The 'mac' in Tarmac comes from the name of Scottish engineer John McAdam

The team name: Rob Ford: any colour you want as long as it's crack

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The Klingon
4) The game dev

The ones that got away
1) Asia makes up what percentage of Earth's land mass? You can be up to 5% over or under.
2) What word derives from the Greek for 'sharp dull'?
3) Vancouver is known as the Hollywood of Canada, but which of these appears the most in city nicknames: Paris, Venice or Athens?
4) What was the profession of the man killed so that Hannibal Lecter could enjoy his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti?
5) Which US State's state bird is the road runner?
6) Which word, which contains the letters OK consecutively (but not at either end), turns into a word with the same meaning if you remove the OK?
7) Which 2009 film opens with the lines "Oh, America I wish i could tell you that this was still America. But I've come to realize that you can't have a country without people. And there are no people here"
8) Rearrange the letters of the word INTERACTION to make two new related words. (So you're looking for two words which between them have the 11 letters of INTERACTION in them.)

The answers

1) 30% (so 25%-35% is good enough)
2) Oxymoron
3) Venice (apparently pretty much anywhere with a Canal will try it)
4) Census taker
5) New Mexico
6) JOKESTER -> JESTER
7) Zombieland
8) NICOTINE + TAR

Poll results: 14 votes with the average voter scoring 2/8!

The excuses

1) A frustrating miss. My initial guess was 'a lot', but got talked down to 20%, before haggling 'up' to an agonizing 24%.
2) A quizzing chestnut this, I knew I'd heard it before, but couldn't pull it out. Ended up going for 'ricochet', which is obviously French but sounded a tiny bit plausible.
3) Paris seemed 'too obvious', but any attempt at second-guessing the question setter like that is always a risky business, especially when you don't know them too well.
4) While I had actually seen the film in question, this seldom helps when it comes to quizzing. Someone thought he played the clarinet, so we stuck down 'musician' in a vain attempt at getting away with a vague(ish) answer.
5) Ah, you can't seem to do a quiz here without at least one question about an official state something-or-other. Still, having read up on road runner after our first episode of Only Connect, we were moderately close with "well, it looks a bit hot in the cartoons, right? So...Arizona?".
6) My official excuse is that 'jokester' feels rather North American, but having been as close as saying 'joke...something?' we really should have got it.
7) I was quite keen on I Am Legend, which fit the post-apocalyptic vibe of the quote, but it turns out that was two years too early.
8) After the jokester question, another word puzzle (usually my strong suit) that passed me by. On retrospect I'm not too fussed; the clue of the words being related strikes me as perhaps a touch forced, and spotting 'nicotine' out of that bunch seems pretty tough. Meanwhile, if you don't know about the pitch drop experiment, it's worth a look.

The alternative questions
1) Despite thinking for years it was a joke about the board game Risk, in which 1987 film does the quote "never get involved in a land war in Asia" actually feature? It actually derives from principles espoused by Field Marshall Montgomery in a 1962 speech to the House of Lords.
2) Which contemporary musical instrument's unabbreviated name, deriving from the Italian for soft and strong, sounds like an oxymoron? (The name of an earlier version of the same instrument has a similar property.)
3) Which celebratory event in 2012 was in part inspired by a Canaletto painting?
4) The most recent taking place in 2011, the (full) UK census has taken place every 10 years since when?
5) New Mexico is one of four US states that begins with 'New'. Name two of the others.
6) On which game show would host Bruce Forsyth say "I'm the joker in the pack, which makes me such a lucky jack, but here's 4 people that are so appealing, ok dollies, do your dealing."
7) Which BAFTA award winning computer game franchise allows teams of up to four players to co-operate in a bid to survive a zombie apocalypse?
8) Which cigarette brand sponsored the World Snooker Championship from 1976 until 2005 before advertising legislation halted the practice?

The answers

1) The Princess Bride
2) Piano(forte) (its predecessor being the fortepiano)
3) The Diamond Jubilee River Pageant (the painting in question being Lord Mayor's Day on the Thames)
4) 1801
5) New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York
6) Play Your Cards Right
7) Left 4 Dead
8) Embassy

Bonus QuestionDoctor Who 50th Anniversary Quiz

If you think this meme is -1 old
just travel back in time to a
point when it wasn't.

I hope you're all recovering from last night's Doctor Who 50th Anniversary excitement. The doctor and I (that is to say, Doctor Karran, not the Doctor) were asked to run a Doctor Who themed quiz for an event here in Montreal, and so I thought I may as well put it up here so more people could test themselves against it.

One thing I'll note is that we were catering to a (French) Canadian audience. This shows both in the content and style of some of the questions. In particular, as a number of attendees were predominantly French speakers there are rather more 'straight' (factual recall) questions and fewer of the more convoluted kind I like to write to keep things a bit more varied. Nevertheless, it was fun to put together and run, not least because of the inevitable difficulty of identifying official canon in such a complex universe.

The quiz is split up into five rounds (plus an optional music round at the end). I've provided the answers round-by-round so you can either do the quiz all in one go or check how you're doing as you go along. Written before yesterday's special, it's spoiler-free, but those who have seen it may be amused by the questions whose answers cropped up during the show

Round 1: 50 years ago...
1) Which actor played the Doctor first?
2) What relation was the Doctor's first companion, Susan, to the Doctor?
3) What is the name of the first Doctor Who story?
4) Who was President of the USA when the first episode of Doctor Who aired?
5) Who was Prime Minister of Canada when the first episode of Doctor Who aired?

The answers

1) William Hartnell
2) Grand-daughter [Susan was actually an alias, her birth name was Arkytior]
3) An Unearthly Child
4) Lyndon B Johnson [JFK, of course, was assassinated the day before]
5) Lester B Pearson

Round 2: The Doctor(s)
1) Which of the still living Doctor actors is the oldest?
2) Sylvester McCoy plays the wizard Radagast the Brown in which trilogy of films, the last installment of which will be released next year?
3) The Doctor once admitted that at some point he'd disagreed so much with the TARDIS' instruction manual that he'd thrown it into what?
4) Which actor played the Great Intelligence in the episode The Bells of Saint John? He also voiced a version of the Doctor in a BBC animated webcast and appeared alongside eighth Doctor Paul McGann in the movie Withnail and I?
5) Christopher Eccleston supports which English football team?
6) Was David Tennant born in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland?
7) What was the last sentence spoken by David Tennant as the tenth Doctor?
8) When David Tennant regenerates into Matt Smith, he expresses disappointment at his hair still not being what colour?
9) A 2008 episode set in which ancient city featured appearances from Karen Gillan and Peter Capaldi, who would later be given starring roles as Amy Pond and the 12th Doctor?
10) What is the name of Peter Capaldi's character in The Thick of It?

The answers

1) Tom Baker (b. 1934)
2) The Hobbit
3) A supernova
4) Richard E Grant
5) Manchester United [I originally planned to ask about Matt Smith, who supports Blackburn Rovers, but decided that would be more than unfair for a Canadian audience]
6) Scotland [Again, catering to a Canadian audience who probably aren't as used to seeing him speak in his own accent on Virgin Media adverts]
7) I don't want to go
8) Ginger
9) Pompeii
10) Malcolm Tucker

Round 3: Friends
1) In the Matt Smith episode The Doctor's Wife, the Doctor meets a humanoid woman who was used as a host for the consciousness of the TARDIS. The woman reveals that the Doctor gave the TARDIS what four letter name?
2) What animal lends its name to the component of the TARDIS that (used to) change its outer shell so that it would blend into its surroundings?
3) Though normally known by her alias River Song, what is the real name of the wife of the eleventh Doctor?
4) Guarding Amy Pond for over two thousand years, Rory Williams became known as the last... what?
5) The character Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is more commonly referred to by what military rank?
6) The officer mentioned in the previous question was one of the founders of UNIT, an international organization that defends Earth from alien threats. What does UNIT stand for? There are two acceptable answers: its original name and its current name.
7) Immediately after knighting the Doctor as "Sir Doctor of TARDIS", which monarch banished him from the Empire and ordered the creation of the original Torchwood institute?
8) The David Tennant episode Girl in the Fireplace features which character, the mistress of King Louis XV of France?
9) Along with Donald Wilson and Cecil Webber, which Canadian is credited with creating Doctor Who?
10) Hosted on wikia.com, what is the three-word name of the Doctor Who Wiki?

The answers

1) Sexy
2) Chameleon
3) Melody Pond
4) Centurion
5) Brigadier
6) United Nations Intelligence Taskforce originally, now Unified Intelligence Taskforce
7) Queen Victoria [Canada was 'formed' in 1867, so this seemed fair]
8) Madame de Pompadour [Our one concession to being in Quebec]
9) Sydney Newman [That's right, along with basketball and Trivial Pursuit, Canada can now lay claim to Doctor Who as well]
10) TARDIS Data Core

Round 4: Enemies
1) In the original series they originated from Earth's twin planet Mondas, but which race were reintroduced in the modern series as having been created by business tycoon John Lumic?
2) What was the single-word title of the episode that first featured the Weeping Angels?
3) Which race of the planet Skaro were used by Davros in the creation of the Doctor's greatest enemies? Their name is an anagram of Daleks.
4) Larger and bulkier, and generally used as a weapon, what type of screwdriver was used by the Master in contrast to the Doctor's sonic one?
5) A member of which race is described in the fourth series by character Ross Jenkins as "a talking baked potato"?
6) Before her name is revealed in the episode A Good Man Goes to War, by which descriptive three word title was Madame Kovarian identified in the show's credits?
7) What is the first name of the so-called 'last human' who primarily appears as a stretched out piece of skin with eyes and a mouth, connected to a brain in a jar?
8) What is the name of the short white aliens made of body fat whose development on Earth was triggered by the use of a weight-loss pill?
9) What is the name of the Ood's home planet?
10) Which Doctor Who writer created the 1999 British series Queer As Folk? The show follows the lives of three men and their experiences of the Manchester gay scene. (Yes, not technically an enemy, but we're not fans of his...)

The answers

1) The Cybermen
2) Blink
3) Kaleds
4) Laser Screwdriver
5) Sontarans
6) Eye Patch Lady
7) Cassandra
8) Adipose
9) The (imaginatively named) Ood Sphere [My original Ood question was to ask people to identify this instrument, but that seemed a bit much]
10) Russell T Davies

Round 5: Pictures

Check out these rad pictures (click for big, or open in a new tab), questions below.

1) This special edition cover of the British TV guide Radio Times marked both the return of the Daleks as well as a British General Election. What year was this?
2) Which incredibly irritating character is this?
3) Which alien race's design was partially inspired by this Edvard Munch painting?
4) Controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, which utterly terrifying Doctor Who characters are these?
5) Which excellent character is this?

The answers

1) 2005
2) K-9
3) The Silence
4) Autons
5) Doctor Hooves (also Time Turner 'officially') [Rather excellently, someone at the quiz came up with 'Whorse']

And that's that! There were also five music questions which really aren't suited to the blog, but if you're particularly keen you can use the YouTube links below and either close your eyes (or open in a new tab without looking, or something). The clips are of Doctor Who actors singing. One point for each actor you can name, except for the first clip where there are two singers so it's half a point each. To make things not too evil, they're all actors who have played either Doctors or companions.

Round 6: Music

1) Name the actors (half a point each)
2) Name the (male) actor
3) Name the actor
4) Name the actor
5) Name the actor

The answers

1) David Tennant and Catherine Tate
2) Colin Baker
3) Billie Piper
4) Tom Baker
5) John Barrowman [Yes, that is a Whovian cover of a song from the musical Wicked]

So there you have it, a fun quiz to put together, so hopefully at least a moderate distraction to attempt. Winning score was 39.5/45 on the night, so anything near that is impressive. If you spotted any mistakes (which wouldn't surprise me as neither of us are particularly expert Whovians) corrections are always appreciated.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

The team name: Salmon en route

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) Theravada and Mahayana are the two main branches of which religion?
2) Toluca, Monterrey and Puebla are cities in which country?
3) What is the currency of Bolivia?
4) Which sportsman was known as the Louisville Lip?
5) Which 1999 film featured Helena Bonham Carter and Meatloaf alongside the star Brad Pitt?
6) Which three South American countries lie on the Equator?
7) The city of Buffalo, New York, lies on which Great Lake?
8) Which 1997 Quentin Tarantino film is based on Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch?
9) In which city is Dirty Harry set?
10) What is the capital of Sicily?

The answers

1) Buddhism
2) Mexico
3) Bolivano
4) Muhammad Ali
5) Fight Club
6) Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil
7) Lake Erie
8) Jackie Brown
9) San Francisco
10) Palermo

Poll results: 18 votes with the average voter scoring 3.5/10!

The excuses

1) The first of what would be a night of bad misses. We zigged with Hinduism when we should have zagged with Buddhism. There were strong arguments on either side, such as "I covered Hinduism in GCSE Religious Studies, and I don't remember that" and "yama means 'mountain' in Japanese, and mountains often have religious significance in Shinto, one of the main forms of Buddhism in Japan" (we mis-heard the quizmaster's spelling, although in any case Shinto isn't actually a 'form of Buddhism' but I am certainly not qualified to expound on that). We were eventually persuaded by the words sounding "a bit Hindu-y" (although in the discussion I failed to remember the term Saṃsāra).
2) Another 50/50 gone wrong, with us thinking Mexico was 'too obvious' and that instead these might be cities in the southern United States. (We were also moderately motivated by Monterey Jack cheese, from California, had we thought to ask the quizmaster to spell Monterrey things might have been different. Maybe.)
3) Yet another 50/50, but this time both of our options were wrong. We were tossing up between Bolívar and Peso, and eventually went with the former. At least it's an opportunity to remind ourselves that Simón Bolívar remains the only person to be exiled from a country named after them.
4) Incredibly, I had been reading this chap's wikipedia page mere days earlier while writing a quiz, and so this was a particularly galling miss. It was also a lesson in "if you have no idea, just put the most famous one you can think of"; we'd got as far as boxers, but went for George Foreman.
5) Films are the doctor's domain, and while he didn't even think of Fight Club, his guess of Meet Joe Black was a mere one year out from the date in the question.
6) An absolute chestnut, and the moment this question was read out I knew I was going to be kicking myself. I've heard this at at least two other pub quizzes, and it always comes down to "Ecuador, Brazil, and one of Colombia, Peru or Venezuela". Amusingly, this seems to be the first time I've got it wrong. Hopefully giving it the full ones that got away treatment will mean it's the last time as well.
7) Despite visiting Niagara Falls a few weeks previously, we only managed what we thought was an educated guess of Lake Ontario. (And if you're unaware of what the subject line of this post is referring to, this may or may not explain all.)
8) Having narrowed it down to one of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, we decided Jackie Brown seemed a bit too hard, and that of the other two Pulp Fiction came later. At least we were half-right (Pulp Fiction was 1994, while Reservoir Dogs was Tarantino's debut in 1992). We were also swayed by Pulp Fiction's titular literary link.
9) Remarkably, despite our Dirty Harry failings on last week's Only Connect we didn't read up on the series (or watch any of the films like, y'know, a normal person would). Meanwhile, I feel obliged to admit that this was the first time I realized that, despite featuring Clint Eastwood, none of the movies were Westerns...
10) After an earlier question asked us to identify the capital of Germany (spoilers: it's Berlin), we were all a little taken aback by this one by comparison. I did study Italy as part of my geography GCSE (and we all know how useful my GCSEs have proven with quizzing), but the only thing I could remember about Italy was Mount Etna. Apparently they don't consider an active volcano their capital, alas.

The alternative questions
1) What name is given in Hinduism to points in the human body that are centres of life force? In the anime Naruto the term refers to the moulding of physical and spiritual energy essential to carrying out ninja techniques.
2) Australian mouse Monterey Jack is a member of the Rescue Rangers, a detective agency founded by which two Disney characters?
3) Four South American countries' official currency is some sort of peso. Name three of them.
4) Who plays Muhammad Ali in the 2001 biopic?
5) You almost certainly know that the first rule of Fight Club is "you do not talk about Fight Club". You probably know the second rule is "you do not talk about Fight Club". There are, however, six more rules. Give one of them.
6) The Prime Meridian passes through the UK and seven other countries; two in Europe and five in Africa. Name one from each continent.
7) Which of the Great Lakes is the largest in terms of surface area and volume? (Hint: it's not one of the two already mentioned.)
8) What was the maiden name of John F Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline?
9) Dirty Harry features the adventures of San Francisco Police Department inspector Francis Callahan, but which (much better) series of film features the adventures of Detroit cop Axel Foley?
10) The eruption of which volcano, in 79 AD, mostly destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii?

The answers

1) Chakra
2) Chip 'n Dale
3) Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay
4) Will Smith
5) Third: Someone yells stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth: Only two guys to a fight. Fifth: One fight at a time. Sixth: No shirts, no shoes. Seventh: Fights will go on as long as they have to. Eighth: If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
6) Europe: France, Spain. Africa: Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana
7) Superior (In terms of surface area, next is Huron, then Michigan, then Erie and Ontario, giving us the rather unhelpful, but fun to say, abbreviation SHMEO! But, as a commenter points out, by volume it's the even more fun SMHOE!)
8) Bouvier (she later became Jackie Onassis following her marriage to the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis)
9) Beverly Hills Cop
10) Vesuvius

Ones that got away: Only Connect Special 2!

Warning: the following contains spoilers for Series 8, episode 7 of Only Connect, first broadcast on BBC4 last Monday (4th November). I'd be surprised if anyone reading this both cares about the result, and yet hasn't seen the show, but if that's you look away now!

That's right, it's another Ones That Got Away Only Connect special! Like the previous special, I'll be going into considerable detail about what my team (the Board Gamers: Hywel Carver, Michael Wallace and Jamie Karran) were thinking during our latest Only Connect adventure, as well as a little about what we got up to after recording our first episode.

Before the show

More on that team name later

Having won our opening game we had a Saturday evening and the entire Sunday to relax before returning to film on the Monday. As I've previously mentioned, we spent the night painting the town red playing a quiz machine in a Cardiff Wetherspoon (to which the accompanying picture attests). I am not ashamed to admit that, thanks to the sort of session that only comes after a dramatic quizzing victory, I was a little worse for wear the following morning. However, that wasn't going to stop us making the most of our Sunday off, oh no.

From chatting to the production team, we had understood that there were precisely two activities that Only Connect contestants would pursue on an day off from filming. One of these was the Doctor Who Experience in nearby Cardiff, but while we are obliged to at least show a passing interest in all things Whovian to hold onto our geek cards, this didn't particularly appeal. Instead, we headed to St Fagans, a huge open-air national history museum whose slogan isn't, but should be 'the other thing to do near Only Connect'. It's a nice place, and I'd definitely recommend it to any future contestants, but similarly doesn't bear much repeating, so instead I'll leave you with this photo of two thirds of the board gamers in a cockpit.

When we got back to the studios we floated this to the
producers as a replacement for missing vowels.

Sunday night had us bunkered down in the hotel, ordering takeaway curry and getting in some apparently much-needed connecting walls practice on the Only Connect website. Unfortunately we forgot that while we could order takeaway curry, we (I think understandably) hadn't brought any cutlery with us, so we were forced to eat it with the tablespoons from our tea and coffee making facilities. The privation Only Connect contestants undergo to bring the great British public some Monday night entertainment goes shockingly underreported. A terrible night's 'sleep' followed (I think I managed about two hours) and barely a moment after I'd closed my eyes it was time to get up, force down some breakfast, and head out to the studio.

Round 1: What's the connection?

The questions
1) (All in seven segment display) 461375809; 77345663; 5318008; 070616
2) Khartoum's street layout; Pizza Margherita; Kieślowski's Three Colors Trilogy / Red Cross Symbol
3) (Music) Second piano concertos by Chopin; Beethoven; Brahms; Rachmaninov
4) Test of dissolved oxygen; Climate of wine-growing regions; Giles Coren's first novel; Arthur Fonarelli
5) The George and Dragon = 6; The Red Lion = 4; The Cricketers = 22; The Ship Inn = Out
6) (Pictures) The Singing Ringing Tree; The Singing Butler; The Singing Nun; The Singing Detective

The answers

1) Calculator upside-down words
2) Inspired by flags
3) 2nd piano concertos
4) Winkler
5) Value in 'pub cricket'
6) Singing

The excuses
1) Oof. Not the best of starts. We had this as soon as the Lasletts did, but at least they were kind enough to buzz in nice and quick to save us spending too long wondering if they'd got it as well.
2) I don't know where I'd picked up the Khartoum trivium (although it is a bit of a quizzing chestnut), but I do wish I'd been slightly more confident about it and gone for five. Unfortunately neither Hywel nor Jamie could confirm my suspicions so we took the second clue to be sure. I was thus able to use a piece of information I'd read on the back of a pizza menu a few weeks prior to get us back in the game.
3) Not much to say other than that yep, we had no idea. Second symphonies I might have had a shot at, having spent a ridiculous amount of time as a child in the double bass sections of orchestras (playing the double bass, I should add, not just hiding), but recognizing a set of second concertos seems crazytough.
4) Always going to struggle when you know nothing about three of the four clues. Perhaps on another day we'd have guessed Winkler, but it really didn't seem likely to fit the others (whereas the non-existence of GiCo: The Novel remains one of the world's greater mysteries).
5) Like the calculator words, another one we'd have liked. I've never actually played this (nor have I ever particularly understood it; surely most car journeys long enough to warrant a game are mainly on motorways which tend not to be well populated with pubs?) and unlike the Lasletts would have needed the second clue to get it, rather than merely confirm it.
6) Fair play to the Lasletts for stealing the bonus on this, we had no idea. While 'before my time' is a complicated excuse to pull off, and I have at least heard of The Singing Detective and the Singing Nun, they nevertheless strike me as clues whose difficulty is strongly tied to one's age. Not recognizing the Singing Ringing Tree, meanwhile, seems to be our penance for having never been to Burnley. (I was a touch surprised to discover that it is one of four landmarks in a project titled 'Panopticons'. Now obviously 'panopticon' just means 'observe all', but all that word makes me think of is the total surveillance prison designed by Jeremy Bentham, below.)

In a bid to calm the nerves of inmates, Bentham initially
proposed the name 'Singing Ringing Prison'.

Round 2: What comes fourth?

The questions
1) Doctor of Divinity; C.C. in 'beaches'; B.B. King
2) 4th: In the footsteps of Hemingway; 3rd: Around the Pacific rim; 2nd: From North Pole to South Pole
3) Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?; A man's got to know his limitations; Marvelous
4) Ron Francis; Gordie Howe; Mark Messier
5) Cap height; Median; Baseline
6) Nuclear missile launch; UBS logo; Sign of Saint Peter

The answers

1) (e.g.) AA Milne [DD, CC, BB, AA]
2) 1st: Around the World [Michael Palin adventures]
3) Go ahead, make my day [Lines from successive Dirty Harry films]
4) Wayne Gretzky [Most career points in NHL history]
5) Descender [Benchmarks of a letter in typography]
6) (e.g.) Car key [Things with 4, 3, 2, 1 keys]

The excuses
1) The third question of the night we would have desperately loved to see on our side. Doctor of Divinity could only mean DD, and while I briefly considered the sequence might go up to GG, I realized that there were far more things that would fit for AA. I was a touch surprised the Lasletts took a second clue here, but then again with a six point lead they didn't need to gamble.
2) Considering we had no idea on the Michael Palin angle, I remain moderately impressed we got this (albeit having been given a slightly generous second bite of the cherry by Victoria). Credit to Jamie for the quick-thinking to go from our initial answer to the correct one despite having no clue why. Looking these up it seems I shouldn't be surprised by our ignorance; none of us have ever been particularly TV-literate, let alone in our pre-teens.
3) Another tough set, I thought. We got caught up with the idea of 'mis-quoted lines' (via "Do I (you) feel lucky?") hence our guess of "Play it (again), Sam".

Giving a puck.

4) Having moved to Canada since filming, I have had to try very hard to keep this episode secret from our new friends. We also took a trip (pilgrimage) to the Hockey Hall of Fame last month to atone for our sins (right). Well done to the Lasletts for recognizing any of the names (and thus successfully applying the rule of "the answer to any hockey question is 'Wayne Gretzky'").
5) The sight of the word 'median' will get any statistician excited, but the other clues didn't ring any other statistical bells. However, Hywel had recently read a book on typography which helped as, being full of words, it presumably featured loads of descenders.
6) The only question on the show I felt was a bad miss, as well as a lesson in how easily you can get distracted by the wrong idea. After two clues we thought we had two things with two keys (which Jamie almost buzzed in on, forgetting it was a sequence question). Our eventual theory of it going 3, 2, 1, 0 really did not sit well with me, but we didn't have enough time on the third clue for me to point out that the Sign of Saint Peter has two keys (it's on the flag of Vatican City, y'see) and so a 4, 3, 2, 1 sequence would make much more sense.

Going into the walls we had a 13-6 deficit, and were already starting to think about a winner-loser playoff. Still, any sort of turnaround here and we'd be in with a chance, and we couldn't do much worse than last time...

Round 3: The connecting walls

We were up first, and our wall can be played on the Only Connect Website (wall 373). Groups (and connections) under the button:

The answers

International beers (Corona, Brahma, Skol, Asahi)
Stages of a solar eclipse (Totality, Bailey's beads, Diamond ring, First contact)
Items in 'Hush little baby' (Looking glass, Billy goat, Cart and bull, Mockingbird)
____arium (Planet, Honor, Sol, Frigid)

Unlike our previous attempt, we spotted an early set of five and were able to rattle through the permutations to get a group of beers ('Sol' being the phony). Next to fall were the stages of a solar eclipse, with Bailey's Beads and diamond ring two big giveaways. (I saw a (total) solar eclipse in Germany back in 1998. Our initial spot started to get cloudy as we neared totality, and I have a very distinctive memory of speeding across the German countryside in a salmon pink Renault Clio.) After a bit of a pause I was pleased to take advantage of one of the wall tricks we'd picked up in training. Sometimes you can look at groups you've already identified and spot elements that are designed as red herrings for the groups you've not yet found. Diamond ring in our solar eclipse group was one of these, and helped the penny drop that we were looking at 'momma's gonna buy you'. We then spent a while trying to figure out what the last group could be, before worry got the better of us as we made sure we had actually solved the wall.

We got painfully close to the -arium answer (Hywel at one point even says "it's got to be a suffix, or something"), but we just couldn't see it. Meanwhile, the discussion between Jamie and Victoria about milking billy goats completely passed me by at the time.

With seven points scored, we'd improved on our first wall, but knew the Lasletts would need to have an absolute 'mare to leave us with any chance in missing vowels. Theirs is number 374 on the website, groups and connections below.

The answers

'Blake's 7' Characters (Cally, Tarrant, Servalan, Avon)
Colour homophones (Car key, Rows, Read, Wight)
BBC Radio 1 breakfast DJs (Mayo, Cox, Grimshaw, Blackburn)
Isle of ____ (Bute, Dogs, Grain, Man)

Playing this one at home (albeit without the help of Hywel) we put in a fairly unimpressive five. We got the colours and the DJs, but couldn't untangle Blake's 7 from islands. We're thus rather glad we didn't get this wall, not just because of the possibility of a lower score, but also because we have a number of friends who would be incredibly unimpressed to see us fail at a Blake's 7 question on national television (it's on the to-watch list, honest). Unfortunately, Blake's 7 seemed the key to this one (as far as I can tell there's no fifth re herring character for that group, either), and the Lasletts made absolute mincemeat out of it.

Round 4: Missing Vowels

The bad news was that we were now trailing by ten going into missing vowels. The good news was that we knew we had approximately zero chance of victory, so could relax a little. In the end (mainly thanks to some mis-buzzes from the Lasletts) we came out level, 5-5, but in reality we were already thinking about our next game which, in magical TV land, was filming immediately after this one. So while it was a well-deserved break for the Lasletts, it was a quick change of clothes and some painkillers for me. Once more unto the breach, and all that...

No player has won the FIFA World Cup's 'Golden Ball' award more than once

The attendees
1) The doctor
2) The statistician

The ones that got away
1) What is the highest number of goals scored by one player in a FIFA World Cup finals tournament?
2) What name is given to a baby guinea pig?
3) In the nursery rhyme, where does the Muffin Man live?
4) Which general led the victorious army in the final battle of the Second Punic War?
5) Which Vice President of fuel company Exxon was kidnapped and murdered in 1992?
6) Who wrote the play Major Barbara, about an Officer of the Salvation Army who becomes disillusioned with her Christianity?
7) Who is the youngest brother of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter?
8) In which west coast US city would you find the Jack Murphy stadium?

The answers

1) 13 (by Frenchman Just Fontaine in 1958)
2) Pup
3) Drury Lane
4) Scipio Africanus
5) Sidney Reso
6) George Bernard Shaw
7) Aaron Carter
8) San Diego

Poll results: 24 votes (including one impressive 8/8) with the average voter scoring 2.5/8!

The excuses

1) A moderately staggering number (we guessed seven) Fontaine scored four goals in a 6-3 victory over West Germany in the third place playoff, along with a hat trick in a 7-3 drubbing of Paraguay in the group stage.
2) Young animal names are one of those things that appear in pub quizzes and pretty much nowhere else. The male and female names, at least, make use of porcine nomenclature, being boars and sows, respectively.
3) The doctor seemed convinced that (via Shrek) it was Pudding Lane, which is presumably part of his elaborate conspiracy theory that the Muffin Man started the Great Fire of London.
4) A spectacular failure of the 'play the quiz, not the question' strategy. The doctor had the correct answer immediately, but was alas swayed by my "that seems really hard for this quiz...".
5) Apparently no-one in the pub got this one right, to the great surprise of the quizmaster. The story is quite an interesting read, although best saved until after you've checked out the alternate questions below.
6) With little else to go on we played our 'American playwright' card of Tennessee Williams. On the plus side, it allowed me to make hilarious jokes for the rest of the evening about how we hadn't got the playwright right.
7) Presuming that the answer would be a famous Carter, and deploying around 90% of our hip hop knowledge in the process, we stuck down Sean Carter (AKA Jay-Z). On retrospect, quite a funny mis-step, but worth some style points, at least.
8) There only seemed a few options here (mainly in California) but we plumped for one of the wrong ones. Apparently it's called the Qualcomm Stadium at the moment, and has been since 1997. The Jack Murphy in question, meanwhile, was a sportswriter who initially drummed up support for a stadium in the city.

The alternative questions
1) Frank Fontaine is a major antagonist in which video game, whose concept was based on the ideas of objectivism (as popularized by Ayn Rand)?
2) Papua New Guinea occupies half of the island of New Guinea, the other half belonging to which nation?
3) The Drury Lane of Muffin Man fame was, in 1869, home to the first store of which eponymous (and now) nationwide retailer?
4) Scipio defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal Barca, the centre of whose Empire was located at (you guessed it) Carthage, now a suburb of which African capital city?
5) In their ransom note, Reso's kidnappers posed as members of Greenpeace angry (amongst other things) about the sinking of which ship in 1985?
6) The musical My Fair Lady is based on which Bernard Shaw play?
7) Despite their extensive discography, the Backstreet Boys have only managed to top the UK singles charts once with which 1999 song? A parody titled 'eBay' was released by Weird Al Yankovich several years later.
8) The Qualcomm Stadium is home to the NFL team the San Diego Chargers. California is home to a further 14 major sports teams (those that play American football, ice hockey, basketball or baseball in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively), name 5 of them.

The answers

1) Bioshock
2) Indonesia
3) Sainsbury's
4) Tunis
5) Rainbow Warrior
6) Pygmalion
7) I Want It That Way
8) NFL: Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers (and the aforementioned Chargers)
NHL: Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks
NBA: Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings
MLB: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Los Angeles Dodgers, Oakland Athletics, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants.