The evening started on a stumble, as we learned on arrival that the pub’s WiFi was down that evening. But the players kicked things off with a bang as they mobilized to get connected.

Most people had 3G-capable smartphones or dongles for their laptops. Others were more enterprising: a few people went to the bar next door and conned their way into getting a password for their WiFi. As one member of the Brixton Hive put it, “Usually messing about trying to get on the internet is annoying – but this time it just made me feel all MacGyver.” Their gung-ho attitude ended up winning them the trophy.

You can download a PDF of the questions (and answers) used on the day. We eased people into the idea of a ‘pub quiz where you can cheat’ with Round 1, which pretty much everyone aced; Round 2 was a little harder but didn’t pose too much of a challenge for most. Round 3 was obviously the trickiest; even the best teams only got 4 out of the 10 questions within the 30 minutes they had, and they both had several ‘remote players’ who were helping them out by Skype, phone, and IM. Round 4 was rapid-fire, with the first team to answer getting the points, and really boiled down to how had the fastest Googling skills and connectivity.

On the whole, we were very pleased with the evening; it was an experiment, the ‘Alpha run’ of the Hive Mind Challenge experience, but people had a lot of fun and everyone seems to be eager for the next challenge. For other opinions, you can see coverage in Prospect Magazine’s blog (thanks to Tom Chatfield!) and quite a few reactions on Twitter.

And we’d love to hear from you, if you were there, or if you were participating remotely. How do you think Hive Mind Challenge 2.0 could be made better?

Let us know, and we’ll see you at Challenge 2.0, which will probably be happening in January! Follow us at @hivemindcontrol to get the latest…

• Round 1: 10 questions, 1 point each
• Round 2: 10 questions, 2 points each
• (intermission)
• Round 3: 10 questions, 4 points each
• Round 4: 10 questions, 3 points each (but it’s not quite that simple…)

Also, we’re not going to ask you to use Twitter to send us your answers – instead, we’ll just be using old-fashioned pens and paper. Still, you might find it useful to follow @hivemindcontrol since we may also be posting the questions there.

See you on Wednesday!

A few notes to prepare you for the day:

• Each team needs to designate or set up one Twitter account that represents them. We’ll ask you for the name of the account when you get to the pub. No need to send it ahead of time.
• Be sure to follow @hivemindcontrol on Twitter. This is where you’ll be posting your answers on the night.
• If you’re on your own now, but would like to build a team for the evening, may we suggest using the comments on this post to look for teammates? Teams can be any number up to 5 people.
• Aim to arrive a bit before 7pm. Don’t be late, or you’ll miss points!
• Though there is free WiFi at the pub, some of the questions may be quite bandwidth-intensive, so you’ll be happy if you’ve got 3G connectivity. Just a tip. There’s also a BT OpenZone WiFi point nearby as well.
• Dress practically, there may be a little physical activity involved…

And get ready to rumble. Because on November 25th, only one team can dominate London’s Hive Mind…