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 19 February 2015
The 'USS' in Star Trek was said to stand for both United Space Ship and United Star Ship
Your targets this week:
1+ out of 11: Well done, you beat us! 2+ 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) Until 1995, scientists thought the giant panda was genetically closer to what animal than bears? 2) Which of these is not a real species of bear? Cave, Cinnamon, Glacier, Mexican Grizzly, or Naked? 3) Louis Jourdan, who died on Valentine's Day, played which Bond villain in the movie Octopussy? 4) The Cricket World Cup began last weekend at the Hagley Oval, a ground in which country? 5) 7 years ago Toshiba announced they would no longer produce what storage format? 6) What was Geordi La Forge's rank in Star Trek: The Next Generation?
Each of the next three answers rhymes with 'bear' or 'bears'.
7) Which actress wore prosthetic breasts in the movie A Dirty Shame? 8) The USA has 492, China has 152, Canada has 32. What? 9) In the New Testament, what would find in Matthew, Chapter 9, Verses 9-13?
No more rhyming!
10) 2 point question: 'Old Orchard' (which is also a chain of pubs of Montreal) is cowboy slang for what?
The answers
1) Raccoon 2) Naked (it's an hilarious 'Barenaked Ladies' joke, because Canada) 3) Kamal Khan 4) New Zealand 5) The HD DVD 6) 3 possible answers: Lieutenant (Junior Grade), Lieutenant, or Lieutenant Commander (he was promoted during the series) 7) Selma Blair 8) Billionaires 9) The Lord's Prayer 10) Whiskey
Our excuses
1) Considering the doctor's usual reliability on animal taxonomy, and raccoons being my favourite animal, this was something of a devastating miss. The doctor at least got this wrong in style: knowing the giant panda's genus is Ailuropoda and that 'ailuro' comes from the Greek for domestic cat, we suggested that scientists thought giant pandas were related to cats. 2) This was an amusing question to be asked, as when the doctor and I were on Pointless we faced a multiple choice round with a list of bears, some of which were fake. (More on that in the alternative question below.) Thanks to our memories of the show we knew there was a cinnamon bear, but the rest were a mystery. We went with glacier thinking that either this was a reference to the brand of mints, or at least that a glacier-specific species of bears would seem a bit odd. Alas, we had not reckoned for some good old-fashioned Canadian humour. 3) Bond trivia is firmly the doctor's domain, but as it's one of those subjects where a spectacular depth of knowledge is expected we seldom do particularly well. He knew Blofeld had been portrayed by multiple actors, however, so it seemed a better guess than nothing. 4) A testament to how little time I've had to procrastinate lately, it was to my horror that I realized I didn't know what was a very basic question for someone from England. I got as far as remembering seeing one or two people live-Tweeting, and did some maths to work out the approximate time zone, but from there it was always going to be a toss-up between Australia and New Zealand. 5) Unlike the previous question, our toss-up here was always going to miss as we contemplated either VHS cassettes or floppy disks. 6) Considering we went on to lose by such a slim margin, dropping a question like this was horrible. We've watched the entire series (obviously) and spent most of the round trying to work out whether "Lieutenant Commander La Forge" or "Commander La Forge" sounded more familiar. We were further persuaded of the latter by being fairly sure Data was a Lieutenant Commander (which, it transpires, he is), but there really is no excuse. 7) We hadn't heard of the movie, or the actress, and our strategy of "name an actress who rhymes with bear" led to Claire Danes who is not, it would seem, the same person. 8) This was a fun one to think about, but unfortunately we devoted most of our thinking time to the next question. As such, when the doctor suggested airports it seemed 'good enough', when really I should have been a touch more certain that Canada has more than just 32 of them. 9) Brutal. Another 'on another night, we'd've won' contribution. The phrasing indicated something fairly specific, but we didn't stumble in the right direction. A less-than-optimistic "Mary Magdalene washing Jesus' feet with her hair". 10) Not, as the question may have suggested, a case of local knowledge helping here. We went the fairly direct (i.e. unimaginative) route and went with 'bar/saloon'.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (2 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!
My alternative questions 1) The name of which web browser is another name for the red panda? 2) As explained above, when the doctor and I were on Pointless, one round was on types of bear. But to within 10%, how many of the 100 people surveyed on that episode (when given 100 seconds to name as many types of bear as they could) named the giant panda? (Note that 'within 10%' means 'plus or minus 10% of the actual answer', not 'within 10 people'.) 3) According to oxforddictionaries.com what is the standard English plural of the word octopus? 4) Of the five teams to have won the Cricket World Cup which one does not represent a member of the United Nations? 5) Essential (boring) trivia: the HD in HD DVD stands for high definition (or density), but what does the V in DVD stand for? (The Ds stand for Digital and Disc.) 6) What links a five-time Wimbledon champion with an alien race from the Star Trek series? 7) A now-global boycott of which mulinational corporation began in the United States over 30 years ago in protest over their marketing of breast milk substitutes? 8) Who is North America's only black billionaire? 9) The penultimate UK number one single of 1999, Cliff Richard's The Millennium Prayer featured the Lord's Prayer sung to what tune? 10) The 'Old Fashioned' is often described as the world's first cocktail. Primarily comprised of whiskey, according to the International Bartenders Association there are three other ingredients. For one point each, name two of them.
The answers
1)Firefox 2) 44 (so 40-48 gets you the point) 3)Octopuses 4) West Indies 5) Versatile (although I should also accept 'video' or, indeed, 'it doesn't stand for anything - although your local quizmaster might not) 6)Borg 7)Nestlé 8)Oprah Winfrey 9) Auld Lang Syne 10) (Angostura) bitters, sugar, and water (fancy!)
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
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