No-one's really sure why New South Wales is called New South Wales

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 7: Well done, you beat us!
4+ out of 7: We'd have won with you on our team!

By the way, some of this week's answers are linked in some way. No points for spotting any connection, but it may help make you more certain of one or two answers!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer

The ones that got away
1) Which Scottish-born dancer and actress came to international attention playing the lead role in the 1948 film The Red Shoes?
2) Brisbane is the capital of which Australian state?
3) What type of aircraft was Francis Gary Powers piloting when he was shot down and captured by the Soviets in 1960?
4) Which star of American Sniper is the god-daughter of former TV 'Dragon' Kelly Hoppen?
5) Which indie band, founded in Leeds in 1985, had albums titled George Best, Bizarro, and Seamonsters?
6) Nicknamed 'pitbull', which former rugby union player (later a TV pundit) won 64 caps for England?
7) Now married to The Only Way is Essex cast member Mark Wright, who played Coronation Street character Tina McIntyre until her murder last year? (That is, the character was murdered, not the actor.)

The answers

1) Moira Shearer
2) Queensland
3) U2
4) Sienna Miller
5) The Wedding Present
6) Brian Moore
7) Michelle Keegan

Our excuses

1) Assuming you're not reading this before looking at the answers, you may have spotted a theme of (male) England football captains. Suffice to say we completely missed it. This question is one I've no idea the difficulty of, and while to me it seems like someone stretching to find another Shearer, I'm happy to be informed if it's actually Very Famous Indeed. We put Lauren Bacall, who at least was also alive in 1948 (pretty good going for us).
2) Oops. Australian geography is pretty standard quiz fodder, but they're one of those things I always think I'm better at than I actually am (so I've never got around to trying to properly learn it). To make matters worse, we'd been chatting to a friend of ours earlier in the day about his upcoming trip to - you guessed it - Brisbane, and so all I could remember was that it "wasn't a million miles from Sydney" which should've been, but wasn't, enough help.
3) Considering last week's question about the band, I was frustrated I hadn't been maintaining the blog while away in the UK, as obviously I read about this incident when writing that post. The doctor was torn between U2 and Blackbird, with the latter's first flight coming a good 4 years later.
4) The 'Dragon' clue not helping, we (and by 'we', I mean the doctor and the programmer) were left struggling to remember who was in American Sniper. They eventually settled on Kate Hudson, who is American, but is at least also a woman.
5) Once again with very little helping us out in the question, we tried to think of any 'indie' bands who might have been formed in Leeds in 1985. Apparently we put down Echo and the Bunnymen, who Wikipedia inform me are a rock band formed in Liverpool in 1978. Still, none out of three ain't bad.
6) Our team's combined knowledge of former England rugby union players amounted to Jonny Wilkinson, Will Carling, and (our answer) Mike Catt, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
7) Hahahaha. Hahaha. Ha.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (4 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
1) The Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes concerns a girl whose shoes force her to dance. What Stravinsky ballet - whose premiere resulted in a 'near-riot' - culminates in a girl dancing herself to death?
2) The Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands found off the Queensland coast, between the Australian mainland and which large island?
3) After tricking the Americans into thinking the U-2 pilot had died, which Soviet leader revealed the truth with the enjoyable quote "I must tell you a secret. When I made my first report I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well... and now just look how many silly things the Americans have said."?
4) Reflecting Navy SEALs' training to operate in all environments, what three words are abbreviated to form SEAL?
5) Which legendary squid-like sea monster was given the scientific name Microcosmus marinus by taxonomist Linnaeus in the first edition of his System Naturae? (Reassuringly, the creature was excluded from later editions.)
6) What is the largest score a team can't end a standard rugby union game with? (Assuming, for the sake of this question, that a game could go on forever.)
7) With families moving in on 9th August 1902, Coronation Street was named in honour of the coronation of which monarch?

The answers

1) The Rite of Spring (and while you're here, be sure to check out the Wikipedia page List of classical music with an unruly audience response)
2) New Guinea
3) Khrushchev
4) Sea, Air and Land
5) The Kraken
6) 4 (you can score 3, 5, or 7 points at a time, for a penalty/drop goal, unconverted, an converted try, respectively, and every score from 5 and up is possible; this relates to a moderately interesting thing in American football)
7) Edward VII

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

Tweet