The author of Charlotte's Web also wrote Stuart Little

Your targets this week:

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

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

The ones that got away
1) In The Simpsons, what is the name of the pig mascot of the Springfield A&M football team?
2) In Charlotte's Web what is the name of the pig?
3) In Charlotte's Web what is the first name of the girl?
4) What disease is caused by eating raw or undercooked pork or game infected with roundworm?
5) The term 'hog' for a motorcycle is actually an acronym - what do the letters HOG stand for?
6) Who directed the 1988 movie Twins?
7) In which league (note: not division) of Major League Baseball do the Minnesota Twins play?
8) Named after their grandmothers, who were the first twins to live in the White House? Surname only suffices.

The answers

1) Sir Oinks-A-Lot
2) Wilbur
3) Fern (Arable)
4) Trichinosis
5) Harley Owners Group
6) Ivan Reitman
7) American League
8) (Barbara and Jenna) Bush

Our excuses

1) Yep, this week we had rounds on pigs and twins, not the hottest topics on my quiz revision list. I haven't regularly watched The Simpsons in about 15 years, but given that the episode in question was first aired in 1993 this isn't much of an excuse. We went with Spider-Pig as the only Simpsons pig character we could think of (who, it turns out, is really called Plopper).
2-3) While this is of course an exceptionally famous book across the world, this felt like one of those literature questions where everyone in North America has read it, whereas most of the British have merely heard of it. We had no idea on the pig front, but the doctor fished out an almost-but-not-really good guess of 'Annabel' for the girl's name.
4) Once again the doctor had to deal with our incredulity as he failed to know about a relatively rare disease.
5) On further reading it seems this is actually more of a backronym, with Wikipedia providing the details, but still a neat enough trivium.
6) I'd never heard of this guy, but it turns out he's directed or produced a number of notable films from the classic Ghostbusters and the not-quite-so-classic Ghostbusters II, to the love-it or hate-it Kindergarten Cop and the hate-it or hate-it Junior.
7) Baseball fans will know this is a toss-up between the National League and the American League. Despite having (admittedly somewhat half-hearted) fans of the Giants and the Blue Jays on the team we didn't land on the correct choice.
8) My instinct proved correct on this, not least because Bush gives you two chances for the price of one, but we were fairly sure George W. only had one daughter. Reagan, then, was our less-than-educated guess.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (4 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) Appearing in the names of a number of colleges and universities in the United States, the initials A&M traditionally stand for Agricultural and Mechanical. An exception to this is Texas A&M University who, in 1963, adopted their current name with the now symbolic A and M explicitly not standing for anything. Which London institution adopted a similar strategy in 2005, where new corporate branding saw its name replaced by an initialism in all external communications?
2) Name any year during which anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce was alive.
3) A two-parter (you need both for the point, and don't forget this relates to question 3 above):
a) spell the first name of the British TV presenter who rose to fame hosting Ready Steady Cook in the 1990s
b) spell the first name of the British TV and radio presenter who was the first regular female presenter of the Radio 1 Chart Show and has also been a regular team captain on ITV2's Celebrity Juice.
4) Essential (but boring) trivia: what word, also beginning 'trich...', is an impulse disorder characterized by the urge to pull out one's own hair? The name derives from the Greek for 'hair', 'to pull', and 'madness'.
5) Which Olympic sport features two hog lines?
6) Which two Ghostbusters also wrote the two Ghostbusters movies? You can give me either the full names of the actors or the characters (or even one of each).
7) The Minnesota Twins are named after the Twin Cities of - you guessed it - Minneapolis and which other (also the state capital)?
8) What is the name of the current 'First Dog' of the United States? The name is also the 'signature' by which Tweets made by the President - rather than his staff - on his official feed are identified.

The answers

1) UCL
2) 1759-1833
3) a) Fern and b) Fearne
4) Trichotillomania
5) Curling - at one end it's the line you must release the stone before, at the other it's the line the stone must pass to remain in play
6) Dan Aykroyd/Raymond Stantz, and Harold Ramis/Egon Spengler
7) Saint Paul
8) Bo

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