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, 9 April 2015
Star Trek features a game called Strategema
Your targets this week:
1+ out of 9: Well done, you beat us! 4+ out of 9: We'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The left-fielder
The ones that got away 1) What type of acid is found in car batteries? 2) What was the name of the first production commercial jetliner, which took paying passengers for the first time in 1952? 3) What two-word term was coined by the critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 to describe the technique popularized by Jackson Pollock and others? 4)2 point question: What is each player's objective in the board game Stratego? 5)2 point question: In Risk, which continent is the easiest to defend, having the fewest connections to any other continents? 6) Who was the president of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954? 7) What type of creature is a dugite?
The answers
1) Sulphuric 2)The de Havilland DH 106 Comet ('Comet' was good enough for the point) 3)Action painting 4) To capture their opponent's flag 5) Australia ('Oceania' not accepted) 6) Hồ Chí Minh 7) A snake ('reptile' not accepted)
Our excuses
1) The doctor was pretty certain it was lead, the left-fielder was wholly unconvinced, and I decided this seemed like something the doctor tends to inexplicably know. Turns out he was thinking of the name 'lead-acid battery', which is because they have lead in them, not because there's a thing called lead acid. 2) When the answer was read out I still didn't recognize it, but on looking it up I did recognize the name 'de Havilland'. Make of that what you will. We came up with 'Dreamliner', which is apparently a type of Boeing airliner. 3) The left-fielder suggested 'abstract expressionism', which sounded great, and is (Wikipedia informs me) closely associated with action painting. 4) A round on board games naturally tricked us into deploying our joker for double points, and promptly backfired when we were asked about a game I've never played. The left-fielder had a vague memory of it being something to do with Europe or Japan, and so capturing one of those territories went on the sheet. 5) We got a Risk question wrong a few months ago and despite reading quite a lot about the game for writing that blog post, I still couldn't bring a clear enough image of the board to mind. We were torn between South America and Australia, and while I knew the former had two connections, I had a sneaky suspicion Australia had more. In addition, we suspected we were behind and that most teams would put Australia, so we took an educated gamble that didn't pay off. 6) The left-fielder came in immediately with the answer but unfortunately both the doctor and I were suspicious. We thought Hồ Chí Minh was in power for much longer, and while I think this was an understandable mistake - he was president of North Vietnam from 1954-1969 - in retrospect our eventual punt of Lê Đức Thọ was nowhere near a 'better than nothing' guess. 7) "It's always a bird or a fish, but it doesn't sound like a bird or a fish." "It sounds a bit like Diglett, you know, that Pokémon that comes out of holes in the ground." "Oh yeah, huh. Shall we go for mole?" "Sure, we've probably lost anyway."
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (4 or more points)? 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 4
1) The coulomb, the unit of electric charge, can be defined as the function of which two SI base units? (You need both for the point.) 2) Boeing commercial airliners follow the familiar naming convention of the form 7X7, where X is replaced by a number (so e.g. X = 4 gives us the Boeing 747). Which is the only single-digit number X which gives rise to a 7X7 model name that has not yet been assigned to an airliner? 3) What nickname for Pollock can be obtained by adding a single letter to that of a famous Victorian serial killer? 4) For one point each, name the movies in which each of these fictional board games appear. 5) In a standard Risk set, the continent of Africa is divided into six territories. Four of these are North Africa, South Africa, East Africa and Congo (or Central Africa). For one point each, name the other two, both of which are also real-world countries. (So no, West Africa is not one of them.) 6) Lê Đức Thọ is one of two people to voluntarily refuse a Nobel Prize, refusing the 1973 Peace Prize claiming there was no actual peace in Vietnam. Which French novelist is the other, declining the 1964 Literature Prize saying "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution"? 7) In which Disney animated film would you find a royal aide called 'Sir Hiss'?
The answers
1) Second and Ampere (1 coulomb = 1 sA) 2) 9 (i.e. there is no Boeing 797) 3) Jack the Dripper 4)Jumanji and Robocop 5) Egypt and Madagascar 6) Jean-Paul Sartre 7) Robin Hood
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
YOU SPELLED IT SULPHURIC! i'm mid-conversation with someone about this right now. apparently it's sulfuric everywhere now?! my coworker and i are both gobsmacked that you're supposed to use an F and not a PH.
sul(ph|f)uric acid and ho chi minh hurt...but as we'd already won the first half, it would have been overkill... you didn't mention that we won the first half with a perfect score (A BRAGWORTHY ACCOMPLISHMENT), and we had trouble drinking enough to even clear that gift certificate... can you imagine winning two? we'd die.
ps: this is left-fielder, i am tired of switching my name every time ;D
I lose sleep every time a team member suggests the correct answer and we ultimately put a wrong one. (Slight exaggeration. (I do feel bad though.))
And yeah, I should probably have written sulfuric; I *vaguely* remember that change happening, plus it even threw me when I was trying to fact-check this quiz.
When we used to do that quiz semi-regularly as a two, I genuinely worried about winning both rounds, since we had enough time spending $50, let alone $100. Still would love to do it at some point, but SOMEONE runs a conflicting Monday quiz so we probably never will.
I don't think I've ever got a board game question wrong on this blog. I feel very smug about this. :D (This is, of course, because I am a master of games whereas you are a mere gamer.) (And I've not even played Risk in about a decade.)
Impressive. I think my lack of knowledge of Risk is demonstrated by how I thought 'never get involved in a land war in Asia' was a Risk thing for *years*.
YOU SPELLED IT SULPHURIC! i'm mid-conversation with someone about this right now. apparently it's sulfuric everywhere now?! my coworker and i are both gobsmacked that you're supposed to use an F and not a PH.
ReplyDeletesul(ph|f)uric acid and ho chi minh hurt...but as we'd already won the first half, it would have been overkill... you didn't mention that we won the first half with a perfect score (A BRAGWORTHY ACCOMPLISHMENT), and we had trouble drinking enough to even clear that gift certificate... can you imagine winning two? we'd die.
ps: this is left-fielder, i am tired of switching my name every time ;D
I lose sleep every time a team member suggests the correct answer and we ultimately put a wrong one. (Slight exaggeration. (I do feel bad though.))
DeleteAnd yeah, I should probably have written sulfuric; I *vaguely* remember that change happening, plus it even threw me when I was trying to fact-check this quiz.
When we used to do that quiz semi-regularly as a two, I genuinely worried about winning both rounds, since we had enough time spending $50, let alone $100. Still would love to do it at some point, but SOMEONE runs a conflicting Monday quiz so we probably never will.
I don't think I've ever got a board game question wrong on this blog. I feel very smug about this. :D (This is, of course, because I am a master of games whereas you are a mere gamer.) (And I've not even played Risk in about a decade.)
ReplyDeleteImpressive. I think my lack of knowledge of Risk is demonstrated by how I thought 'never get involved in a land war in Asia' was a Risk thing for *years*.
DeleteI mean, it is pretty sound advice in Risk, too.
Delete