Despite no money through endorsements, Floyd Mayweather is 2014's highest-paid athlete

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 12: Well done, you beat us!
6+ out of 12: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) The fictional Barbara Millicent Roberts is better known by what name?
2) In miles per hour, what is the world record for a land snail? The answer contains the number 6, some number of 0s, and a decimal point.
3) Angelina Jolie missed the premiere of her movie Unbroken because she was suffering from what?
4) After a death at the San Diego Zoo this month, there are only five of what animal left on Earth?
5) Which country, where 10-20 are killed each year, observes a remembrance day for journalists killed in the line of duty on December 15th?
6) In professional boxing, what weight class is immediately below heavyweight, capping at 200 pounds?
7) As of April 2014, which of these sports clubs has the highest payroll? Manchester City FC, the New York Yankees, or FC Barcelona?
8) Occurring on the second Monday in October, the earliest possible date for Canadian Thanksgiving is October 8th. When is the next time Canadian Thanksgiving will fall on this date?
9) Three point question: what three liqueurs are layered in a B-52 cocktail? 1 point for each.
10) No country name in the world contains the consecutive pair of vowels UU. There are four other vowel combinations that don't appear in any country name. Name three of them. (You need all three for the point.) Note that the vowel pairs can appear across two words in a country name, so if there was a country called Nu Uland then that would give us a 'UU' combination. As a further clarification, note there are 25 possible pairs of vowel orderings: AE and EA, for example, are different.

The answers

1) Barbie
2) 0.006mph
3) Chickenpox
4) (Northern) white rhino
5) Russia
6) Cruiserweight (or junior heavyweight)
7) Manchester City FC
8) 2018
9) Coffee liqueur (e.g. Tia Maria or Kahlúa, Irish cream (e.g. Bailey's), orange-flavored liqueur (e.g. Triple sec or Grand Marnier)
10) UO, OE, EU, II

Our excuses

1) This was a real kick yourself question, as it's one of those quizzing classics that we either had somehow not encountered or (more likely) just forgotten. Without much hope we went with Thoroughly Modern Millie.
2) We worked out that 0.0006mph was about 1 metre per hour, which seemed pretty plausible (and more plausible than 10 times faster or slower). Alas, it seems snails are somewhat speedier than we'd anticipated. I quite enjoyed how the "it's a 6 and some zeroes" clue turned this from a complete crapshoot into something where some maths would help you narrow down the options.
3) Celebrity news has never been good for us. We went with depression as a cheerful stab in the dark.
4) This one was particularly frustrating, as we immediately considered white rhino but ruled it out as we were pretty sure we'd seen one at Disney World the previous week. It turns out there are two subspecies of white rhino, with the northern being much (much) rarer. The doctor suggested the Javan tiger, which unfortunately seems to be extinct.
5) Having been forewarned the quiz had a "this day in history" round we had done some prep on the topic, but didn't read all the way to the bottom of that day's Wikipedia page. Oops. We went with Israel.
6) Regular readers will be familiar with our boxing expertise. The doctor came agonizingly close here, however, with his guess of light heavyweight just one classification lower.
7) Obviously all three are very wealthy clubs, but I had a vague (and apparently inaccurate) memory of the very highest earning athletes typically coming from baseball, so we went with the Yankees.
8) I'm blaming the beer for this one. I took the basic rule of "dates advance one day a week each year" (so Christmas was on a Wednesday last year, will be on a Thursday this year, and on a Friday next year) but got completely muddled and did it in the wrong direction.
9) With a point per ingredient, we were rather aggrieved to miss completely on this one. Suffice to say we shall be trying to 'revise' cocktails over the Christmas period...
10) Quite a fun question to work on, as you gradually eliminate pairs as you think of countries. We eventually got down to six: EE, EU, II, OE, OO and UO. We somehow forgot Cameroon and Greece, and having incorrectly hypothesized that the homeland is called "The United Kingdom" we eliminated EU and went with II, UO and OO - so close!

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 point or more)? Would you have helped us win (6 points or more)? 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) July 1992 saw Mattel release Teen talk Barbie, which spoke a number of phrases. One of these (spoken by about 1.5% of dolls sold) saw Barbie complaining that which school subject "is tough!"?
2) The term 'gastropod' (the class to which snails and slugs belong) derives from the Ancient Greek for which two words?
3) After a chickenpox infection, the virus remains dormant in the body, but it can be 'reactivated' later in life and cause a different form of the infection with the scientific name herpes zoster, but more commonly called what?
4) Part of the reason rhino horns command high prices on the black market is their use in some traditional medicines. Their medicinal properties are more than questionable, however, as they are made of what substance, the same type of protein that makes up human hair and fingernails?

Question 8

5) December 15th is also Zamenhof Day, which celebrates the culture of which language? The date commemorates the birthday of L. L. Zamenhof on December 15, 1859.
6) Which World Heavyweight Champion was the inspiration for the name, iconography, and fighting style of the character Rocky Balboa?
7) According to Forbes, who is Britain's highest-paid athlete of 2014?
8) Along with it's national winter sport of (ice) hockey, what is Canada's national summer sport? Pictured here, it's a team game of Native American origin.
9) What drink is added to a B-52 to create the somewhat pun-tastic B-52 "with bomb bay doors"?
10) 3 point question: There are three UN member states which are the only countries whose names start with their respective letters of the alphabet. For 1 point each, name those three letters. For example, if only one country in the world began with the letter A, A would be one of the answers. (Spoilers: it isn't.)

The answers

1) Math(s)
2) Stomach foot
3) Shingles
4) Keratin
5) Esperanto
6) Rocky Marciano
7) Gareth Bale
8) Lacrosse
9) (Bombay) gin
10) O (Oman), Q (Qatar) and Y (Yemen) - bad luck if you said Z, as that's the only letter with two (Zambia and Zimbabwe)

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

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