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, 15 May 2015
Burger King allegedly spent over $1 million to put the Burger King in Floyd Mayweather's entourage
Your targets this week:
We won this week, but could you have done even better?! The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The secret German 4) The rich person otherkin 5) The metallurgist
The ones that got away
Question 5
1) Director Richard Attenborough recruited over 300,000 extras for a two minute scene in what movie? 2) Madison Avenue lies between Park Avenue and which other numbered avenue in New York? 3) At the start of its first series the show Mad Men was set in what year? 4)2 point question: Based on the average Canadian consumption rate of beef, how many cows are eaten by the population of the island of Montreal each day? You need to be within 50% to get the two points. 5)2 point question: The car pictured in this slightly doctored advert is considered one of the biggest marketing flops of all time. What is it? (1 point for the brand, 1 point for the specific car.)
The answers
1) Gandhi 2) 5th 3) 1960 4) 500 (so 250-750 gets you the points) 5) Ford Edsel
Our excuses
1) I suspected I'd kick myself on this one, but when a teammate suggested Ben-Hur it rang a faint bell for having a lot of extras (even if it did seem rather too early for Attenborough). Turns out it had quite a few (some 10,000), but nowhere near the 300,000 in Gandhi. 2) Having visited New York City last November I attempted to sketch out a map on a cocktail napkin, narrowing down the options to 4th or 5th. My patchy memory had me leaning more for the former, and combined with a failed attempt to second-guess the quizmaster (5th seemed too amenable to a blind guess) we lost this particular coin toss. 3) While we were all thinking early sixties, no-one was quite sure how early sixties. I also probably didn't help matters by blurting out 1963 early on for no particularly strong reasons, thereby anchoring everyone to an ultimately quite wrong guess. Pro-tip for numerical quiz questions: everyone should think of their own answer before anyone says anything! 4) A Montreal special for you here, although given that we over-estimated the island's population by some 50% (thinking it was 2.5 million rather than the correct 1.7 million) we were unlikely to come close. As it turned out, and truly demonstrating the power of having a statistician on your team, I forgot to divide by 100 and wound up with an answer of 150,000 cows a day. Oops. 5) Not a car I'm familiar with, and a question we left rather too late to consider properly. That said, the doctor thought the Lincoln logo was roughly the right shape to fit on the grille, which wasn't too bad a shout.
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
Question 2
1) The 250 mile Dandi March, led by Gandhi in 1930 and an important part of the Indian independence movement, concerned the British tax on what? 2) Owing to its resemblance to a household item, what is the name of this building (located at 175 Fifth Avenue)? 3) 1960 is known as the Year of Africa, with 17 nations from the continent gaining independence that year. Two of those 17 gained independence from the UK. Name either of them. 4) mcdonalds.com lists 7 main ingredients/components in their Big Mac. For 1 point, name 2 of these ingredients, for 2 points, name 4. 5) Along with Ford, which two other major American automotive companies make up the so-called 'Big Three'? (1 point for each.)
Me before clicking the answers to your alt questions: "hey, I think I nailed this one." after: "oh dear no."
I think that building should've taken the name I just invented for it instead: The doorstop building. Also, is it bad that I got all 7 for the big mac? :S
I might not have recognised the car just from the picture, but the description of it as the biggest marketing flop, in conjunction with the picture, was a give-away. I remember the Ford Edsel from The Book of Heroic Failures. A great book, but I think it could do with updating, to replace the World's Worst Weather Report with Michael Fish's famous prediction that there wouldn't be a hurricane.
It's a fun area, with New Coke I suppose being the single most famous example. I'd never heard of the car in question (although that's not necessarily saying too much), so it's always fun to find out about super famous things that have just somehow passed one by.
Me before clicking the answers to your alt questions: "hey, I think I nailed this one." after: "oh dear no."
ReplyDeleteI think that building should've taken the name I just invented for it instead: The doorstop building. Also, is it bad that I got all 7 for the big mac? :S
Next quiz you do with us you're officially on sandwich duty.
DeleteI might not have recognised the car just from the picture, but the description of it as the biggest marketing flop, in conjunction with the picture, was a give-away. I remember the Ford Edsel from The Book of Heroic Failures. A great book, but I think it could do with updating, to replace the World's Worst Weather Report with Michael Fish's famous prediction that there wouldn't be a hurricane.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fun area, with New Coke I suppose being the single most famous example. I'd never heard of the car in question (although that's not necessarily saying too much), so it's always fun to find out about super famous things that have just somehow passed one by.
Delete