In the board game, 'backgammon' refers to a particularly overwhelming victory

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us!
5+ out of 8: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The engineer
4) The curler

The ones that got away
1) Which band had eight consecutive UK number one albums without releasing a single?
2) In psychology, who coined the terms introvert and extrovert?
3) In 1983 the Gavilan SC was the first computer described with what term?
4) Which film was the first to take more than $1 billion at the box office?
5) How many points are there on a backgammon board?
6) A temperature of 58°C, the hottest every recorded on Earth, was recorded in which continent?
7) The flag of which country was the first to be placed on the moon?
8) The term 'queen regent', as opposed to 'queen consort', refers to female monarchs who ruled on their own, rather than as the wife of a king. Since 1066, how many queens regent have there been of England (and later Britain)? These are those 'acknowledged' as queens regent. [This is as much clarification as we could get.]

The answers

1) Led Zeppelin
2) Carl Jung
3) Laptop
4) Titanic
5) 24
6) Africa (but this is a bit dubious; see our excuses below)
7) Soviet Union
8) 7 (again, see our excuses for clarification)

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (5 or more correct)? Blogger polls are (incredibly) still broken, so if you want to tell the world feel free to comment below or Tweet me @statacake!

Our excuses

1) After some debate we reluctantly went with Pink Floyd as a band who were spectacularly popular but perhaps didn't have music that lent itself to single releases. However, this week the doctor failed to heed the 'say everything that crosses your mind' warning, as "oh bugger, I thought of Led Zeppelin but didn't say it" prompted the inevitable "dude, I would have known that was right!". One day we'll learn.
2) Mea culpa. We decided our options were Freud or Jung, and I thought that Jung would be 'too hard for this quiz'. Sorry guys.
3) To make up for that last blunder, I was quite keen on laptop here but at the last minute someone suggested the SC might stand for 'supercomputer', so we went with that. Grr.
4) Apparently we don't have a great grasp of money, as we thought it must have been a fairly recent film to make that much. Our guess of Avatar has the distinction of being the first film to take two billion dollars, so I'm going to pretend that means we were close.
5) This is not the first occasion I've been asked this question in a quiz, but I think the last time it happened we got it right. Most of the team independently came up with 32 which seemed about right, but for future reference I'm just going to remember that the number 12 is often a reliable basis for these sorts of things.
6) This is either a trick question, or an incorrect one, as the record in question was de-certified by the World Meteorological Organization in 2012. The actual record seems to be held by Death Valley in California which, to add insult to (quizzing) injury, was precisely what we suspected.
7) Apparently the Soviets crashed a rocket carrying their flag into the moon in 1959. The doctor suggested "they might have fired one from a t-shirt cannon from a satellite", and on retrospect we should perhaps have had more faith in the argument "why would you even ask this if it was just the USA?".
8) Hugely frustrating, and a good example of why I think asking questions along the lines of "how many monarchs..." have to be done very carefully. We identified five women who were unambiguously queens in the own right: Mary I, Elizabeth I, Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II, but that left Matilda and Lady Jane Grey as disputed claimants, as well as Mary II who co-ruled with William III, but not merely as a consort. On checking my facts for this write-up, I've also discovered that the term is queen regnant (not regent), and that according to this list, at least, the 'actual' number is eight. However, depending on how you consider Matilda, Jane and Mary, the answer could also be five, six or seven. If there are any royal terminology experts reading who can correct/clarify this, I'd be all ears, but for now at least this seems like something you should be very wary of asking.

My alternative questions
1) The original having heavily featured for much of the show's run, a drum and bass remix of Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love' was the theme tune of which long-running BBC program from 1998 to 2003?
2) Popular in online 'personality tests', the Myers-Briggs psychometric questionnaire identifies 16 psychological 'types' via four pairs (or dichotomies) of type preference, each identified by a letter. One pair is Extroversion (E) and Introversion (I), and another is Sensing (S) and Intuition (N). What type, beginning with F, pairs with Thinking, and what type, beginning with P, pairs with Judging, to complete the set?
3) The term 'smartphone' first appeared in 1997, when which Swedish telecommunications company (whose name is perhaps more familiar in conjunction with that of a Japanese multinational) described its GS 88 'Penelope' as such?
4) While the sinking of the Titanic took some 1,500 lives, the sinking of which (far less well-known) passenger ferry in 1987 is thought to be the world's deadliest peacetime maritime disaster, with an estimated 4,386 deaths?
5) In backgammon you get extra moves if you roll a double (the same number on both dice). Assuming the dice are fair, what's the probability of rolling a double?
6) Despite being the first to ratify the US Constitution, which is the only US state to not have a national park?

Question 7

7) With obvious similarities to that of the Soviet Union, pictured is the flag of Transnistria, a breakaway state located within which European country?
8) Traditionally the direction British monarchs face on coins alternates with each succession. Which king bucked this trend, preferring portraits of himself looking to the left, the same direction as his predecessor?

The answers

1) Top of the Pops
2) Feeling and Perception
3) Ericsson
4) The Doña Paz
5) 1 in 6
6) Delaware (although they're making progress)
7) Moldova
8) Edward VIII

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