Guilherme Silva and Luís Sá have been circulating in the quiz underworld since 2011, at first only as participants, but soon afterwards as quizmasters — in other words, the hosts of a quiz game about pop culture and general knowledge in which several teams compete to silently write down the highest number of correct answers.

In 2011, the quiz format was still timidly entering the city. Originally brought to Porto by Breyner 85, it soon spread to another leading venue on the "quick question, slow answer" circuit, Casa da Madeira. Nowadays, you can find quizzes in the most diverse places, from breweries to shopping centres. The Batalha Quiz model is that of a themed quiz: focused on cinema, and with some questions that intersect with Batalha's programme, it is divided into two parts, of 25 questions each.

Question 8 — Which actor voices Mr. Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)?

It's not yet ten o'clock and the most devout begin to trickle in, occupying the tables closest to the projection screen. On busy days, some puffs have to be spread out to accommodate all the participants. Guilherme, Jay and some members of the Batalha team distribute the answer sheets to the various tables, keeping an eye out for people who don't yet have a team, or teams that are too large and may have their members redistributed.

The lights in the room take on a dark, conspiratorial colour. Guilherme takes up position next to the projection screen, reading aloud the rules of the game. The conversations die down, and you can hear the chairs dragging across the wooden floor, forming semicircles facing the action — not because of the reading of the rules, which they already knew by heart, but because the game is about to begin. The last rule is the golden rule, and also the rule that makes this whole shared moment unusual: no mobile phones are allowed during the game.

Question 11 - Who is the only female director nominated for a Best Director Oscar this year?

The questions follow one another, with a rhythm that allows room for the anxiety of those who have the answer on the tip of their tongue, needing only a slight memory refresher. The search for information in the furthest corners of the brain manifests itself in various physical ways: gnawing on the pen, massaging the temples, staring at a point on the ceiling and trying to find somewhere in there the name of the German director of whom they've seen one or two films. In some teams the discussion is heated, trying to eliminate possibilities and arriving at the answer by logic. Discussions, however, held at a very low volume, so as not to favour the team sitting next to them.

Question 27 - What is the name of Jafar's parrot, voiced by Gilbert Gottfried in Aladdin (1992)?

When the break comes round, there are those who take it upon themselves to use their phones to reply to the messages they've accumulated or to see what's new on social media, but there are few - most are already checking how many correct answers they've written on the sheet handed out to the quizmasters. There are little moments of eureka here and there: clay thrown at the wall that ended up sticking, answers that weren't risked and would have been correct, and good-humoured recriminations from those who didn't see their proposed answer, which turned out to be correct, accepted by the rest of the team. The bar regains the sound of voices and movement, and the queue at the bar thickens.

Question 43 - What is the name of the main character in Police Academy (1984)?

Having resumed the game, the second batch of questions has a more geeky slant, with questions that oscillate between high and low culture, as quickly centred on European cinema as on Japanese kaiju monster films. The quizmasters themselves admit that there is an authorial voice between the parts, written by each of them. But this voice doesn't jeopardise the coherence of the profile of the questions, since they both attended the same quiz "schools", albeit in different teams — Guilherme usually in the Guilicious team, and Jay in the Borussia do Outro Mundo team. Not all the questions are simple: in some you have to identify the dialogue you hear, in others you have to identify a film by just one frame, and in still others you have to find the common thread between several images.