25/06/13: the blue triangle on the flag of the Czech Republic was added to distinguish it from that of Poland

Question 6

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer

The ones that got away
1) In what year was the film Lost in Space released?
2) In Australian rules football there are two ways of scoring points. How many points are each of these two ways of scoring worth? (2 point question, 1 point for each)
3) Who said "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted"?
4) Meadow, Sheep's Fescue, and Quaking are all types of what plant?
5) In what year did the Czech Republic come into existence?
6) Identify the company logo (pictured).
7) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "You designed your home yourself?".
8) On which Canary Island island is Santa Cruz?

The answers

1) 1998
2) 6 points (for a goal) and 1 point (for a behind)
3) Albert Einstein
4) Grass
5) 1993 (January 1st, to be precise)
6) Yamaha
7) Custom House
8) Tenerife

Update: Poll results! 7 votes with 1 scoring 5/9, 2 scoring 4/9, 1 scoring 2/9, and 3 scoring 1/9.

The average voter scored 2.5 out of 9.

The excuses
1) We went with 1999 - another lesson in "it's always longer ago than you think".
2) Thinking it may have similarities with rugby union, we went with 5 and 2. It turns out we'd have had better luck if we'd thought of American football instead, where a touchdown is worth 6 points, and a kicked 'conversion' 1.
3) A very recognizable quote but not one we could quite place - we dabbled with Gandhi before plumping for Nelson Mandela.
4) A very gettable miss, we were too focused on plant meaning flower and went for the 'safety' play of rose.
5) Knowing that the USSR collapsed in 1991, we thought it was a pretty good shout. Unfortunately the USSR didn't go quite so far west.
6) The doctor seemed reasonably confident that this was Suzuki, so presumably had motorcycles in mind. We briefly discussed that the logo was made up of tuning forks, but didn't take this idea as far as we should have done.
7) Not a bad little clue - we got as far as "something house" but couldn't manage the final step.
8) Bit of a crapshoot if you don't know the answer to this one, and sadly we zigged with Lanzarote. Had I known at the time that Tenerife is the largest of the Canaries (which is a pretty standard bit of trivia) we might have zagged instead.

The alternative questions

^{Question 1}

1) Which oft-parodied warning, issued by Robot B-9 (pictured) in the CBS series Lost in Space, was actually only ever spoken once on the show?
2) What shape is an Australian rules football field?
3) In Einstein's famous E = mc² equation, what constant does the c stand for?
4) What is the principal psychoactive constituent of marijuana? (Its common three letter abbreviation is enough for the point.)
5) Name the five post-Soviet states whose name ends in -stan. Clue: Afghanistan and Pakistan aren't on the list, and are the only two other such countries.
6) Name one of the two products Yamaha originally manufactured when it was established in 1887?
7) In the name of the Government department, what do the letters HMRC stand for?
8) What animal is the Canary Islands' name derived from?

The answers

1) Danger, Will Robinson! (Bonus fact: the show was an adaptation of the Johann Wyss novel Swiss Family Robinson)
2) Oval (often modified cricket grounds)
3) The speed of light (about 300 million metres per second)
4) Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC
5) Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
6) Pianos and reed organs
7) Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs
8) Dog (from the Latin Canariae Insulae, meaning "Island of the Dogs") - it has a ballin' flag

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18/06/13: George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panagiòtou

Question 4                                  Question 7

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer

The ones that got away
1) Brainteaser: What goes around the world but stays in the corner?
2) Identify the film from its tagline: "Guess who's coming to save the world again?"
3) What George Michael song features the lyrics "I'm never gonna dance again / Guilty feet have got no rhythm"?
4) Identify the company from its logo (pictured).
5) In which country is the Champions Trophy currently (as of 18/06/13) taking place?
6) Which post-war Prime Minster had the first names Robert Anthony?
7) Identify the celebrity from their caricature (pictured).
8) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "Some grassy fields in a line are doomed to die by fingers on my hand".

The answers

1) A stamp
2) Ghostbusters II
3) Careless Whisper
4) John Deere
5) England and Wales
6) Eden
7) Richard Attenborough
8) Heathrow Terminal 4 (or 5)

Update: Poll results! 10 votes with 2 scoring 3/10, 3 scoring 2/10, 3 scoring 1/10, and 2 joining us on zero.

The average reader scored 1.5 out of 10.

The excuses
1) Our own proposals included a compass rose (usually found on the corner of maps) and, for similarly iffy reasons, page numbers in an atlas. Eventually we decided these were a bit rubbish and went with yo-yo, hoping there was some sort of trick we'd never heard of called 'staying in the corner'.
2) An inspired last minute change of heart saw us cross out the correct answer in favour of Men in Black 2 :(
3) Singing along I got as far as "do-do-do-do-do-do-doo-do-do I'm nobody's fool" which seemed a good, albeit wrong, guess. Turns out I was surprisingly close, with the next two lines unhelpfully being "Though it's easy to pretend / I know you're not a fool."
4) We spent a long time debating whether this was Jeep or Land Rover. Of course, it was neither (and none of us had ever heard of the correct answer - apparently they make agricultural machinery).
5) Initially sidetracked by thinking this might be an alternative name for the Confederations Cup we eventually decided it was something to do with cricket and went with Australia.
6) A bad miss, with us initially sticking down the correct answer only to over-think it and put Blair, who is of course Anthony Charles Lynton. (On retrospect it seems that 'post war' was supposed to be a clue to 'near war'.)
7) Our proposals ranged from Rowan Williams to Terry Pratchett and, somehow, Desmond Tutu.
8) As utterly torturous a clue as this was, we had to admit it was very gettable. Our own stab of Harrow and Wealdstone (because you might kill someone by, er, wielding a stone, or something?) was at least slightly more of a fit than usual.

The alternative questions

Question 2

1) What was the world's first adhesive (public) postage stamp, first issued in 1840?
2) Give the first (or, if you're feeling cocky, full) names of the three original Ghostbusters played by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis (pictured).
3) Which song denied Wham!'s Last Christmas the 1984 UK Christmas number 1 spot?
4) What, especially in the United States and Canada, is a John Doe?
5) Cricket! South Africa qualified for the semi-finals at the expense of their West Indian opponents after a last-ball wicket and a lot of rain gave them an unlikely draw in their final Champions Trophy group match. What method, named after the two statisticians who devised it, was used to calculate this result? (With apologies for such a needlessly long question, but it's a pretty fun result.)
6) Since Arthur Balfour's election in 1902 there have been 21 different Prime Ministers. Of these, just two had surnames in the second half of the alphabet (that is, beginning with N-Z) - who?
7) In which 1993 film did Richard Attenborough play the role of "eccentric developer" John Hammond?
8) London Heathrow is, by passenger traffic, the world's third busiest airport. Name one of the two cities home to the two airports that beat it.

The answers

1) The Penny Black
2) Peter (Venkman), Ray (Stantz), and Egon (Spengler).
3) Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid
4) A placeholder name, much like Joe Bloggs in the UK. (I wouldn't ask a 'definition' question like this in an actual quiz - too much scope for vague almost-answers.)
5) The Duckworth-Lewis method
6) Margaret Thatcher and Harold Wilson
7) Jurassic Park
8) Beijing (Capital International, 2nd) and Atlanta (Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, 1st)

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1106/13: The 20 million rupees won in Slumdog Millionaire converted to about £200,000 at the time

Question 1                                   Question 4

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
4) The actuary
5) The gamedev

The ones that got away
1) Who is this chap (pictured)? He starred in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire.
2) In what year was Planet Terror released?
3) Which country's London embassy was besieged for six days in 1980?
4) What is this European country (pictured)?
5) Identify the film from this quote: "There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch."
6) Identify the film from this quote: "For just one night let's not be co-workers. Let's be co-people."
7) Which African city's name means 'new flower'?

The answers

1) Dev Patel
2) 2007
3) Iran
4) Moldova
5) Austin Powers in Goldmember
6) Anchorman
7) Addis Ababa

I'm still not bored of asking how people have done on this week's questions. Let the world know with the poll on the right.

Update: Poll results! 7 votes with 4 scoring 3/7, 2 scoring 1/7, and 1 joining us on zero.

The average reader scored 2 out of 7.

The excuses
1) Two fun facts: according to our answer sheet we went with Amir Khan and the name Patel means 'landowner'.
2) One day there will be something interesting to say here. Maybe.
3) Half the team immediately thought Iran while one member (whose identity shall remain secret for his own sake) was reasonably confident about Libya. Unfortunately he was thinking about the shooting of Yvonne Fletcher.
4) Pretty brutal if you ask me, although gettable, especially when one member of your team once got a University Challenge starter about a Moldovan breakaway territory...
5) - 6) A couple more movie quotes for the album, although the record should note that the programmer did at least suggest the Austin Powers answer.
7) This rang a bell but we couldn't bring it to mind. We went with the not-too-implausible Nairobi but that roughly translates to 'cold water'.

The ones I would have asked
1) The final question in the film Slumdog Millionaire concerns which book by Alexander Dumas?
2) Where did Quentin Tarantino work prior to becoming a film director, citing his experiences of the job as inspiration for his directorial career?
3) As the name of a British army regiment, what do the letters SAS stand for?
4) With the exception of its coat of arms, Moldova's flag is almost identical to that of which of its neighbours?
5) In Austin Powers in Goldmember which singer - then a member of Destiny's Child - played FBI agent Foxxy Cleopatra?
6) The Californian city in which Anchorman is set is an anagram of which eight-letter word meaning to identify a problem?
7) At 2,355m, Addis Ababa is the fifth highest capital city in the world. Name one of the four capitals which are higher.

The answers

1) The Three Musketeers
2) A video rental store (specifically Video Archives)
3) Special Air Service
4) Romania
5) Beyoncé Knowles
6) Diagnose (San Diego)
7) In (quite literally) ascending order: Bogotá (Colombia), Thimphu (Bhutan), Quito (Ecuador), La Paz (Bolivia).

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04/06/13: Now with 100% more quiz!

Now with bonus content!
Don't miss the extra question set at the bottom of this post!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
4) The saxophonist

The ones that got away

Question 1!

1) Identify the film (pictured).
2) What year was this film released?
3) Which of these (British) army ranks is the highest: captain, colonel or major?
4) Identify the film from this quote: "Smiling is my favourite. You make me smile. That makes you my favourite."
5) Identify the film from this quote: "And all the while I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one even looks up."
6) Which English county is bordered by the rivers Stour to the south and Waveney to the north?

The answers

1) The Bone Collector
2) 1999
3) Colonel
4) Elf
5) Titanic
6) Suffolk

Don't forget! You can show off your prowess, or share in our failure, via the poll on the right. Results of the last poll are on the relevant post now.

Update: Poll closed, so it's time for results! 6 votes with 1 scoring 3/6, 3 scoring 2/6, and 2 joining us on zero.

The average reader scored 1.5 out of 6.

The excuses
1) The perils of doing a quiz too many times: we were pretty sure this film had come up before on the same question, so ruled it out. Turns out our memory is slightly better than the quizmaster's.
2) Yawn.
3) A lesson in always double checking if you can. The saxophonist assured us the answer was major, having not heard that colonel was an option. As the doctor and I have put far too many hours into Halo 3's multiplayer, we would have been able to work out the answer to this one, but didn't bother.
4)-5) Not much to say (we went for Forrest Gump for the first one, which at least seemed plausible). Amusingly the team we were marking - who eventually came second last - got both of these (along with the Bone Collector questions) correct.
6) A touch unfortunate on this one, as the saxophonist recalled the Stour being somewhere around Dorset of Wiltshire. Turned out he was bang on, but alas the question was referring to a different Stour.

The ones I would have asked

In another new venture for The ones that got away, and to try and break up the monotony of endless movie questions, I thought I'd have a go at taking the ones we got wrong and constructing vaguely related but moderately more interesting questions to ask. I'll try to stick to one of three types: fun facts I discovered when researching the answers above, something you can think about and hopefully work out, or 'classic trivia' that will regularly come up at your local quiz. At the very least they'll hopefully be slightly more interesting than the dregs of our own quizzing experiences.

Question 6!

1) What word, beginning with O, describes a place where one might keep a bone collection?
2) Which notable US television drama saw its first episode broadcast on January 10, 1999? It would go on to run for six seasons over the next eight years, winning 21 Emmys and five Golden Globes.
3) What is the full name (including rank) of the Catch-22 character played by Bob Newhart in the novel's 1970 film adaptation? (Remember, this relates to Question 3 above.)
4) In the Harry Potter novels, what do the letters S.P.E.W. stand for in the name of the activism group established by Hermione Grainger?
5) Which shipping company owned the Titanic?
6) Suffolk only boasts one professional football team, whose (slightly modified) badge is pictured. Can you name them?

The answers

1) Ossuary
2) The Sopranos
3) (Major) Major Major Major
4) Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare
5) White Star Line
6) Ipswich Town

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