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.
Friday, 5 December 2014
Snickers was a horse
Your targets this week:
1+ out of 4: Well done, you beat us and we'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor
The ones that got away 1) The 1981 wedding of (fictional) super couple Luke Spencer and Laura Webber remains the highest-rated hour in American soap opera history. Name the show. 2) The US television channel Syfy broadcasts marathons of science fiction classic The Twilight Zone every year on New Year's Eve (and Day) and which other holiday? 3) Nicknamed the Flying Finn, which real-life marathon runner is Dustin Hoffman's idol in the 1976 movie Marathon Man? 4) Containing a single alcohol serving, typically what size (in millilitres) are bottles of spirits usually served on aeroplanes?
The answers
1)General Hospital 2) The Fourth of July/Independence Day 3) (Paavo) Nurmi (although there are numerous Finns with this nickname) 4)50ml
Our excuses
1) A short, US-centric set this week, and it's no coincidence that these are from our trip south of the border to New York. We'd not heard of General Hospital, but it's definitely an institution in the US with over 13,000 episodes and counting. That said, apparently there was a UK spin-off in the 1970s. We went with the standard 'popular 80s US TV show' guess of Dallas. 2) Halloween seemed the obvious guess here, with the only slight niggle of doubt stemming from the end of October being awfully close to the end of December. If we'd followed this thought further we might have spotted Independence Day as an alternative big holiday sufficiently far from the New Year for people's marathon appetite to have built up again. 3) Flying Finn puts me in mind of the Formula One driver Mika Häkkinen, who it seemed an unlikely candidate to also be a marathon runner from the 20s. I was surprised the name didn't ring a bell when read out. 4) A pretty weird question, but one I felt quite annoyed for missing. My (admittedly hazy) memory was that a shot of alcohol was 25ml, although the Wikipedia page on shot glasses seems to reinforce this. Unfortunately, I should have realized that would make for a tiny bottle of booze.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us and helped us win (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
Question 2. Spoopy.
1) A surprise fan of General Hospital, she apparently sent the actors who played Luke and Laura bottles of champagne in time for their on-screen marriage. Whose (real-life) 1981 wedding was one of the most watched broadcasts in British television history? 2) Three years before taking on the role for which he is best known, name the actor pictured on the left in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. 3) With nine Olympic gold medals, Paavo Nurmi sits joint-second on the list of all time Olympic gold medalists. Which athlete is way (way) out in first place with 18? 4) In the UK one unit of alcohol is defined as 10 millilitres. How many units of alcohol are therefore in a 70 centilitre bottle of 40% ABV vodka?
The answers
1)Princess Diana 2)William Shatner 3) Michael Phelps 4) 28 units (40% of the 700ml of vodka is alcohol, which is 280ml)
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
That airline question is most unfair - a "single serving" indeed. A single of spirits was 1/6th of a gill or, now, 25ml. So 50ml would really be a double.
That airline question is most unfair - a "single serving" indeed. A single of spirits was 1/6th of a gill or, now, 25ml. So 50ml would really be a double.
ReplyDeleteHa, yes, it certainly seemed a bit off (or at least vague) at the time. Such are the perils of quiz.
Delete