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.
Sunday 23 February 2014
The 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution took over 200 years to be Ratified
Your targets this week:
1+ out of 11: Well done, you beat us! 4+ out of 11: We'd have won with you on our team!
A reminder that The Ones That Got Away below are presented as they were to us. To give you that unique pub quiz experience any inaccuracies/ambiguities are included and addressed in the excuses. (Oh, and you may notice that this quiz featured a round inspired by Black History Month.)
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The engineer
The ones that got away
Question 11
1) In describing which of his films did Quentin Tarantino say "we'll sell you the whole seat but you'll only use the edge of it"?
2) The 'Duke of Exeter's Daughter' is another name for which medieval torture device?
3) In which city's airport did a $50 million diamond heist take place in 2013?
4) The number 6.626 x 10⁻³⁴
is associated with which scientist? Hint: the answer fits into a crossword with the following spaces/letters: _ A _ _ _ _ _ _ _
5) Who is Kamala Khan?
6) What was the first original series to be streamed on Netflix?
7) What was the birth name of Martin Luther King?
8) What two word term describes the voyage whereby African slaves were taken to the Americas?
9) Nominated for nine Academy Awards, the film 12 Years a Slave is based on whose memoirs?
10) The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution gave what to African Americans?
11) Name the person pictured.
The answers
1) Reservoir Dogs (but see Excuses below)
2) The rack
3) Brussels
4) Max Planck
5) The real name of Ms. Marvel - Marvel's new teenage superhero who is the first Muslim character to headline a Marvel comic book. (Anything along these lines is good enough for the point.)
6) Lilyhammer
7) Michael
8) Middle Passage (of the triangular trade)
9) Solomon Northup
10) The vote/suffrage
11) Sidney Poitier
Poll results: 23 votes. 20 of you did better than us of which 5 would have helped us win! The average voter scored 2/11.
The excuses
1) One of those pseudo multiple choice questions, we discussed a number of his films before settling on Kill Bill as being the one most likely to keep you on the edge of your seat. While writing this up, however, I've been unable to verify this quote, it instead seeming to originate from adverts for monster truck derbies.
2) A disappointing miss. The doctor suggested the iron maiden which, despite knowing its existence in the Medieval period is generally considered a hoax, seemed to fit too nicely to be wrong.
3) I had a vague memory of a heist at Heathrow Airport, and while there was a very famous one, it happened in 1983 making it just a touch too early for this question...
4) Huge frustration. I immediately thought "that looks like Planck's constant" but it has been so long since A level physics that I wasn't at all sure and, since it didn't fit the crossword puzzle space, I completely dismissed it. Moments after handing in it hit me - if you include the 'Max' it fits - and I kicked myself for at least not considering the possibility.
5) The doctor, as you may or may not know, is a huge comics nerd, and his face when the answer was read out was absolutely priceless (he'd even read the relevant comic recently). His only excuse is that comic book questions are so rare in quizzing that it created something of a blind spot in his thinking.
6) I was nowhere on this (and thought it was insanely difficult), but the other two-thirds of the team both immediately suggested House of Cards so we stuck it down with some confidence. It seems a touch hard to verify, but as far as I can determine Lilyhammer (which I'd not heard of but sounds pretty great) beat House of Cards by nearly a full year.
7) The first of several questions I was surprised to discover I had no idea about. I can only assume this is a quizzing chestnut that has somehow passed me by until now.
8) Slightly harder, but again something most of us (I suspect) learnt about in school.
9) A fairly fundamental quizzing rule is that you've got to at least know your Oscar-nominated movies. We are horribly out of touch with the current crop of films and were duly caught out (albeit by something of a toughie) here.
10) Worst miss of the night, and a classic case of overthink. The obvious answer (i.e. the correct one) struck us as just too early given that women's suffrage took until the 1920s, so we went with 'freedom' as a more likely consequence of the preceding Civil War.
11) The second time a Canadian quiz has wanted us to write down Sidney Poitier. Still, an opportunity to remind ourselves his position as the first black actor to win the best actor Oscar (for his role in Lilies of the Field).
The alternative questions
1) Six characters in Reservoir Dogs are known by pseudonyms of the form "Mr." followed by a colour. Name four of them.
2) What practice, generally considered a form of torture, involves pouring water over a cloth covering the face of a bound captive causing them to violently experience the sensation of drowning?
3) Along with Pokémon Diamond and the enhanced remake Pokémon Platinum, which organically derived gemstone lends its name to a fourth generation game in the Pokémon series?
4) Name the large telecommunications company whose founder also lends his name to the SI unit of electrical conductance.
5) Nightrunner, a French-Algerian Muslim traceur was recently enlisted to fight crime under the aegis of which DC Comics hero?
6) Lilyhammer is, predictably, set in the Norwegian town and 1994 Winter Olympics host Lillehammer, which means one last hurrah for a topical Winter Olympics question! The Nordic combined event involves competitors competing in which two sports?
7) Which Civil Rights advocate (and widely tipped presidential candidate) was assassinated on June 6 1968 - just two months and two days after Martin Luther King?
8) Which appropriately-named West African country was colonized during the 19th Century largely by freed slaves from the United States?
9) One of 12 Years a Slave's nine Academy Award nominations includes Best Director for Steve McQueen who also won the 1999 Turner Prize. Which Croydon-born artist, whose own entry grabbed rather more of the headlines, did he beat to this particular honour?
10) Given its reference to the 1776 Declaration of Independence, in which year did Abraham Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address?
11) The 1356 Battle of Poitiers was a major incident in which (slightly inaccurately titled) series of conflicts?
The answers
1) Blonde, Blue, Brown, Orange, Pink, White
2) Waterboarding
3) Pearl
4) Siemens
5) Batman (he is known as 'the Batman of Paris' or, enjoyably, 'Le Batman of France')
6) Ski jumping and cross-country skiing.
7) Robert (Bobby) Kennedy
8) Liberia
9) Tracey Emin (with My Bed)
10) 1863 ("four score and seven" years later)
11) The Hundred Years' War (which, of course, lasted 116 years)
I'm always way better at your questions. Got 4 of the actual ones and 10 of yours. Which only goes to show that if I'm ever looking for a quiz in Canada it should probably be written by you.
Yeah, I do generally try and make mine a bit easier as (obviously) I tend to think the ones we got wrong are super tricky. That said, 4 and 10 strikes me as a pretty cracking performance - as long as you didn't get the Pokemon one wrong :p
I did exactly the same thing you did on Max Planck, incidentally. That was a mean question. (And I almost talked myself out of suffrage for the 15th Amendment, because I was under the impression that had been included in the 13th.)
And of course I didn't get the Pokemon one wrong, what do you take me for.
Good man. And yeah, that Max Planck one was incredibly frustrating - especially so as it was the only one we got wrong in that particular round of the quiz >:(
I'm always way better at your questions. Got 4 of the actual ones and 10 of yours. Which only goes to show that if I'm ever looking for a quiz in Canada it should probably be written by you.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I do generally try and make mine a bit easier as (obviously) I tend to think the ones we got wrong are super tricky. That said, 4 and 10 strikes me as a pretty cracking performance - as long as you didn't get the Pokemon one wrong :p
DeleteI did exactly the same thing you did on Max Planck, incidentally. That was a mean question. (And I almost talked myself out of suffrage for the 15th Amendment, because I was under the impression that had been included in the 13th.)
DeleteAnd of course I didn't get the Pokemon one wrong, what do you take me for.
Good man. And yeah, that Max Planck one was incredibly frustrating - especially so as it was the only one we got wrong in that particular round of the quiz >:(
Delete