This weekend the doctor and I got our geek on and headed to Montreal Comiccon. One of the best things about conventions are all the cosplayers - attendees who put together often incredible costumes of their favourite people/characters from movies, TV, music, video games and, of course, comics. Naturally, we took a bunch of photos, and what better way to share them than through a picture quiz?
Here, then, are 22 questions about or inspired by what we saw at the con. Suffice to say this will be on the slightly nerdy side, but I've tried to keep things reasonably accessible. Sincere thanks and credit to all those pictured, some of the efforts on display were truly stunning.
Don't forget to click on an image for a larger version - but be careful: it brings up a slideshow and if you scroll too far you might be spoiled for the answers!
Questions 1-4
1) Which fictional team drive this car? 2) What is the alpha-numeric designation of this dog (hint: he has nothing to do with Star Trek). 3) In the middle here is an excellent portrayal of Rainbow Dash from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series, but from which British TV show do the couple flanking her take inspiration? 4) Name the actor on the left and the (fictional) species portrayed on the right. (1 point for each)
Questions 5-8
5) This cosplay is of an operatic character from which 1997 film directed by Luc Besson? 6) Who is this chap? 7) Which Doctor Who 'doctor' has been shopping? I want the name of the relevant actor, please. 8) On which fictional space station might you find this staff member?
Questions 9-12
9) (Top left) Which musician is currently in a legal battle with Disney over attempts to trademark the emblem worn here? 10) (Top right) Which character is this? He was played in a 1992 movie by Danny DeVito. 11) (Bottom left) Rocking some appropriate plaid, which Canadian superhero is this? 12) (Bottom right) This is the lead character from which critically acclaimed American crime drama which ended a year ago this month?
Questions 13-16
13) Looking a little bit lonely, this bad guy is from which comic, television and movie franchise? Its cartoon's first arrival in the UK was marked by the change of one word in its title - considered too violent for children - to 'hero'. 14) Which musician is this? 15) Real name Arthur Curry, which superhero (and founding member of Detective Comics' Justice League of America) is this? 16) Hopefully all of us can recognize a Spock at a hundred paces, but which actor played him in Star Trek?
Questions 17-20
17) (Top left) Which two characters are these? (1 point for each) 18) (Top right) Name any two of the five characters here. (1 point for each) 19) (Bottom left) Ignore what I think is a steampunk zombie and instead check out Thor. What is the name of his hammer? 20) (Two pictures in bottom right) These are two characters from which major fantasy TV series?
21) One of the pictures (and questions) above features precisely one real-life celebrity famous person. Which question/who?
And finally...
22) Where's Wally? :D
Once you've had enough of staring at that little lot, check below for the answers, tally up your score then let the world know how you got on with the poll! The answers
The (real) IT Crowd
1) The Ghostbusters 2) K-9 (from Doctor Who) 3) The IT Crowd (it's Roy and a gender-swapped, race-swapped Moss!) 4)2-pointer: Jim Carrey (portraying Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) and a Predator (from Predator) 5) The Fifth Element (the alien Diva Plavalaguna, played by Maïwenn Le Besco, pictured, and voiced by Inva Mula) 6) Hulk Hogan 7) David Tennant (complete with 3D glasses) 8) The Death Star (it's an Imperial gunner, in case you were wondering) 9) deadmau5 ('dead mouse' or similar is fine)
Diva Plavalaguna
10) The Penguin 11) Wolverine (James Howlett and Logan also acceptable) 12) Breaking Bad (it's Walter White) 13) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (it's Shredder) 14) Slash from Guns N' Roses 15) Aquaman 16) Leonard Nimoy 17)2-pointer: Virginia "Pepper" Potts and Tony Stark (from the Iron Man series; pseudonyms also acceptable)
Walter White
18)2-pointer: Standing up from left to right: Elsa (from Disney's Frozen), Mr. Freeze (from the Batman comics, perhaps most notably played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1997 film Batman & Robin), Emma Frost (from the X-Men), Ice King (from Adventure Time), kneeling is Captain Cold (from the Flash comics). Only two points available but if you knew all five please fill out an application to be friends with the doctor. 19) Mjölnir 20) Game of Thrones (it's Daenerys Targaryen - also know as Mother of Dragons among many others - and Hodor) 21) Hulk Hogan in question six is the real deal :D 22) Right at the back, just to the right of the blue door (circled here)
The latest in computerized identification.
Don't forget the two-point questions: the total score is out of 25!
Everyone's Pointless friend Richard is all grown up with a show of his own. He's taken off the stabilizers (read: Alexander Armstrong) and bought himself a brand new bicycle. It's a little bland, and certainly no 18-speed racer, but Two Tribes still goes at a bit of a lick and offers a perfectly watchable half hour of quizzing fun. (I don't know where this bicycle metaphor came from but I'm going on holiday tomorrow so I've decided it's fine.)
Like most shows, Two Tribes has its own simple shtick. Each round sees contestants placed into tribes (i.e. teams) based on their yes or no responses to personality-based questions. One round might see karaoke lovers against those who can't stand it, while the next could mix them up based on sunbathing preferences. Beyond this you're watching a fairly straight question-and-answer show, with each round's winning team progressing while the losers fight it out among themselves for survival. Once whittled down to two the tribalism is dropped altogether for a final head to head where the winner, in a curious twist, gets not cash but £1,000 in vouchers (such as for travel, 'gadgets', or sofas). The individual games aren't particularly inspiring; the only newish trick is that when working as a team individual contestants can pass on a question in the hope a team-mate knows it. Otherwise you're watching straight buzzer races or, in the case of the final, a 'chess clock quiz' where a player's timer ticks down until they successfully answer a question. (If you think that last one sounds familiar, there are severalpossiblereasons why.)
First impressions, then, are that though not the most original this is still a perfectly serviceable show. It's a half hour format in a half hour slot (take note, The 21st Question), and even the more 'grumpy old quizzers' out there should be satisfied with the number of questions they get through. Beyond that, though, the basic Two Tribes premise adds very little.
The back of Richard Osman's head.
The obvious selling point of the format is to encourage the viewer to root for one of the teams in each round. For this to work, however, you need to look for things a bit more divisive than whether or not people think they can dance. The third show provided the first hints of this idea, when the contestants were split based on whether they were royalists (and Richard made a few attempts to remind us that we were supposed to follow suit), but the subsequent banter had an inevitable air of tension. A general uneasiness between contestant and present pervades the show, with questions about whether someone lies about their age, or if they've ever been dumped creating an atmosphere rather at odds with a friendly teatime quiz aesthetic. (One chap who found himself in the "I'd make a good Prime Minister" tribe, cheerfully announced he'd stop anyone from using the NHS who hadn't paid into it; if I wanted that sort of ill-thought out political debate I'd watch Prime Minister's Questions, not "that new Richard Osman thing that's on before Eggheads".)
Two Tribes consequently finds itself in a slightly awkward position. On the one hand their USP is to create teams we might actually care about, but on the other the topics that are most likely to invite viewer engagement are necessarily the divisive, controversial issues that have no real place at 6pm on BBC Two. This reduces its function to that of 'banter butter'; greasing the wheels of getting to know the contestants by using their personality prompts as a starting point. To its credit, the show works quite well in that regard, but this feels more of a clever side-effect than a format-selling feature.
When it comes to quizzes there are good formats, and there are good shows, and for me Two Tribes is more of the latter than the former. There's a healthy number of questions, which though not the hardest are well-compiled, and the contestant chatter is spread out and well-motivated by the game's structure. Everything else is at best fine, and there's very little that actively detracts from the viewing experience. One minor exception is Osman's hosting which, having previously served as Alexander Armstrong's straight man, can be a touch uncomfortable. His wry sense of humour is often directed at contestants unsure of how to react, and there's no charismatic co-host to step into the subsequent awkward silence.
Otherwise, Two Tribes works well enough to warrant a half hour of your day, with its pace and light-heartedness providing a refreshing change in the current quizzing landscape. Though by no means a classic, it's certainly not 'bad', and at the moment that alone can set a new quiz apart.
It's the summer! No really, you can tell because ITV are doing their thing of taking The Chase off air for a few weeks while they trial some new shows. Gethin Jones (equally famous for his roles on Blue Peter and Welsh language rugby-themed quiz Cwis Meediant) spends an hour asking 21 questions to 11 contestants, one of whom could be walking away with thousands of pounds. It sounds, and is, a bit slow, but with 2000% more questions than Deal or No Deal it's not always quantity that counts.
The show has a simple premise - Gethin has 21 questions and whoever's in control of the game when he asks the final one gets the chance to win a Big Cash Prize. Regular quiz viewers will know, however, that a simple premise alone does not necessarily a simple show make, and in its implementation various complications arise.
We start by being launched headfirst into the 'Race to Five' where the contestants are asked to find five correct answers to a question from a set of ten options ("Which five of these ten are Coronation Street characters?", for example). As Gethin explains while they answer (apparently oblivious to those of us trying to tackle the question ourselves) this will decide who stands where at the start of the game. We still don't know what any of this really means, however, and so Gethin is left to inject some intrigue on our behalf "Oh, you've chosen position number 9? Interesting! Position number 3? That's brave!". A first time viewer may as well be watching Numberwang, and if you're more interested in my thoughts as a whole than a summary of the rules, skip down to Easy when you know how.
You've got the touch, you've got the power (spot)
Once everyone's in position someone will be on the 'Power Spot' and we now get a grip on the actual mechanics. The game is split into 'battles' of up to three questions where the Power Spot player tries to see off whoever is next in line. Crucially, the challenger can only succeed and take over the Power Spot by answering a question correctly that the Power Spot player gets wrong; if both contestants match each other across the three questions then the challenger is eliminated. In the meantime, correct answers from the Power Spot player builds up the show's jackpot (but no-one really pays any attention to that).
Gethin to know you.
Play continues with either the Power Spot player holding on, or a challenger replacing them, gradually working down the queue of contestants as the question number ticks up. As there are a fixed number of questions some players may not get to play at all (unless some battles end quickly) and we'll occasionally hear a strange noise and a challenger at the back of the queue will be told they're out. Similarly, a player in the 'danger zone' and at risk of the same fate may find themselves guaranteed to play. As a final bit of gameplay contestants may sometimes 'double up': doubling the difficulty and monetary value of the questions in a battle. After the 20th question whoever is in control of the Power Spot has, effectively, won the show, and gets to face the titular question for the cash. Anyone left in line toddles off (but, as long as it's not Friday, will be back tomorrow - hooray!).
The jackpot question is a fairly standard list format, such as the 10 most populous US cities, or the 10 biggest grossing Leonardo di Caprio movies. The contestant is first asked for three answers that appear on the list, and if they're all there they win half the jackpot. They can then gamble to offer a further two that will net them the full jackpot, and then gamble one last time to offer a sixth answer for the chance to double it. Win or lose they're the one contestant who won't be coming back tomorrow (and with nary a coveted trophy to dry their tears).
Easy when you know how
A simple premise it may be then but, as that explanation illustrates, there's a lot more going on than just 21 questions. Much of this becomes clear after a few episodes but for a brand new show testing the waters with a ten-game run it asks rather a lot of its necessarily new viewers. While some of these complications are largely unavoidable, there are still things the show could really do without. A fixed jackpot for example, rather than one that builds, would remove an element that adds approximately nothing to the experience. (While in theory a player lasting a long time on the Power Spot yields a bigger jackpot, this detail is generally lost in the broader 'survival' narrative.) The double up, meanwhile, feels like something very much tacked on and doesn't offer as much tactical depth as the show would like us to think (a Power Spot player should almost never use it, a challenger almost always should).
There are, however, more fundamental problems, with the show's 'basic' premise the most significant. In an era where to save money quiz shows try to desperately string out as few questions over as long a period as possible, advertising up front that you're going to spend an hour asking just 21 of them is remarkably brazen. The Chase can ask that many in a couple of minutes, while the similar-ish Eggheads usually manages around 30 in half the time. What's more, the general difficulty level is so low that several of those 21 are often pointlessly easy, with the knock-on effect whereby contestants will often be eliminated despite answering all of their questions correctly. (While this of course rewards players who start on the Power Spot for their bravado, it still leaves an unsatisfying taste in the mouth.)
"If you're in green you will be seen" is one of
several rejected catchphrases for the show.
Beyond gameplay the presentation of the show can be characterized as 'okay'. Gethin's hosting is serviceable, but with the hallmarks of a man who cut his teeth in children's television, while the general aesthetics are the now-typical 'dark and moody' affair which inspires nobody. It says a great deal that for me the studio highlight is a moving walkway that swings around to the next contestant after each elimination.
Overall, however, this is not as bad a quiz as it sounds. Once you're broadly familiar with the idea of "someone's in control and has to answer questions to stay in control until the end" the various intricacies can be safely ignored. At that point it becomes a fairly unremarkable hour of questions that could at least serve as a backdrop while you're making dinner. The jackpot round is fun enough (even if they do commit the quizzing cardinal sin of sometimes not revealing missing answers), and seeing someone last a long time on the Power Spot has the potential to be quite engaging. Beyond that, though, I don't buy into the various forced narratives ("ooh, you faced Steve on Tuesday and he won!"), but I'm sure there are plenty of potential viewers to whom that would appeal.
On a first viewing, though, things are at best overwhelming and at worst incomprehensible, and so it's understandable that the show has received the customary bashing on social media platforms. Given a couple of weeks for viewers to get to grips with it's conceivable this could do enough to merit another run, and with a few tweaks (or at least a better approach to how the rules are presented) it could and should be far less intimidating. Even then, though, the lack of questions (and consequent pacing) makes this a tough sell to even the most casual quizzer.
A curious property of TV quizzes is that there is often little correlation between effort and reward. Some shows offer huge prizes in return for particularly exceptional quizzing, while others reward only mild skill (or even plain old luck) with similarly enormous paychecks. The most peculiar extreme, however, features those shows that are the hardest by far to win, but offer virtually no prize whatsoever. Compare Mastermind, one of the toughest gigs in town, with Deal or No Deal, where contestants are asked (the same) yes or no question a few times. On the latter, and on a daily basis, players could win up to £250,000, on the former one contestant a year gets a fruit bowl.
Clearly then, people aren't applying for Mastermind for the money. Instead there's some intangible prestige associated with claiming this particular televisual title that keeps the contestants rolling up. Tell some hardcore quizzers you won a few quid off the Banker and they might feign mild interest, tell them you've won Mastermind and, well, you won't need to tell them because they'll have already tried to recruit you to their quiz league.
During a recent pub quiz someone suggested that Mastermind could be regarded as a 'quizzing Grand Slam'; one of those few tournaments where the title means more than any prize money that might come with it. (And while I'm well aware of how this sounds just a little bit silly in the cold light of day, it honestly made perfect sense after a few pints.) What followed was an inevitable debate over which other quiz shows could be considered Grand Slams, and whether we could pair them up with their real-life equivalents in tennis (other sports are available, but it was Wimbledon season). We decided that to qualify a show had to have no prize money, be currently televised (thus ruling out Fifteen to One, an otherwise obvious contender), and be 'bloody hard'. Your mileage may vary, but what follows is thus the entirely subjective view of a group of moderately squiffy quiz nerds.
"You should've chosen 'being a crybaby'
as your specialist subject!!!"
Wimbledon
The British classic can only be matched by one show: Mastermind. While not the oldest on the list, it is arguably the 'daddy' of TV quizzes with the greatest recognition even among those strange members of society who don't obsess over trivia. Sure, Andy Murray won the US Open last year, but it was his subsequent victory at Wimbledon that got the most attention. Win Mastermind and chances are even your hairdresser will be impressed.
The Australian Open
The youngest of the tennis grand slams, we thought University Challenge, with its inherently youthful flavour, was the best match. Another unashamedly tough quiz, it's possibly the hardest to win given the relatively strict eligibility requirement of being a student. While the Open University has seen some 'back door' routes into this title in the past, their lack of presence in the competition in recent years suggests that even that path may be closed for the time being.
The US Open
While the oldest of the lot, the radio-only presence of Brain of Britain
means it doesn't quite have the Wimbledon-esque significance of
Mastermind in the public consciousness. Nevertheless, there's no denying
the difficulty and importance of claiming this particular accolade in
the quizzing world. I'll admit the US Open analogy is more process of elimination than perfect match, but if you really want a tenuous link then let's say Brain of Britain's somewhat idiosyncratic question structure reflects the US Open's position as the only grand slam with final set tiebreaks. Uncanny.
The French Open
Rafael Nadal's skills at missing vowels
are a closely-guarded secret
With the French Open's clay courts setting it apart from the other three tennis Grand Slams, we felt the lateral thinking element of Only Connect made it a fitting final entry to the list. While perhaps too young to be a cast-iron consideration just yet, there is sadly little competition for this fourth and final spot. Whether it can stand up to the test of time remains to be seen.
Final thoughts
I don't doubt that many would argue with the above but I can at least claim not to be the only person to consider these shows as a quizzing 'big four'. Former Mastermind champion (not to mention Brain of Britain and Only Connect runner up) Dave Clark identified appearing on these four shows as one of '30 quiz experiences to try before you die' (which is a good read if you haven't already seen it), and various googling can throw up other similarly 'qualified' individuals espousing the virtues of every member of the list.
In any case they all certainly tick the boxes of having no prize money and being bloody hard. Indeed, with regards to the latter no-one has managed to win all four. To date Ian Bayley has come the closest, winning Brain of Britain in 2010, Mastermind in 2011, and is one third of Only Connect's all-conquering Crossworders. He also carries the rare distinction of having appeared on University Challenge twice, for two different institutions, but despite this is unable to complete the set. Clearly, if you want to achieve this holy quaternity of quiz shows, you need to start young.
