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 15 January 2015
Fajitagate was a thing
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 left-fielder
The ones that got away 1) From what country was explorer Alexander Mackenzie? 2) From what country was explorer Edmund Hillary? 3) On 30th September, 1927, which legend make history by hitting his 60th? 4) In what month of 1974 did Richard Nixon resign? 5) What adjective could describe a cow that's had its horns removed, but not its opinion? 6) In which 1966 Billy Wilder movie did Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon become embroiled in an extravagant insurance scam?
The answers
1) Scotland/Britain 2) New Zealand 3) Babe Ruth (the 60 being his record-breaking 60 home runs that year) 4) August (August 9th, in case you're wondering) 5)Polled 6)The Fortune Cookie
Our excuses
1) A bit of overthinking here, as we decided the obvious answer was, well, too obvious, and instead went with Canadian as it rang a faint bell. Turns out it should have as he's apparently known for his 1792-3 overland crossing of Canada to reach the Pacific Ocean. 2) A bit of underthinking here, as we decided on the obvious answer of British while I sat wondering if I had a good reason to think he was from New Zealand. One of those classic quiz dilemmas where I had a feeling for the right answer, but was nowhere near certain enough to go with it, even if it is some fairly standard trivia. 3) Back to overthinking, as while the doctor and I could only manage the "it sounds like baseball so, er, Babe Ruth?" our Canadian teammate had an inkling for Roger Maris (who in fact broke Ruth's record, albeit in 1961). I should note we were more than happy with this answer, as I thought Ruth's career had finished by 1927. 4) Based on vague memories of footage from the time, we suspected the Watergate break-in itself probably happened in a summer month. I pushed us to September, thinking there would have been a bit of delay before the resignation, but in doing so put us one month too late. (Although given it took over 2 years from the break-in to resignation, I don't think we can really claim this as a 'close call'.) 5) We quite liked our guess of 'stubborn' for this, as it sounds a bit like 'stub horn' which seemed to neatly fit the clue. Unfortunately that's from the Middle English in the sense of 'untamable' or 'implacable', so falls into "clever but not correct". 6) We didn't have much of a clue on this, but the left-fielder suggested Charade as the name sounded like it might fit the movie, it was from roughly the right time (1963, it seems) and it even had Walter Matthau in it.
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
Question 6
1) The Hudson's Bay Company is a Canadian retail business group and the oldest company in North America. It takes its name from the Hudson Bay in North-Eastern Canada, the world's second largest bay behind which other? 2) Where would you find the mountain Mauna Kea which, at over 10,200m, is the tallest mountain in the world when measured from its base? (By comparison, Everest is 8,848m from base to summit.) 3) What two-word term describes an award in Major League Baseball earned by a player leading the league in three specific statistical categories of performance? The term is used in numerous sports, although perhaps most notably in horse racing. 4) Wikipedia has a long (and fascinating) list of scandals given "-gate" suffix names, but who was the perpetrator of 2010's 'bigotgate'? 5) If you polled 100 sheep asking them what their favourite day of the week was, what is the minimum number of votes any one day could receive and still win outright (i.e. by at least one vote)? (Assuming every sheep picks a day.) 6) Before portraying Keith Lemon, comedian Leigh Francis created Channel 4's Bo' Selecta. Which English singer-songwriter is this Bo' Selecta mask depicting?
The answers
1) The Bay of Bengal 2) Hawaii 3)Triple Crown 4) Gordon Brown (on describing Gillian Duffy as a "bigoted woman") 5) 16 (with each other day receiving 14 votes; no day could win outright with just 15 votes, it would be at best a tie) 6) Kelly Osbourne
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
For the record, left-fielder is not merely a reference to my weird collection of mind trivia, but is my position in baseball as well. Double meanings are fun!
Really kicking myself on the Mackenzie one, because in retrospect I knew Mackenzie had explored in Canada, which almost certainly means he would not be Canadian (the Brits and the French had explored most of this place by the time Canadians became "A Thing").
Of course I'm really REALLY kicking myself over Maris/Ruth... I realized it was home runs pretty quickly, but in my mind Ruth hit 58 and Maris hit 60. In fact I remember listening to an interview with Chris Davis in 2013, who was on track to beat 62 (but not Barry Bonds' 73 (a number I had to look up to confirm, because apparently, I cannot remember numbers of home runs)) and said publicly that he thought 62 was the only record that stood due to PED allegations against Bonds. Of course, his season fell off the rails, he hit "only" 53, and he became far less good at baseball in 2014 (in a season ending with -- and this is true -- a PED charge).
I didn't have a curveball's chance in Cuba on the other four, of course.
The thing to remember about Watergate is that the actual break in took place in 1972. It took two years for the whole thing to be unearthed.
ReplyDeleteThat's just what they want you to think!
Delete(But yes, good point. I actually missed that entirely.)
I knew the resignation was a couple of years after the breakin, but had no idea which month it was. I had a 1 in 12 chance with May, but no luck.
DeleteI knew that de-horned cattle are referred to as polled, but your sheep question wasn't trivia - it was maths !
ReplyDeletePfft. The debate about 'what is trivia' is a complicated one :p I'll admit I'm somewhat biased when it comes to maths, though!
DeleteFor the record, left-fielder is not merely a reference to my weird collection of mind trivia, but is my position in baseball as well. Double meanings are fun!
ReplyDeleteReally kicking myself on the Mackenzie one, because in retrospect I knew Mackenzie had explored in Canada, which almost certainly means he would not be Canadian (the Brits and the French had explored most of this place by the time Canadians became "A Thing").
Of course I'm really REALLY kicking myself over Maris/Ruth... I realized it was home runs pretty quickly, but in my mind Ruth hit 58 and Maris hit 60. In fact I remember listening to an interview with Chris Davis in 2013, who was on track to beat 62 (but not Barry Bonds' 73 (a number I had to look up to confirm, because apparently, I cannot remember numbers of home runs)) and said publicly that he thought 62 was the only record that stood due to PED allegations against Bonds. Of course, his season fell off the rails, he hit "only" 53, and he became far less good at baseball in 2014 (in a season ending with -- and this is true -- a PED charge).
I didn't have a curveball's chance in Cuba on the other four, of course.