Each week, quiz obsessives and Only Connect champions
Jamie Karran (@NoDrNo) and Michael Wallace (@statacake) take on the pub quizzes of the world.
Find out every Friday if you could have helped with the questions they got wrong.
Sunday 22 September 2013
Black Sabbath never had a UK number one single
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
The ones that got away
1) Which Olympic field event was redesigned in 1986 following safety concerns?
2) In early editions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, what colour were the Oompa Loompas?
3) Which of these do not feature in the 1968 film Yellow Submarine? a) Blue Meanies b) Screaming Yellow Zonkers c) Butterly Stompers d) Snapping-Turtle Turks
4) Name any two of the original members of Black Sabbath.
5) The trade route known as the Silk Road ran from China to which European country?
6) Which dinosaur was described by its discoverer in 1903 as "the largest known dinosaur"?
7) What is SoHo short for? (Hint: this question refers to the area of New York, but if you know the origin for the similarly named part of London, you'll still get the point.)
The answers
1) The javelin
2) Black (they were African pygmies)
3) Screaming Yellow Zonkers
4) Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward
5) Italy
6) Brachiosaurus
7) South of Houston (Street) - the London area is thought to be named after a hunting cry
Poll results! A frankly shocking 3 votes with 1 scoring 3/7 and 2 scoring 1/7.
The average voter scored 1.5 out of 7.
The excuses
1) Javelin seemed too obvious, so we went with hammer (which has always struck me as a spectacularly dangerous bit of kit to be hurling around). Interestingly it seems the javelin redesign wasn't just down to safety concerns: a high frequency of 'flat landings' had also led to disquiet thanks to seemingly inconsistent measurement/disqualification criteria.
2) We both knew they were orange in the 1971 film, whereas in the 2005 version they were all played by Deep Roy (a Kenyan-born actor of Indian descent). A debate on whether a quizmaster would ask a question that required us to specify a 'colour' for a race of people followed, and so we eventually settled on orange, hoping that the emphasis on the word 'novel' in the question was to distinguish it from the more recent movie adaptation. Well at least we weren't accidentally racist.
3) We all know about Blue Meanies, of course, and we thought Snapping-Turtle Turks and Screaming Yellow Zonkers were a bit to weird to be made up. It turns out that the latter, while not being in Yellow Submarine, were not made up either: it's a brand of popcorn in the United States. Obviously.
4) Confession time: this isn't quite what was asked. The quizmaster actually wanted us to name the entire original lineup, but given that this seems about as hard as "name anyone in Black Sabbath who isn't Ozzy Osbourne" I thought this alternative phrasing was moderately more fair.
5) A touch embarrassing, we went with Turkey (which at least seems to be where the road part of the route just about ends up).
6) I've had to tweak the wording again to hopefully ease some frustration; this was asked as "what is the world's largest dinosaur?" which, as any moderate dinosaur-enthusiast will know, is not particularly well-defined. It's not even clear whether this means heaviest, tallest, or even longest, but the Internet reckons the Argentinousaurus is probably a pretty good bet.
7) Naively, we assumed the question was about London, and went with South Holburn, which I was pretty sure was wrong but was nevertheless quite pleased with. Turns out that it's more west than south (but wrong in any case), but at least our answer was technically consistent, which is almost as good as being correct. Maybe.
The alternative questions
1) Which is the only Olympic sport in which the women's world record is 'better' (faster, further, etc.) than the men's?
2) Which 1972 novel was Dahl's sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
3) Which 1970 Beatles documentary (sharing its name with one of their songs as well as a jukebox musical currently running in London) features their rooftop concert, their last public performance?
4) Ozzy Osbourne had three children with second wife Sharon. They are Kelly, Jack, and who?
5) Colloquially, a silk is concerned with which profession?
6) What does the word 'dinosaur' mean?
7) Which singer, who died in 2000 aged 41, has a memorial bench in Soho Square, London, inscribed with lyrics from her song about the park?
I'm extremely late to these questions but, in my defense, I've also just found the blog. It's a cracking read but I had one correction - Ozzy's actually got five kids. He was married once before Sharon and has a son (Louis) and a daughter (Jessica) with his first wife.
Silks are not members of the Queen's Counsel, but are Queen's Counsels, that is, they (nominally) counsel the Queen
ReplyDeleteAh, good observation, thanks (and edited). I had wondered about that distinction when I was writing this up, so thanks for the clarification.
DeleteI'm extremely late to these questions but, in my defense, I've also just found the blog. It's a cracking read but I had one correction - Ozzy's actually got five kids. He was married once before Sharon and has a son (Louis) and a daughter (Jessica) with his first wife.
ReplyDeleteGood spot, thanks, I've edited the question accordingly to clarify this :)
Delete