We won this week, but could you have done even better?
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The programmer 4) The entrepreneur 5) The comet 6) The antipodean
The ones that got away 1) In what year was the first Rush Hour movie released? 2) Who is this a caricature of? 3) On a list of the world's largest islands, where does Britain rank? 4) Which London bridge crosses the Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge? 5) Who was the last member of the Beatles to marry? 6) Which world famous band were originally called Feedback? 7) Which 'Alan' is this? 8) What was the title of Take That's first UK number one single? 9) Which charity uses the slogan "Refusing to ignore people in crisis"?
Questions 2 (left) and 7 (right)
The answers
1) 1998 2) Steve McQueen 3) 9th 4) Waterloo Bridge 5) Paul McCartney 6) U2 7) Alan Dale (apparently most notable for playing Jim Robinson in Neighbours) 8) Pray 9) The (British) Red Cross
Our excuses
1) An old regular feature of the blog makes a reappearance, thanks to us (as seemingly always) going one year out with 1997. 2) We spent a long time debating whether it was Daniel Craig or Frank Sinatra, before going with Jeff Goldblum at the last minute. Obviously. 3) There was some debate about whether we thought the quizmaster would count Australia as an island or not (he didn't), and in the end we were agonizingly close with eighth. 4) This was a London quiz, so should have been gettable, but we went (very) wrong with Tower Bridge. 5) As I'm sure you're desperate to know, the order of (first) marriages goes Lennon (1962), Starr (1965), Harrison (1966) and then McCartney (1969). Mmm, fascinating. 6) Spending our time thinking of bands whose music we thought could be described as "a bit feedbacky" we dabbled with Nirvana before putting down Muse. Reading up on U2, it seems Feedback was their very first name before changing to The Hype, the latter of which at least rang a bell. 7) As the hardest question on a picture sheet full of Alans, it's not too surprising we missed this. My notes tell me we put Alan Jackson, who the Internet suggests is an American singer with a cowboy hat. 8) After a previous quiz asked us for Blondie's first single, it was a similar story here as we tried to pick a random Take That song and hope for the best. Once again this seems a very tough ask, with the band having four top 10 hits before Pray. 9) Influenced, I suspect, by the question putting the charity Crisis in mind, we went with Shelter, another homeless advocacy group.
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) Meaning 'Fragrant Harbour', where was Jackie Chan born? 2) A caricature question gives me an excuse to revisit a past favourite: which world leader currently on the election trail has been painted by George W. Bush here? 3) Of the 10 largest islands in the world, 3 belong exclusively to one country - which country? 4) Situated near Blackfriars Bridge, which tower was built with two circular and one cross-shaped window to (ostensibly) subvert advertising laws? 5) Who is the only one of Henry VIII's wives to not share a Christian name with any other? (Full name, please.) 6) Mostly found in the Mojave Desert, the plant yucca brevifolia was given its more common name of Joshua tree by a group of settlers of what religion? 7) With over 7,000 episodes to date, Neighbours is (unsurprisingly) the Australian TV show with the most episodes. Which is the only episodic UK show to have more? 8) One of those 'tricks' quizmasters occasionally like to throw around is that the Robbie Williams classic Angels never reached the top of the UK singles chart. In fact, it peaked at a meagre number 4 in early 1998. That week coincided with the UK release of what hugely popular Celine Dion track? 9) A quizzing chestnut to finish: the International Committee of the Red Cross is one of only two organizations (along with just four individuals) to win more than one Nobel Prize. The other is the UNHCR, but what does the R in UNHCR stand for?
The answers
1) Hong Kong 2) Stephen Harper (Canada's current Prime Minister) 3) Canada (Indonesia features on three of the 10 largest islands, but shares Borneo with Brunei and Malaysia, and New Guinea with, you guessed it, Papua New Guinea; and never assume a quizmaster won't ask highly related questions!) 4)The Oxo Tower 5) Jane Seymour (I ask this moderately dull question as an excuse to tell you of my 'Henry's Wives Order Mnemonic'. Just remember CAJACC (or 'cadge-ack' out loud) and that each non-unique wife is in alphabetical order: Aragon, Howard, and Parr for the Catherines, Boleyn and Cleves for the Annes. Admittedly you need to know the names in the first place, and it sounds really dumb and complicated, but I've had this do the trick on several horrible "who was his nth wife?" questions.) 6) Mormonism (the tree's shape reminded them of a story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer) 7) Coronation Street (with over 8,000; Emmerdale is only about 200 behind Neighbours, however) 8) My Heart Will Go On (I'm afraid you don't get the point for "oh, that song from Titanic, y'know, near...far...duh-duuh-duuh-duh-duuuuuh") 9) Refugees (it's the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
We're back from our UK travels, so this week (and possibly a few more) will feature questions from the British side of pub quizzes. Sorry the blog has been a bit erratic while we've been away - there likely won't be an update next week but after that things should be back to normal!
Your targets this week:
1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us and we'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The historian 4) The gardener 5) The astronomer
The ones that got away 1) Who sings the opening line of the original (1984) Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas? 2) How is the musician Graham McPherson better known? 3) What was Blondie's first UK number one single? 4) Which comedy duo performed the 1991 Comic Relief single The Stonk? 5) Taking place at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, in what year was the Beatles' final live concert? 6) Which 1980 comedy film features the character Ted Striker? 7) Which product used the slogan 'Splash It All Over'? 8) Give the first names of the four main characters from The Young Ones. You need all four for the point.
The answers
1) Paul Young 2) Suggs 3) Heart of Glass 4) Hale and Pace 5) 1966 6) Airplane! 7) Brut 8) Mike, Neil, Rick, Vyvyan
Our excuses
1) Ah, barely back in the country five minutes and we were getting questions wrong about Band Aid. The only line 'famously' sung that we could think of was Bono's "thank God it's them instead of you", and while it seemed unlikely he'd do that and the opening, it seemed a better guess than a blind pick of another name on the single. 2) One of the pleasures of living abroad is not having to remember every British celebrity's stage name (admittedly, there are North American equivalents, but they seem somewhat rarer). Bono (real name Paul Hewson, obviously) was once again our go-to guess. 3) This seems a case of "pick a famous Blondie song and hope for the best", especially when Hanging on the Telephone was an earlier single but 'only' got to number 5. Our guess of One Way or Another both came out after Heart of Glass and wasn't even released as a single (although it did reach the giddy heights of 98 via downloads of a 2013 cover/mash-up of the song by One Direction). 4) Possibly my favourite question to ask our regular teammates here in Canada. French and Saunders seemed a reasonable stab for a question I'm unashamedly playing the 'before our time' card on. 5) Using the age-old tactic of averaging the guesses of each team member, we landed on 1969, so not particularly close. (Although we can claim a moral victory as that happens to be the year they made their unannounced rooftop appearance, which was their final public performance, if not a 'concert' in the eyes of the quizmaster.) 6) Not recognizing the name, we picked The Naked Gun as the only 80s comedy film we could think of (as it turns out, we were off by some way, with the first of the series released in 1988). At least Airplane also featured Leslie Nielsen. 7) A tossup, with Old Spice or Brut the obvious(ish) options. Curses. 8) I think this question really amounts to "do you remember Mike?". As someone who is firmly a Michael, and not a Mike, I naturally didn't.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (3 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) In November 2014 Do They Know It's Christmas was re-recorded (again), but with a number of changes to the lyrics. The line "thank God it's them instead of you" seemed particularly inappropriate, as the single was in aid of which crisis? 2) After years spent searching for information about his estranged father, Suggs claims he only learned of his 1975 death after reading what online? 3) What word links a 1980 number one single for Blondie and the girl group who took a cover of The Tide Is High to number one themselves in 2002? 4) Bringing things moderately more up to date, which author wrote two books - one about fictional creatures, the other about a fictional sport - to help support Comic Relief in 2001? 5) At the time of their last performance, Candlestick Park was home to which Major League Baseball team? The team would subsequently move to what is now known as AT&T Park, and have won (as of August 2015) three of the last five World Series. 6) Which 2001 Baz Luhrman musical film, like Airplane!, contains an exclamation mark in its title? 7) What is the German spelling of the city of Cologne? 8) When The Young Ones featured Scumbag College taking on Footlights College in an episode of University Challenge, one question asked "Who said 'Lawks-a-lordy, my bottom's on fire'?". While Kendal Mintcake (Ben Elton) was given the points for 'Lenin', which 15th Century martyr was the answer on the card?
The answers
1) The Ebola crisis 2)His own Wikipedia page ('Wikipedia' is good enough for the point) 3) Atomic (the band being Atomic Kitten) 4) J. K. Rowling 5) The San Francisco Giants 6) Moulin Rouge! 7) Köln (and because I'm feeling nice, I'll accept Koln) 8) Joan of Arc
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
After my last fairly unexciting poll about when people quiz, I thought I'd ask about something a little more exciting this time: stranger danger!
Melodramatic, perhaps, but at a quiz in Montreal earlier this year a never-before-seen event interrupted our evening: someone asked to join our team.
I'll admit, we were both caught completely off guard, and in our painfully British attempt to work out what to say the unwitting invader quickly decided (or, rather, worked out) we were a pair of weirdos and that maybe they were better off finding a more normal group to ask. Nevertheless, we were staggered: the idea of asking to join a random team seemed unthinkable, and we put it down to North American friendliness (or, perhaps more accurately, British stand-offishness) and got on with the quiz.
Still, I wanted to know if others had had this experience, and if so, what they do about it. The poll below presents a few options, so do please take a moment to select the one that applies to you. What's more, if none seem quite right there's a free text 'other' field for all your descriptive needs.
While the Ones That Got Away are still on holiday as we continue our tour of the UK, here's a rundown of the results of the latest Pub Quiz Poll: when do you most often attend a quiz?
While not the largest sample size (currently 77 votes) a three-tier structure seems to be emerging. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are the most popular evenings for a quiz, with Friday and Saturday predictably quiet. Sundays and Wednesdays, meanwhile, make up something of a middle ground.
It's surprisingly hard to find good data on when pub quiz nights are held. I've only managed to dig up one source that offers a day-to-day breakdown, but that's from eight years ago and based on just 230 Scottish pubs. In that survey Thursday was by far the most popular night for a pub to host a quiz, with Wednesday the least popular of the Sunday-Wednesday options. It's hard to say how strongly pub quiz attendance will correlate with which nights pub quizzes are on offer (market forces would perhaps suggest they should match up pretty well, at least), but it's certainly difficult to draw many conclusions from such limited data.
My own answer to this poll would have been Monday, but mainly because that happens to be the day of the week when our preferred Montreal quiz takes place. Back in the UK we would regularly quiz on Mondays and Tuesdays, with Wednesday a very occasional treat, so there at least my own experience matches up with the poll results.
As always, thanks to those who voted - a new Pub Quiz Poll will be up very soon!
While the doctor and I are off on our world tour of the UK, I thought I'd share a Canadian quiz I wrote for a quiz evening we had with some friends while we've been out here. (Yes, our coolness knows no bounds.) These questions are designed to be 'Canada 101' - I'd expect most Canadians to score close to if not exactly full marks - but still accessible to those not from the true north strong and free. As an extra help this is an Alphabet Quiz: there are 26 questions with each answer beginning with one letter of the alphabet (so one answer starts with A, one answer starts with B, and so on). To clarify some 'ground rules':
1) Ignore all preceding definite and indefinite articles (e.g. if the answer was 'The Answer' that would count as 'A', not as 'T'). 2) If the answer is a person's name, then surname suffices (e.g. if the answer was 'John Smith' then you only need to get "Smith", and that answer would count as 'S', not 'J'). Except... 3) ...if the answer is a monarch, then the first name gives you your letter (e.g. if the answer was 'William I', that answer would count as 'W'). 4) You may want to grab a pen (or electronic note-taking device) to cross off letters as you go along - the more you can cross off the more help you'll have on the remaining answers!
The questions
Question 1
1) Which Canadian dish of chips, cheese curds and gravy (pictured), is spelled the same as the French spelling of the President of Russia's surname? 2) Most major Canadian airports are identified by three-letter codes all starting with what letter? (While a few other airports around the world also have codes beginning with this letter, the vast majority are located in Canada.) 3) Along with Scottish biochemist John Macleod, Canadian scientist Sir Frederick Banting co-discovered what glucose regulating hormone? 4) Who is the current (as of July 1st, 2015) Prime Minister of Canada? 5) Which Canadian singer, according to one of his most famous song's lyrics, bought his first guitar for 15 cents? 6) What term describes the method used to begin play in ice hockey? 7) Nicknamed “The Great One”, and considered by everyone to be the greatest player ever, who is the correct answer to every British quiz question about ice hockey? 8) Who is currently Canada's head of state? 9) Which Canadian singer's single 'Call Me Maybe' is (currently) the 21st most-watched video on YouTube? 10) What is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the world (after Paris)? 11) Canadians Chris Haney and Scott Abbott invented what world-famous board game, first released in 1982? 12) Which sport was invented by Canadian James Naismith as a way to keep his gym class active on a rainy day? 13) Which character did (Canadian!) William Shatner play on Star Trek? 14) Established by the process of 'Confederation', who was the British monarch when Canada became its own country? 15) Known for his highly energetic, slapstick performances, which Canadian-born actor has starred in two feature film adaptations of Dr. Seuss books? 16) How do Canadians pronounce the 26th letter of the alphabet? 17) The Canadian motto is 'A Mari Usque Ad Mare', meaning 'from ____ to ____' - what single word fills in the blanks? 18) Which two-word province boasts this flag?
Question 18
19) Unsurprisingly, Canada has won the most gold medals in (men's and women's) Olympic ice hockey, with 13. Which country (who have lost to Canada in 9 gold medal games) have the most silver medals, with 11? 20) Home to around one million people, what is the capital city of Canada? 21) Which is the only Canadian province to share its name with a letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet? 22) Following an early career as a teen star in the French-speaking world, which Canadian singer won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland? 23) Stretching from New Mexico in the southwestern United States, to northern British Columbia in western Canada, what is the second-longest mountain range in the world? 24) Canada consists of three 'territories' and how many provinces? Give your answer in roman numerals. 25) Canada has two official national sports. One is (spoilers) ice hockey, which sport with Native American origins is the other? 26) Picture: Real name James “Logan” Howlett, who is being given a lesson in Canadian property values here? (As always, you can click for a bigger version.)
Question 26
The answers
1) Poutine 2) Y 3) Insulin 4) (Stephen) Harper 5) (Bryan) Adams 6) Face-off 7) (Wayne) Gretzky 8) Elizabeth II 9) (Carly Rae) Jepsen 10) Montreal 11) Trivial Pursuit 12) Basketball 13) (Captain James Tiberius) Kirk 14) Victoria 15) (Jim) Carrey 16) Zed (yes, I was struggling...) 17) Sea 18) Nova Scotia 19) USA 20) Ottawa 21) Quebec 22) (Celine) Dion 23) Rocky Mountains 24) X 25) Lacrosse 26) Wolverine
In alphabetical order: Adams, Basketball, Carrey, Dion, Elizabeth II, Face-off, Gretzky, Harper, Insulin, Jepsen, Kirk, Lacrosse, Montreal, Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Poutine, Quebec, Rocky Mountains, Sea, Trivial Pursuit, USA, Victoria, Wolverine, X, Y, Zed.
How did you do? In a change from tradition you can simply enter your numerical score in the poll below (and click 'Finish Survey'). 1 point per correct answer and no half marks - a perfect score is 26!
Sorry for no update today - we're in the UK on a working holiday, so the blog will be taking a bit of a back seat for a few weeks. That said, I have prepared a special surprise quiz to mark our time back in the country, so keep an eye out for that!
In the meantime, you'll be delighted to hear that within 36 hours of being back in the country (and still rather jet-lagged) we were in a rural pub sitting down to our first pub quiz. We lost by a whopping 0.25 points (still taking home a similarly whopping £8 for second place), with some delightfully anglocentric questions. (Although disappointingly, none were about motorways.)
1+ out of 7: 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) The croissant was invented in which country noted for its pastries? 2) Taxi-app company Uber launched a rental service for what type of vehicle in May? 3) In what month is Patriots' Day celebrated in the United States? 4) There have been at least two movies called The Patriot released over the years. Name the actor who stars in the 1998 movie The Patriot and the actor who stars in the 2000 movie The Patriot. (You don't need to match up the actors to the specific years, but you do need both for the point.) 5) Which of the following is not a real flavour of Doritos? a) Butter and Soy Sauce; b) Coconut Curry; c) Italian Seafood; d) Roasted Turkey; e) Spicy Kimchi 6)2 point question: In what city was the Titanic built?
The answers
1) Austria 2)Helicopter 3)April 4) Steven Seagal (1998) and Mel Gibson (2000) 5) Spicy Kimchi 6) Belfast
Our excuses
1) 'Notable for its pastries' seemed to hint fairly heavily towards Denmark, and despite me sharing the fascinating fact that the Danish call Danish Pastries weinerbrød (meaning 'bread from Vienna') and us briefly contemplating the Austrian option, we trusted our first instinct. 2) This news had obviously passed the whole team by and we went with the fairly uninspired guess of rickshaw (albeit via a Katie Melua-inspired dalliance with bicycles). I was interested to discover while writing this that the vehicle I had previously identified as a tuk-tuk is in fact more generally know as an 'auto rickshaw'. 3) A tricky one, this, with little to really hang a guess on (the closest Canada has is National Patriots' Day, which is a holiday observed in the province of Quebec while most of the rest of the country is celebrating Victoria Day). Had I known the Boston Marathon is run on Patriots' Day we may have had more of an idea, but with 12 options to choose from we picked July. 4) The team (i.e. not me) knew Gibson starred in one of them, but for the other we were left picking at random from the set of actors who might plausibly appear in that sort of film, eventually putting down Liam Neeson. Missing Seagal is perhaps forgivable, as it was apparently his first direct-to-video film (although it was based on a book called The Last Canadian, so make of that what you will). 5) These types of questions can often be incredibly tricky. Here we dismissed the correct answer as a bit too boring to have been made up, whereas Italian Seafood sounded too horrendous to be true. 6) A question I'm very glad didn't come close to costing us the win, as it should really have been bread and butter for us. We tied ourselves in knots a bit, knowing it sailed from Southampton but that that shipbuilding pointed at Ireland and our answer of Liverpool. (I must confess that part of my rationale for deciding against Belfast was that it seemed too hard for a Canadian crowd.) It seems this wasn't too terrible an idea, as the Titanic was registered at Liverpool, but with the construction taking place in Belfast.
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 1) Commonly mis-attributed to Marie Antoinette, the quote 'let them eat cake' is in fact referring to which rich, bread-like foodstuff? 2) While we're thinking of the French, the word 'cab' (as in taxicab) is a contraction of what longer word for a type of horse-drawn carriage? 3) The Patriot missile takes its name via a bacronym (a reverse-engineered acronym). Beginning 'Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept On ______', what word completes it? 4) In the 1992 movie Patriot Games, Harrison Ford plays a character also played by Alec Baldwin in a 1990 movie. For 1 point each, name the movie and the character. 5) The original product that would go on to become Doritos today were first made at the delightfully named 'Casa de Fritos' in which California theme park? (They were made by taking surplus tortillas, cutting them up and frying.) 6) Infamously, the Titanic did not have enough lifeboats to save all of those on board. To within 10%, what proportion of the estimated 2,224 people on board could theoretically have been saved if all of its lifeboats been sent out at full capacity?
The answers
1)Brioche 2) Cabriolet 3) Target 4) The Hunt for Red October and Jack Ryan) 5) Disneyland 6) 53% (so 43%-63% gets you the point; lifeboat capacity was 1,178)
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
