The term "First Gentleman" is used in the United States for the husband of a state governor

Your targets this week:

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

I got bored again, so there's another bonus round all the way at the bottom! Do check it out!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) According to the book of Genesis, on what day did God create man?
2) Acclaimed actor Donald Sutherland (most recently noted for playing President Snow in The Hunger Games movies) was born in Canada's third least populous province - which one?
3) Which of the Democratic Party's declared candidates for the 2016 United States Presidential election is a Senator for Vermont? (No, it's not Hillary Clinton.)
4) What is Kanye West's middle name?
5) 2 point question: What picture completes this group?

Question 5

The answers

1) The 6th day
2) New Brunswick
3) Bernie Sanders
4) Omari
5) A lion (these are the mascots of Harry Potter houses; the eagle, badger and snake are the mascots of Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin, respectively, with lion left over for Gryffindor)

Our excuses

1) Some within-team debate as the doctor was fairly sure of sixth while a teammate's suggestion of fifth eventually won out. A bit of googling suggests 'man is five' (from this song and elsewhere) is a phrase with some significance, and may have explained how this went awry.
2) Doubtless a pretty tough ask for anyone outside of Canada, and even within it we were struggling, narrowing down to a toss-up between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. (In fact, Nova Scotia is the fourth least populous, with Newfoundland and Labrador filling in second spot.)
3) I can't say I pay too much attention to a Presidential race much before the year of the election, so we were always going to struggle here. Credit to our team for coming up with Elizabeth Warren who, while not a candidate (yet), has been repeatedly tipped to enter the race and is a Senator from nearby(ish) Massachusetts.
4) Not much to say on this one, with no idea we went for that old fallback of 'John'. So close.
5) Oof. Horrible way to lose it, and the doctor took most of the responsibility for some over-confidence (although I should have known better as well). We both convinced ourselves the mascot of Gryffindor was the gryphon, and that the carefully-cropped image was representing its head, leaving 'raven' the missing answer. We should perhaps have realized that even Ms. Rowling is not quite so on the nose. (Oh, and in case you're wondering, there was an entire round of these Only Connect-like picture questions. Fun!)

How did you do? Would you have beaten us and helped us win (1 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
1) Thought by many to be the cradle of civilization, what word meaning 'between rivers' describes the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system?
2) Canada's smallest province is Prince Edward Island. The fourth son of George III, the Prince Edward in question was never king himself, but was the father of which other British monarch?
3) No relation to Elizabeth, Chief Justice Earl Warren chaired an investigation into what event? The 889-page final report was presented on September 24, 1964.
4) Recorded after leaving Chicago State University aged 20, what was the name of Kanye West's debut studio album?
5) 2 point question: In my super-great Harry Potter fanfiction (Harry Potter and the Trivia of Quizkaban) I've created a new Hogwarts house called Quizzlefun! You know all the mascots of the four canonical houses above, but can you work out what animal is Quizzlefun's mascot? Here's an exclusive sneak-peak to help you work it out:

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Honestly, Harry, given how often it allows me to show off knowing something without any need to explain why I know it, I'd have thought you'd have read Hogwarts: A History by now!"

"Look," sighed Harry, "all I want to know is what animal Quizzlefun's mascot is, can't you just tell me?"

"Oh Harry," Hermione replied smugly, "I can't just tell you things, how are you to learn!" She thought for a minute. "Ah, how about this. If Gryffindor plus Ravenclaw equals gryphon, and Gryffindor plus Slytherin plus Quizzlefun equals Chimera, then what does Quizzlefun equal?"

The answers

1) Mesopotamia
2) Queen Victoria
3) The assassination of President Kennedy
4) The College Dropout
5) A goat

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
 
Bonus round: Gimme 10!

After last week's experiment with 'double or nothing', I've decided to try a new question idea this time around. Below you'll find five more questions loosely inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away, but each has four possible answers. As usual, you get 1 point per correct answer, but once again you have to decide how many answers you're confident of. If you provide an incorrect guess you'll score 0 for that question! So look over each question and decide whether you want to give 1, 2, 3 or all 4 answers. Your target is to score 10 points (although if you think that's too easy, feel free to set your own goal) - no poll for this one, but feel free to let me know how you did by other means!

Oh, and one last thing: perfect spelling is required!

1) Along with Genesis, which four other books of the bible make up the Pentateuch?
2) What are the middle names of the last four US Presidents? To help, those Presidents are Barack H. Obama, George W. Bush, Bill J. Clinton and George H. W. Bush (and yes, you need both names for that last one to score).
3) What four countries in the Commonwealth of Nations have a larger population than that of the UK?
4) What four singles where Kanye West is credited as the lead artist have reached the top 5 in the UK Singles chart?
5) What four Latin words feature in the Hogwarts motto? In English it is usually translated as 'never tickle a sleeping dragon'.

The answers

1) Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
2) Hussein, Walker, Jefferson, Herbert Walker
3) India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh
4) Slow Jamz, Gold Digger, Stronger, FourFiveSeconds
5) Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus

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The Poisson distribution is the best probability distribution. Probably.

Don't forget: if you haven't voted in my 'When Do You Quiz?' Poll, do please spare a moment to do so here!

We won this week, but could you have done even better?

Bonus! I've added some extra fun to the alternative questions this week, so do have a go at them as well!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The left-fielder

The ones that got away
1) The first law school for women in the US was originally named after which cross-dressing Shakespeare character?
2) Mary has a purse containing 50 coins totalling exactly 1 dollar. Mary drops 1 coin, what is the percentage chance that coin is a penny? The available coins are 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents and 25 cents, and you need to be within 5% to get the point.
3) What is the name of the main family in Downton Abbey?
4) Of the two quotes that follow, one is attributed to Vladimir Putin, the other to a member of House Lannister in Game of Thrones. For 1 point, which is which?
"There are no men like me. Only me."
"Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right."

The answers

1) Portia (from The Merchant of Venice)
2) 85% (she either has 40 pennies, 8 nickels and 2 dimes, or 45 pennies, 2 nickels, 2 dimes and a quarter)
3) Crawley
4) The first quote is Lannister, the second is Putin

Our excuses

1) A very small set on a quiz that we did almost awkwardly well on (including a perfect score through the first two rounds). Still, an interesting mix in the ones we did drop, with this a particularly good question as it rewards either knowledge of US law schools, or of Shakespeare (Portia's 'cross-dressing' comes as she assumes the role of a lawyer's apprentice). Not being familiar with The Merchant of Venice we instead went for Viola from Twelfth Night (after a not inconsiderable time spent trying to remember her name).
2) Urgh. One of those times where I think "oh well, at least this proves I don't leave out questions from the blog if they're too embarrassing". After a while spent convincing myself there were only two possible combinations, I failed at the last by thinking "ok, so one is 40 pennies, the other is 45 pennies, so that's a 42.5% chance!", forgetting there were 50 coins in total, not 100.
3) I'm starting to notice a certain 'curse of Downton' cropping up on quizzes here, where the combination of North Americans seeming strangely obsessed with the show, along with our own utter indifference, renders such questions impenetrable. My notes tell me we went with 'Bannister' in the end, although whether this was just a hangover from the Lannister question is beyond my beer-fogged memory.
4) The doctor and the left-fielder independently agreed on the wrong way round for these, and I was too busy carefully counting coin combinations to get involved (and I seldom try with 'this-or-that' style questions anyway). On the plus side, there were another pair of quotes which they did identify correctly, so we did as well as you'd expect picking at random.

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

With only four Ones That Got Away this week I thought I'd get a bit more creative to offer slightly more bang for your blog-reading buck. For one week only you're getting twice as many alternative questions, which come in two formats: 'Straight Up' and 'Double or Nothing'.

'Straight Up' questions are simple fact-based trivia with 1 point available for each correct answer. Points scored on these questions are safe regardless of what happens next.

'Double or Nothing' questions have two possible responses, and it's up to you whether you provide one or both answers. Giving one correct answer scores you 1 point, giving two correct answers scores you 2 points but if you give two answers and either is wrong you'll score nothing for that question! After you read each question you'll have to decide whether you'll play it safe with one answer, or risk it all by going for two. Good luck!

Part 1: straight up: 
1a) What two-word phrase is used by modern critics to label Shakespearean works that are not easily categorized as comedy, tragedy, or history?
2a) If I toss a (fair) coin twice, what is the probability it will land on the same side both times?
3a) Whose 'Book of Household Management', a guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, has sold millions of copies despite advice including boiling pasta for nearly 2 hours?
4a) If 'Raymond Richard' is the author George R. R. Martin, then who is 'Ronald Reuel'? (Surname suffices.)

Part 2: double or nothing:
1b) Two of Shakespeare's canonical plays have titles wherein all words begin with the same letter. Name one or both. (Obviously one-word titles don't count.)
2b) A GCSE maths question was doing the rounds a few weeks ago concerning someone called Hannah and a bag of sweets. Consternation abound concerning the equation n² - n - 90 = 0. Give one or both values of n that satisfy it. (Note: you should not take into account what n actually represented in the original exam question.)
3b) The title characters of both a 1937 animated film and a 1950 animated film were scullery maids. Name one or both.
4b) Vladimir Putin's surname is written as 'Poutine' in French, which is hilarious because poutine is a Canadian dish traditionally consisting of french fries and two other ingredients. Name one or both.

The answers

1a) Problem plays
2a) 50% (writing H for heads and T for tails, there are four possible results from tossing a coin twice: HH, HT, TH, TT, of which half are both heads or both tails)
3a) Mrs (Isabella) Beeton
4a) J. R. R. Tolkien
1b) Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest
2b) 10 and -9 (although if you remembered the whole question you'd know that -9 wouldn't have been possible as n was the number of sweets in Hannah's bag)
3b) Snow White and Cinderella
4b) Gravy and cheese (specifically, curds)

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll! (Remember the maximum possible is 12 points!)

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Pub Quiz Poll: When do you quiz?

Following my Pub Quiz Poll about team sizes, here's another data gathering exercise. Pretty simple: when do you quiz? Please vote for whichever day of the week you most often attend a pub quiz. If you regularly attend more than one quiz a week, please choose the day you quiz more often or, if you attend more than one equally regularly, pick which you'd continue to attend if you could only go to one. (Sorry if that gives you a hard decision - I've kept the poll to 'one vote per person' so that people who regularly attend multiple quizzes don't skew the results too much.)

Results will be discussed in due course (and hopefully with a slightly quicker turnaround than the last poll!).

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Pub Quiz Poll Results: Team size limits

Earlier this year I ran a poll asking what you think the team size limit should be at pub quizzes (if, indeed, you thought there should be a limit at all). Five months later I've remembered to have a look at the results, and they were fairly conclusive. As you can see below, a team size of six seems to be the prevailing opinion, picking up precisely half of the votes to date. Around one in five voters preferred to see quartets of quizzers, while one in seven think five heads are the perfect number.

I can't say I found these results all that surprising; in my experience of quizzing the most common team size limit is six, and I doubt that's a coincidence. Still, it's mildly interesting to note that even numbers seem to be preferred, while it's good to see the often under-represented non-integer team size getting a mention as well.

Not pictured: pretending it isn't a problem

All of this does raise the question of what to do about levelling the playing field between smaller and larger teams. The simplest solution to me is to have a size limit, and a six player cap (at least for a normal pub setting) is a good balance between letting people have a good social experience without too many players feeling they have no chance. There are times when this isn't necessarily practical though, be it a long-running quiz with long-held traditions, or simply a cultural issue (as noted on the original post, it's quite rare to encounter team size limits here in Montreal). There's also the question of what a quizmaster faced with an unexpectedly large group should do - your landlord won't be happy to see a large group heading out the door regardless of the quizzing reasons.

The latter case is probably more easily dealt with: one ad hoc fix is to let big groups play but explain they can't win the top prize (or, as I've seen at some venues, have a separate 'big team prize'). Another quite common choice is to ask the big team to split in two, although this needs a quizmaster who's either alert to collusion or good at persuading them to be competitive.

Handling a situation where large teams are an established part of the quiz requires more creativity. A careful balance has to be struck between the smaller teams feeling hard done by without the larger teams (and their all-important larger spending power) feeling unfairly targeted. The one successful solution I've seen (and discussed in the comments here) are multi-answer questions where the number of required answers is the same as your team size. ("For five points, name as many landlocked African countries as your team size", for example.) Choosing the correct questions for this is difficult, but it ties the difficulty directly to your team size making it feel perfectly fair.

If you have any other suggestions to balancing team sizes do let me know, either in the comments or on Twitter, and keep an eye out for another Pub Quiz Poll coming soon!

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The Canadian Navy's motto is 'Ready Aye Ready'

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 metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) In the Canadian navy, what rank is immediately below rear admiral?
2) Despite its 'Peach State' nickname, Georgia's peach production is lower than which of its neighbouring states?
3) In which country did George Foreman fight Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle? You can give either the current name or its name at the time of the fight.
4) What do the letters of the US TV channel 'CNN' stand for?
5) Which Russian wrote the existentialist novel Notes from Underground?
6) Which company was behind the first FIFA World Cup football to be made with the now iconic black-and-white design of hexagons and pentagons?
7) And in which year was that World Cup?
8) Where in the body would you find the 'IT band'?

The answers

1) Commodore
2) South Carolina
3) Zaïre (now Democratic Republic of the Congo)
4) Cable News Network
5) (Fyodor) Dostoyevsky
6) Adidas
7) 1970
8) The leg

Our excuses

1) We (correctly) guessed this would be the same as the Royal Navy, but couldn't remember how they worked, so instead hoped it was the same as in Starfleet, recalling Captain Kirk's demotion from Admiral to Captain in Star Trek IV. Unfortunately, despite the Commodore rank also existing in Starfleet, it's seldom mentioned (and apparently was dropped altogether in the year 2364), so I think that's a pretty good excuse.
2) The team's combined knowledge of South-East US geography was good enough to identify the valid options, before going for Alabama over South Carolina in something of a coin toss.
3) After some brain-wracking, some of the team had Congo while the doctor dug up Zaire, and none of us were sure enough which Congo Zaire became (or indeed, whether Zaire was right in the first place).
4) I suspect for most this comes down to getting the C, and many of those will be kicking themselves - as we did - for putting 'Central'.
5) The classic pub quiz game of 'pick one of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin or Solzhenitsyn' and hope you're right. Except for some reason we ended up with Kafka. Hmm.
6) A fun fact which I was surprised to discover I didn't know. Adidas was tempting me, but seemed a bit too 'obvious' (famous last words, especially when they've been making them for the last 40 years...), and in hindsight I should have realized Umbro was a bit too anglo-centric for a Montreal quiz.
7) We were a bit closer on this one, as while we obviously knew it wasn't 1966, I then pushed one World Cup too late with 1974.
8) IT is short for 'iliotibial', and it seems 'IT band syndrome' is a common sporting injury. The doctor claims "it can't kill you so I don't care". Reassuring as ever.

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 4

1) The highest-selling single computer model of all time, how much RAM does the Commodore 64 have?
2) Having granted a patent for the land to Robert Heath in 1629, North and South Carolina are named after which monarch?
3) What term for a type of punch derives from the arm's motion mimicking the action of swinging a scythe?
4) Which television network's logo is this? Its name translates to 'island' or 'peninsula'.
5) Give a year in which Dostoyevsky was alive.
6) The 2006 FIFA World Cup ball was the Adidas +Teamgeist, with the plus sign included so the name could be trademarked as the regular German word Teamgeist could not. What does Teamgeist translate to in English?
7) The 1970 World Cup was the last time the Jules Rimet trophy was awarded, as Jules Rimet himself had stated it could be kept by the first team to win the tournament how many times?
8) Z'roa, a lamb shankbone appears on the Seder Plate, part of what religious festival?

The answers

1) 64 kilobytes
2) Charles I (of England, Carolus is Latin for 'Charles')
3) Haymaker
4) Al Jazeera
5) 1821-1881
6) Team spirit (à la, for example, zeitgeist)
7) Three (with Brazil the 1970 champions)
8) Passover

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

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Prince's real name is Prince

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 metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) Featuring artists including Joy Division and Anna Domino, now-defunct Factory Records was one of the most influential labels of the 1980s. In what city was it based?
2) In what year did Enron file for bankruptcy amid a massive financial scandal?
3) Which of these is not a real Prince song: 'Computer Blue', 'Easy 2 Tease Me', 'Glam Slam', 'Horny Pony', or 'Raspberry Beret'?

The following 3 questions all have answers of the form "blank the blank" (e.g. 'Gordon the gopher'):

4) What skating move involves crouching near the ice on one foot while holding out the other leg which looks kinda like a gun?
5) What 2001 movie starring Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but lost out to A Beautiful Mind?
6) What 24 year-old rapper is also known as 'DJ Stank Daddy' and 'Wolf Haley'?

The answers

1) Manchester
2) 2001
3) Easy 2 Tease Me
4) Shoot-the-duck
5) In the Bedroom
6) Tyler, The Creator

Our excuses

1) I think Salford-based Joy Division should have given us more of a clue on this one, but our first instinct was London and we felt we had little else to go on. In hindsight I could perhaps have had more faith in my observation that 'factory' hints to somewhere beyond the M25, but at the time that seemed more than a little flimsy.
2) Getting the year for something like this seems simultaneously very tricky and very gettable. We ended up three years off (guessing 2004), led somewhat astray by our memory of seeing the musical based on the scandal in London some time ago. (As I'm sure you're wondering, we scored free tickets somehow, and it was precisely as weird as you might expect a musical about a financial scandal to be. There were velociraptors.)
3) Pretty big mea culpa on this one, as I incorrectly tried to second-guess the quizmaster and suggested that the specification that the song was spelt with a '2' meant Easy 2 Tease Me was unlikely to have been made up. Luckily I made amends for it by downing half a pint of cider quicker than the other two teams in the tiebreak to win the quiz. Phew.
4) The 'gun' hint put us in mind of 'cocking the hammer', but it was still a fairly optimistic guess. I didn't recognize the answer, but it turns out it's one of those things you've seen loads of times so has a pleasing "oh, so there's a name for that?" ring to it. (By the way, if you've ever wondered why it's called figure skating, it's kinda fun.)
5) I don't think a single team got this one, which is a touch surprising for an Oscar-nominated movie.
6) Perhaps a slightly bigger name over here than back in the UK (although he's picked up a few top 40 albums, so hardly a nobody), but still rather outside our wheelhouse.

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 5

1) Which US Government organization has nicknames including The Pickle Factory, The Company, and Virginia Farm Boys?
2) Before shortening to Enron, the company was to be named 'Enteron', but made the change after the realization that Enteron approximates the Greek for what body part?
3) Who is the first female in line to the British throne?
4) There are four Olympic disciplines of figure skating: men's singles, ladies' singles, pair skating, and what other? Unlike the other three, in this discipline competitors must skate to music with a clear beat or rhythm.
5) Indicated on this floor plan, in what building would you find the Queens' Bedroom?
6) What Tyler was a leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England? (Spelling counts!)

The answers

1) The Central Intelligence Agency ('CIA' is good enough for the point)
2) Intestines (e.g. gastroenteritis comes from 'gastro' for stomach and 'entero' for small intestine)
3) Princess Charlotte
4) Ice dancing
5) The White House
6) Wat Tyler

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

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