublin tournament itself. Results as follows:

(Note: the tiebreaker answer was 707, so players with the same score are ranked by how close their answer was to the tiebreaker, namely the “tiebreaker difference” column.)

Round 1 (Dec 2019-Jan 2020)

The 32 qualifying players were randomly drawn into 8 heats of 4 players each, with the 2 top-scoring players from each heat going to the next round, as highlighted in green. Each heat consisted of 4 rounds of questions (32 questions in all).

Heat 1
Conor Horgan10
Tom Diffley11*
Anthony Strogen13
Gearóid Grogan11*
*Gearóid won the tiebreak 3-1
Heat 2
Dónall Hoey15
Brian O’Hanlon15
Greg Redmond10
Padraig McLoughlin11
Heat 3
Noel Rogers8
Dónal Ring14
Kevin Jones15
James Sherry7
Heat 4
Mark Lynch8
Gerry Barrett19
Damian McDonnell6
Alan King11
Heat 5
Jules Carney8
Karen Crofton12
Gary Stephens11
Patrick Carthy13
Heat 6
Gary Power8
James Bane12
Eamon Murphy11
Paul Curtayne16
Heat 7
Amanda Bane7
Peter Lowney14
Kevin Lawless10
James Conroy6
Heat 8
Eamonn O’Riordan12
Daniel Watts5
Colm O’Sullivan10
Cathal Dunne15

Round 2 (Feb 2020)

The last 16 players were randomly drawn into 4 heats. Again, each heat consisted of a 4-round 32-question quiz, with the 2 top-scoring players going through.

Heat 1
Dónall Hoey10
Kevin Jones20
James Bane15
Dónal Ring6
Heat 2
Anthony Strogen11
Gearóid Grogan7
Cathal Dunne15
Peter Lowney13
Heat 3
Kevin Lawless6
Paul Curtayne12
Eamonn O’Riordan16
Patrick Carthy13
Heat 4
Brian O’Hanlon13
Alan King7
Gerry Barrett10
Karen Crofton12

Semi-finals (Nov 2020)

After an 8-month delay caused by COVID-19, the tournament resumed online with the remaining matches played via Zoom. In the semi-finals at the end of November, the last 8 players were randomly drawn into 2 heats. This time, each heat was twice as long, consisting of 8 rounds of questions (64 questions in total), with once again the 2 top-scoring players going through.

Heat 1
Eamonn O’Riordan24
James Bane19
Peter Lowney21
Karen Crofton19
Heat 2
Brian O’Hanlon19
Kevin Jones26
Patrick Carthy34
Cathal Dunne17

Final (Dec 2020)

The final was held on Saturday 5th December, again via Zoom.

After a very closely-fought quiz, both Patrick Carthy and Kevin Jones finished level on points. An additional tiebreaker round failed to separate them, so it came down to the final nearest-the-pin question. Patrick’s answer was closer, so he was crowned Brain of Dublin and received the trophy plus €100 cash prize, while Kevin received the runner-up prize of €50. Congratulations to both!

Finalists
Peter Lowney21
Kevin Jones29*
Patrick Carthy29*
Eamonn O’Riordan14
*Patrick won via tie-breaker

Questions & answers

All the questions & answers from Brain of Dublin 2020 are here for you to freely download: