The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
The ones that got away
1) Which Scottish city is served by Turnhouse Airport?
2) Which Italian cathedral features around 3,200 statues?
3) Archie Moore is a famous name in which sport?
4) Which novel ends with "After all, tomorrow is another day?"
5) Who wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls?
6) Who wrote The Sound and the Fury
7) Who wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The answers
The excuses
1) "No idea, but there are only six..." we thought, before discounting Glasgow and Edinburgh on the grounds of "we'd've heard of it if it was one of them".
2) Neither of us could think of any cathedrals in Italy (but we did have a lengthy argument about Vatican City's status as a country), but the Wikipedia page for the answer is well worth a read.
3) Good rule of thumb for quizzes (for me, at any rate): if it's a question about a sportsman you've never heard of, it's almost always boxing. Despite one of us having read 900 chapters of a manga about the sport.
4) I actually said the correct answer during our discussion of this question, but I think both of us had rather too much beer to remember it wasn't only a movie... (Bonus question: who wrote it?)
5-7) These were part of a 10-question round on 'name the novelist', which started well but went downhill towards the end. We don't feel too ashamed to have missed the last one, but the previous two were a touch embarrassing.
Wednesday 27 February 2013
Saturday 23 February 2013
23/01/13: Picasso's politics and Pedigree
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
The ones that got away
1) Which political party did Picasso join in 1944?
2) Who was the leader of the Labour party immediately before Tony Blair?
3) Who designed the Mastermind chair?
4) Which brewery makes the beer Pedigree?
5) The Belgian beer kriek is flavoured with what?
6) Which architect designed the new Wembley Stadium?
7) Mike Hawthorn was the first English winner of what?
8) Name the four UK number ones from the 1980s with the word 'Town' in the title.
9) Big Spender features in which musical?
10) In which country is the northernmost point of South America?
The answers
The excuses
1) I think we were victims of the classic 'overthink' on this one: each of us having a vague memory of something complicated we didn't even manage a guess, but merely sticking down 'communist' would have got us the point.
2) 'Controversy' here. I'd looked at the list of Labour leaders shortly before the quiz, and so remembered that Margarett Beckett had served briefly between Smith and Blair. We felt a little hard done by when, after the fact, the quizmaster decided that "acting leaders don't count"(!).
3) Classic trivia, but no idea. 'Design' has never really been in our wheelhouse.
4) We were quite happy with our guess of Fuller's, but should probably have remembered their most famous product is London Pride.
5) Another classic trivia question, which we should really have known off the bat. Instead, we went for the 'educated' guess of chocolate (geddit?). I have a theory that with any question like this in a quiz you have a pretty good chance if you go with cherries regardless.
6) This one had been on University Challenge a couple of days previously, and we still didn't get it. Our perennial guess of Stirling for an architecture question still failing to pay off.
7) Yet another bad miss. We went with BBC Sports Personality of the Year (which on retrospect was quite a bad guess given that an English winner of that is hardly remarkable).
8) We actually got three of the four (you can probably guess which three), which was all that was really expected of us. Anyone who got all four would have been awarded a ridiculous number of bonus points, which of course no-one did.
9) Musicals are never good news for us, and this one proved no exception.
10) A tossup between Colombia and Venezuela where we went the wrong way. It's actually quite easy if you're familiar with the layout of South America, though.
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
The ones that got away
1) Which political party did Picasso join in 1944?
2) Who was the leader of the Labour party immediately before Tony Blair?
3) Who designed the Mastermind chair?
4) Which brewery makes the beer Pedigree?
5) The Belgian beer kriek is flavoured with what?
6) Which architect designed the new Wembley Stadium?
7) Mike Hawthorn was the first English winner of what?
8) Name the four UK number ones from the 1980s with the word 'Town' in the title.
9) Big Spender features in which musical?
10) In which country is the northernmost point of South America?
The answers
The excuses
1) I think we were victims of the classic 'overthink' on this one: each of us having a vague memory of something complicated we didn't even manage a guess, but merely sticking down 'communist' would have got us the point.
2) 'Controversy' here. I'd looked at the list of Labour leaders shortly before the quiz, and so remembered that Margarett Beckett had served briefly between Smith and Blair. We felt a little hard done by when, after the fact, the quizmaster decided that "acting leaders don't count"(!).
3) Classic trivia, but no idea. 'Design' has never really been in our wheelhouse.
4) We were quite happy with our guess of Fuller's, but should probably have remembered their most famous product is London Pride.
5) Another classic trivia question, which we should really have known off the bat. Instead, we went for the 'educated' guess of chocolate (geddit?). I have a theory that with any question like this in a quiz you have a pretty good chance if you go with cherries regardless.
6) This one had been on University Challenge a couple of days previously, and we still didn't get it. Our perennial guess of Stirling for an architecture question still failing to pay off.
7) Yet another bad miss. We went with BBC Sports Personality of the Year (which on retrospect was quite a bad guess given that an English winner of that is hardly remarkable).
8) We actually got three of the four (you can probably guess which three), which was all that was really expected of us. Anyone who got all four would have been awarded a ridiculous number of bonus points, which of course no-one did.
9) Musicals are never good news for us, and this one proved no exception.
10) A tossup between Colombia and Venezuela where we went the wrong way. It's actually quite easy if you're familiar with the layout of South America, though.
Tuesday 12 February 2013
12/02/12: Cryptically challenged
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
4) The saxophonist
5) The TV star
The ones that got away
1) Identify the film from this quote: "I know who I am. I'm the dude that's playing the dude disguised as another dude."
2) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "Speaking Greek might be helpful here."
3) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "The empire of the wild dog."
4) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "This witch stumbles over her rocky words."
The answers
The excuses
1) We got a touch obsessed with the idea that this was one of those 'play-within-a-play' films. Our answer sheet informs me we eventually went for Face/Off. Not entirely sure how that happened...
2-4) Rather undone by the cryptic stations this week, although we thought Totteridge and Whetstone was at least plausible for the last one. (Our guesses for the first two, of Kensington Olympia and Barking were, admittedly, rather more optimistic.)
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
4) The saxophonist
5) The TV star
The ones that got away
1) Identify the film from this quote: "I know who I am. I'm the dude that's playing the dude disguised as another dude."
2) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "Speaking Greek might be helpful here."
3) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "The empire of the wild dog."
4) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "This witch stumbles over her rocky words."
The answers
The excuses
1) We got a touch obsessed with the idea that this was one of those 'play-within-a-play' films. Our answer sheet informs me we eventually went for Face/Off. Not entirely sure how that happened...
2-4) Rather undone by the cryptic stations this week, although we thought Totteridge and Whetstone was at least plausible for the last one. (Our guesses for the first two, of Kensington Olympia and Barking were, admittedly, rather more optimistic.)
Friday 8 February 2013
11/18/12: Stations, singing, and the Stig
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The programmer
The ones that got away
1) Which musical most recently won an Oscar in one of the acting categories?
2) ...and who won it?
3) What is the most northerly station on the London Underground network?
4) Which country produces the most wine?
5) Who was revealed as Top Gear's Stig in 2010?
6) Which gangster had the nickname Scarface?
7) What is the name of Mumford and Sons first studio album?
8) What word is both an item of clothing worn on the legs and a young oyster?
9) Which country was formally known as British Honduras?
The answers
The excuses
1) A bit of overthinking here. Given the phrasing, we thought maybe it would be one from surprisingly long ago, so went for The Sound of Music. Alas, this was wrong on two counts as our other guess...
2) ...Julie Andrews, though nominated, did not win, losing out to Julie Christie in Darling. (The Sound of Music did at least win Best Picture.)
3) We went with Watford Junction, thinking it a reasonable guess, but it's not even close. Chesham is also the westernmost Tube station, while Morden and Upminster complete the compass in the south and east, respectively.
4) We thought it was a tossup between France (2nd) and Spain (3rd). It's actually quite close between the top two, though.
5) Knew the name, but got nowhere near remembering it. Went with Michael Schumacher, who at least played the part briefly.
6) A pretty shocking miss, although we added insult to injury by not only trying to remember the name of the character from the film (Tony Montana), but failing even that and coming up with some Scarface/Rocky hybrid in Tony Marciano.
7) Despite listening to radio 1 for years solely to get better at this sort of question, I could only drag up the name of one of their singles (which, admittedly, I was still fairly proud of).
8) Quite a neat question, I thought, which saw us guess 'greave' and 'garter' before settling on 'jean'. None of which, of course, were even close.
9) Our Central American geography isn't brilliant, and we went through a few options (none of them the correct answer) before settling on Trinidad and Tobago.
1) The statistician
2) The programmer
The ones that got away
1) Which musical most recently won an Oscar in one of the acting categories?
2) ...and who won it?
3) What is the most northerly station on the London Underground network?
4) Which country produces the most wine?
5) Who was revealed as Top Gear's Stig in 2010?
6) Which gangster had the nickname Scarface?
7) What is the name of Mumford and Sons first studio album?
8) What word is both an item of clothing worn on the legs and a young oyster?
9) Which country was formally known as British Honduras?
The answers
The excuses
1) A bit of overthinking here. Given the phrasing, we thought maybe it would be one from surprisingly long ago, so went for The Sound of Music. Alas, this was wrong on two counts as our other guess...
2) ...Julie Andrews, though nominated, did not win, losing out to Julie Christie in Darling. (The Sound of Music did at least win Best Picture.)
3) We went with Watford Junction, thinking it a reasonable guess, but it's not even close. Chesham is also the westernmost Tube station, while Morden and Upminster complete the compass in the south and east, respectively.
4) We thought it was a tossup between France (2nd) and Spain (3rd). It's actually quite close between the top two, though.
5) Knew the name, but got nowhere near remembering it. Went with Michael Schumacher, who at least played the part briefly.
6) A pretty shocking miss, although we added insult to injury by not only trying to remember the name of the character from the film (Tony Montana), but failing even that and coming up with some Scarface/Rocky hybrid in Tony Marciano.
7) Despite listening to radio 1 for years solely to get better at this sort of question, I could only drag up the name of one of their singles (which, admittedly, I was still fairly proud of).
8) Quite a neat question, I thought, which saw us guess 'greave' and 'garter' before settling on 'jean'. None of which, of course, were even close.
9) Our Central American geography isn't brilliant, and we went through a few options (none of them the correct answer) before settling on Trinidad and Tobago.
09/01/13: Miserable miniskirts and metacarpals
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) Another doctor
The ones that got away
1) Name a year in which Les Misérables is set
2) Which fashion designer is most associated with hot pants and the miniskirt?
3) In which part of the body would you find the metacarpal?
4) Which actor (who has a flowery name) played Pike in Dad's Army?
5) In which river can you find the pink dolphin?
6) In Jaws, who said "we're gonna to need a bigger boat"?
7) Who said "I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know"?
8) In which Swedish port is Wallander set?
9) According to the novel, which city has 'A room with a view'?
10) In which Irish county is the Giant's Causeway?
11) Which English town famously has a crooked spire?
12) Cardiff stands on which river?
The answers
The excuses
1) We all thought it included the storming of the Bastille, so went with 1789. (Don't forget, you can remember the date of that (July 14th) because it is the birthday of Nicholas Cage's daughter in Con-Air.)
2) I don't have a record of our guess for this, but suffice to say it wasn't a very good one.
3) Despite having two (medical) doctors on the team, we got this one wrong, going for wrist. It seems you probably shouldn't bother doing a medical degree solely to improve at pub quizzes.
4) Even with the flower clue our lack of Dad's Army knowledge showed here. We had a long struggle trying to think of a man's name that sounded like a flower: "Oak, that's a manly name, right?" "...sure, why not."
5) We weren't the only team to go Yangtze for this one, presumably thinking of the extinct Baiji. As it turns out, Wikipedia reckons there are two 'pink dolphins', the other being found in Southeast Asia.
6) Our answer of "the shark" did not even raise a smile from the quizmaster, which was disappointing. Some later research suggests it's actually "you", not "we" who needs the boat.
7) We thought this was maybe about the Beatles, and so went with Ravi Shankar. One of our more ridiculous punts, I think.
8) I only knew two places in Sweden: Stockholm (because it's the capital) and Malmö (because of Eurovision). Neither helped us out here.
9) A poor miss on this one. We went Venice (to be fair, there are some quite nice views to be had there).
10) I'm pretty certain I have never got a quiz question about Irish counties correct.
11) UK geography hurts us again - this fact didn't even ring a bell (ho-ho).
12) Excruciating. Although it seems there is some uncertainty of whether Taffy stems from the river, or from the name Dafydd.
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) Another doctor
The ones that got away
1) Name a year in which Les Misérables is set
2) Which fashion designer is most associated with hot pants and the miniskirt?
3) In which part of the body would you find the metacarpal?
4) Which actor (who has a flowery name) played Pike in Dad's Army?
5) In which river can you find the pink dolphin?
6) In Jaws, who said "we're gonna to need a bigger boat"?
7) Who said "I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know"?
8) In which Swedish port is Wallander set?
9) According to the novel, which city has 'A room with a view'?
10) In which Irish county is the Giant's Causeway?
11) Which English town famously has a crooked spire?
12) Cardiff stands on which river?
The answers
The excuses
1) We all thought it included the storming of the Bastille, so went with 1789. (Don't forget, you can remember the date of that (July 14th) because it is the birthday of Nicholas Cage's daughter in Con-Air.)
2) I don't have a record of our guess for this, but suffice to say it wasn't a very good one.
3) Despite having two (medical) doctors on the team, we got this one wrong, going for wrist. It seems you probably shouldn't bother doing a medical degree solely to improve at pub quizzes.
4) Even with the flower clue our lack of Dad's Army knowledge showed here. We had a long struggle trying to think of a man's name that sounded like a flower: "Oak, that's a manly name, right?" "...sure, why not."
5) We weren't the only team to go Yangtze for this one, presumably thinking of the extinct Baiji. As it turns out, Wikipedia reckons there are two 'pink dolphins', the other being found in Southeast Asia.
6) Our answer of "the shark" did not even raise a smile from the quizmaster, which was disappointing. Some later research suggests it's actually "you", not "we" who needs the boat.
7) We thought this was maybe about the Beatles, and so went with Ravi Shankar. One of our more ridiculous punts, I think.
8) I only knew two places in Sweden: Stockholm (because it's the capital) and Malmö (because of Eurovision). Neither helped us out here.
9) A poor miss on this one. We went Venice (to be fair, there are some quite nice views to be had there).
10) I'm pretty certain I have never got a quiz question about Irish counties correct.
11) UK geography hurts us again - this fact didn't even ring a bell (ho-ho).
12) Excruciating. Although it seems there is some uncertainty of whether Taffy stems from the river, or from the name Dafydd.
22/01/13: Charlie, Freddy, Gorge and Borg
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
The ones that got away
1) Where did Prince Charles and Princess Diana get married?
2) What was Kevin Keegan's birth name?
3) Identify the film from this quote: "Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron."
4) What county is Cheddar Gorge in?
5) In what year did Björn Borg win his first Wimbledon title? (You're allowed 1 year either way.)
The answers
The excuses
1) A classic tossup between St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey.
2) With no idea, we figured our only hope was a trick question and went for Kevin.
3) I defer to my teammates for almost every film quote question, and we apparently came up with Freddy Got Fingered here. If memory serves we weren't the only ones.
4) UK geography is another big weakness for us, and it showed. We went for Gloucester (despite my concerns that presumably this is where another famous cheese comes from). Our only consolation was that it at least shares a border with the correct answer.
5) A long way off on this, we went with 1982. (All I could offer was that Boris Becker first won in 1985, because a friend at school was apparently almost named after him before his parents mercifully saw sense.)
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
The ones that got away
1) Where did Prince Charles and Princess Diana get married?
2) What was Kevin Keegan's birth name?
3) Identify the film from this quote: "Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron."
4) What county is Cheddar Gorge in?
5) In what year did Björn Borg win his first Wimbledon title? (You're allowed 1 year either way.)
The answers
The excuses
1) A classic tossup between St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey.
2) With no idea, we figured our only hope was a trick question and went for Kevin.
3) I defer to my teammates for almost every film quote question, and we apparently came up with Freddy Got Fingered here. If memory serves we weren't the only ones.
4) UK geography is another big weakness for us, and it showed. We went for Gloucester (despite my concerns that presumably this is where another famous cheese comes from). Our only consolation was that it at least shares a border with the correct answer.
5) A long way off on this, we went with 1982. (All I could offer was that Boris Becker first won in 1985, because a friend at school was apparently almost named after him before his parents mercifully saw sense.)
21/01/13: Bender, beavers and animal bits
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
The ones that got away
1) In Futurama, what is Bender's full name?
2) What fruit comes from a blackthorn?
3) What nationality was Christopher Columbus?
4) Which fictional character drives the DRAG-U-LA?
5) What is the name for a beaver's home?
6) Who is credited with introducing the red rose as Labour's logo?
7) What was the Roman name for Scotland?
8) What is the term for animal pancreas when served as food?
The answers
The excuses
1) We had no idea for this one, I think we guessed something 'hilarious' like "Bender Bender McBenderson".
2) Again, not much of a clue, but we guessed loganberry, which at least seemed plausible.
3) The first embarrassing miss of the night. We thought it was a tossup between Portugese and Spanish, and went with the latter because of the famous Barcelona monument.
4) We assumed this was a car from Wacky Races, and tried to remember the team that drove some sort of spooky car. We eventually settled on 'The Tombstone Gang', which we later discovered was in fact a posse from the video game Red Dead Redemption. Oops.
5) Another embarrassing miss, which I'm putting down to the cider. Predictably, we put dam, but really should have done better.
6) Without much of an idea we went with PR-specialist Tony Blair.
7) Again, bit embarrassing. We went with the Gaelic name - Alba - which we'd picked up from watching some of the bizarre Gaelic programmes on the BBC's iPlayer.
8) It's tempting to blame this one on being vegetarian, but we jumped the wrong way on sweetbread vs. sweetmeat.
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
The ones that got away
1) In Futurama, what is Bender's full name?
2) What fruit comes from a blackthorn?
3) What nationality was Christopher Columbus?
4) Which fictional character drives the DRAG-U-LA?
5) What is the name for a beaver's home?
6) Who is credited with introducing the red rose as Labour's logo?
7) What was the Roman name for Scotland?
8) What is the term for animal pancreas when served as food?
The answers
The excuses
1) We had no idea for this one, I think we guessed something 'hilarious' like "Bender Bender McBenderson".
2) Again, not much of a clue, but we guessed loganberry, which at least seemed plausible.
3) The first embarrassing miss of the night. We thought it was a tossup between Portugese and Spanish, and went with the latter because of the famous Barcelona monument.
4) We assumed this was a car from Wacky Races, and tried to remember the team that drove some sort of spooky car. We eventually settled on 'The Tombstone Gang', which we later discovered was in fact a posse from the video game Red Dead Redemption. Oops.
5) Another embarrassing miss, which I'm putting down to the cider. Predictably, we put dam, but really should have done better.
6) Without much of an idea we went with PR-specialist Tony Blair.
7) Again, bit embarrassing. We went with the Gaelic name - Alba - which we'd picked up from watching some of the bizarre Gaelic programmes on the BBC's iPlayer.
8) It's tempting to blame this one on being vegetarian, but we jumped the wrong way on sweetbread vs. sweetmeat.
Round 1, Question 1
The summary: Hello there, and welcome to The Ones that Got Away - a repository for pub quiz questions that bettered me and my motley band of quizzers. (With the occasional bit of more general quiz geekery thrown in for good measure.)
The principle: We do a lot of pub quizzes, and while we're not too shabby, we're by no means 100%-ers either. A while ago I started noting down all the questions we got wrong, partly to keep track of our weaknesses, and partly to see if we can still remember Kevin Keegan's real name in 10 years' time. Knowing quite a few quizzers, I realized I may as well stick these questions up on the interwebs, so that all can share in our spectacularly consistent inability to identify film quotes (and other assorted animals). However, this is going to be a 'warts-and-all' affair, so expect some embarrassing misses.
The structure: The main purpose of this blog is to keep a record of quiz questions, so there won't be too much commentary from me to clutter things up. That said, I do think it's interesting to share our (often dreadful) thought processes, so along with the questions and the answers, each post will feature a section of 'excuses' where I'll briefly discuss what we guessed, and why.
The alternative questions: Since starting this blog I've begun to add my own 'alternative' questions to the ones that got away. These aim to be somewhat related in topic, but are either what I consider quizzing chestnuts (those trivia that come up time and time again) or just things I think are interesting. While they won't always be particularly polished, they'll hopefully teach most readers something new and/or fun (indeed, they're often things I only discovered in researching that week's ones that got away).
The principle: We do a lot of pub quizzes, and while we're not too shabby, we're by no means 100%-ers either. A while ago I started noting down all the questions we got wrong, partly to keep track of our weaknesses, and partly to see if we can still remember Kevin Keegan's real name in 10 years' time. Knowing quite a few quizzers, I realized I may as well stick these questions up on the interwebs, so that all can share in our spectacularly consistent inability to identify film quotes (and other assorted animals). However, this is going to be a 'warts-and-all' affair, so expect some embarrassing misses.
The structure: The main purpose of this blog is to keep a record of quiz questions, so there won't be too much commentary from me to clutter things up. That said, I do think it's interesting to share our (often dreadful) thought processes, so along with the questions and the answers, each post will feature a section of 'excuses' where I'll briefly discuss what we guessed, and why.
The alternative questions: Since starting this blog I've begun to add my own 'alternative' questions to the ones that got away. These aim to be somewhat related in topic, but are either what I consider quizzing chestnuts (those trivia that come up time and time again) or just things I think are interesting. While they won't always be particularly polished, they'll hopefully teach most readers something new and/or fun (indeed, they're often things I only discovered in researching that week's ones that got away).
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