‘What’s the nerdiest argument you’ve ever seen break out in a pub?’ – 19 brawls with petty origin stories

It’s hardly surprising that fights break out in pubs. With all that beer sloshing around, tensions are bound to flare up.

However not every bar fight is over a sports game. Able-Cap2623 invited r/AskUK users to share the nerdiest reason they’ve seen a pub argument broke out, and even shared their own experience:

‘I was at a pub quiz near a well known U.K. nuclear site and one of the questions was, “What is the half-life of uranium?”

‘The quizmaster gave the answer as 4.5 billion years, which immediately started an argument with a table of nuclear engineers because he hadn’t specified which isotope.

‘Of course there was a team of physicists who joined in and it went on for about ten minutes.

‘The answer sheet apparently meant uranium-238. Everyone else just wanted the next question… but at least the chips were homemade… well worth the entrance fee.

‘What’s the most obscure thing you’ve seen people argue over?’

Put up your dukes, here are the top replies…

1.

‘I was outside a pub smoking once and overheard two guys talking about their mate inside. The only bit I caught was “he’s a nice enough guy but he knows f*** all about non ferrous metal.’
-CartoonistNo9

2.

‘Pub quiz question was “what colour was captain kirks captains chair”

‘”which enterprise”

‘”what”

‘”which ship?”

‘”the enterprise”

‘”which one”

‘”kirks”

‘eye twitch’
-Amdrauder

3.

‘We had one about who discovered X-rays. We said Roentgen but the other team didn’t understand so asked us to spell it. We spelled it as above but the answer sheet has the Germanic Röntgen so they didn’t allow it.

‘I was livid!’
-cheandbis

4.

‘”How many provinces are there in Canada?”

‘I said 10.

‘The answer the quiz master had was 13.

‘Canada has 10 provinces and three territories. If they’ve asked “how many subdivisions?”, fine. But they explicitly asked for “provinces”; one of the main defining feature of Canadian territories is that they’re not provinces.’
-FishUK_Harp

5.

‘I once fell out with a man because James Bond was on the TV in the corner and he commented “nice! A ’68 mustang” and I replied “that’s a 64, the 68 was the fastback”. Argued about it until he stormed out (this was pre smart phones) – we didn’t start speaking again for literally months 😂 😂’
-TacticalRiotChimp

6.

‘I know a pub right next to hospital accommodation that’s stopped asking anything even vaguely medical because of the medical students and doctors, lol’
-PoshDeafStar

7.

‘I had a drink with a few engineers years ago and they started arguing over the best bathroom fan extractor’
-bangkokali

8.

‘A ‘mate’ started a heated argument after my friend said he would be a ravenclaw.

‘”No! You can’t be a ravenclaw, I’m a ravenclaw. You need to be smart to be ravenclaw!”

‘”To be honest mate, I really don’t give a shit”

‘”See you don’t even care, you’re not smart enough to argue with me about it”

‘”I’m smart enough not to argue about a fictional house in a fiction book”

‘I think my friend won the argument.’
-pacmanfunky

9.

‘A few teams of old men and women accused my team of cheating because we were the only ones who got a question right about when Nintendo was first founded. They genuinely couldn’t accept a bunch of young people got something right that they didn’t.’
-FunkyYoghurt

10.

‘I overheard some ideological debate between tossers in a pub I worked at, one bloke was stonewalling the other by repeating “Have you read your Marx? Have you read your Marx? Have.you.read.your.Marx?” over the top of him.’
-Substantial_Lake707