On Holiday!

I'm currently travelling through the wilds of Canada, so the blog will be on a hiatus for a bit. In the meantime, happy Canada Day! Why not celebrate by reading past entries in the blog? You can't have read all of them, right?

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Special Edition: MatchWords Week 2!

It's week 2 of the MatchWords special! If you missed last week's check it out here! This week's edition features 10 more matches where the home and away team abbreviations spell out a word. View the quiz as an image file here and as a PDF here. Your challenge is to identify each country, work out its three-letter abbreviation, and the resulting word. (Alternatively, you could work out the word and try and reverse-engineer the countries.) However you do it, you get 1 point per country (full name, not just its abbreviation) and 1 per word, giving a maximum possible score of 30. Answers are below the image, and as always there's a poll below to let everyone know how you did!

Click here for the full quiz!

The answers

11) Belgium (BEL), Uganda (UGA), BELUGA
12) Turkey (TUR), Botswana (BOT), TURBOT
13) Gambia (GAM), Bolivia (BOL), GAMBOL
14) Iceland (ISL), Andorra (AND), ISLAND
15) Hungary (HUN), Germany (GER), HUNGER
16) Angola (ANG), Lesotho (LES), ANGLES
17) Madagascar (MAD), Denmark (DEN), MADDEN
18) Cyprus (CYP), Russia (RUS), CYPRUS
19) Gibraltar (GIB), Bermuda (BER), GIBBER
20) Finland (FIN), Estonia (EST), FINEST

How did you do? Let the world know with the poll!

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Special Edition: Introducing MatchWords!

Inspired by Euro 2016, I was looking for fun quizzing gems hiding in international football (but don't worry, actual football knowledge isn't especially required). Many fans are familiar with the 'fun fact' that when Sweden host Denmark the scoreboard reads SWE vs. DEN, spelling out SWEDEN. This got me thinking about other international fixtures which, when you merge the teams' FIFA three-letter abbreviations, spell out words.

Depending on which dictionary you use, this leads to 70-80 fixtures where the home team's abbreviation followed by the away team's abbreviation spells out a word. Most of these are really weird things that no-one ever uses (Sweden vs. Venezuela leads to 'SWEVEN', which is apparently an archaic term for a vision or dream), but some are words I've actually heard of. I've decided to call these things 'MatchWords', and - obviously - have come up with a quiz based on them.

The quiz consists of 10 such matches with clues to the home team, away team, and the MatchWord itself. There's an example of one of the questions below, and for the full thing either click here for an image, or here for a downloadable PDF! Your challenge is to identify each country, work out its three-letter abbreviation, and the resulting word. (Alternatively, you could work out the word and try and reverse-engineer the countries.) However you do it, you get 1 point per country (full name, not just its abbreviation) and 1 per word, giving a maximum possible score of 30. Answers are below the image, and as always there's a poll below to let everyone know how you did!

Click here for the full quiz!

The answers

1) Bangladesh (BAN), Germany (GER), BANGER
2) Cambodia (CAM), Peru (PER), CAMPER
3) Colombia (COL), Liehctenstein (LIE), COLLIE
4) Honduras (HON), Estonia (EST), HONEST
5) Democratic Republic of the Congo (COD), Germany (GER), CODGER
6) Trinidad and Tobago (TRI), Libya (LBY), TRILBY
7) Samoa (SAM), Panama (PAN, SAMPAN
8) South Korea (KOR), Malaysia (MAS), KORMAS
9) Sierra Leone (SLE), Azerbaijan (AZE), SLEAZE
10) Puerto Rico (PUR), Palestine (PLE), PURPLE

How did you do? Let the world know with the poll! (And, if you enjoyed it, come back next week for 10 more new MatchWords!)

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There was an evil car in Knight Rider called Knight Automated Roving Robot (KARR - geddit?!)

Your targets this week:

We won this week, but could you do even better?

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

The ones that got away
1) In Knight Rider, what model of car is (the original) KITT?
2) Which Canadian singer-songwriter began an advice column in the Guardian earlier this year?
3) Which of these is not a real game developed as part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise? a) Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games; b) Sister Sonic; c) Sonic's Casino Poker; d) Sonic's Delivery Service; e) Sonic's Schoolhouse
4) What emotion was singer songwriter Akon's first number 1 single as lead artist?
5) What emotion is a part of the mouth spelled backwards?
6) 2 point question: approximately how many US patents have been issued? Your answer will be the number 9 followed by a certain number of zeros.

The answers

1) Trans Am (Pontiac alone does not suffice for the point)
2) Alanis Morissette
3) Sonic's Delivery Service
4) Lonely
5) Smug (from 'gums')
6) 9,000,000 (9 million)

The doctor's excuses

1) Did you know that Trans Am is probably short for Trans America? We didn't hear 'model' and so hedged our bets with Pontiac :(
2) We put Bryan Adams because he's really popular in Canada because he's secretly from there, and so everyone is like, really proud of him, but it was actually Alanis Morissette. Which is ironic.
3) We put Sister Sonic (which, as a cancelled and unreleased title sort of counts as correct, IMO) based on only having heard of one of them (the Olympics one). Sonic's Schoolhouse was an edutainment title and Sonic's Casino Poker (a Japanese mobile poker game from the 2000s). I guess Sonic's Delivery Service is a riff on the Studio Ghibli movie Kiki's Delivery Service? Who knows?!
4) This song is basically a duet between Akon and a weird "chipmunkified" voice singing about how they are "mr lonely". It's pretty weird and I had actually heard it, but since the only Akon song, that we for sure knew the name of, was called "Smack That"... so that's what we put. I think Akon is like... mainly RnB, which is one of the few genres I will happily admit to be largely un-fond of (it's just like, kind of croonily smooth in an annoying way? I dunno. End of The Road by Boyz II Men is a deffo a classic, tho).
5) I hate this kind of question, where people are like 'uh it's a medical question' and it's basically not it's some stupid trick joke. Everyone else seemed fine with it though, weirdly.
6) Given that at one time there was a patent on minigames being played in the loading screen of video games, I'm surprised there aren't as many patents as we thought (900 million).

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 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) The 'Pontiac Bandit' is a character played by Craig Robinson in which police sitcom? The title consists of a New York borough followed by two numbers.
2) In her first column, Morissette answered a reader who was feeling attracted to a man other than their husband. In doing so, she advised "Far better to let your spark be grist for your marriage’s mill, rather than a reason to end it." - broadly speaking, what is 'grist'?
3) What company, who created and owns the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, takes its name originally from an abbreviation of 'Service Games'?
4) Akon's 'Lonely' features an edited version of 50s crooner Bobby Vinton's 'Mr. Lonely'. A cover of what Tony Bennett song provided Vinton with his biggest hit? The title consists of a colour followed by a fabric.
5) Speaking of body parts that are anagrams of emotions, what body part is an anagram of 'elation'?
6) Pictured are images from US patents 6276176 and 4591071 A, belonging to Sara Blakely and Lonnie Johnson, respectively. For 1 point each, what brand names are each of these inventions associated with?

Question 6 (click for a bigger version!)

The answers

1) Brooklyn Nine-Nine
2) Grain (more specifically, grain separated from its chaff ready for milling)
3) SEGA
4) Blue Velvet
5) Toenail
6) Spanx, Super Soaker

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

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Kraft Dinner (macaroni and cheese in a box) is very popular in Canada, where it's widely known as simply 'KD'

Exciting times! Occasional team-mate (and our regular quizmaster, no less) the left-fielder went to a quiz (without us, the cad), and offered to write a special guest Ones That got Away! You'll find their missed questions, excuses, and alternative questions below. I've even got to play along myself, so you have an extra target to beat. (You may also learn, given the difficulty of some of these for non-Canadians, why we only went to this quiz once...)

Your targets this week:

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

The attendees
1) The left-fielder
2) The mac-and-cheese eater

The ones that got away 
1) How many boroughs are there in Montreal?
2) For 1 point each, name the four divisions of the National Hockey League before they were renamed in 1993.
3) What sport divides play into "chukkas"?
4) Botts' dots are sometimes used to divide what?
5) For 1 point each, name the three people pictured: they discovered penicillin, were a supermodel, and the 20th century writer who wrote The Doors of Perception about mescaline trips respectively. Each name contains an X.
6) What is the capital of Ghana? Starts and ends with the letter A.
7) Where are the Montgomery glands located? Starts and ends with letter A.

Question 5

The answers

1) 19
2) Patrick, Adams, Norris, and Smythe Divisions
3) Polo
4) Roads into lanes (they are the reflective dots affixed to the pavement in some places)
5) Alexander Fleming, Kim Alexis, Aldous Huxley
6) Accra
7) Areola

The left-fielder's excuses

1) Well, two University geography students (one from Urban Planning, no less) couldn't get close on this one. We knew it was somewhere between ten and twenty, and I was pretty sure it was a prime number (I remember these things, inexplicably) but, unfortunately, we were six short, guessing thirteen. Seems like valuable trivia knowledge, that (basic local civic knowledge).
2) A real howler for us, since we managed to get four names down - Campbell, Wales, Smythe, and Norris netting us two points - but it turns out that Campbell and Wales are conferences. At least we managed to pull two of them, considering neither of us were more than eight years old when they changed to geographical names.
3) Would've benefited us greatly to have a non-Canadian on our team, here, because all we use our horses for is making terrible family dramas for primetime television and pooping on our most historic streets. While I was able to reason that a chukka is also a name for a desert boot, I did not put together that desert boots were worn by British soldiers, which would have gotten us closer. Without anything good to guess, we played defensively and put lacrosse, because if that was the answer, most of the teams in the bar would've taken it.
4) Really rubbing in the fact that I did not pay attention in any Urban Planning courses here. I thought of stamps (you know how they have those little circular perforations where you're supposed to tear?) and I was so proud of thinking of a thing that separates other things with circles, we didn't really put any more thought into this. Now I wonder what the dots between stamps are called.
5) FLEMING GODDAMN IT. Actual conversation:
- "his first name is definitely Alexander."
- "what's his last name?"
- "I can't remember... same last name as the time zone guy."
- "Oh my god. I had a vest I bought from a thrift store from a boys private school in Toronto that was named after the time zone guy."
- "So what's his name?"
- "I CAN'T REMEMBER."
- Ten minutes of brain-wracking later: "FUCK. WRITE HAMILTON. I GIVE UP."
We didn't stand a chance on Kim Alexis, and we could not get Huxley -- after trying to remember if Hunter S. Thompson, Ray Bradbury, Joseph Keller, Timothy Leary, Jack Kerouac and other druggie-writers had an X in their name, we gave up and wrote "Ray X. Bradbury" -- which, another team pointed out when our wrong answer was read aloud, would have been better had we written "X-Ray Bradbury." Shut up, other team.
6) Well, we knew it started and ended with A, so OBVIOUSLY I wrote Abuja and felt very proud of myself. You know those times when you feel like YOU DON'T EVEN DESERVE TO QUIZ? Here's one!
7) Yup, knew this, but by this point we were pretty beaten down and we couldn't even think of any body parts starting/ending with A other than aorta. Which we knew was wrong. But we wrote anyway, because blank is death in quiz.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have beaten the statistician (3 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (6 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) Toronto famously (now) has six boroughs, which is why Canadian poet laureate Drake (lol) calls the city The 6ix. Three are Etobicoke, Scarborough, and Old Toronto. The other three are East/North/(unprefixed) What? Four letters.
2) When the NHL merged in the late 70s with the WHA, four teams entered the league. Of those four, one is still in its original location, while the other three have since relocated to Colorado, Carolina, and Arizona respectively. What are those four merger teams? 1 point each.
3) A question that sums up all of my knowledge of Polo pretty succinctly: who makes Polo Sport brand men's cologne?
4) Two of my favourite Dots growing up were Dot Warner and Dot Matrix. From what TV shows were these two characters? 1 point each.
5) The pictures on the right show two other people with an X in their name: The first, "the first computer-generated TV host", and the second, an animator and director. Who are they? 1 point each.
6) What is the only country that starts and ends with the letter A, whose capital ALSO starts and ends with the letter A?
7) What region (province, state, etc)'s capital is Montgomery? It also starts and ends with the letter A.

Question 5

The answers

1) York
2) Edmonton Oilers (still there!), Winnipeg Jets (moved to AZ), Quebec Nordiques (moved to CO), New England/Hartford Whalers (moved to NC).
3) Ralph Lauren
4) Animaniacs and Reboot
5) Max Headroom and Tex Avery
6) Andorra (Andorra la Vella)
7) Alabama

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

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The NHL's Stanley Cup is not flat, but in fact, very tall

Your target this week:

1+ out of 7: 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 secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin
6) The sports guy

The ones that got away

Question 3

1) What is the most spoken language in South America?
2) In 1993, which New York borough held a referendum on whether to secede from the city of New York?
3) Pictured is part of an Internet meme. In this context, what 3 words most typically follow 'here come dat boi!'?
4) In grams, how much does a bee hummingbird weigh? Your answer will be the number 2, followed by a number of zeros.
5) In May 1877, an 8.8 magnitude Earthquake occurred off the coast of which country? If you get the country you get 2 points. If you get one of its neighbours you get 1 point.
6) This question will require some explanation. On the night this was a '5 or 0' question: you either get 5 points or 0 points. Since you only need 1 point to help us win it'll be a 1 point question here. Name as many NHL players who have won the Hart Memorial Trophy in the 21st Century as you have members on your team. (So for most of you playing at home, this will probably be just 1.)

The answers

1) Portugese
2) Staten Island
3) O shit waddup
4) 2 grams
5) Peru (1 point answers: Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile)
6) Joe Sakic, Jose Theodore, Peter Forsberg, Martin St. Louis, Joe Thornton, Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Henrik Sedin, Corey Perry, Evgeni Malkin, Carey Price

The doctor's excuses

1) Gods, what a question. I'm sure there are accurate official numbers somewhere, but Wikipedia is all "Spanish and Portuguese are the most spoken languages in South America, with approximately 200 million speakers each" so I'm kind of like "that's as specific as I want it, really". Moral victory!
2) We discussed basically all the boroughs and decided that "Manhattan, being the richest" would probably have the most to gain by seceding. Totally wrong though, evidently. Staten Island apparently wanted something to do with a landfill site doing. Seems reasonable I guess?
3) If you haven't seen this meme yet, maybe don't google it? It's not a particularly good one and memetic contamination is a legit and growing concern in the modern world, IMO.
4) ffffffffffffffffuuu- we (obviously) considered 2 grams but thought that honestly that seemed kind of incredible for a bird, even a teeny tiny one. We went 20 grams. Let's just pretend we were talking about one specific, morbidly obese, bee hummingbird.
5) So, like, I was aware of Voltaire attacking the philosophy of optimism due to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Which is only a century and a bit wrong, time-wise. I also had basically no idea where the earthquake in question had been and forgot that Austria wasn't famous for its coastline. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing... not as dangerous as earthquakes, though, I suppose.
6) I think this was a week where we happened to have a hockey fanatic on the team (woo), but unfortunately it turned out that this question was super hard (boo), so we spaffed it. Ah well... that's just the way the hockey puck drops, I guess! (No that is not a real Canadian saying, I'm sorry I misled you.)

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


Our alternative questions
1) Only 4 countries with populations of over 10 million have Portugese as their official language. 2 of them are Brazil and (spoilers) Portugal. For 1 point each, name the other 2. As a hint, the two countries both border Zambia, which is the only neighbour they have in common.
2) Staten Island derives its name from what language?
3) Speaking of inexplicably viral frogs, Crazy Frog evolved from a 1997 recording of a 17-year-old Swede trying to impersonate what?
4) Speaking of Swedes (and hummingbirds), Måns Zelmerlöw sang the lyrics 'Go sing it like a hummingbird / The greatest anthem ever heard' in the process of winning what competition in May 2015?
5) In Greek mythology, which god was thought to cause earthquakes?
6) To most fans North America's major hockey league is known as the National Hockey League, or simply NHL. In French-speaking regions (most notably Quebec), the league is abbreviated to the same three letters, but in a different order - what order?

The answers

1) Angola, Mozambique
2) Dutch (don't forget that New York was formerly New Amsterdam, fact fans!)
3) A two-stroke engine (anything along the lines of 'engine', 'motorbike', 'car', etc. is fine)
4) The Eurovision Song Contest
5) Poseidon
6) LNH (Ligue Nationale de Hockey)

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

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No post this week - ill :(

Sorry! On the plus side, we won the grand final of the six-month season at our regular quiz. (Admittedly this isn't particularly good news if all you care about is my quiz questions, but it won us a beer party so we're pretty pleased.)

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