25/06/13: the blue triangle on the flag of the Czech Republic was added to distinguish it from that of Poland

Question 6

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer

The ones that got away
1) In what year was the film Lost in Space released?
2) In Australian rules football there are two ways of scoring points. How many points are each of these two ways of scoring worth? (2 point question, 1 point for each)
3) Who said "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted"?
4) Meadow, Sheep's Fescue, and Quaking are all types of what plant?
5) In what year did the Czech Republic come into existence?
6) Identify the company logo (pictured).
7) Identify the London station from this cryptic clue: "You designed your home yourself?".
8) On which Canary Island island is Santa Cruz?

The answers

1) 1998
2) 6 points (for a goal) and 1 point (for a behind)
3) Albert Einstein
4) Grass
5) 1993 (January 1st, to be precise)
6) Yamaha
7) Custom House
8) Tenerife

Update: Poll results! 7 votes with 1 scoring 5/9, 2 scoring 4/9, 1 scoring 2/9, and 3 scoring 1/9.

The average voter scored 2.5 out of 9.

The excuses
1) We went with 1999 - another lesson in "it's always longer ago than you think".
2) Thinking it may have similarities with rugby union, we went with 5 and 2. It turns out we'd have had better luck if we'd thought of American football instead, where a touchdown is worth 6 points, and a kicked 'conversion' 1.
3) A very recognizable quote but not one we could quite place - we dabbled with Gandhi before plumping for Nelson Mandela.
4) A very gettable miss, we were too focused on plant meaning flower and went for the 'safety' play of rose.
5) Knowing that the USSR collapsed in 1991, we thought it was a pretty good shout. Unfortunately the USSR didn't go quite so far west.
6) The doctor seemed reasonably confident that this was Suzuki, so presumably had motorcycles in mind. We briefly discussed that the logo was made up of tuning forks, but didn't take this idea as far as we should have done.
7) Not a bad little clue - we got as far as "something house" but couldn't manage the final step.
8) Bit of a crapshoot if you don't know the answer to this one, and sadly we zigged with Lanzarote. Had I known at the time that Tenerife is the largest of the Canaries (which is a pretty standard bit of trivia) we might have zagged instead.

The alternative questions

^{Question 1}

1) Which oft-parodied warning, issued by Robot B-9 (pictured) in the CBS series Lost in Space, was actually only ever spoken once on the show?
2) What shape is an Australian rules football field?
3) In Einstein's famous E = mc² equation, what constant does the c stand for?
4) What is the principal psychoactive constituent of marijuana? (Its common three letter abbreviation is enough for the point.)
5) Name the five post-Soviet states whose name ends in -stan. Clue: Afghanistan and Pakistan aren't on the list, and are the only two other such countries.
6) Name one of the two products Yamaha originally manufactured when it was established in 1887?
7) In the name of the Government department, what do the letters HMRC stand for?
8) What animal is the Canary Islands' name derived from?

The answers

1) Danger, Will Robinson! (Bonus fact: the show was an adaptation of the Johann Wyss novel Swiss Family Robinson)
2) Oval (often modified cricket grounds)
3) The speed of light (about 300 million metres per second)
4) Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC
5) Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
6) Pianos and reed organs
7) Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs
8) Dog (from the Latin Canariae Insulae, meaning "Island of the Dogs") - it has a ballin' flag

Tweet