Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or

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Your targets this week:

1+ out of 9: Well done, you beat us!
3+ out of 9: We'd have won with you on our team!

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

The ones that got away
1) The Battle of Quebec was also known as what?
2) What are the two defining characteristics of a single malt Scotch whisky? (There was some amount of clarification on this, including that "made in Scotland" is not one of the things being asked for. Essentially, what do the words 'single' and 'malt' indicate?)
3) What is the oldest distillery in the world?
4) ...and in what year was it founded?
5) On a Scotch label, what does the term cask strength (or barrel strength) mean?
6) What are the two differences between a Manhattan cocktail and an Old Fashioned cocktail? (Each cocktail has two components/ingredients that the other doesn't, you need all four for the point.)
7) What song do Uma Therman and John Travolta dance to in the diner scene in Pulp Fiction?
8) Name the two main high school girl characters in the movie Clueless. Hint: they share their names with singers "from the 70s, I guess?". First names suffice.
9) What is the name of the seaside town that features at the end of the movie The Shawshank Redemption?

The answers

1) The Battle of the Plains of Abraham
2) Made from malted barley and from a single distillery
3) Bushmills
4) 1608
5) That it has not been diluted with water
6) An Old Fashioned contains sugar and is garnished with orange while a Manhattan contains vermouth and is garnished with a cherry (you needed all of that for the point and this is somewhat debatable anyway; see excuses below)
7) C'est la Vie (although its actual title is You Never Can Tell - if you knew that I think it's fair to give yourself the point)
8) Cher (Horowitz) and Dionne (Davenport)
9) Zihuatanejo

Our excuses

1) While we (deliberately) avoid quizzes here that have much of a Canadian bias, a bit of country-specific history is bound to crop up from time to time (although to be entirely fair this is technically British history). More to my surprise than frustration I suggested the correct answer in our discussions (having tried to read up a little on our current home) but thought the plains in question were way out west somewhere. Instead The War of 1812 stepped in as our default 'Canadian history' answer.
2) Yep, there was an entire round on whisk(e)y. No, we don't really care for the stuff. That said, we got the first half of this, just not the 'single distillery' bit.
3) "Think of a Scottish whiskey maker." "Er, Glenfiddich?" "That'll do."
4) "I reckon early 1600s?" "Oh, I was thinking the 1100s" "Ok, let's split the difference and go for 1337 to commemorate the Hundred Years' War."
5) The doctor was thinking along the right lines with this, suggesting it was "something like being as strong as vodka?". I stuck down '40% ABV' as I've seen it on a lot of booze bottles so figured there might be some significance to it, but 40% is in fact what whisky is often diluted down to (from 60%-80% at cask strength), partly to bring it in line with some countries' rules on minimum/maximum alcohol content for the drink.
6) This was a tough one to swallow (ho-ho) as, having been forewarned that one of the night's rounds would feature whiskey, we did a bit of revision before the quiz on the topic - including these two particular cocktails. According to the International Bartenders Association both cocktails feature a cherry garnish, while the Old Fashioned also has an orange slice. In terms of ingredients proper the Vermouth/sugar difference is correct, but the Old Fashioned has a "few dashes" of water added to it as well. We didn't bother challenging; it's a complicated enough question as it is and one can't know what source is being cited anyway.
7) The oceanographer sang a different song from Pulp Fiction (Misirlou), which the doctor managed to remember the name of, so at least we were internally consistent.
8) Despite the hint we were rather taken by the names Brittany and Tiffany. Both the oceanographer and the doctor had seen this movie - clearly it's one that sticks in the memory.
9) The doctor knew how to say the answer, but had no idea how to spell it, with his attempt of 'Jawataneo' understandably not deemed close enough by the quizmaster.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more correct)? 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!


My alternative questions
1) While the Seven Years' War ended with dramatic territorial exchanges across the globe, little changed in Europe. What four word Latin phrase, meaning "the state existing before the war", is used to describe such outcomes?
2) This milk flavouring product's original (Swiss) name was based on what were its two main ingredients: eggs and malt. Originating as a misspelling of this name, what is it known as in English-speaking markets?
3) The Old Bushmills Distillery is a mere 2.5 miles away from which UNESCO World Heritage Site? Its visitors' centre was shortlisted for the 2013 Stirling Prize, but lost out to Nuneaton's Astley Castle.
4) What are the (distinct) prime factors of 1608? (That is, the set of prime numbers which divide 1608 exactly.)
5) The term 'proof' in the context of alcohol is, like the more common alcohol by volume (ABV), a measure of how much alcohol is in a liquid. It originated in the 16th century when gunpowder would be doused in what drink and then ignited to 'prove' it had not been watered down?
6) New York (both the state and the city) was named in honour of the Duke of York who would become which English King?
7) The C'est la Vie featured in Pulp Fiction was, alas, not the C'est la Vie that shot Irish pop group B*Witched to double-denim stardom back in 1998. Incredibly, they had a further three consecutive UK Number 1 singles - name any one of them.
8) Clueless was (loosely) based on the Jane Austen novel Emma. Name one year in which Jane Austen was alive.
9) Some essential trivia to finish: The Shawshank Redemption was adapted from the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by which renowned author?

The answers

1) Status quo ante bellum
2) Ovaltine - the Swiss name is Ovomaltine (from the Latin 'ovum' for egg and the word 'malt')
3) The Giant's Causeway
4) 2, 3 and 67 (1608 = 2³ x 3 x 67)
5) Rum (typically part of payment to British sailors)
6) James II
7) Rollercoaster, To You I Belong, Blame it on the Weatherman
8) Any year in the range 1775-1817 gets you the point
9) Stephen King

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

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The Ones That Got Away


(And don't worry if you're feeling left out; I'm hoping to get a Geocities page together in the next few months or so.)

Nintendo originally sold playing cards

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 10: Well done, you beat us!
6+ out of 10: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away

N.B. This quiz began with five picture questions for which we were given ten minutes during which smartphones were permitted. As such for questions 1, 2 and 3 only you should/can allow yourself around four minutes in total to try and use Google (or similar) to work out the answers. The only restriction is to limit yourself to what you could reasonably expect to do with the pictures on a physical piece of paper in a dark pub - in other words, things like copying the images into a reverse image search website is probably not in the spirit of The Ones That Got Away! As always, if an image is a bit small you can click on it for a slightly bigger version.

Questions 1-3

1) Googling allowed: What is this object used for?
2) Googling allowed: What movie is this still from?
3) Googling allowed: What plant is this?
4) No more googling! Which musical features the songs Too Darn Hot, Wunderbar, and Why Can't You Behave?
5) If I'm spending lev and can see the Nevsky Cathedral, which country am I in?
6) If I'm spending rupiah and can see the Candi Sewu Temple, which country am I in?
7) If I'm spending balboa and can see the Bridge of the Americas, which country am I in?
8) If I'm spending lira and can see the Blue Mosque, which country am I in?
9) In the 1986 Nintendo game Pro Wrestling which one of the following characters could you not select to play as? A) King Slender B) Fighter Hayabusa C) The Amazon D) Great Puma E) Marty the Magnificent
10) In the early Super Mario games Princess Peach was known by what other name?

The answers

1) Sealing tins/cans
2) The Quiet Man
3) Aloe
4) Kiss Me, Kate
5) Bulgaria
6) Indonesia
7) Panama
8) Turkey
9) Both Marty the Magnificent and Great Puma were accepted (see excuses below)
10) Princess Toadstool

Our excuses

1) Having experienced this round format once before we felt better prepared for it but ultimately got the same score as we would have were googling not allowed. We suspected this was an old-fashioned tin opener but we could neither confirm nor refute this idea.
2) This is probably one where googling helped a number of teams; since if you could recognize John Wayne it provided a strong starting-point. We couldn't so were left searching for descriptions of the scene with predictably little success.
3) The doctor suggested 'spiral cactus' and a quick google image search for this term returned a number of very similar looking pictures. However, the aloe in question seems to be aloe polyphylla (also known as 'Spiral Aloe'), which as far as I can tell is unrelated to the cactus.
4) Musicals are a topic we tend to dread in quizzes but we almost managed a perfect round this time. This one slipped through via a guess of Cabaret due to it being set in Germany (hence Wunderbar) and featuring an American character (hence 'Darn'). Impeccable logic, I'm sure you'll agree.
5) Another round we'd encountered before at this quiz and a fairly brutal reminder that I should probably do some studying. Currencies are one of those quizzing staples I have never had the motivation to learn (and beyond a few basics don't tend to come up too much in day-to-day life). Levs got us as far as Eastern Europe, and while the doctor knew a little about the Alexander Nevsky in question we were still going to be making an educated guess. (Not least because there are predictably several cathedrals named after him scattered around that part of the world.) We couldn't remember what the currency of Ukraine was (it's hryvnia, apparently), but thought "Ukrainian lev" sounded familiar, so we went with that.
6) Given rupees we were thinking vaguely Asia-y, and stuck down Cambodia because "the've got Angkor Wat on their flag, they probably like temples, that'll do". (Cambodia actually uses the riel.)
7) On retrospect this was arguably an obvious one to guess given the landmark, but for whatever reason we were convinced Bolivians used balboas (they don't, they use the rather easy to remember bolivianos). At least we correctly remembered that it's Venezuela which uses the bolívar.
8) I imagine a number of readers will have been shaking their heads at us for missing this one. In my defence I did suggest Turkey, but without much certainty, and the doctor thought they were one of the many countries that used the dinar. Instead we looked for an Islamic country close to Italy whose currency we didn't know. This led us to Tunisia who, of course, do use the dinar.
9) While Marty the Magnificent was the intended answer, Great Puma was also accepted as it was the final boss and not one a player could select at the start of the game (or something like that; the bar was very noisy). While neither of us had played this game I've since discovered it is where the fairly famous Internet meme A Winner is You originates, so we must accept some nerd shame for this one. We thought The Amazon, as a presumably female character, seemed an unlikely inclusion in a game from so long ago. (Turns out they're a half-piranha, half-man. Obviously.)
10) I'm going to try and sell this as 'too much knowledge is a dangerous thing', as while we obviously knew Princess Peach is also referred to as Princess Toadstool, we thought this might simply be her official royal title and so not be what the quizmaster was looking for. The doctor had a memory of her being called Daisy in the early games (while acknowledging that there is another princess with that name) and despite the pressure of "you know how bad this will look on the blog if we're wrong and it is just Princess Toadstool, right?" it was Daisy we wrote down.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (6 or more correct)? 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!



My alternative questions
1) Which cartoon character, whose surname is Rodríguez, has an almost pathological fear of can openers?
2) Drawing on his experiences as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro newspapers, who wrote the novel The Quiet American?
3) Which BBC sitcom was a parody of the BBC drama Secret Army?
4) Kiss Me, Kate is based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Which 1999 movie (starring a teenage Heath Ledger in the role of Petruchio) was also based on the play?
5) Ukraine is one of four (UN member) countries whose flag is comprised entirely of the colours blue and yellow. Name two of the three others.
6) What theory, particularly notable for its relevance to US involvement in Vietnam, held that a communist victory in one country would start a chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighbouring states?
7) Panama is one of rather more than four (UN member) countries whose name is made up of alternating vowels and consonants. Shorter examples include Oman, Gabon and Benin, but which 18-letter country name is the longest with this property?
8) Pre-decimal British currency would typically be written using the symbols £, s and d for pounds, shillings and pence respectively. These symbols derive from three Latin currency denominations with £ coming from libra and d from denarius. Which Roman coin gave rise to the letter s in this system? (And no, it's not 'shilling'.)
9) Which video game series features a Russian boxer originally known as Vodka Drunkenski? His name was changed to Soda Popinksi to avoid controversy.
10) In terms of total copies sold (across all platforms) what is the best selling video game of all time?

The answers

1) Bender (from Futurama, full name Bender Bending Rodríguez)
2) Graham Greene
3) 'Allo 'Allo (if you got this thanks to it corresponding to the 'Aloe' question above then I commend your attention span)
4) 10 Things I Hate About You
5) Kazakhstan, Palau and Sweden
6) The domino theory
7) United Arab Emirates
8) Solidus
9) Punch-Out!!
10) Tetris

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

The name 'Looney Tunes' is a parody of Disney's 'Silly Symphonies'

Your targets this week:

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

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) For which fashion house was Marc Jacobs creative director from 1997 to 2013?
2) Which company designed the famous 'Kelly' bag?
3) Founder of of his namesake clothing company, from which country did Levi Strauss originate before moving to the United States at the age of 18?
4) What do the two letters in the name of the multinational clothing company H&M stand for?
5) If Queen Elizabeth has a morning mimosa, what champagne would be used?
6) In the wine industry, what do the letters WSET stand for?
7) Where would you find the Gallo winery?
8) In the Looney Tunes cartoons what does Bugs Bunny usually say when he wakes up? (The quizmaster went on to provide this 'clarification': "he says other things, but about, like, 80% of the time he says this one thing".)
9) In the cartoon Rocko's Modern Life what is the name of the cow?

The answers

1) Louis Vuitton
2) Hermès
3) Germany (specifically Bavaria)
4) Hennes and Mauritz
5) Veuve Clicquot
6) Wine and Spirit Education Trust
7) California
8) "What a hangover" (but apparently you also get the point if you put "What's up, doc?")
9) Heffer

The excuses

1) Yep, there was an entire round on fashion, and those of you familiar with our respective wardrobes could probably guess this is not really our comfort zone. All we could manage on this one was the doctor's vague memory of 'Daisy by Marc Jacobs' which, apparently, is a perfume. We plucked a fashion house from thin air (Dolce and Gabbana) with predictable results.
2) Another 'pick a random fashion brand' for us. This time we went with Louis Vuitton, so at least if we'd been playing "answer the previous question" we would have got a point. (You've got to look for the silver linings when quizzing is going this badly.)
3) "I guess it's Germany or Austria, so probably Austria because that's slightly less obvious?" "I have a really vague inkling it's the Czech Republic." "Oh, ok, let's put that." In a round where points were (very) hard to come by this was the only real disappointment.
4) The doctor thought it was a Swedish company, and that the letters stood for Swedish-ish names, but that was never going to be enough to get us to the answer.
5) A question that, really, is just a bit weird. I'm not entirely sure what the source is for this, and some googling suggests that a number of champagne houses hold royal warrants, including our guess of Bollinger. If there are any royal mimosa experts out there, do get in touch.
6) This rang a faint bell for both of us but that was about it. We wondered if it could relate to the conditions of how a wine's grapes were grown, concocting the rather implausible guess "wine, season, earth, terroir".
7) I think by this point we'd had enough of fashion and wine, didn't really think about it, and just stuck down 'Champagne'. (The question itself, meanwhile, is admittedly rather imprecise; "the USA" is an equally valid answer, as is "the universe".)
8) I really have no idea what is going on with this question. (Meanwhile the doctor refuses to recognize the genius of my guess of "I'm up, doc".)
9) A show I watched a fair amount of when it was on Channel 4 in the 90s, but not enough to drag the name from the recesses of my mind. (As you'll be desperate to learn, we went with 'Moo'.)

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!



My alternative questions
1) A custom-made Louis Vuitton trunk, accompanied by model Gisele Bündchen (in a Louis Vuitton dress), contained what notable object last Sunday (July 13)?

Question 2

2) Carried by Hermes in Greek mythology, what is the name of the staff pictured? It is often (but erroneously) associated with healthcare organizations due to its similarity to a traditional medical symbol.
3) What is the common English title of the (Johann) Strauss work whose original German title is An der schönen blauen Donau?
4) H&M is one of a handful of companies that owns a two-letter .com domain name (predictably, hm.com). Which company owns the two-letter domain aa.com?
5) Typically, a mimosa is an equal mix of champagne and orange juice, whereas a Buck's Fizz cocktail is a mix of two parts orange juice to one part champagne. If I have exactly enough champagne and orange juice to make 12 mimosas (with nothing left over), what is the maximum number of Buck's Fizzes (of the same size) I can make?
6) If that last question gave you flashbacks to your school days, here's another: spell the word beginning with S defined (according to dictionary.com) as "a waiter, as in a club or restaurant, who is in charge of wines".

Question 7

7) The flag pictured features in which series of video games set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic United States?
8) Last week (July 10) saw the 25th anniversary of the death of which voice actor dubbed "The Man of a Thousand Voices"? His portfolio included (among many others) Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.
9) A heifer is defined as a young cow that is yet to do what?

The answers

1) The World Cup
2) The caduceus (the medical symbol is the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake, and no wings)
3) The Blue Danube (the German translates to "By the Beautiful Blue Danube")
4) American Airlines (in case you guessed the Automobile Association, they have theaa.com)
5) 9 (To make 12 glasses of mimosa you need 6 glasses of orange juice and 6 glasses of champagne. To make the most Buck's Fizzes from these ingredients you use all 6 glasses of orange juice and 3 glasses of champagne, giving you enough for 9 Buck's Fizzes - and a few champagne chasers.)
6) SOMMELIER
7) Fallout
8) Mel Blanc
9) Give birth

If you got this far let the world know how you got on with the poll below!

Ticket to Ride is not only a Beatles song but also an award-winning board game!

Your targets this week:

We won this week (hooray), but as always a score of 1 or more means you knew something we didn't!

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

The ones that got away
1) Which was the only Four Tops single to top the UK charts?
2) Which band had an album cover featuring the members' faces on Mount Rushmore?
3) Who recorded the song Eye of the Tiger, the theme for Rocky III?
4) On which Beatles album did Ticket to Ride first appear?
5) Appearing in seven 007 movies, which actor has played Bond the most times?
6) Timothy Dalton played Bond in two movies, The Living Daylights (1987) and which other (released in 1989)? (And yes, just in case you were considering it, you can rule him out of the previous question!)
7) Which blue-veined cheese is named after an Italian village?
8) Which is the only Dickens novel with a female narrator?
9) Which is the highest mountain in Canada?

The answers

1) Reach Out I'll be there (VIDEO)
2) Deep Purple (the album is Deep Purple in Rock)
3) Survivor
4) Help!
5) Roger Moore (minor controversy as the question - as phrased on the night - was ambiguous; see our excuses below)
6) Licence to Kill
7) Gorgonzola
8) Bleak House
9) Mount Logan

The excuses

1) The doctor had this lurking in the back of his mind because, of course, someone once sang it at his school's eisteddfod. Very much not in our ballpark, although our guess of Build Me Up Buttercup (I now learn by The Foundations) was at least in a similar musical direction.
2) We were quite taken with the Dead Kennedys on this one (yes, I know he's not on Mount Rushmore, but still). Deep Purple are one of the (quite large set of) bands we've heard of, and appreciate are really quite famous, but are from an era and a genre none of us have ever felt particularly inclined towards. Also, there are five of them, making the Mount Rushmore link that extra bit trickier to spot.
3) A frustrating one; the doctor and I realized on retrospect we knew this, but somehow got it into our heads that the question was asking for a singer rather than a band. This was sufficient distraction to completely forget my sixth form school panto where I spent an unhealthy amount of time trying to source a copy of the song for a scene where a classmate playing David Hasselhoff had to pretend to punch a bear.
4) I'm pretty sure I've been asked more questions about the Beatles since moving to Canada than I ever was in the UK. The Internet tells me this song featured in the movie Help!, so perhaps that's a way into it if you're more familiar than us with the band's oeuvre. We successfully remembered (from a previous quiz, of course) that their ninth album is actually called The Beatles, and not the White Album as it is commonly known, but this came much later in their career. Don't forget the important fact that the Beatles aren't spelling out the letters HELP in semaphore on the cover!
5) For most people this is, I suspect, a toss-up between Roger Moore and Sean Connery, and since the doctor could remember more films featuring the latter than the former it's what we put down. The mild controversy here is that Connery has also starred in seven Bond films, it's just that one of them (Never Say never Again) was an independent production and so, along with the 1967 spoof Casino Royale, isn't usually counted. Nevertheless, the question doesn't make this relatively important distinction clear, so I apologize on the quizmaster's behalf for the oversight if it caught you out. As I always say, however, it's that authentic pub quiz experience this blog is all about.
6) You might have guessed there was a Bond round to go with the preceding music round. This is a topic which is wholly the doctor's domain, and his guess of On Her Majesty's Secret Service is notable both for being some 20 years too early, and also George Lazenby's only Bond role.
7) In what I think is quite a tough set of Ones That Got Away, this is the only one I'm particularly
cheesed offannoyed about. We had a combined blank on blue-veined cheeses and could only put down Roquefort, despite it sounding incredibly French (presumably because it is).
8) Ah yes, Dickens, that quizzing staple which crops up far more often than the number of people who've actually read the damned things could ever warrant. As you can probably tell we're not exactly fans, but worked our way to a tossup between the correct answer and Little Dorrit. I have no idea how.
9) Did I mention we live in Canada? I've been a touch remiss with my Canadian trivia revision, but suspect even the odd Brit might know this one. (It does, however, provide an interesting perspective on the UK pub quiz scene, where "what's the highest mountain in the UK?" might even merit the odd guffaw for its easiness.)

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!



My alternative questions
1) Essential trivia time: which US city is also known as Motown, from which the music genre and record label get their name?
2) During which US President's tenure did the construction of the Mount Rushmore sculpture end?
3) To date (July 2014) how many feature-length movies are there in the Sylvester Stallone Rocky series?
4) The album Help! includes an exclamation mark in its title and so sometimes makes writing about it feel a touch awkward. Which long-running US game show's name also ends with an exclamation mark? (Legendary contestant Ken Jennings once commented that the exclamation mark was pronounced "paid for my house".)
5) The one piece of James Bond trivia I can remember: which 1968 musical was loosely based by an Ian Fleming novel?
6) Licence to Kill was the first Eon Productions Bond film not to use the title of an Ian Fleming story. Since then only two Bond films have shared titles with an Ian Fleming novel or short story - name both.
7) About whose imprisonment did Émile Zola protest with his famous open letter "J'accuse ...!"? (Surname only suffices.)
8) Which three-letter pseudonym did Dickens employ for many years, supposedly inspired by hearing the name Moses spoken by someone with a cold?
9) My new way for remembering that the highest mountain in Canada is Mount Logan is because it is also the name adopted by a Canadian superhero. Born James Howlett, which X-Man is named after the animal whose fierce temper he is supposed to possess?

The answers

1) Detroit
2) Franklin Roosevelt (not to be confused with Theodore Roosevelt who appears in the sculpture, where construction ended in 1941)
3) Six (the most recent being the un-numbered Rocky Balboa in 2006)
4) Jeopardy!
5) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
6) Casino Royale (the first Bond novel) and Quantum of Solace (the latter in the collection of short stories For Your Eyes Only). Several others have since been novelized by Bond continuation authors.
7) (Alfred) Dreyfus
8) Boz (a shortening of 'Boses')
9) Wolverine

Bonus questionWas Series 9 of Only Connect the toughest yet?

Only Connect had its last hurrah on BBC 4 last night with the end of series 9 heralding its long-anticipated move to BBC 2 in the autumn. Much has been made of the supposed threat this might pose to the show's famed difficulty, with many a doubter worried about an inevitable 'dumbing down' as it tries to find its feet in more populist waters. Conversely, the latest series - featuring a brand new question editor - has been cited as the 'toughest ever', with some going as far as to say the questions have been "impossible", "unfair", and "a masterpiece in obscurity". Now that the series is complete what can we take from the scorecards the latest inductees to the Only Connect Cadet Force have turned in?

Our first exhibit is the simplest: average total score (of both teams) per episode for each series, contrasted with the series 1-8 average.

Average (combined) per-episode scores of Only Connect teams, series 1-9.

It probably won't come as too much of a surprise that, with an average combined score per game of just under 34 points, series 9 is indeed the lowest scoring yet. What's slightly interesting, however, is that this puts it just a couple of points lower than the previous record holder: series 2's teams averaged 36 points per game between them. Nevertheless, series 9 is rather out on its own and a standard statistical test suggests that this fluctuation isn't just down to chance, so something's going on (and for those of you who yearn for p-values, it's 0.01).

It's fairly clear, then, that scoring this series was abnormally low, but it gets a little more interesting if we look at round-by-round scoring to see exactly where these points have been lost. The next graphs split average scores per game into individual rounds (you may want to click it to make it slightly bigger, or even right-click and open in a new tab).

Average (combined) per-episode round-by-round scores of Only Connect teams, series 1-9.

Series 9 doesn't stand out quite so much on these plots, as there is understandably rather more natural variation in scores when we look at things in more detail. Nevertheless, series 9 saw the lowest average scores in sequences and on the walls, and was also well below average for connections and missing vowels to boot. Compared with the Series 1-8 average, Series 9 episodes saw around 1 fewer point scored in rounds 1 and 2, a 2.5 point drop on the walls and another 2 points or so in missing vowels. While this points to a general across-the-board fall in scoring, the wall scores are responsible for slightly more than their fair share of the drop-off.

Let's take a more detailed look at those wall scores. The following compares the distribution of scores on individual walls for series 1 to 8 with those of series 9: the height of a bar indicates what proportion of walls were solved for that particular score. It's here where a big part of series 9's lower scores is hiding.

Particularly striking are the bars at the far end. Out of series 9's 26 walls just 4 - under 1 in 6 - were solved for the maximum of 10 points. In contrast, across the 224 walls in series 1 to 8 a whopping 78 - over 1 in 3 - were maxed. While comparing the relatively small series 9 dataset with series 1-8 leaves a lot of room for statistical noise to creep in, it's still a fairly remarkable change in scoring, and again there is some reasonable statistical evidence this isn't just down to chance (p = 0.02, stats-fans).

Go hard or go home?

So where does this little tour of Only Connect numbers leave us? One thing that's inescapable is that the scoring in series 9 of TV's toughest quiz was not merely the lowest yet, but also so low that the odds of this being down to random chance alone are low enough to interest a statistician (and we're very interesting people). In other words, there's reasonable evidence that something is underpinning the drop. What exactly is, however, debatable. Harder questions, perhaps? Or could it simply be this series' contestants being a touch sub-par?

The data, alas, cannot distinguish these two possibilities (much like the never-ending debate over whether exams are getting easier or kids are getting smarter). Personally, though, I'm largely in the "ouch, that was a bit tricky" camp. Like every one that has preceded it, this series featured contestants with some serious quizzing pedigrees along with some entirely new faces, and I certainly don't think any of them were shown to be chumps (I'd welcome anyone who says otherwise to apply!). On the other hand, the questions have seemed a touch stiffer from the comfort of my sofa, and I think the change in question editor has shown through in a slight shift in the styles of puzzles we've been faced with. How this will develop for the show's first (of hopefully many) series on BBC 2 remains to be seen, but for now at least I think fears of Only Connect going soft can be put to one side.

Although really, if there's one show that can afford to dumb down, it's this one.

Bonus QuestionWho's going to win Only Connect?

Two teams, one trophy.

Doesn't time fly? After 12 weeks of mind-bending questions, Series 9 of Only Connect is about to reach its climax. Tonight we'll see the Europhiles take on the Relatives as they vie to stop me introducing myself as "reigning Only Connect champion". (Which inexplicably doesn't seem to work too well here in Canada.) What's more, for the last show on BBC 4 it will be an Only Connect first, with the final a rematch of a first round encounter which saw the Europhiles sneak home 17-14. This suggests the Relatives are tonight's underdogs, but I thought I'd look through the archives to see whether finalists' form across a series can tell us much about who's more likely to take home the trophy. (And if you're new to the blog, you may find my analysis here using the same data of how important missing vowels is interesting.)

For each of the eight Only Connect finals to date I compared the round-by-round scoring of the eventual champions with that of the runners-up across their respective runs to the final. For each team I looked at the following six statistics (averaged across their games): total points scored, winning margin in those games, points scored in each of the first three rounds (connections, sequences, and walls), and points percentage in missing vowels.

These are hopefully self-explanatory except for the missing vowels 'percentage', which is a stat I concocted for comparing series champions in a previous post. Rather than looking at total points scored in missing vowels, which can vary in length from show to show, I instead compare how many points a team scored with the combined total of their and their opponents' score in the round. For example, if a team scores seven points in missing vowels while their opponents score three, their missing vowels percentage would be seven out of ten, or 70%. Not ideal, of course, but as most missing vowel clues are solved it's hopefully slightly more reliable than looking at raw score for that round.

For simplicity I decided to consider, for each of these metrics, whether or not the team that went on to become series champions had a better or worse record across the series than the eventual runners-up. The results of this can be seen in the figure below, where green indicates the champions had a better record, red a worse one, and orange that they were all square. (If you have trouble with red and green I've made a greyscale one, and if you want to see the full numbers you can check them out in an ugly table here.)

The first thing to note is that in every series so far the eventual champions have scored more points on their way to the final than the runners-up. Champions also tend to have better winning margins, with this being the case for seven of the eight. The round-by-round data, meanwhile, are rather less informative. Sequences are arguably the best indicator of potential champions, with six out of the eight champions demonstrating a better record on that front (and on the two other occasions things were very close), but beyond that you're usually looking at something of a coin toss.

How the Series 9 finalists compare.

So what of the latest pretenders to the Only Connect throne? Unique in having a head-to-head record we can already say that the Europhiles are 1-0 up, but if we look at their average records this series things start to turn the other way.

The Relatives have the edge in four of the six metrics I've considered, including the apparently all-important 'average points' statistic, having averaged an additional 3.5 points per show. They only trail in winning margin and missing vowels, with the Europhiles' record in the latter particularly impressive. However, while the Europhiles have only conceded a grand total of six points to opponents in missing vowels, five of these came in their early encounter with the Relatives. If things are close going into the final round be prepared for some fireworks.

Now before I get a bunch of angry comments telling me to give back my PhD I should acknowledge that all this analysis is a little tongue-in-cheek given the size of the dataset I've worked with and the numerous assumptions I've had to make. The biggest question mark hangs over whether it's at all legitimate to compare team's head-to-head records, as these will be at least partly determined not only by which opponents they happened to meet along the way, but also by their route through the tournament. With later rounds supposedly featuring harder questions, for example, the Europhiles have presumably faced tougher sets on average given the Relatives' extra game during the theoretically easier first round. Then again, the Relatives pulled off an impressive 18-15 win in their semi-final while the Europhiles came home 11-7, but it's impossible to say how much of this is down to a better team, and how much is down to easier questions or just plain old luck of the draw.

Nevertheless, the stats alone suggest that while the Relatives may have stumbled in their first meeting they're now firmly the favourites on paper. My money, however, is on the Europhiles, who have impressed me a touch more over the series (and because you can rely on a statistician to hedge his bets). Either way we should be in for a cracking contest, and once you've seen it come back tomorrow where I'll be looking at the real Only Connect talking point: "is it just me, or was this series really, really hard?".

Pub Quiz Cheat Sheet: Tour de France

A new idea Jamie and I have been tossing around is 'pub quiz cheat sheets' - taking topics that typically make good pub quiz fodder and putting the most commonly asked facts into one cartoonish summary page. Obviously these won't (and indeed can't) be too comprehensive, but the hope is to get those questions quizmasters just love to ask stuck in your head long enough to pick up the occasional point or two. No idea if it has legs but we've jumped in nevertheless with the Tour de France. Can never separate your white jerseys from your polka dots, or remember where Chris Froome was born? This might (but only might) help (as always, click for a bigger version):

The men's singles trophy at the French Open is named after the 'Four Musketeers' of French tennis

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us!
We won this week, so no 'winninger than you' target!

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

The ones that got away
1) Who were the the winners of this year's men's and women's singles competitions at the French Open? You need both for the point.
2) Two actors have appeared in all six Star Wars movies playing the same two characters. Name the two actors and the two characters. You need all four for the point.
3) Name the ship in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island which shares its name with the second largest Caribbean Island.
4) In 1963 and 2012, what did the Russians and Chinese do for the first time?
5) What word can mean both 'deactivated' as well as 'activated'?
6) Garlic belongs to which flower family?
7) Name the movie which features this quote: "Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."
8) In what year was the first e-mail sent?

The answers

1) Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova
2) C-3P0 and R2-D2 played by Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker respectively
3) Hispaniola
4) Send a woman into space ('person' is not correct) - Valentina Tereshkova and Liu Yang
5) Off (e.g. 'turned off' and 'went off')
6) Lily
7) The Wizard of Oz
8) 1971

The excuses

1) I have not kept up with tennis particularly well since moving to Canada, and while Rafael Nadal's record in the tournament is hard to miss the women's singles had completely passed me by. I went with Li Na, who I at least knew had won the tournament previously, but she went out in the first round this year.
2) This one fell to the doctor who got three out of four before slipping up with Anthony Perkins instead of Anthony Daniels.
3) One we really felt we should have known, but neither our literary nor geographical knowledge were up to scratch. Despite correctly guessing the island in question must be the one split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (the largest being Cuba) we had no idea what it was actually called.
4) The countries and years put us in mind of space shenanigans, but we incorrectly went with 'person' rather than 'woman'. We had our doubts, not least because I thought Yuri Gagarin went up in the late 50s (when in fact it was 1961), but didn't think outside the box enough.
5) We (and most of the bar) weren't particularly convinced by this one, but in the context of a bomb going off, or an alarm going off, it does (just about) work. At one point during our (lengthy) deliberations we even mooted the correct answer but dismissed it without thinking it through enough.
6) First observation: yes, this is a spectacularly common piece of trivia that we've heard multiple times before, and somehow forgot. Second observation: whether this is even correct seems really complicated, with various sources suggesting that garlic used to be placed in the lily family (Liliaceae) but not any more. If anyone reading can offer a clearer explanation (and I'll be honest, that wouldn't be difficult) to please let me know.
7) I'm not entirely sure if this is one that can be figured out, but in any case we were nowhere.
8) Another slightly complicated one given that it's not particularly clearly defined, with the 1971 date seemingly referring to the first ARPANET email. Being huge nerds, we suspected it was "probably an ARPANET thing", and the oceanographer narrowed the date down to 1971 or 1973, but the virtual coin toss fell the wrong way for us.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
1) Launched in 1963 and analogous to the men's Davis Cup, what is the name of the premier team competition in women's tennis?
2) In early drafts of the Star Wars scripts Luke Skywalker was given the first name Annikin (not to be confused with his father Anakin) and what surname?
3) In the fictional sea song (originally from Treasure Island), how many men are on a dead man's chest?
4) Like astronaut, which two terms featuring the suffix -naut refer to space travellers from Russia and China? You need both for the point.
5) In which show, first airing on BBC Two from 1998 to 2001, would the start of contests typically be signalled by the countdown "3, 2, 1, activate!"?
6) Someone who certainly does know their garlic is Bram Stoker's Dracula. Meaning 'son of Dracul' which fifteenth century ruler who was also known as Dracula provided the inspiration for the famous vampire's name?
7) Classic trivia time: while Dorothy shall forever be associated with her ruby slippers from the 1939 movie, what colour shoes did she wear in the original novel by L. Frank Baum?
8) One of many apparent anachronisms of modern computing, from what phrase do the letters 'CC' refer to when sending an email to multiple recipients?

The answers

1) The Fed Cup (formerly the Federation Cup)
2) Starkiller
3) 15
4) Cosmonaut and taikonaut
5) Robot Wars
6) Vlad the Impaler (or, more formally, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia)
7) Silver - they were changed to ruby to take advantage of the then-new Technicolor film process
8) Carbon copy