The longest-titled James Bond film is George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service

The doctor and I are teaming up this week: the excuses are solely his doing, while the alternative questions are a combination of our attempts at trivia funtimes!

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

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

The ones that got away
1) To what genus of birds does the Kestrel belong? Hint: It shares its name with a US sports team.
2) Which country recently re-elected its centre-right prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho? It is the first European country to have done so since the start of the global financial crisis in 2009.
3) Name the two mobile telephones announced by Google at a September 2015 event in San Francisco.
4) In what year did the first James Bond movie Dr No. come out?
5) October is the 10th month, despite have the prefix "Oct" meaning Eighth in its name. Which two months were added to cause this?
6) Name all 10 events in the Men's decathlon. All 10 needed for the point.
7) Name all 10 members of the Wu-Tang Clan, both deceased and not. All 10 needed for the point.

The answers

1) Falcon
2) Portugal
3) Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P
4) 1962
5) January and February
6) 100m, 400m, 110m hurdles, 1,500m, Javelin, Pole Vault, Discus, Shot put, Long jump, High jump
7) Raekwon, RZA, GZA, Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Cappadonna, Masta Killah, U-God, Ghostface Killah

Our excuses

1) None of us being particularly familiar with the Atlanta Falcons we instead went for Seahawks, as we could see that they were playing a game on the pub TV... so it was like, fate, or stuff. Wrong though.
2) The rich-person otherkin (recently returned from a stint in Dubai, which they described as being "insane, you have no idea") assured us that there was no way that Coelho was not an "uber-Spanish" name. Since she has roots in Italy, this seemed like pretty good knowledge and a decent basis for an answer. Coelho is actually a deffo Portuguese name meaning 'rabbit'. Just goes to show that you can't trust rich people, I guess.
3) Personally i think this is probably the most boring question I've ever been asked (in light of the answer). Like if they were called the Nexus 6-Willies and the Nexus 5-Fart then I'd think it was super funny and a super good question to ask. Obviously that's immaterial though, and there's definitely an argument that one should vaguely keep up with tech news... I think I'm the wrong person to have that argument with though.
4) We seem to have very poor luck with film year questions, and were actually pretty chuffed to be only one year out with 1963.
5) Quite a contentious one this as we were unable to derive the meanings behind all the month names (something that we thought would be utterly key to the answer... but which wasn't, the months mainly seem to have vague or obscure name origins). The statistician argued that, since July and August were associated with Julius and Augustus Caesar, who are dudes, rather than Gods (we remembered that January came from Janus, Roman God of the threshold), they were most likely to have been invented most recently. January and February were apparently added to the original 10 months by the Numa Pompilius "Second King of Rome" because i guess that's the sort of thing that people did for fun before Twitter was invented.
6) This was the first of two 10-answer questions where every 2 answers got you a point. As the team's default 'sports guy' the statistician was left to his own devices and managed 9 of the 10, incorrectly including the hammer but leaving out the 400m. What a n00b.
7) The second of two 10-answer questions where every 2 answers got you a point. Amusingly a friend (playing off the doctor's desire to become better educated about rap music) had recently written us a cryptic Wu-Tang clan member-name connection quiz (things get wild sometimes, when your friends are nerds). Despite this, and despite the charming graffiti in the Men's loos declaring that "Wu-Tang is for the children!", we managed to misremember Redman as being a member (he collaborated with Method Man, but was not himself a member) and couldn't remember Cappadonna, instead plumping for the invented rapper Genius (watch out for him though, dude's gonna blow up now he's been mentioned on this blog).

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more point)? 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 1

1) Pictured is the logo of a Toronto NBA team - what is their name? (Hint: it's also a word for a type of bird.)
2) Portugal is one of only two European Union members to share the same time zone as the UK. What's the other?
3) Versions of Google's mobile operating system Android are released under confectionery-themed names, such as Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair. For 1 point each, can you identify the two versions with the pictured logos? As a hint, they begin with I (on the left) and J (on the right).
4) Dr. No dies (spoilers!) in a reactor coolant tank filled with heavy water. What subatomic particle is the key difference between heavy water and regular water?

Question 3

5) The key difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is in when leap years occur. While they happened once every four years in the Julian calendar, under the Gregorian system they happen in years that are divisible by 4, except that years divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. Simple, eh? For 1 point each, when was the last year that would have been a leap year under the Julian system, but wasn't under the Gregorian system, and when will the next such year occur?
6) What total height do you get if you add together the current men's world records (as defined by the International Association of Athletics Federations) in long jump, high jump and pole vault? If you're within a metre you get the point.
7) The last four letters of the Wu Tang Clan song C.R.E.A.M. stand for 'Rules Everything Around Me'. What does the 'C' stand for?

The answers

1) Raptors
2) Republic of Ireland (Iceland also shares the same time zone, but isn't an EU member)
3) Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean
4) A neutron (heavy water contains deuterium, which is heavy due to the presence of an extra neutron in its core)
5) 1900 and 2100
6) 17.56m (so 16.56m - 18.56m gets you the point; the pole vault record is 6.16m, the high jump 2.45m and the long jump 8.95m)
7) Cash

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

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