2016 has been designated as the International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 12: Well done, you beat us!
3+ out of 12: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) What is the first name of (Canadian Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau's wife?
2) Who directed Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back? (Hint: it's not George Lucas)
3) By area, what is the second-largest lake in the world?
4) What song's second verse begins "It's always tease tease tease. You're happy when I'm on my knees."? (You just need the song, not the band.)
5) Harrison Ford's second-biggest grossing film is now Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What movie did it relegate to second?
6) Introduced in September, who is the current principal of South Park Elementary School?
7) What country did the Romans refer to as Hibernia?
8) As of December 30, 2015, which singer is the most-followed person on Twitter? They overtook Justin Bieber for the honour.
9) 2 point question: Which (American) football team plays at Lambeau Field?
10) 2 point question: The international airport serving Budapest, Hungary, is named after which composer?

The answers

1) Sophie
2) Irvin Kershner
3) Lake Superior
4) Should I Stay or Should I Go (by The Clash)
5) Star Wars: A New Hope ('Star Wars', or 'Star Wars Episode IV' are also fine)
6) PC Principal ('Principal' alone does not suffice)
7) Ireland (technically the island of Ireland, but Ireland was the expected answer)
8) Katy Perry
9) Green Bay Packers
10) Liszt

My excuses

1) The perils of Canadian quizzing. We briefly considered bargaining with the quizmaster for half points for knowing David Cameron's wife's name, but decided better of it. Instead, we tried to think of the most French lady name we could, coming up with the slightly close 'Marie'.
2) Despite having marathonned the entire series in preparation for seeing the newest installment, not to mention the doctor's predictably encyclopaedic knowledge of such things, he wasn't able to bring this name to mind. Sadtimes.
3) Canadian quizzes so seldom ask geography questions we've become quite bad at it. Here we tied ourselves in knots thinking the biggest lake was Lake Baikal, when (obviously) it's the deepest. On the plus side, we did correctly deduce that the largest lake that wasn't Lake Baikal was the Caspian Sea, but by that point that wasn't much help.
4) With no idea we decided to put Whip/Nae Nae by Silentó, a song neither of us has actually heard but is rapidly becoming our go-to for any music question here.
5) The second Star Wars question dropped of the night risked the doctor being sent over the edge. Luckily he decided this technically doesn't count as a Star Wars question so that's ok. We put Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which is a tantalizingly close third.
6) Having no idea I speculated (fairly optimistically) that he might 'hilariously' be called something like Mr. Principal, so wrote down 'Principal'. I was (almost) outraged not to be given it.
7) Haha, oh dear again. Being tricked by the existence of Hibernian FC we went with Scotland. This in spite of the fact that we were both fairly sure we'd got a question about Caledonia being Scotland wrong on another quiz some years ago.
8) Incredibly, I'd written a question about this very topic about 2 weeks previously as part of a Christmas quiz I'd planned to administer to the doctor and some friends. Predictably I never actually got around to running the quiz, and couldn't remember the answer myself. We went with the old Twitter staple of Lady Gaga who now ranks at number 7.
9) The quizmaster described this as "a really easy one", which is always a good sign with North American sports questions. With things like this we usually just put whatever team comes to mind first, which in this case was the Baltimore Ravens (who play at the highly memorable M&T Bank Stadium).
10) A final embarrassment to round things off. We both immediately said Liszt and then second-guessed ourselves with Brahms because of his ludicrously famous Hungarian Dances. (We also have a strategy on 'high brow' questions here to always go for the most famous option.) Had we remembered his first name was Johannes we might have saved ourselves, but it was not to be.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more point)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below!



(No alternative questions this week as we've been too busy being festive, sorry!)

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Bonus Question: Christmas Advent Connection Quiz!

It's a Ones That Got Away Christmas special! The numbers have fallen off my advent calendar, can you match up the pictures with the answers to these 24 mildly festive questions? For bonus fun, the 24 answers form 6 connected groups of 4, like a slightly enlarged Only Connect connecting wall (phwoar).

The calendar is below the questions, and you can find a big PDF version of the whole thing here (and as a PNG here)! Don't forget you can click on images to make them bigger!

The Questions 

Question 5

1) What does a Cockney need to have a butcher's hook at something?
2) In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the third ghost to visit Scrooge is the Ghost of Christmas...what?
3) One Major League Baseball team contains the same word twice in its name: once in English and once in Spanish. What (English) word?
4) On what piece of equipment can you compete in Winter Olympic sports including parallel, cross, and slopestyle?
5) Pictured are the (slightly festivized) heads of the two main types of what animal?
6) A traditional term in the Royal Navy for the first lieutenant on board a ship, what two-word phrase is commonly used by Star Trek Captain Jean-Luc Picard to refer to his first officer William Riker?

Question 15

7) What is the Roman counterpart of the brother of the figure depicted on the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus?
8) Despite eventually having almost nothing in common with the original, Disney's Frozen was first intended to be based on which Hans Christian Andersen story?
9) What is both Maverick's Radar Intercept Officer in Top Gun *and* a word, according to urbandictionary.com, meaning "A verb, which means to grab someone between their butt cheeks and to squeeze, almost with an intent to hurt, although it is often done in a joking, playful manner between friends"?
10) What three letters appear in the middle of five-letter words meaning a high temperature, a component of a video game, and the middle name of a Beckham?
11) What type of object may be described informally as an 'icy dirtball', 'deep fried ice cream', or a 'dirty snowball'?

Question 19

12) Familiar to many in the name of a high street sandwich chain, what is the French word for 'eat'?
13) What is the (English) name of the only Serbian football team to have won the European Cup?
14) Most famous for its three Olympic-class ocean liners, how was the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company better known?
15) Oh no! Someone has festivized some ladies. What first name do they all share?
16) Removing the last 2 letters of the third-oldest National Park in England and Wales gives the name of what mountain?
17) Two national flags consist solely of red and white and feature a crescent moon with a single star. One is Tunisia, what's the other?
18) What name links an Orwellian pig and 5 Simpsonian cats?
19) What food is being represented here?
20) Despite being predominantly a different colour, what is the name of the third-highest award for valo(u)r in the United States Armed Forces?

Question 23

21) What word describes Maid Marian in a 1973 Disney animated feature, Krystal from the Star Fox universe in video games, and the nickname of ITV's newest Chaser?
22) What term describes a kebab made of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie?
23) What is the title of the upcoming album set to be released on this festivized singer's 69th birthday?
24) What name is shared by: a Russian leader widely regarded as responsible for millions of deaths, a prominent Nazi, and (at birth) Kevin Keegan?

The Calendar

(You may want to click on this to get a larger version.)

The Answers

You can find the full answers, with groups, here!

How did you do? Let the world know with the poll below! (1 point per correct answer - you don't need to worry about identifying all the groups, but it might help with solving.)

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Swing states in the US are also known as 'purple states'

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us!
2+ out of 8: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) The game Jenga takes its name from the Swahili word for what?
2) Which of these is not a real type of owl? Barking; Elf; Pole; Laughing; Powerful.
3) Which actress, who received her first Oscar nomination for her role in Rachel Getting Married, recently(ish) announced her pregnancy?
4) Which 2-word phrase, a metaphor for the early Internet, was designated the US Dialect Society's 'Word of the Year' in 1993?
5) What was the US Dialect Society's Word of the 20th Century? Hint: it contains 2 'z's.
6) The words 'cyber', 'e-', 'millennium bug', and 'web' were all US Dialect Society Words of the Year in the 1990s. Which was Word of the Year earliest?
7) ...and which was Word of the Year latest?
8) The words 'app', 'bailout', 'subprime', and 'tweet' were all US Dialect Society Words of the Year in the 2000s. Which was Word of the Year earliest?

The answers

1) Build (if you had something similar it's up to you if you think it's 'close enough')
2) Pole
3) Anne Hathaway
4) Information superhighway
5) Jazz
6) Cyber (in 1994)
7) e- (in 1998)
8) Subprime (in 2007)

My excuses

1) One of those questions where you wonder how you've never heard it before. Our discussions went nowhere near the correct answer, instead settling on 'wood'.
2) We misheard 'pole' as 'hole', but it wouldn't have made much difference. We went with 'barking' as it seemed very similar to 'laughing', but much less silly.
3) Haha. So far beyond our wheelhouse that we can't see the boat any more. (I had to actually google what a wheelhouse was, so that's something.) The other half of our team were at least familiar with the movie, but we couldn't get much further than "name an actress who is maybe sort of young but not that young???", which my notes tell me gave us someone called 'Rooney Mara'.
4) Pretty sad to miss this one, as I really enjoy phrases like this (the movie Hackers is easily in my top 5 of all time). We came up with 'dial up', which at least seemed pretty plausible.
5) Someone immediately said jazz, which struck me as an ok idea but hardly screamed 'word of the century'. Then someone said pizza, which the doctor thought was a great idea (I think because he likes pizza).
6-7) With so little separating the options (cyber, web, millennium bug, e- were from 1994, '95, '97 and '98, respectively) this was always going to be tough. We were one year out with both, picking web for earliest and millennium bug for the latest.
8) Subprime, bailout, tweet, app span the years 2007-2010, so another tough set, although our guess of tweet was the second-worst available for this one.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 point or more)? Would you have helped us win (2 points or more)? 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

Question 2

1) The Disney character 'Simba' takes his name from the Swahili word for what?
2) In comics, the Court of Owls is an organized crime group - specializing in the kidnap of child circus performers - based in which fictional city?
3) Like many quizzers, I only really know about Anne Hathaway (the actress) because of questions about Anne Hathaway (the wife of William Shakespeare). With that in mind, the stage name of which actress, known for her roles in Live and Let Die and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, is shared with that of the third wife of another famous 16th Century figure?
4) What 8-letter, German-inspired alternative to 'information superhighway' was coined around the same time?

Question 7

5) Commonly encountered in jazz, what colour describes a note that is sung or played at a slightly different pitch than standard?
6) Word of the Year questions are fun, so here's another. What puzzle was Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year in 2005?
7) Earlier this year, the Royal Mail produced a stamp set to celebrate British innovations. What invention does this (slightly censored) stamp commemorate?
8) Let's pretend that the word 'subprime' means 'whole numbers that are equal to a prime number minus 1'. So for example, since 17 is prime, 16 is 'subprime'. Defined this way, how many subprimes are also prime?

The answers

1) Lion (of The Lion King fame)
2) Gotham City
3) Jane Seymour
4) Infobahn
5) Blue
6) Sudoku
7) Cat's eyes
8) 1 (as every prime number except 2 is odd, every subprime except for 1 must be even, so 2 is the only prime subprime)

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

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In Japan, Ronald McDonald is called Donald McDonald

Your targets this week:

 We won this week, but could you have done even better?

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin
6) The meteorologist

Question 4

The ones that got away
1) The highest ranked food services company on the Fortune 500 is McDonald's. What's the second?
2) What word, co-opted by JK Rowling, was originally slang for a marijuana cigarette?
3) In cents, how much money is '2 bits'?
4) Who is being played by Sigourney Weaver here?
5) Which 3 of the following 8 animals are nocturnal? Honey badger, Koala, Lynx, Moose, Red fox, Komodo Dragon, Ostrich, Tortoise. You need all 3 for the point.

The answers

1) Starbucks
2) Muggle
3) 25
4) Dian Fossey (in Gorillas in the Mist)
5) Honey badger, Koala and Red fox

The doctor's excuses

1) Moderately difficult and interesting question. Yum Brands was suggested on account of their ownership of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, which seemed to me to be a sufficiently strong trifecta to make them a decent competitor to Maccy D's. Turns out that Starbucks is 187 and Yum is 228.
2) We immediately discarded "muggle" as being way too obvious to be the real answer and then spent quite a while wracking our brains about it. In the end someone remembered the term "squib" (a child born of magical parents but without magical abilities). Since a squib is a thing you light, and so is wacky tobaccy we thought it seemed like a good shout.
3) In googling something interesting to say about this question, I was reminded that "Shave and a haircut. Two bits" is a well known musical sting. The highlight of that Wikipedia page is the fact that "In Mexico, the tune is highly offensive, as it is commonly used to stand in for the vulgar phrase 'chinga tu madre, cabrón'". I shan't translate that though, as it is jolly rude.
4) I have, on multiple occasions, mistaken Fossey for Goodall, which is weird because I don' t really know much about either person other than "they both did ape research stuff". It turns out they're both rather interesting people. Worth reading up on.
5) I'm not really sure why we put "lynx" here. I think someone had a theory about koalas being definitely diurnal or something? I'm not 100% sure I think I'd been drinking, which makes sense, it is a pub quiz after all.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us? 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!


Our alternative questions

Question 1

1) In 2012 a Nebraska woman sold a Chicken McNugget (pictured) for over $8,000. Why was it so expensive?
2) We asked a question about Harry Potter last week, so here's an HP question instead. According to Heinz.co.uk, what is the most prevalent ingredient in a bottle of HP (brown) sauce? (Hint: it's not vinegar.)
3) In Disney's Tron, 'programs' are associated with 'bits' which are capable of saying only two words: which two?
4) Along with her research on gorillas, Fossey undertook many anti-poaching efforts. But what (pictured below) is, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the world's most illegally traded animal?
5) Have another animal question. What is the common name of the only marsupial native to the USA? One of these creatures was voiced by William Shatner in the movie Over the Hedge, bringing his unique style to a rather overacted 'death' scene.

Question 4

The answers

1) It (supposedly) resembles George Washington
2) Tomatoes
3) 'Yes' and 'No'
4) The pangolin
5) Possom (more formally, the Virginia opossum)

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

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In Star Wars, the name AT-AT stands for All Terrain Armored Transport

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 14: Well done, you beat us!
4+ out of 14: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The metallurgist
4) The secret German
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) To within 50 centimetres, how tall was the tallest ever sunflower?
2) In Casper the Friendly Ghost, what are the three main uncle ghosts called? (You need all three for the point.)
3) Which of these is not a real professional baseball team in the Philippines? Alpha Aces, Blackwater Elite, Manila OJ Drinkers, Rain or Shine Elasto Painters, Talk N' Text Tropang Texters.
4) Which WWE wrestler's gimmick is that they are followed around by a party, with supports called 'rosebuds'?
5) 3 point question: "Never send a human to do a machine's job" - for two points, name the movie this quote is from, for a third point, name the character who said it.
6) 3 point question: "Who's the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?" - for two points, name the movie this quote is from, for a third point, name the character who said it.
7) 2 point question: What is the most abundant element in pewter?
8) 2 point question: Which singer, born with the surname Sarkisian, is usually known simply by an abbreviation of her first name?

The answers

1) 9.17 metres (so 8.67m to 9.67m gets you the point)
2) Fatso, Stinkie, and Stretch
3) Manila OJ Drinkers
4) Adam Rose
5) The Matrix, said by Agent Smith
6) Star Wars (Episode IV), said by Obi-Wan Kenobi
7) Tin
8) Cher

The doctor's excuses

1) The problem with division of labour in a regular quiz team, is that you end up like the eukaryote cell, and I am one of the organelles that doesn't give even a little bit of a damn about "number estimation" questions. I'm like a sexy mitochondrion that doesn't care about mathematically quantifying stuff. A German did it, btw. The sunflower thing, that is... vorsprung durch sonnenlicht, I guess.
2) Casper's Wikipedia page is a real treasure trove of the kind of undeliberate humour of someone taking something very silly ULTRA-seriously. "As his name indicates, he is a ghost, yet he is quite personable". FOLLOWED BY A CITATION. Further hilarity can be found in the disquisition on whether Casper is an actual dead human child, or if he is just a ghost "because his parents were already ghosts when they were married".
3) Having played the Metal Gear Solid games, I am highly distrustful/enamoured with PMCs (private military corporations), of which Blackwater is one (although they changed name now). Knowing this, and knowing that the Quizmaster had recently been playing MGSV, I thought Blackwater was the fake. It wasn't though. *Fart Noises*.
4) Don't know much about wrestling. Someone suggested that Ric Flair was also known as "Nature Boy" and so having party people known as "rosebuds" seemed reasonably on-theme.
5) Me and The Statistican have tried to watch Blade Runner about 4 times, and fallen asleep in the attempt 4 times. We've both read (and enjoyed) the original novel though, so screw you with your "oooh but it's a sci-fi classic oooh oooh". Anyway I dunno... this seems like an OK question where we just didn't even consider the right answer, so I ain't even mad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
6) This is a horrendously generic quote and I hate it. What I hate even worse is the fact that I've seen this movie approximately 50 times (we had the original trilogy on VHS before the remasters came out... I had a blessed childhood) and still missed it. Anyway, I gotta stop typing and go punch something now.
7) Apparently pewter is basically just tin with some other metals (antimony, bismuth, copper, sometimes lead) thrown in to make it harder, which is nice to know (no sarcasm). Unfortunately none of us knew this but I'd had some Warhammer 40k dudes who were tiny little pewter statues, and thought they seemed quite heavy and leady. So that's that excuse.
8) Top Fact: In 2014 Sia was the 97th richest Australian under the age of 40. I think Cher would have been a better guess (especially given that it was the right answer), but I'm not sure anyone even suggested her sadface.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (4 or more points)? 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!


Our alternative questions
1) According to Guinness World Records, the longest-standing unsolved maths problem is Goldbach's Conjecture from 1742, which states that every positive even number (except for 2) can be written as the sum of two of what type of number?
2) Fatso is the 'proper' name of a cat who features in a viral Internet meme appearing to play what type of instrument, after which the cat is more commonly known?
3) Despite being the 12th most populous country in the world, the Philippines are yet to claim a gold medal at any Olympic Games. There is one country more populous who hasn't won any Olympic medal - which?
4) For 1 point each, name the two four-letter body parts that describe, respectively, a 'good guy' and a 'bad guy' in professional wrestling.
5) By a shocking coincidence, main character 'Neo' in the Matrix has a name which is an anagram of 'one', because he is 'the one', or something. Here are three anagrams from a famous (terrible) book by Dan Brown. For 1 point each, provide the intended solution to the (somewhat related) anagrams:
(a) O, Draconian devil!
(b) Oh, lame saint!
(c) So dark the con of Man
6) John Williams won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work ont he first Star Wars movie. For 1 point each, give the three other movies for which he won either a Best Original Score or Best Original Dramatic Score Oscar. (And just to avoid frustration, he won neither for Fiddler on the Roof.)
7) In the Harry Potter novels, first year students are instructed to bring what piece of equipment, specified as "pewter, standard size 2"?
8) Identifying celebrities from their real names is seldom fun, so I'm spicing it up with some Pokemon. For 1 point each:

Question 8: (a) on the left and (b) on the right

(a) Born Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel, how is this musician better known? His name sounds like that of the first Pokemon pictured.
(b) Born Thomas DeCarlo Callaway, how is this musician better known? To get his name combine the (slightly slurred) name of the second Pokemon with a colour.

The answers

1) Prime numbers (so 4 = 2+2, which are both prime, 6 = 3+3, 8 = 3+5, 10 = 3+7, etc. etc.)
2) Keyboard [VIDEO]
3) Bangladesh
4) Face and heel
5) (a) Leonardo da Vinci, (b) The Mona Lisa, (c) Madonna of the Rocks
6) Jaws, E.T., Schindler's List
7) A cauldron
8) (a) Seal (the Pokemon is Seel) and (b) CeeLo Green (the Pokemon is Sealeo)

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

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The Starbucks logo features (maybe) a melusine

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 6: 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 left-fielder
4) The rich-person otherkin


The ones that got away
1) Until recently, the Starbucks pumpkin spice latte didn't contain any pumpkin, but did contain what three autumn spices instead? You need all three for the point.
2) In A Song Of Ice And Fire (Game of Thrones), which vile family is in charge of The Twins, two castles that span a river crossing?
3) Which actor plays both Winklevoss twins in the movie The Social Network? (Surname suffices.)
4) The four primary ingredients of beer are water, hops, malt, and what?
5) Which actor plays the title character in The Man with the Golden Gun? (Again, surname suffices.)
6) The letters in SACRAMENTO can be rearranged to form two words which are synonyms of one another. what are the two words? (You have at most about 5 minutes for this question.)

The answers

1) Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves
2) House Frey
3) (Armie) Hammer
4) Yeast
5) (Christopher) Lee
6) SCENT and AROMA

The doctor's excuses

1) If it was an Apple Spice Latte, then the PSL-style abbreviation would make this the coffee equivalent of "Netflix and Chill". Other than that stark realisation I know basically nothing about this drink. I effectively hate all "seasonal" spices.
2) I've not read any, but as far as I can tell, the point of Game Of Thrones is that it's like history, only with more boobs and willies and swearing. I've not watched it though because *actual* history has a bunch of that stuff in it if you look closely enough. We put Baratheon because I'd at least heard of it, and I thought Joffrey was maybe a Baratheon (my understanding is that he's a bit of a turd and thought maybe thence "vile").
3) This guy is actually pretty hot in a kind of "Westworld" definitely-has-a-detachable-robot-penis kind of way. Not the kind of guy whose name you remember, since you're gone before he wakes up though.
4) The excuse for this is that there is no excuse, we've got it wrong before and it's exactly the sort of thing that "proper" quiz nerds know. Wikipedia seems to indicate that whilst yeast *is* a key part of the beer making process, it is decanted off at some point and thus doesn't count as an ingredient? I basically can't be bothered to look into it further, beer is rubbish, cocktails are where it's at, mang! The statistician adds: At first this was a bit annoying because we'd been asked a similar question about the Reinheitsgebot (German beer purity law) a few months ago and got it wrong. It seems that time we did remember yeast, which isn't included according to those pesky Germans.
5) Just a brainfart really, I knew it was Lee but got confused thinking about "that other Hammer Horror guy who was also in Star Wars" - In fact this was a *double* brainfart (a brainshart?) because I was actually thinking of Peter Cushing (the inimitable Grand Moff Tarkin), not Vincent Price.
6) I am so bad at anagram/letter rearrangement questions. As such, they just tend to make me furious. I'm angry right now, just typing this. Furious.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us and helped us win (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!


Our alternative questions
1) Equal to its size in (US) fluid ounces, the Starbucks coffee size 'venti' comes from the Italian for what number?
2) What word links the star sign bridging May and June, NASA's second human spaceflight program (between Mercury and Apollo) and, with one letter changed, the UK's 2003 Eurovision Song Contest entry?
3) Twitter recently caused a minor online furore by changing its star-shaped 'Favorite' button into a Facebook-like, er, 'Like'. Raising concerns about professionalism, sexual harassment, and even sexuality, what shape did they choose for the new button?
4) Which beer brand is marketed under a three-letter abbreviated name in most European Union countries owing to an ongoing trademark dispute with a Czech beer maker?
5) Christopher Lee played Frankenstein a lot, and before you get arsey about Frankenstein being the name of the scientist, Wikipedia says common use has made it ok. Anyway, what biblical name did Shelley use to refer to Dr Frankenstein's creation?
6) If you take California's 2-letter state abbreviation and follow it by its capital, you get CA Sacramento, which isn't really anything. However, with which state can you follow this process and end up with the title of an OutKast song? As a bonus hint, the city is also mentioned in the lyrics of Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk.

The answers

1) 20 (there is also the Trenta, which is Italian for 30 and is - you guessed it - 31 fluid ounces)
2) Gemini (or Jemini for the ESC entry)
3) A heart
4) Budweiser (or Bud, as it's known in the EU except for the UK, Ireland, and Spain; the Czech beer maker is Budweiser Budvar)
5) Adam
6) Mississippi (MS Jackson and the song "Ms. Jackson")

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

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No-one knows exactly why Babe Ruth is called Babe Ruth

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 6: Well done, you beat us!
3+ out of 6: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The rich-person otherkin
4) The secret German
5) The metallurgist

The ones that got away
1) How tall was Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest ever man? (Margin of error of +/-3in or +/-10cm)
2) How many walking legs does a lobster have?
3) Not counting movies explicitly about/focused around swearing, such as Swearnet (it's Canadian, don't worry about it, but you get the idea - The Editor), which Scorsese movie posesses the highest "fuck count", i.e. most uses of the word?
4) Spot the fake from this list of historic Major League Baseball teams: Brooklyn Bridegrooms, Chicago Orphans, Houston Colt 45s, NY Highlanders, Philadelphia Widowers
5) 2 point question! What does the ancient Greek letter "eta" look like in upper case?

The answers

1) 2.72m or 8ft 11.1in (so 2.62m to 2.82m, or 8ft 8.1in to 9ft 2.1in gets you the point)
2) 10
3) The Wolf of Wall Street
4) Philadelphia Widowers
5) H

The doctor's excuses

1) In reading up on this it turns out that Wikipedia describes him as "the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence"... I assume this is to rule out allegations that Galactus, Michael Jordan, or God were the *actually* tallest person.
2) I tend to try not to think about lobsters because i find the whole human-lobster relationship a bit sad, thus i am recusing myself from continuing with this excuse
3) We watched this movie recently (well, I watched all of this movie and the statistician watched half of it and then fell asleep... it is a very long movie mainly about being on drugs, with some bits which are like The Apprentice a bit, I guess.... in common with this sentence I thought it was *overly* long and didn't really go anywhere, so I think this was a pretty legit choice).
4) We tend to check-out pretty early on these sorts of "spot the fake" questions but on this occasion we thought there was meta-gaming to be done. With 3 teams having a connection to familial relationships (Bridegrooms, Orphans, Widowers), it seemed the odd one out would be somehow work-outable from which seemed most "constructed" of the three. Half the team argued that Orphans and Widowers both seemed like things there might be charity teams constructed for. The other half of the team argued that widowers were arguably the conceptual confluence of orphans and bridegrooms and thus more likely made up. The latter was correct, but not gone with, much to the chagrin of the pro-widower camp.
5) The statistician wrestled with this for a long time, writing out almost all of the Greek letters in both their upper and lower case forms, but eventually got it down to 3 and zagged the wrong way. He has told me to point out that there's not much use knowing about upper case Greek letters that look identical to Roman letters, which is probably an excuse or something.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 point or more)? Would you have helped us win (3 points or more)? 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 tallest (note: not necessarily highest) statue in the world depicts which person or deity?
2) The oxygen-containing organic compound in lobster blood is haemocyanin rather than haemoglobin. Haemoglobin contains iron, making human blood red, haemocyanin contains what metallic element, giving lobster blood its distinctive blue colour?
3) Gadzooks is a somewhat archaic example of a "minced oath" (like saying "sugar" instead of "shit"... everyone knows what you meant and now everyone thinks you're a loser as well as short-tempered). The phrase it's trying to obscure is "God's Hooks". But to what biblical items did this refer?
4) Meaning "a convenient way of resolving a plot issue" (especially in a theatrical context) give an alternate translation of the phrase Apò mēkhanês Theós in either English or Latin.
5) The nicknames of two current Major League Baseball teams contain words from the NATO phonetic alphabet. For one point each, name the word (or the team).

The answers

1) Buddha
2) Copper
3) The nails supposedly stuck into Jesus when he was crucified (I say supposedly because apparently it was pretty common to just tie people up there rather than using nails, but it doesn't make for such a sexy gory story, I assume).
4) "Deus ex machina" or "God from the machine"
5) Yankee and India (New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians)

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

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A sumo wrestler automatically loses if his belt becomes completely undone

Your targets this week:

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

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The metallurgist
4) The secret German
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) Vodka, Galliano and orange juice are the ingredients of what classic cocktail?
2) In Japan it is supposedly good luck to have sumo wrestlers do what to your baby?
3) During the 1800s in Britain what drug, known as 'quietness', was given to children?
4) In days, how long does a cat usually stay in heat?
5) Who was the first non-human to testify before the US Congress, doing so in defence of music education programs?
6) What is the most shoplifted item in the United States?
7) 2 point question: What was bubble wrap's original intended purpose?
8) 2 point question: The designer of the current United States flag submitted it as an assignment at school. What letter grade did they receive for it?

The answers

1) Harvey Wallbanger
2) Make it cry
3) Opium
4) 5
5) Elmo
6) Candy (anything along those lines, like sweets or conficetionery, etc., gets you the point)
7) Three-dimensional wallpaper
8) B-minus

The doctor's excuses

1) It's rare to have a cocktail question that isn't basically completely uninteresting, and this one fails to buck the trend. I guess maybe we should have known this because it's so simple. But no.
2) We knew that there was something to do with salt being used to keep away evil spirits in sumo and so thought that the idea of fat men lightly seasoning infants could also be a thing. It's not.
3) Complicated one this. I knew that 19th century Brits were all about the laudanum (tincture of opium) but didn't know *exactly* what opium actually was, buuuuuut I was almost certain it contained either heroin or morphine. Thinking that the quizmaster wouldn't know much about the difference between the two. Turns out that opium's effects are almost entirely due to the 10-ish percent morphine that it contains. So I'd expect us to have gotten away with this.
4) I really hope the usual quizmaster is back next week.
5) Fire up the Ones That Got Away klaxon as a near-identical came up over a year ago here and we got it wrong again. The statistician's immediate thought was the correct answer of Elmo, but then everyone seemed to think it was Kermit. The statistician was pretty sure we'd got this wrong before, and at the last minute had a memory of reading the correct answer in fact being the puppet Lamb Chop. Turns out Lamb Chop was granted permission to speak in front of Congress back in 1993, which makes this question seem a little bit iffy (but does at least almost vindicate the statistician's blog-based memory).
6) We were trying to think what might be needed in a hurry and so were thinking of tampons or condoms. I think we eventually settled on baby formula because of it (allegedly) being sold for drugs. I guess it's just candy because sweets are small but tasty!?
7) Bubble wrap would probably make awesome insulation, we thought. But then again, I'm not an insulation expert. Also, apparently every team in the bar put the same wrong answer as us, which I always think tells you something about a question.
8) We were too taken with the idea i) that it had gotten an F, and ii) that the F stood for flag (it had been a pretty terrible quiz, so I think we were just trying to put *something*. B minus is almost a laughably uninteresting and specific answer...

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (4 or more points)? 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!


Our alternative questions

Question 6

1) Clearly the only way to make cocktail questions even vaguely not terrible is to include a cryptic clue alongside the ingredients, so what cocktail of vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice might make you doubly happy?
2) The Street Fighter videogames feature a sumo wrestler with the first name Edomondo (Edmond) and a surname which is shared by a Japanese automobile company. Give that name.
3) "[blank] is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." - For one point, fill in the blank. For a second point, name the author of the original German.
4) Since 2006, Heat Magazine has run an annual poll to find the nation's 'oddest celebrity crush'. The first three winners of this dubious accolade were the hosts of what TV show?

Question 8

5) To within 4 inches or 10 centimetres, how big (tall) is Big Bird?
6) If the Ones That Got Away had a chocolate bar, and its logo was made entirely of other chocolate logos, it might look like this. For 1 point name 3 of the chocolate products whose letters I have 'borrowed', for 2 points, name all 4.
7) The Taiwanese drink bubble tea typically features chewy balls made of either jelly or what cassava root extract?
8) Getting the public to submit designs is a common strategy when a country wants a new flag. Which nation's competition saw these two entries alongisde more reasonable contenders?

The answers

1) Woo Woo
2) E. Honda
3) Religion and Karl Marx
4) Top Gear (at time of writing their new show doesn't have an official name, but if you came up with a different show hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May, then you can have the point)
5) 8 foot 2 inches or 249 centimetres (so 7'10'' to 8'6'' or 239cm-259cm gets you the point)
6) Rolo, Turkish Delight, Galaxy, Wispa
7) Tapioca
8) New Zealand

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

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The Clash only had one UK top ten single

Your targets this week:

We won this week, but could you have done even better?
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin
6) The ringer

The ones that got away
1) The Clash song Rock the Casbah was inspired by the post-1979 ban on Western music in what country?
2) The building 'Blok P' was reportedly home to over 1% of the population in what autonomous country?
3) The animal Ursus arctos horribilis is better known by what name?
4) 2 point question: On January 25th, 1979, Robert William became the first person in history to be killed by what?
5) 2 point question: Excluding any spaces or punctuation, name country with exactly 14 letters in its name (and to simulate the quiz experience, you should only allow yourself a maximum of 5 minutes).

The answers

1) Iran
2) Greenland
3) Grizzly bear
4) A robot
5) Papua New Guinea or Solomon Islands

The doctor's excuses

1) We all independently thought that the Casbah had a connection to Morocco. Annoyingly multiple of us, if we had thought to question the first thing that more than one person liked, would have suggested a second-guess of Iran - based on the revolution in 1979 that brought the Ayatollah to power and trapped Ben Affleck in a building with an Argos catalogue... or something.
2) We didn't realise Blok was spelled Blok and not Block. So we weren't even thinking in the right area of Europe. We reasoned that the term "autonomous country" rather than just "country" was a clue to the fact that it was something weird like the Vatican. In actual fact Vatican City is simply an "independent state".
3) We thought we "knew" that the grizzly was Ursus horribilis, but in fact it turns out that the horribilis part is it's subspecies, in taxonomic terms, so there effectively is no such animal as Ursus horribilis. All this is just to say that we missed that it was the mainland grizzly and instead put "kodiak bear", which is Ursus arctos middendorffi (boringly just named after some guy). At least we avoided the trap of thinking it was the polar bear - Ursus maritimus.
4) Since anaesthetics is a field that progresses quite rapidly, we thought that lethal injection might be relatively recent, since it's *sort* of just someone doing a normal anaesthetic and then, being all WHOOPS POISON! It is pretty recent actually... having been first used in 1982, but still wrong. In future I'm just going to try to remember "Robert was killed by a robot"
5) This was an extremely high pressure quiz since it was the final of a tournament which had being going on for 6 months. As such, there was a lot going on as the final paper was handed in and mistakes were made (the passive voice means it was nobody's fault!). Czechoslovakia is obviously not a country any more, and is thus a wrong answer... but it does have the right number of letters, so it's swings and roundabouts really.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (3 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!


Our alternative questions
1) 2 point question: Here are the first lines of two books purportedly banned in Iran. For 1 point each, name the novel:
a) "Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery."
b) "'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die."
2) Greenland may be considered the least densely populated country in the world, but what Asian country is the least densely populated UN member state?
3) 2 point question: Which fictional bear's name derives from that of a Canadian provincial capital? For a second point, name any other Canadian provincial capital.
4) Robert William's death on January 25th coincided with the day of celebration of what other Robert?
5) What 'constitutional union' of 14 letters long would have been another bad answer to this question, as it ceased to exist 97 years ago?

The answers

1) a) The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) and b) The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie)
2) Mongolia
3) Winnie-the-Pooh (after Winnipeg), other capitals are St. John's, Halifax, Fredericton, Charlottetown, Quebec, Toronto and Regina
4) Burns
5) Austria-Hungary

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

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McCain (the frozen chip company) was founded in Canada

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 11: Well done, you beat us!
5+ out of 11: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) What is the only animal that does not have a nervous system?
2) What is the SI unit of magnetic field strength?
3) ...and what is the full form of this unit in SI base units?
4) What is ergophobia the fear of?
5) What is the fear of numbers called?
6) Is metrophobia the fear of subway cars, cities, poetry or measurements?
7) Who said "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.": Richard Nixon, Charles de Gaulle, John Diefenbaker, or Francisco Franco?
8) Who said "We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.": George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, or John McCain?
9) Who said "Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore. Anyone [in his place] would go nuts.": Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, or Hassan Rouhani?
10) Who said "I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.": Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin?
11) Who said "I would lean towards the idea, for myself, that you are born a pedophile, and it’s actually a problem that we do not know yet how to treat this pathology.": Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Viktor Orbán, or Alexis Tsipras?

The answers

1) Sponge
2) Tesla
3) kg·s⁻²·A⁻¹
4) Work
5) Arithmophobia
6) Poetry
7) Charles de Gaulle
8) George W. Bush
9) Vladimir Putin
10) Arnold Schwarzenegger
11) Nicolas Sarkozy

The doctor's excuses

1) I really like jellyfish, and so I am sad that this was not the correct answer (although apparently I don't know enough about them to know they did have rudimentary senses). Incidentally my dog has no nose and is thus very bad at smelling. Didn't know the sponge thing.
2) When we used to watch university challenge on the reg (it's harder when you're in Canada [ooer missus!]) they would always ask about magnetic flux and so we finally learned that the SI unit for that was the Weber. Unfortunately that wasn't the question. Quiztrolled :(
3) Not only did we not know in detail what a Weber was, we were also wrong about it being a Weber in the first place... double-wrong.
4) We thought of 3 things here... that an erg was a unit of energy and work (in the physics sense), that an erg was also a sand dune-type thing, and that ergo was latin for "therefore" (or something). Turns out we went for the wrong one of the three... which was maybe dumb of us. Although now I want to know what the actual fear of sand dunes is.
5) I find phobia questions deathly dull if I'm honest... perhaps I have a phobia of questions about phobias!!!! (I tried to find out what the Ancient Greek for that would have been and failed magnificently.)
6) Subway cars seemed dumb, so a 1 in 3 chance, and those Greeks sure did love their measurements! (They were also noted poets, but whatevs trevs.)
7) Nixon (famously) went to China, as immortalised in the John Adams opera Nixon In China. We guessed that this might have informed the sort of expert opinion we see in the quote.
8) We thought that Republicans didn't care about Africa, and Clinton seemed the odd one out (we thought the fact that it sounded like such an obvious "Bush-ism" was a red herring).
9) Rouhani was the only one we'd not heard of, which is a pretty boring reason for an answer, but we were pretty lost at sea otherwise.
10) It seemed mildly odd to put Bachmann in there since she seemed much less famous than the others. Also we had memories of her having to defend herself from allegations that she was a witch, and so maybe she's really dumb? Turns out you should always bet on an evil cyborg from the future.
11) Since we'd not had the answers yet, we didn't know how dismal a strategy "go for the one you know least about" (here, Orbán) was proving, and as such the streak of failure continued.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (5 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!


Our alternative questions

Question 2

1) What three word phrase, attributed to Sir Alex Ferguson, can describe the nervous final minutes of a sporting event?
2) Which country's (slightly censored) 100 dinar banknote is pictured here?
3) If the magnetic flux through a surface is 100 webers and the surface is 10 square meters, what is the resulting magnetic flux density in Teslas? (As a hint, consult the picture in the previous question!)
4) Which 17th century philosopher came up with the proposition "je pense, donc je suis"?
5) Roman numerals were widely used in Europe until around the 14th century AD, at which point they began to be replaced by numerals bearing which demonym?

Question 6

6) Which city's subway system (the busiest in the world) uses this logo?
7) The First Republic of France was founded in 1792 during the French Revolution. Which numbered republic of France did de Gaulle found in 1958?
8) Who added to his growing list of controversial remarks by commenting on John McCain with "He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured."?
9) According to World Health Organization figures, approximately how many people in Africa died of AIDS-related disease in 2012? If you're within 25% of the WHO estimate you get the point.
10) Schwarzenegger went AWOL from the Austrian army so that he could participate in the Junior Mr. Europe bodybuilding competition and was punished by time in military prison. What does AWOL stand for?
11) The president of France also holds the title (along with the Bishop of Urgell) of Co-Prince of which European microstate?

The answers

1) Squeaky bum time
2) Serbia (and yes, that is good old Nikola on there)
3) 10 (the formula on the banknote tells us to divide the magnetic flux of 100 webers by the surface area in square meters, i.e. 100 divided by 10)
4) René Descartes
5) Arabic numerals (Hindu-Arabic or Indo-Arabic acceptable).
6) Beijing
7) Fifth republic
8) Donald Trump
9) 1,108,000 (so 831,000 to 1,385,000; you can read more here here)
10) Absent WithOut Leave (or Absent Without Official Leave)
11) Andorra

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No blog today :(

Sorry all, spent most of yesterday barely able to get out of bed, so no blog funtimes this week :(

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The longest-titled James Bond film is George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service

The doctor and I are teaming up this week: the excuses are solely his doing, while the alternative questions are a combination of our attempts at trivia funtimes!

We won this week, but could you have done even better?

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The rich-person otherkin
4) The secret German
5) The metallurgist

The ones that got away
1) To what genus of birds does the Kestrel belong? Hint: It shares its name with a US sports team.
2) Which country recently re-elected its centre-right prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho? It is the first European country to have done so since the start of the global financial crisis in 2009.
3) Name the two mobile telephones announced by Google at a September 2015 event in San Francisco.
4) In what year did the first James Bond movie Dr No. come out?
5) October is the 10th month, despite have the prefix "Oct" meaning Eighth in its name. Which two months were added to cause this?
6) Name all 10 events in the Men's decathlon. All 10 needed for the point.
7) Name all 10 members of the Wu-Tang Clan, both deceased and not. All 10 needed for the point.

The answers

1) Falcon
2) Portugal
3) Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P
4) 1962
5) January and February
6) 100m, 400m, 110m hurdles, 1,500m, Javelin, Pole Vault, Discus, Shot put, Long jump, High jump
7) Raekwon, RZA, GZA, Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Cappadonna, Masta Killah, U-God, Ghostface Killah

Our excuses

1) None of us being particularly familiar with the Atlanta Falcons we instead went for Seahawks, as we could see that they were playing a game on the pub TV... so it was like, fate, or stuff. Wrong though.
2) The rich-person otherkin (recently returned from a stint in Dubai, which they described as being "insane, you have no idea") assured us that there was no way that Coelho was not an "uber-Spanish" name. Since she has roots in Italy, this seemed like pretty good knowledge and a decent basis for an answer. Coelho is actually a deffo Portuguese name meaning 'rabbit'. Just goes to show that you can't trust rich people, I guess.
3) Personally i think this is probably the most boring question I've ever been asked (in light of the answer). Like if they were called the Nexus 6-Willies and the Nexus 5-Fart then I'd think it was super funny and a super good question to ask. Obviously that's immaterial though, and there's definitely an argument that one should vaguely keep up with tech news... I think I'm the wrong person to have that argument with though.
4) We seem to have very poor luck with film year questions, and were actually pretty chuffed to be only one year out with 1963.
5) Quite a contentious one this as we were unable to derive the meanings behind all the month names (something that we thought would be utterly key to the answer... but which wasn't, the months mainly seem to have vague or obscure name origins). The statistician argued that, since July and August were associated with Julius and Augustus Caesar, who are dudes, rather than Gods (we remembered that January came from Janus, Roman God of the threshold), they were most likely to have been invented most recently. January and February were apparently added to the original 10 months by the Numa Pompilius "Second King of Rome" because i guess that's the sort of thing that people did for fun before Twitter was invented.
6) This was the first of two 10-answer questions where every 2 answers got you a point. As the team's default 'sports guy' the statistician was left to his own devices and managed 9 of the 10, incorrectly including the hammer but leaving out the 400m. What a n00b.
7) The second of two 10-answer questions where every 2 answers got you a point. Amusingly a friend (playing off the doctor's desire to become better educated about rap music) had recently written us a cryptic Wu-Tang clan member-name connection quiz (things get wild sometimes, when your friends are nerds). Despite this, and despite the charming graffiti in the Men's loos declaring that "Wu-Tang is for the children!", we managed to misremember Redman as being a member (he collaborated with Method Man, but was not himself a member) and couldn't remember Cappadonna, instead plumping for the invented rapper Genius (watch out for him though, dude's gonna blow up now he's been mentioned on this blog).

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more point)? 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

Question 1

1) Pictured is the logo of a Toronto NBA team - what is their name? (Hint: it's also a word for a type of bird.)
2) Portugal is one of only two European Union members to share the same time zone as the UK. What's the other?
3) Versions of Google's mobile operating system Android are released under confectionery-themed names, such as Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair. For 1 point each, can you identify the two versions with the pictured logos? As a hint, they begin with I (on the left) and J (on the right).
4) Dr. No dies (spoilers!) in a reactor coolant tank filled with heavy water. What subatomic particle is the key difference between heavy water and regular water?

Question 3

5) The key difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is in when leap years occur. While they happened once every four years in the Julian calendar, under the Gregorian system they happen in years that are divisible by 4, except that years divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. Simple, eh? For 1 point each, when was the last year that would have been a leap year under the Julian system, but wasn't under the Gregorian system, and when will the next such year occur?
6) What total height do you get if you add together the current men's world records (as defined by the International Association of Athletics Federations) in long jump, high jump and pole vault? If you're within a metre you get the point.
7) The last four letters of the Wu Tang Clan song C.R.E.A.M. stand for 'Rules Everything Around Me'. What does the 'C' stand for?

The answers

1) Raptors
2) Republic of Ireland (Iceland also shares the same time zone, but isn't an EU member)
3) Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean
4) A neutron (heavy water contains deuterium, which is heavy due to the presence of an extra neutron in its core)
5) 1900 and 2100
6) 17.56m (so 16.56m - 18.56m gets you the point; the pole vault record is 6.16m, the high jump 2.45m and the long jump 8.95m)
7) Cash

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

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The US title of Murder on the Orient Express was Murder in the Calais Coach

It's another Ones That Got Away special brought to you by the doctor! I'm currently swamped with work so you're getting the occasional treat of his take on things. Good luck!

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 6: Well done, you beat us!
3+ out of 6: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) Which European country drinks more coffee per capita than anywhere else in the world?
2) In what decade was Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express set?
3) Which TV show introduced The Simpsons?
4) What sport was once contested with a spadroon?
5) What is the world's highest capital city?
6) Which South African city is overlooked by Table Mountain?

The answers

1) Finland
2) 1920s
3) The Tracey Ullman Show
4) Fencing
5) La Paz
6) Capetown

Our excuses

1) We put Italy, having never once considered Finland, mainly because of their tradition of "suspended coffee" making them seem like a country who take their roasted bean drinks very seriously. (Although remember, coffee ain't actually a bean, it's a seed... that's one to annoy people with at parties). Seems like one of those trivia you never know until you do, and when you do, you never forget.
2) The lion's share of our deliberation over this question was about "that one Doctor Who episode where Agatha Christie fights a giant wasp". Whilst a deeper Whovian knowledge would have given us 1926 as the date that episode was set, our inability to remember incidental (non-vespiform) details led to us being about 30 years off... which i think is pretty ok really.
3) Classic, if a tad obscure, trivia due to the collossal cultural impact of El Simpsones (Spanish name for the show, probably). We were just like "well we have no idea, so let's put something of the form 'The [person's name] Show' yeah?". Turns out that The Larry Sanders Show is actually a sitcom starring Garry Shandling. So there you go.
4) Spadroon sounded like "ye olde Englishe" to us and the sword in question's wikipedia page is a stub, which doesn't shed much light on the matter. Our guess of football was based on the idea that perhaps "spadroon" sounded an appropriate name for an inflated pig's bladder. It's not, but you've gotta have a go, right?
5) I'm basically pants at geography, having almost wholly outsourced it to my glamorous assistant. Everyone was thinking South/Central America and since Machu Picchu is in Peru and looks quite high up in pictures, we went with Lima. The elevation of Machu Picchu is 2,430m (oh?), Lima is 2672m (looking good!) and La Paz is 3,650 m (nooooooo).
6) We watched SO MUCH of the 2010 World Cup, in South Africa, and apparently have literally nothing to show for it. Sad :(

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (3 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) In 1906, Finland became the second country in the world to practice universal suffrage. Which island nation (coincidentally one of the first to popularise the Flat White coffee) was the first to do so, in 1893?
2) The Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None, takes its title from the final line of which children's rhyme about the varying fates of a number of small native Americans?
3) Published weekly between 1977-2012, what is the name of Matt Groening's comic strip about the darkly comedic lives of a group of rabbits?
4) With a name literally translated as "sword way" what Japanese martial art, in which practitioners endeavour to strike one another with wooden or bamboo swords, is similar to fencing but way cooler?
5) La Paz's full name is 'Nuestra Señora de La Paz', meaning 'Our Lady of...' what?
6) Which 2004 animated movie contains an extended diatribe by superhero fashion designer Edna Mode, about the significant safety hazards presented by capes?

The answers

1) New Zealand
2) Ten Little Indians
3) Life In Hell
4) Kendo
5) Peace
6) The Incredibles

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