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.
Thursday, 7 August 2014
Warwick Davis' Ewok character in Star Wars is called Wicket Wystri Warrick
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 President does Forrest Gump 'moon'?
2) In Star Wars who leads the army of clones to save the remaining Jedi in the colosseum?
3) In Star Wars what is the secret weapon the Geonosians planned to make?
4) In Star Wars how old is Yoda when he dies?
5) Which is the largest capital city in the world in terms of population?
The answers
1) Lyndon B Johnson
2) Yoda
3) The Death Star
4) 900 years
5) Tokyo (I'll discuss this in more detail below, but as many of you will appreciate this is a somewhat iffy question - I queried this when it was asked and the quizmaster, to his credit, admitted he wasn't sure about the various ways 'city' can be defined, and said that "if you can show me with google your answer is a valid one, I'll try to be fair" - our answer of Beijing was marked wrong, but as we'd won anyway we didn't challenge; I leave it up to your judgement/conscience whether you award yourself the point! For future reference, quizzers would be well-served to familiarize themselves with this Wikipedia page, which is a good summary of the various definitions.)
Our excuses
1) Recalling the scene related to Forrest's actions in the Vietnam War we narrowed down our options to LBJ or Nixon. To me, Nixon seemed the more plausible option: in my mind he is more strongly associated with the war and would seem the more likely candidate for a 'funny' scene like that. The doctor, meanwhile, had a "really vague inkling" it was LBJ, but was feeling a bit unwell and didn't push for it.
2) Yep, there was a Star Wars round and we really flubbed it. This is the only one of the movies I haven't seen, while the doctor hadn't seen it in many, many years, but vaguely remembered Mace Windu leading a group in that particular scene. It turns out his memory was pretty close: Windu arrived at the Petranaki arena leading a Jedi strike team, but it was Yoda who arrived shortly later leading the clones.
3) Knowing relatively little of Star Wars I suggested the obvious answer of the Death Star, but the doctor was wholly unconvinced. Instead, we went a bit lateral and suggested they planned to create the clone army of the previous question. I would suggest the truth about whether or not they 'planned' to create the Death Star is somewhat debatable, with Wookieepedia suggesting it was originally envisioned by the human Raith Sienar. This is perhaps getting a little caught up in semantics, however.
4) We could remember the quote "When ... hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not", but obviously not the all-important number. Our guess of 200 was almost embarrassingly far off.
5) As alluded to above, these sorts of questions are very tricky to phrase accurately. I had been reading the relevant Wikipedia page just the other day so suspected this was going to prove frustrating one way or the other, so asked the quizmaster if he could be clearer about what definition of 'city' he was using. He said he'd always try to be fair and that if I could show him that my answer was valid he'd give me the point (which rather impressed me - your typical quizmaster will just waffle about how 'their answer is final' or similar). He then asked me what I was thinking and I said "well, I know that Tokyo is the largest city in the world in terms of metropolitan area but..." at which point he interrupted to say "don't overthink it". On retrospect I realize that this was him trying to be helpful by reassuring me that I was thinking along the right lines, but for whatever reason I interpreted this as him saying that that was wrong and there was a more 'obvious' answer. With that in mind I switched to Beijing, which I recalled being the second largest 'city proper' in the world (behind Shanghai), and at the time at least seemed the more natural way to interpret the question. Suffice to say I'm very glad this particular question didn't affect the outcome!
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 (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!
My alternative questions
1) Franklin D Roosevelt is one of two men to have taken the oath of office of the President of the United States four times: who's the other?
2) The 'console wars' of the late 80s and early 90s (described in Blake Harris's book of the same name as "the battle that defined a generation") concerned which two video game companies?
3) In Mel Brooks' Star Wars parody Spaceballs, what is the food-inspired name of the character based on Jabba the Hutt?
4) Also a performer of the Muppet characters Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster and Bert (among others), who provided the voice of Yoda in the original Star Wars trilogy?
5) In 2020 Tokyo will become the first Asian city to host the Olympic Games for a second time. Name all four of the other Asian cities to have hosted the (summer or winter) Olympics. (And to avoid ambiguity: I'm not counting Moscow or Sochi as Asian cities.)
The answers
1) Barack Obama (his first inauguration featured a wording mishap so the oath was retaken at a private ceremony, while his second Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, meaning a private ceremony that day was followed by a public one the next)
2) Nintendo and Sega
3) Pizza the Hutt
4) Frank Oz
5) Sapporo (Winter 1972), Seoul (Summer 1988), Nagano (Winter 1998), Beijing (Summer 2008) - Pyeongchang will add to this list with the 2018 Winter Games
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
I think in this case the answer is unambiguous enough. By any sensible measure ("city proper" clearly not being a sensible measure, viz. London) Tokyo is the largest city in the world by a pretty massive margin.
(I may be overly sensitive here, because I half-live in Tokyo and have met far, far too many people who have no idea it's the largest city in the world.)
I think in this case the answer is unambiguous enough. By any sensible measure ("city proper" clearly not being a sensible measure, viz. London) Tokyo is the largest city in the world by a pretty massive margin.
ReplyDelete(I may be overly sensitive here, because I half-live in Tokyo and have met far, far too many people who have no idea it's the largest city in the world.)