Fringe 2025 – Book now for The Elimination Game
Gooses Quizzes, Edinburgh's quiz company, has today announced the return of its popular show, The Elimination Game, to the Fringe.
The Elimination Game will run for 25 nights from 31 July – 24 August at Assembly Rooms, Bijou on George Street.
Back for a third year running, The Elimination Game pits the whole audience against each other in an epic trivia battle. With bigger prizes than ever, plus brand-new rounds, the game has been expertly designed with a series of make-or-break questions that test your knowledge and luck, to see if you will face elimination or be crowned champion.
Tickets are priced from £13.50 per person, and there is a fresh set of questions each night, so audience members can go back time and time again.
The show offers a unique blend of competition and camaraderie that has something for everyone – from classic pub trivia to weirdly specific topics. Each game has approximately 6-10 rounds and with one winner per round, there's plenty of opportunities to bag yourself a prize.
For those looking to get ahead of the crowd, The Elimination Game will be running a preview show on 24th July. Tickets for the preview night are £20.
Andrew Wildgoose, host of the Elimination Game, said: 'We're chuffed to bits to march The Elimination Game back up George Street and into the Fringe. Edinburgh audiences are among the best in the world. This year, we've brewed up fresh rounds, belter prizes and a few sneaky curveballs that'll have even the brainiest quiz goers scratching their heads. So grab your pals, your gran and the office geek, leave Google at the door, and get ready for a quiz scrap with more plot twists than the history of Edinburgh itself.
'If you're eliminated early doors, don't worry – there's always another round and the bar's still open. If you're the last one standing, you'll earn bragging rights for the rest of the summer (and an actual crown you can keep forever).'
Tickets are now on sale for The Elimination Game and can be purchased here.
Andrew Wildgoose PHOTO www.jackcurrie.com
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Edinburgh Reporter
6 hours ago
- Edinburgh Reporter
Fringe 2025 – Book now for The Elimination Game
Gooses Quizzes, Edinburgh's quiz company, has today announced the return of its popular show, The Elimination Game, to the Fringe. The Elimination Game will run for 25 nights from 31 July – 24 August at Assembly Rooms, Bijou on George Street. Back for a third year running, The Elimination Game pits the whole audience against each other in an epic trivia battle. With bigger prizes than ever, plus brand-new rounds, the game has been expertly designed with a series of make-or-break questions that test your knowledge and luck, to see if you will face elimination or be crowned champion. Tickets are priced from £13.50 per person, and there is a fresh set of questions each night, so audience members can go back time and time again. The show offers a unique blend of competition and camaraderie that has something for everyone – from classic pub trivia to weirdly specific topics. Each game has approximately 6-10 rounds and with one winner per round, there's plenty of opportunities to bag yourself a prize. For those looking to get ahead of the crowd, The Elimination Game will be running a preview show on 24th July. Tickets for the preview night are £20. Andrew Wildgoose, host of the Elimination Game, said: 'We're chuffed to bits to march The Elimination Game back up George Street and into the Fringe. Edinburgh audiences are among the best in the world. This year, we've brewed up fresh rounds, belter prizes and a few sneaky curveballs that'll have even the brainiest quiz goers scratching their heads. So grab your pals, your gran and the office geek, leave Google at the door, and get ready for a quiz scrap with more plot twists than the history of Edinburgh itself. 'If you're eliminated early doors, don't worry – there's always another round and the bar's still open. If you're the last one standing, you'll earn bragging rights for the rest of the summer (and an actual crown you can keep forever).' Tickets are now on sale for The Elimination Game and can be purchased here. Andrew Wildgoose PHOTO Like this: Like Related
Edinburgh Reporter
6 hours ago
- Edinburgh Reporter
Late night dining done right – Duck & Waffle's 9PM Club
With the Edinburgh Fringe fast approaching – and my recommendations spreadsheet nearly complete – my attention has turned to where's good to eat during the festival season. Sometimes it's a case of grab-and-go from the excellent street food vendors that pop up around venues. But other times you want to catch a show and have a proper catch-up with friends, which calls for a restaurant booking. My advice as a seasoned Fringe-goer? Plan and book ahead. Restaurants get busy, and if you're after late-night dining, many Edinburgh establishments close their kitchens around 9 pm. We're not quite Mediterranean in our dining culture – where heading out for dinner after 8 pm is the norm rather than my usual bedtime! Edinburgh isn't particularly renowned for late-night dining establishments where you can 'chew the fat' over great cocktails, conversation, and decent food. However, a little birdy let me know that Duck & Waffle does exactly that. So, getting in practice for my occasional late-night Fringe outings, I headed to Duck & Waffle to try their 9PM Club. A Gastro-Diner Experience in St James Quarter Set in the heart of Edinburgh's acclaimed St James Quarter, Duck & Waffle focuses on duck – particularly their signature dish and namesake. This 'gastro diner' experience has become a hallmark of the brand. They welcome guests for all-day brunch, dinner, Sunday roast (one of the best I've had in Edinburgh, alongside The Bonnington), and cocktails. The décor is genuinely impressive – from the striking entrance via the lift from Leith Street, to the oversized feathered lampshade extractor fan above the chef counter where guests can perch on bar stools and watch the action unfold, right through to the outdoor terrace. Duck & Waffle deserves a place in your little black book for entertaining friends or visitors who fancy a late-night bite. The 9PM Club: Sip, Savour, Stay Longer Their 9PM Club allows you to do exactly that. Every night from 9 pm until close (1 am), you can enjoy 25% off dinner. Reservations must be made in advance – walk-ins aren't eligible – but the excellent news is that the 25% discount applies to your entire bill. We sampled some of their impressive cocktails on the open-air terrace with views out to the Balmoral clock. Their 'Beverage Book' menu is extensive, covering just about everything under the sun. With the sun making a welcome appearance and it being a warm summer's evening we took advantage and had our cocktails out on the terrace. What caught our eye was their Tequila Edit – a series of shaken, stirred, and served-with-flair tequila cocktails, reasonably priced at £10 each. Alternatively, you can opt for a tequila cocktail flight, choosing three from the five on offer for just £25. We indulged in the latter. My favourite was the Ginger Grass – a zesty, tart creation that was less sweet than the Kiwi-Rita (served over a block of ice, though the agave presence made this too sickly for my palate). The Main Character Marg, served with house pickle and chilli, is worth sampling. Late Night Feast Time was getting on – well past my usual witching hour. We didn't actually sit down to eat until 9.45 pm, where we were looked after by our lovely Italian waiter, Christian, who embodied everything you want in service: charming, attentive without being overbearing, and genuinely informative. The menu is divided into snacks, breads, raw, small plates, and large plates – designed, in line with current trends, for sharing. Famished (having last eaten at lunch), we started with one of their freshly baked breads: the Nduja & Gruyère Cheese with parmesan and herb dip, which proved plenty for two to share. We also ordered their bacon-wrapped dates, stuffed with chorizo and Manchego – these are definitely NOT for sharing. The dates cost £4 each and arrive presented on striking porcelain in nouvelle cuisine style. Stylish, though they're essentially one or two bites! For main course, my guest chose the signature Duck & Waffle, which Christian helpfully and stylishly served for us. It's a gastro remake of pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup – their signature dish features a waffle topped with crispy leg confit and fried duck egg, accompanied by maple syrup with sesame seeds. Nice enough, though we both agreed it felt more like a brunch dish and was too sweet for me at that time of night. I opted for something more savoury: the Half Roasted Corn Fed Chicken with wild mushrooms, ratte potatoes, truffles, and an abundance of tarragon. This was a generous serving and delicious. We also ordered Truffle & Parmesan Fries (a generous portion) and Tenderstem Broccoli with hummus and chilli crunch. Honestly, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs – the chicken didn't need the additions. As the Balmoral Clock hands crept well past my bedtime, we passed on desserts, both happily satiated and very full, before catching the last tram and bus home. Supporting a Good Cause If you're quick, they're celebrating Pride with a special close to their hearts. For every Pride special sold, they're donating £1 to LGBT Health and Wellbeing Scotland, the leading charity for LGBT+ adults, providing vital support through counselling, peer groups, and inclusive community events. On offer: a Thirst Trap cocktail – a floral, fizzy, fabulous delight (Bombay Sapphire gin, aloe vera juice, verjus, Monin bubblegum syrup, crème de cassis, citrus, served long over ice, topped with rose lemonade) for £12, and Rainbow Delight – buttermilk waffle with macerated strawberries, Chantilly rainbow cream, and sprinkles. Also worth noting: their Sunday Roast, available 11:30 am-4 pm. Their two-course Sunday Roast is a quacking great deal at £32 per person. The Sunday Roast at Duck & Waffle is a quacking good deal The Verdict Unaccustomed as I am to Mediterranean-style late-night dining, next time I'll probably opt for more small plates and sides rather than bread and a main – avoiding that 3am food-baby feeling and reaching for the antacids! But with its glamorous interior, genuine style, and attentive service, Duck & Waffle earns a five-star rating from me. It's definitely worth adding to your Fringe dining hit list, or whenever you need somewhere open for late-night dining – just make sure you plan ahead. Now, I'm off to put the finishing touches on my Fringe Show Spreadsheet – watch this space. DUCK & WAFFLE EDINBURGH St James Quarter 400-402 St James Crescent Edinburgh, EH1 3AE +44 131 202 2700 Hours of Operation Sunday-Wednesday: 9 am – 12 pm (last dinner sitting 10 pm) Thursday-Saturday: 9 am – 1 am All-day brunch available 11 am – 4 pm Reservations [email protected] Like this: Like Related
Scotsman
13 hours ago
- Scotsman
Shorter runs and smaller shows - how the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is changing as costs rise
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... When Samia Rida began planning her first year performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with her show Kidnap, she found she was unable to make the numbers add up. A recipient of the Keep It Fringe award, which this year handed out £2,500 bursaries to 180 performers, she knows she was in a more privileged position than many. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But she still could not afford to commit to the full, four-week run that has launched many comedians' careers, instead performing for 12 days between July 30 and August 10. Late 'n' Live at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh 'I was eventually offered two options [from venues],' she said. 'One was a full run and one was the run that I'm doing, and I could only afford the shorter run. So it was a no brainer for me.' Comedian Ms Rida, who played GP Sammi on Scottish soap River City in 2009, is keeping costs down by staying with a friend's family. 'I'm thrilled to be able to get there at all, because it felt like a dream at one point,' she said. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It was actually intimidating. But it's frustrating. I think it's really sad for who didn't get any funding and just can't take a show up there at all. It's tragic, really, that the arts are segregating people in this way - people who have money and people who don't.' Samia Rida was a recipient of the Keep It Fringe Award. | Samia Rida The increased cost of performing at the Fringe has seen a rising trend in artists opting for shorter runs rather than staying at the event for an entire month. Fringe venues have said while the number of performances held throughout the month remain the same as previous years, the number of different artists performing has risen, due to shared slots and shorter runs. Meanwhile, others have admitted they have more requests for shorter slots than they can fulfil. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It comes against the backdrop of the 2025 programme having 3,352 shows - the second most in the Fringe's history - across 265 venues. Some veteran performers have opted not to attend the Fringe at all this year due to a lack of availability of shorter venue options. Others are cutting corners by self-producing, or turning to friends and contacts to help out - rather than using a major show production company with a bigger budget. Casts and production teams are also getting smaller, with one venue owner warning the event was at risk of becoming a 'one monologue festival'. When planning for this year's Fringe, comedian Rosie Nicholls found out the flat she had rented for her Fringe shows every year had gone up in price again to £8,000 for the month. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad After three years of successful runs as part of award-winning sketch duo Grubby Little Mitts, the only option available to Ms Nicholls and her team was to cut short their run. However, she could not secure a venue and has been forced to entirely scrap the idea of performing in Edinburgh this year. Ms Nicholls said she had applied to two major venues, but had not received any suitable offers for a two-week slot - with only full, month-long residencies on offer. 'It was kind of strange to have had a hit show at the Fringe with really good sales, good audiences, good reviews, for three years in a row, and then as soon as we didn't want to do a whole month and sink thousands into that, it wasn't an option for the venues,' she said. 'You have to not take it personally, because they're just trying to make money as well.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Performer Connor McKenna has managed to secure a venue for a shorter, two-week run for his show, Seltzer Boy at Snug at Paradise in Augustines on George IV Bridge. But high accommodation costs mean he is having to undertake a daily commute to his home in Glasgow, rather than immerse himself in the festival. 'Performing at the Fringe has been a dream for me,' said Mr McKenna, who said the less-well known venue he had chosen was three times cheaper than a similar-sized space at one of the larger venue operators. 'When you're younger, you're starry eyed, you think 'I'm going to go and have such success and I'm going to meet with all these people, and be just like Phoebe Waller-Bridge'. 'Fleabag' writer and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge is heavily rumoured to have been offered the part of Petunia Dursley - Harry's pompous aunt who takes him in after the death of his parents, only to largely ignore him. Fiona Shaw played the part in the original film series. | Getty Images for Paramount Pictu 'You have all these dreams and part of that fantasy is living in Edinburgh, being in Edinburgh and finding all these wonderful artists and seeing all these wacky shows and having your mindset completely changed. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'And of course, when you get to the reality, it's like 'OK, the train comes at 12.30 and if I can make it, then I will have time to eat dinner at home'. Part of the wonder of it is a little dampened by the fact that I can't afford to stay there.' He added: 'I really wish I could do the full run, a longer run, so that I can build up an audience as I go through word of mouth. But it being it only two weeks. I don't have as much time to do that.' Tom Forster, Summerhall Arts fringe producer and programmer, warned performers were being 'priced out' of doing full runs, which he said were vital to securing recognition - and generating audiences by word of mouth to create more revenue. A lack of options for those on a tighter budget means only performers with money behind them can afford to put on a show, which he said favoured professionals, rather than emerging talent and meant the Fringe was no longer 'an experiment on the side like it used to be'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Each year we are receiving more requests for shorter runs due to financial barriers, but the value of doing a full run at the festival cannot be understated,' he said. 'Typically, reviews and word of mouth gathered in the first half generate revenue in the second half. 'However, emerging, and independent companies are being priced out of taking that risk; forced to place a higher value on specific portions of a full run - the alleged 'industry week' for example - that then devalues the other portion by inferring that there's no industry around the rest of the time, which is nonsense.' Mr Forster added: 'You're not going to take the risk on an unfinished product unless your certain the show is a belter and set to take advantage of the duration. Conversely, you might have to make cuts to the show to facilitate a full run to the point where it's not worth presenting. 'Either way, the only people who can work within that financial uncertainty are professionals, who get paid to strike the balance between finished and unfinished. And those kinds of quality producers, much like everything else, are becoming shorter in supply on the Fringe because often that tricky work goes unpaid.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mr Forster said some performers were no longer even opting for a 'half' run of two weeks, but a 'couple of days here and there' throughout the month. He said: 'That didn't exist when I first started working at the festival in 2008. Not only does splitting a slot up in that way become much more carbon intense - three shows travelling to one slot, instead of one show per slot - but it also puts pressure on the entire economy of the festival; less accommodation, more demand on press/industry and, of course, more competition for audience attention.' Rosie Nicholls and Sullivan Beau Brown of Grubby Little Mitts: Hello, Hi. Picture: Contributed. Katy Koren, co-artistic director of Gilded Balloon, said: "We've noticed an increase in shorter runs since the pandemic, with acts less keen to come to the Fringe for the full month - mostly due to the increased cost of accommodation for artists, which means it just isn't a viable option for many. "The Fringe used to be a development and training ground for acts to immerse themselves in the festival, improve their performance skills and maybe get spotted and be offered that next stepping stone beyond the Fringe. But a training opportunity that is no longer affordable or, even more worryingly, useful to a performer's career means they'll go elsewhere or look at options to reduce the risk, which is happening more and more.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ms Koren added: 'We've noticed the number of performances we put on flatline, but the number of shows we have each year is increasing, reflecting the fact that more shows are coming, but just doing shorter runs in our available performance slots." A growing number of experienced Fringe comedians who have learned the ropes over years of trips to Edinburgh have turned producer to help out up-and-coming acts new to the industry who cannot afford professional support. Ms Nicholls is one, producing a debut hour from new sketch duo The Mayor and His Daughter, visiting Edinburgh for just a couple of days at the beginning and end of their run. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Meanwhile, comedian Ignacio Lopez, who has appeared on shows including Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News for You and QI, is producing debut full-length performances from Welsh comedians Steffan Alun and Josh Elton alongside his own show. He is keen to show the up-and-coming comedians the Fringe is not entirely inaccessible. He said: 'I feel like I've done every kind of show, every kind of venue, every format of ticketing or free collection, pay what you want. I feel like I've tried and tested everything. I convinced them [Steffan and Josh] to take the leap this year. 'I said 'look, it's not as much of an expense to do a show in a venue with proper light, sound and tech as you think'. There's ways of doing it with a quite DIY mentality. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I'll design a flyer, I'll get that cheap somewhere. I'll tie all those things together. So when I say producing, that's a really fancy way of saying 'I'm just introducing two friends to a bunch of other mates who'll do bits and pieces for them'.' However, a shorter run does not necessarily correlate with less success at the Fringe. Last year, comedian Amy Gledhill won the Edinburgh Fringe comedy award after performing a show only for the second half of August, as did Sam Campbell in 2022. Ignacio Lopez | Show poster Pleasance director Anthony Alderson has warned rising costs are forcing performers to scale back shows, putting the Fringe in danger of becoming a 'one monologue festival'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He told The Scotsman: 'Our entire industry is in danger of losing multiple opportunities for people on and off stage. The shorter runs themselves aren't the problem per se. People have always come for shorter runs for a variety of reasons. 'The issue is that people are now being forced to ditch their production values because of the cost of being in the city so shows are smaller, less technically ambitious and cannot employ as many people as needed to always create a polished product.' He added: 'The Edinburgh Fringe is one of the cornerstones of our theatre industry. Therefore, if the cost of being in the city becomes so high that we start losing jobs in theatre, then our industry as a whole, and our city, is going to lose out.
