The Hoover Dam was once known as Boulder Dam

Your target this week:

1+ out of 10: Well done, you beat us and we'd have won with you on our team!

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

The ones that got away
1) What percentage of a human brain is fat?
2) The Hoover Dam lies on the border of which two US states?
3) Which planet in our solar system rotates on its axis in a different direction to all the others?
4) The Orient Express originally ran between which two cities?
5) As of the end of July, who is 2014's top earning actress according to Forbes magazine?
6) 'The Day the Music Died' is a reference to the deaths of which three musicians?
7) Where have geologists dubbed "the city waiting to die"?
8) In Harry Potter what do Ron and Hermione name their two children? As a hint, their names also start with R and H.
9) Which movie features the line "I'm flesh and blood, but not human"?
10) Which movie features the line "When you grow up, your heart dies"?

The answers

1) 60%
2) Arizona and Nevada
3) Venus
4) Paris and Istanbul
5) Sandra Bullock
6) Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and 'The Big Bopper' (J. P. Richardson)
7) Tokyo
8) Rose and Hugo
9) Interview with the Vampire
10) The Breakfast Club

Our excuses

1) The doctor's medical expertise once again coming to the fore in our pub quiz troubles. Unsure whether this was allowing for the brain's high water content he went with 30%, although some sources (such as this) put the brain's water content at 77-78% with just 10-12% fat. A bit of googling suggests the 60% figure is a relatively well-trodden trivium, but it's clearly one of those questions that requires some fairly careful definitions.
2) Having had a big fight on it in the video game Fallout: New Vegas, I knew the dam must be vaguely near Las Vegas giving us Nevada. Unfortunately the game's other primary location of California meant we missed out on the crucial second half of the answer.
3) One of those you know you've heard before (and probably more than once). We got a bit muddled and put Uranus which, along with Venus, orbits in a different direction to the other planets.
4) Like the Hoover Dam we had one half of this (the admittedly fairly obvious Paris). A look at the history of the various routes suggests that our instinct of Vienna for the other end wasn't too ridiculous, though.
5) Movie stars are never our strong suit, with Scarlett Johansson (inspired by her roles in Captain America and Lucy) letting us down.
6) We had the 'obvious' pair of Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper, but our third guess of the (still alive) Chuck Berry wasn't one of our best.
7) The doctor thought (slowly) sinking Venice seemed a plausible guess, while the programmer admitted after the answer was revealed that he'd had Tokyo in mind but was so convinced by Venice he didn't mention it.
8) It's fairly unusual for a Harry Potter question to evade us in a pub quiz and even with the hint we didn't get either name. Our guesses of Remus and Hagrid (both notable characters in the series) seemed quite good at the time.
9) Movie quote questions are a familiar sight on the blog, and while this clearly pointed at something supernatural going on that was as far as we could get. "Twilight is popular with the kids these days, right?" was the height of our discussion.
10) Another movie that is Very Famous which we're yet to see. Still, we capped off a night of 'wrong guesses we quite liked' with Peter Pan.

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 (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
1) The 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz features three versions of the same song but with different titles and lyrics. First sung as "If I Only Had a Brain" by the Scarecrow, and then "If I Only Had a Heart" by the Tin Man, what two words complete the Lion's version: "If I Only Had..."?
2) Hoover, at least in the UK, is a classic example of a 'genericized' trademark - a trademark that has become an everyday word for a general item. Two further examples of this are the common names for the drugs acetylsalicylic acid and diacetylmorphine. Both originally trademarked by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, how are these two drugs better known? (You need both for the point.)
3) Though their use is discouraged by the International Astronomical Union, symbols such as ♀ (for Venus) and ♂ (for Mars) are often used for the planets. The symbol for Mars represents a shield and spear, but what object does Venus' symbol reflect?
4) The original 'test' train for the Orient Express was named the "Train éclair de luxe". Reflecting the train's speed (as well as how quickly one might eat a particular pastry) what does the French word 'éclair' mean in English?
5) According to Oxford Dictionaries, what is a bullock?
6) To date there have (somehow) been eight American Pie movies, including four 'spin offs' along with the original and three sequels. Playing the character Noah Levenstein, who is the only major cast member to appear in all eight of these films?

Question 7

7) Who painted this (pictured)? The artist's work is often easy to identify because his name, like his paintings, puts one in mind of waterways.
8) With write-ups appearing on the Harry Potter website Pottermore during the (real world) 2014 FIFA World Cup, the 2014 Quidditch World Cup took place in which desert in Argentina? (As I'm sure we all know, Bulgaria beat Brazil in the final by 170 points to 60.)
9) Who wrote the 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire on which the 1994 movie is based? As a hint (or just a great way to remember) you can put a model of car in the middle of the author's name and get an iconic 1980s British television presenter.
10) Core members of Hollywood's 'Brat Pack' are typically considered to be those who have appeared in either The Breakfast Club or which other 1985 movie? Its name is also a term for a plasma-based weather phenomenon.

The answers

1) The Nerve
2) Aspirin and heroin
3) A hand mirror ('reflect', geddit???)
4) Lightning
5) A male domestic bovine animal that has been castrated and is raised for beef (you can be fairly generous here; if you said something like 'castrated bull' that's good enough for me) - in US English 'bullock' is another word for 'steer'
6) Eugene Levy
7) Canaletto (real name Giovanni Antonio Canal)
8) The Patagonian Desert
9) Anne Rice (and if you put a Ka in the middle, you get Anneka Rice!)
10) St. Elmo's Fire

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!

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