Newsflash (6th December 2020): After the tournament resumed online, we’re delighted to announce Patrick Carthy as the winner of Brain of Dublin 2020! See our news story for further details. Also, all questions from the tournament have now been uploaded – scroll to bottom of this page for the list of files.
We hope to run Brain of Dublin again in early 2023 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 Horgan | 10 |
| Tom Diffley | 11* |
| Anthony Strogen | 13 |
| Gearóid Grogan | 11* |
| *Gearóid won the tiebreak 3-1 | |
| Heat 2 | |
| Dónall Hoey | 15 |
| Brian O’Hanlon | 15 |
| Greg Redmond | 10 |
| Padraig McLoughlin | 11 |
| Heat 3 | |
| Noel Rogers | 8 |
| Dónal Ring | 14 |
| Kevin Jones | 15 |
| James Sherry | 7 |
| Heat 4 | |
| Mark Lynch | 8 |
| Gerry Barrett | 19 |
| Damian McDonnell | 6 |
| Alan King | 11 |
| Heat 5 | |
| Jules Carney | 8 |
| Karen Crofton | 12 |
| Gary Stephens | 11 |
| Patrick Carthy | 13 |
| Heat 6 | |
| Gary Power | 8 |
| James Bane | 12 |
| Eamon Murphy | 11 |
| Paul Curtayne | 16 |
| Heat 7 | |
| Amanda Bane | 7 |
| Peter Lowney | 14 |
| Kevin Lawless | 10 |
| James Conroy | 6 |
| Heat 8 | |
| Eamonn O’Riordan | 12 |
| Daniel Watts | 5 |
| Colm O’Sullivan | 10 |
| Cathal Dunne | 15 |
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 Hoey | 10 |
| Kevin Jones | 20 |
| James Bane | 15 |
| Dónal Ring | 6 |
| Heat 2 | |
| Anthony Strogen | 11 |
| Gearóid Grogan | 7 |
| Cathal Dunne | 15 |
| Peter Lowney | 13 |
| Heat 3 | |
| Kevin Lawless | 6 |
| Paul Curtayne | 12 |
| Eamonn O’Riordan | 16 |
| Patrick Carthy | 13 |
| Heat 4 | |
| Brian O’Hanlon | 13 |
| Alan King | 7 |
| Gerry Barrett | 10 |
| Karen Crofton | 12 |
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’Riordan | 24 |
| James Bane | 19 |
| Peter Lowney | 21 |
| Karen Crofton | 19 |
| Heat 2 | |
| Brian O’Hanlon | 19 |
| Kevin Jones | 26 |
| Patrick Carthy | 34 |
| Cathal Dunne | 17 |
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 Lowney | 21 |
| Kevin Jones | 29* |
| Patrick Carthy | 29* |
| Eamonn O’Riordan | 14 |
| *Patrick won via tie-breaker |
Questions & answers
All the questions & answers from Brain of Dublin 2020 are here for you to freely download: