If you love a pub quiz but can't stomach the chap with the mic, this one's for you.
Puzzled Pint finally arrives in Barcelona on Tuesday 8 September. The event has been going for years in dozens of places across the globe, from Portland to Prague to Singapore to a good chunk of the UK, always on the second Tuesday of the month. Now it's Barcelona's turn.
The setup is simple and quietly clever.
Finding the venue is the first puzzle. On the Friday before the event, a small location puzzle goes live on the Puzzled Pint website. Crack it and it points you to which neighbourhood bar you're heading for. Don't crack it and you're staying in. That's intentional.
Once you're through the door, you get a bundle of themed puzzle sheets, a final meta-puzzle that stitches all the answers together, and a few extra puzzles if you're quick off the mark. September's theme is Orchestra, put together by Doug Aitchison over in Norfolk. Most people work in teams of three to five, and the theme changes every month.
Volunteers, known as Game Control, hand out the packets, check your answers and offer a gentle shove if you get properly stuck. Nobody's left staring at the same grid for an hour.
It costs nothing to take part. You cover your own food and drinks, which seems reasonable enough given the bar's putting up with a room full of people gnawing on pencils.
The key bit is the vibe. This isn't a contest with a leaderboard and a prize. It's a few hours in a bar with pens, paper and people who share your same slightly nerdy taste. Show up solo and you'll end up on a team.
The Barcelona edition is run by David Staffell, Mairi Nolan and Ferran Ruiz. Details and the location puzzle go up at puzzledpint.org.
