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, 25 September 2014
The maximum possible score in ten-pin bowling without a strike is 190
We won this week :D But could you have done even better? The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor
The ones that got away 1) How long is a ten pin bowling alley (from the foul line to the front pin)? If you get within five feet you get the point. 2) Identify the song and artist from these lyrics (you need both for the point): "I'm waking up to ash and dust \ I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust \ I'm breathing in the chemicals". 3) From which country did Bangladesh declare independence in 1971? 4) Which Texas chapel, built in 1744, takes its now famous name from the Spanish for 'cottonwood'? 5) The first Space Shuttle, unveiled in 1976, was going to be called Constitution before Gerald Ford received over 100,000 letters asking him to change it to what name instead? 6) What 1980s US TV show is name dropped in the Prince song Kiss?
The answers
1) 60 feet or 18.3 metres (55-65 feet or 16.764-19.812 metres gets you the point) or 2)Radioactive by Imagine Dragons [VIDEO] 3) Pakistan 4)The Alamo 5)Enterprise (the campaign was, of course, by Star Trek fans) 6) Dynasty [VIDEO] (the line in question is "You don't have to watch Dynasty to have an attitude")
Our excuses
1) As one who values getting a quiz question correct over looking like an idiot, I promptly got out of my seat and attempted to judge the length of a bowling alley in the bar, before pacing it out (much to some other quizzers' bemusement). This led to a guess of 50 feet, which I felt reasonably sure was an underestimate, but the doctor thought the opposite. Given that I'm blind in one eye (and so have no depth perception) I was inclined to trust the binocular member of our team, but of course on retrospect was rather frustrated. 2) I've probably said it before, but I think lyrics questions are exceptionally hard to gauge the difficulty of. When the answer was revealed it still didn't ring a bell so I assumed it was some super obscure song I'd never heard of (though I am vaguely familiar with the band name). On listening, however, I recognized it instantly, and while I'm not entirely sure where I knew it from, Wikipedia has a fairly long list of options (with Assassin's Creed III advertising the likeliest suspect). 3) Horrible. I said at the time that if this was asked on a UK quiz I would have said Pakistan with some certainty, but geography questions in North American quizzes are often just a case of knowing roughly which countries border each other. As such, I talked myself into putting down India, reassured by the knowledge of the crazy multi-level enclaves along their border suggesting their previous unity. If you're unfamiliar with this particularly odd part of international boundaries, do have a look here. 4) Considering this quiz ended with a tie-break I was incredibly relieved to win as I basically cost us a point here through sheer stupidity. The doctor initially suggested the correct answer, but didn't give any reason why other than "the battle of the Alamo is a famous thing that happened in Texas, right?". I, meanwhile, in a flash of brilliance decided that there wasn't much reason for a church to share a name with a battle and ultimately put down a last-second guess of "Westboro Baptist Church" which is fairly obviously not in Texas and very obviously not derived from the Spanish for cottonwood. I still have no idea why I was so sure Alomo wasn't right; I can only blame the bucket of beers we won at half time. 5) One of those questions where on another night our brains might have happened down the correct train of thought to get to the answer. This was certainly work-outable but we could only imagine a letter-writing campaign might be about a past President or some similarly nationalistic topic. I also had the vague idea that all the Space Shuttles had names starting with C, knowing of Challenger and Columbia. While we could rule out Challenger, Columbia seemed somewhat plausible. In fact, Columbia was the first 'space-rated' Space Shuttle (its first flight taking place in 1981), whereas the Enterprise - though technically the first Space Shuttle - was only used for test flights. 6) Another song lyric question that passed us by, with Cheers our default 80s TV show guess. This time, at least, we knew the song well enough to vaguely hum through it not that it helped.
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) What comes fourth in this sequence? A standard UK 13 amp plug; A 7-10 split in bowling; A Blue Peter badge. 2) Despite the Welsh flag being super rad, only two other countries feature dragons on their national flags. One is a landlocked country in South Asia (with quite a big dragon), the other is a Mediterranean island nation (with a very small one). Name either.
Question 3
3) Pictured is an estimated distribution of what specific subspecies of mammal, the national animal of both India and Bangladesh? 4) Which American folk hero, who died at the Battle of the Alamo, is mentioned in the same line of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire as Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, and Disneyland? 5) Along with the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters, 1986 also saw the Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon, when a limnic eruption caused the deaths of some 1,700 people - how did they die? 6) There are currently eleven official Disney Princesses. The names of four of them (Snow White, Cinderella, Pocahontas and Mulan) feature in the titles of their respective films. Can you match up the other seven with their original Disney films below? You need a perfect set to get the point!
The answers
1) Something with no pins, such as an angry baker who has had their rolling pin stolen (these are things with 3, 2, and 1 pin, respectively) 2) Bhutan and Malta - the flag of Malta features a representation of the George Cross, awarded to Malta in 1942, which contains a depiction of St. George and the Dragon
The flag of Bhutan, Malta, and a slight close-up on that George Cross.
3) The Bengal tiger 4) Davy Crockett 5) Suffocation (a limnic eruption is when carbon dioxide is suddenly released from a lake, displacing all the air nearby) 6) Those princesses and films match up as follows:
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
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