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.
Thursday 3 July 2014
The men's singles trophy at the French Open is named after the 'Four Musketeers' of French tennis
Your targets this week:
1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us! We won this week, so no 'winninger than you' target!
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The oceanographer
The ones that got away
1) Who were the the winners of this year's men's and women's singles competitions at the French Open? You need both for the point.
2) Two actors have appeared in all six Star Wars movies playing the same two characters. Name the two actors and the two characters. You need all four for the point.
3) Name the ship in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island which shares its name with the second largest Caribbean Island.
4) In 1963 and 2012, what did the Russians and Chinese do for the first time?
5) What word can mean both 'deactivated' as well as 'activated'?
6) Garlic belongs to which flower family?
7) Name the movie which features this quote: "Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."
8) In what year was the first e-mail sent?
The answers
1) Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova
2) C-3P0 and R2-D2 played by Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker respectively
3) Hispaniola
4) Send a woman into space ('person' is not correct) - Valentina Tereshkova and Liu Yang
5) Off (e.g. 'turned off' and 'went off')
6) Lily
7) The Wizard of Oz
8) 1971
The excuses
1) I have not kept up with tennis particularly well since moving to Canada, and while Rafael Nadal's record in the tournament is hard to miss the women's singles had completely passed me by. I went with Li Na, who I at least knew had won the tournament previously, but she went out in the first round this year.
2) This one fell to the doctor who got three out of four before slipping up with Anthony Perkins instead of Anthony Daniels.
3) One we really felt we should have known, but neither our literary nor geographical knowledge were up to scratch. Despite correctly guessing the island in question must be the one split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (the largest being Cuba) we had no idea what it was actually called.
4) The countries and years put us in mind of space shenanigans, but we incorrectly went with 'person' rather than 'woman'. We had our doubts, not least because I thought Yuri Gagarin went up in the late 50s (when in fact it was 1961), but didn't think outside the box enough.
5) We (and most of the bar) weren't particularly convinced by this one, but in the context of a bomb going off, or an alarm going off, it does (just about) work. At one point during our (lengthy) deliberations we even mooted the correct answer but dismissed it without thinking it through enough.
6) First observation: yes, this is a spectacularly common piece of trivia that we've heard multiple times before, and somehow forgot. Second observation: whether this is even correct seems really complicated, with various sources suggesting that garlic used to be placed in the lily family (Liliaceae) but not any more. If anyone reading can offer a clearer explanation (and I'll be honest, that wouldn't be difficult) to please let me know.
7) I'm not entirely sure if this is one that can be figured out, but in any case we were nowhere.
8) Another slightly complicated one given that it's not particularly clearly defined, with the 1971 date seemingly referring to the first ARPANET email. Being huge nerds, we suspected it was "probably an ARPANET thing", and the oceanographer narrowed the date down to 1971 or 1973, but the virtual coin toss fell the wrong way for us.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!
My alternative questions
1) Launched in 1963 and analogous to the men's Davis Cup, what is the name of the premier team competition in women's tennis?
2) In early drafts of the Star Wars scripts Luke Skywalker was given the first name Annikin (not to be confused with his father Anakin) and what surname?
3) In the fictional sea song (originally from Treasure Island), how many men are on a dead man's chest?
4) Like astronaut, which two terms featuring the suffix -naut refer to space travellers from Russia and China? You need both for the point.
5) In which show, first airing on BBC Two from 1998 to 2001, would the start of contests typically be signalled by the countdown "3, 2, 1, activate!"?
6) Someone who certainly does know their garlic is Bram Stoker's Dracula. Meaning 'son of Dracul' which fifteenth century ruler who was also known as Dracula provided the inspiration for the famous vampire's name?
7) Classic trivia time: while Dorothy shall forever be associated with her ruby slippers from the 1939 movie, what colour shoes did she wear in the original novel by L. Frank Baum?
8) One of many apparent anachronisms of modern computing, from what phrase do the letters 'CC' refer to when sending an email to multiple recipients?
The answers
1) The Fed Cup (formerly the Federation Cup)
2) Starkiller
3) 15
4) Cosmonaut and taikonaut
5) Robot Wars
6) Vlad the Impaler (or, more formally, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia)
7) Silver - they were changed to ruby to take advantage of the then-new Technicolor film process
8) Carbon copy
I got asked the "what does CC stand for ?2 question at an audition for Mastermind. I could only remember BC, (blind copy) and guessed at Clear Copy for CC.
I passed the audition anyway and remembered the correct answer this time.
Nice - Vlad Tepes is ok, although I only found out when writing this set that it's not his 'real name' or anything, but just Romanian for Vlad the Impaler. Which is kinda interesting.
I got asked the "what does CC stand for ?2 question at an audition for Mastermind. I could only remember BC, (blind copy) and guessed at Clear Copy for CC.
ReplyDeleteI passed the audition anyway and remembered the correct answer this time.
Excellent, if there's one guiding principle for this blog it's the idea of making sure I don't get the same question wrong twice :)
DeleteI got 5/8 if I can have Vlad Tepes, which I've decided I can.
ReplyDeleteI tripped on Starkiller (which I *knew* but couldn't place - I punted on Starstrider), the tennis cup, and the colour of the shoes.
Nice - Vlad Tepes is ok, although I only found out when writing this set that it's not his 'real name' or anything, but just Romanian for Vlad the Impaler. Which is kinda interesting.
Delete