1) 19 times out of 20, if you hear a question and an answer pops into your brain, unbidden, un-thought-out, that’s the correct answer. Go with your gut.

2) The one time during a quiz that you reconsider that answer and come up with a more logical one to put in its place will not be the one time in 20 that your gut was wrong. You’ll change a right answer to a wrong one.

Want to improve your pub quiz scores? Now that I’ve seen countless answer sheets come back, and played in countless quizzes myself, here’s a piece of advice:

Write something down.

Even if you don’t know the answer, make a guess. Make your best guess if you can. If you don’t have a best guess, make a crappy guess. Just make sure you answer the question, even if you’re convinced the answer you’re turning in is wrong.

This seems obvious. But I’ve seen answer sheets come back with blank spaces. I’ve seen answer sheets come back with the correct answer crossed out and nothing written down in its place. It’s one thing to second-guess yourself for the wrong answer; it’s another thing to second-guess yourself for no answer.

There’s a regular group of people I play with when I’m not hosting. And every night we play, there’s at least one argument about what to put down in a slot that threatens to end in leaving that slot blank. In a round about linguistic terminology, I had to fight to get someone to write down “pun,” even though we both thought there was probably a better answer. “Pun” turned out to be correct.

Other nights, when I’m hosting, I’ve seen them turn in a sheet with a blank answer. I’ll talk to one of them later and they’ll say, “Yeah, we talked about [correct answer], but we were pretty sure it was wrong.” Write it down!

Obviously, you want to put down the correct answer. But any answer is better than no answer (unless your particular quiz deducts points for wrong answers, in which case stop taking the SAT for fun). In a visual round this week, we were identifying album covers. There was one that was an elaborate and complicated illustration. I had no idea what it was and, for whatever reason, I’m our music expert. At the last minute, I wrote down Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. Correct answer? Santana’s Abraxis. No point for us, but at least we guessed something.

It’s simple: You don’t score a point for a blank line. You might score a point for a lucky guess. A possible point beats a non-point every time.