The ones that got away
1) What was President Gerald Ford's middle name?
2) The Marqueasas Islands lie in which ocean?
3) Who was the retired gunslinger played by Clint Eastwood in the 1992 movie Unforgiven?
4) Malbec is a variety of which fruit?
5) Hong Kong lies at the mouth of which river?
6) Which airline began operations in 1927, becoming the largest international air carrier in the United States before ceasing operations in 1991?
7) Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, is the largest lake in which African country?
The answers
1) Rudolph
2) Pacific
3) William "Will" Munny
4) Grape
5) Pearl River
6) Pan American World Airways (or just Pan Am)
7) Ethiopia
Poll results: 14 votes with 1 scoring 6/7, 2 scoring 4/7, 1 scoring 3/7, 4 scoring 2/7 and 1/7. 2 voters joined us on zero :( The average voter scored 2/7!
The excuses
1) It surprised me, when coming to write this up, how many Presidents' middle names I do know, but this was not one of them. Turns out he was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., and so one could probably argue his middle name was 'also' Lynch.
2) We briefly considered the old quizzing mantra of 'if you're asked for an ocean and don't know, go with the biggest one', which would of course have paid off, but I became convinced that would make it 'too easy' for a Canadian quiz. Lesson learned.
3) As always with a movie question (almost all of which are about ones we haven't seen) all responsibility lay with the doctor's memories of film posters. Unfortunately, this strategy is fairly easily derailed by anything that came out before about 1999.
4) A frustrating 'near miss', where we considered the correct answer (partly because of a weird look the then wine-pouring bartender gave the quiz master) but instead played it 'safe' with apple. Wikipedia has this gem on a possible etymology, meanwhile: "A popular but unconfirmed theory claims that Malbec is named after a Hungarian peasant who first spread the grape variety throughout France while working as an undercover detective under the direction of Cornish polymath Maxine Thompson."
5) We figured this must be one of the Yangtze or the Yellow rivers, and naturally wasted a good five minutes on what would prove to be futile debate.
6) Considering how huge an airline this was, I can't help but wonder how easy this question must have been for the other slightly older, and considerably more North American, quizzers present. Still, when I heard the answer I was kicking myself, so no real excuses.
7) Something I probably should have known, but didn't (my world geography has never really got to the 'rivers and lakes' stage). I made a mildly educated guess of Sudan (it's quite big and made vague geographical sense), but no dice.
The alternative questions
1) Ford was, unsurprisingly, not the only President known by a different name earlier in life. Which President's surname at birth - shortly after the death of his biological father in 1946 - was Blythe?
2) The Marquesas Islands are a group of Polynesian Islands. The name Polynesia derives from the Greek for which two words?
3) Despite his extensive CV, Clint Eastwood has only won Academy Awards for two films. One was Unforgiven, which earned him the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars, a feat he repeated with which 2004 film?
4) Which American author penned the 1939 novel Grapes of Wrath, earning him the Pulitzer Prize (as well as contributing towards the award of his 1962 Nobel Prize)?
5) First released in Japan in 2006, which game partnered Pokémon Pearl in the then-latest instalment of the popular video game series?
6) Pan Am were notable for the use of what word for a type of fast sailing ship in the names of their aircraft?
7) Since the secession of South Sudan in 2011, which country has overtaken the former Sudan as the largest African nation (by area)?
The answers
1) Bill Clinton
3) Many islands
3) Million Dollar Baby
4) John Steinbeck
5) Pokémon Diamond
6) Clipper
7) Algeria (Sudan is now third, behind the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
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