Bonus QuestionQuizzing Grand Slams?

A curious property of TV quizzes is that there is often little correlation between effort and reward. Some shows offer huge prizes in return for particularly exceptional quizzing, while others reward only mild skill (or even plain old luck) with similarly enormous paychecks. The most peculiar extreme, however, features those shows that are the hardest by far to win, but offer virtually no prize whatsoever. Compare Mastermind, one of the toughest gigs in town, with Deal or No Deal, where contestants are asked (the same) yes or no question a few times. On the latter, and on a daily basis, players could win up to £250,000, on the former one contestant a year gets a fruit bowl.

Clearly then, people aren't applying for Mastermind for the money. Instead there's some intangible prestige associated with claiming this particular televisual title that keeps the contestants rolling up. Tell some hardcore quizzers you won a few quid off the Banker and they might feign mild interest, tell them you've won Mastermind and, well, you won't need to tell them because they'll have already tried to recruit you to their quiz league.

During a recent pub quiz someone suggested that Mastermind could be regarded as a 'quizzing Grand Slam'; one of those few tournaments where the title means more than any prize money that might come with it. (And while I'm well aware of how this sounds just a little bit silly in the cold light of day, it honestly made perfect sense after a few pints.) What followed was an inevitable debate over which other quiz shows could be considered Grand Slams, and whether we could pair them up with their real-life equivalents in tennis (other sports are available, but it was Wimbledon season). We decided that to qualify a show had to have no prize money, be currently televised (thus ruling out Fifteen to One, an otherwise obvious contender), and be 'bloody hard'. Your mileage may vary, but what follows is thus the entirely subjective view of a group of moderately squiffy quiz nerds.

"You should've chosen 'being a crybaby'
as your specialist subject!!!"

Wimbledon

The British classic can only be matched by one show: Mastermind. While not the oldest on the list, it is arguably the 'daddy' of TV quizzes with the greatest recognition even among those strange members of society who don't obsess over trivia. Sure, Andy Murray won the US Open last year, but it was his subsequent victory at Wimbledon that got the most attention. Win Mastermind and chances are even your hairdresser will be impressed.

The Australian Open

The youngest of the tennis grand slams, we thought University Challenge, with its inherently youthful flavour, was the best match. Another unashamedly tough quiz, it's possibly the hardest to win given the relatively strict eligibility requirement of being a student. While the Open University has seen some 'back door' routes into this title in the past, their lack of presence in the competition in recent years suggests that even that path may be closed for the time being.

The US Open

While the oldest of the lot, the radio-only presence of Brain of Britain means it doesn't quite have the Wimbledon-esque significance of Mastermind in the public consciousness. Nevertheless, there's no denying the difficulty and importance of claiming this particular accolade in the quizzing world. I'll admit the US Open analogy is more process of elimination than perfect match, but if you really want a tenuous link then let's say Brain of Britain's somewhat idiosyncratic question structure reflects the US Open's position as the only grand slam with final set tiebreaks. Uncanny.

The French Open

Rafael Nadal's skills at missing vowels
are a closely-guarded secret

With the French Open's clay courts setting it apart from the other three tennis Grand Slams, we felt the lateral thinking element of Only Connect made it a fitting final entry to the list. While perhaps too young to be a cast-iron consideration just yet, there is sadly little competition for this fourth and final spot. Whether it can stand up to the test of time remains to be seen.

Final thoughts

I don't doubt that many would argue with the above but I can at least claim not to be the only person to consider these shows as a quizzing 'big four'. Former Mastermind champion (not to mention Brain of Britain and Only Connect runner up) Dave Clark identified appearing on these four shows as one of '30 quiz experiences to try before you die' (which is a good read if you haven't already seen it), and various googling can throw up other similarly 'qualified' individuals espousing the virtues of every member of the list.

In any case they all certainly tick the boxes of having no prize money and being bloody hard. Indeed, with regards to the latter no-one has managed to win all four. To date Ian Bayley has come the closest, winning Brain of Britain in 2010, Mastermind in 2011, and is one third of Only Connect's all-conquering Crossworders. He also carries the rare distinction of having appeared on University Challenge twice, for two different institutions, but despite this is unable to complete the set. Clearly, if you want to achieve this holy quaternity of quiz shows, you need to start young.

Tweet

Elephants don't really get drunk from fermented fruit

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) Which Beatles song features in the lyrics to Don McLean's American Pie?
2) Who was the first Hollywood actress to feature on a United States postage stamp?
3) Whose unmanned submarine-like vehicle Argo discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985?
4) True or false: the Indian elephant is endangered.
5) Which land animal has the longest tail?
6) Which country produces 'blue mountain' coffee, one of the most expensive coffees in the world?
7) In which decade was the first Indy 500 race?
8) Which film is based on the non-fiction book Wiseguy, chronicling the story of an individual named Henry Hill?

The answers

1) Helter Skelter
2) Grace Kelly
3) Robert Ballard
4) True
5) Giraffe
6) Jamaica
7) 1910s (1911)
8) Goodfellas

Poll results! 7 votes with 1 scoring 6/8, 2 scoring 3/8, 1 scoring 2/8, 2 scoring 1/8 and 1 joining us on zero.

The average voter scored 2-and-a-bit out of 8.

The excuses
1) This question taught me that I know far more of the lyrics to American Pie than I realized. Unfortunately it also taught me that there are some Beatles songs I've never even heard of.
2) Something of a crapshoot for us, although there was an exhibition at a local museum about Grace Kelly at the time, so a fair question.
3) Bit of a weird question, I thought, and we had no idea. The background to the discovery is quite a fun read though, as Ballard was on a semi-secret mission to look for two sunken nuclear submarines.
4) The flawless logic of "it's obviously true, so you wouldn't ask the question unless the real answer was false" scuppered us once again. (Although I stand by my rule that 'true or false' is guaranteed to be a Bad Question.)
5) Strangely I suggested the correct answer as a joke during our discussion (we both thought giraffes had particularly short tails for their size).
6) The only thing I know to put down when I hear 'most expensive coffee' is kopi luwak (AKA 'civet coffee'), so we took a punt on Indonesia.
7) Quite often going for the roaring 20s will stand you in good stead for this sort of question, but not this time alas.
8) I'm not entirely sure I've given this question a fair retelling, but in any case neither of us has seen Goodfellas (somehow), so not particularly frustrating.

The alternative questions
1) How many films are there in the American Pie franchise? (For a bonus point, name all of them.)
2) Which country was Grace Kelly the princess consort of from 1956 until her death in 1982?
3) Ballard also discovered which German battleship, sank by the British in 1941? Its sinking was the subject of a 1960 British film.
4) What is the name of the elephant character who first appeared in a 1931 children's book by Jean de Brunhoff? He would later feature in an English-language version of the same book by A A Milne and, perhaps most famously, a late 80s/early 90s cartoon series.
5) What is the closest extant relative of the giraffe?
6) The exceedingly rare 'blue bear' originates in which mountain range? It is thought to be one possible explanation for yeti 'sightings' in the area.
7) To what does the 500 in Indy 500 refer?
8) Goodfellas comes in at number 12 on Wikipedia's list of films that most frequently use the word `fuck'. Which other De Niro/Scorsese collaboration features at number five?

The answers

1) Four: American Pie, American Pie 2, American Wedding and American Reunion
2) Monaco
3) Bismarck
4) Babar
5) Okapi
6) The Himalayas
7) The length of the race: 500 miles
8) Casino

Tweet

Bonus QuestionCanadian quizzing?

As most of you are probably aware, my partner and I recently moved to the surprisingly sunny shores of Canada. A considerable concern was of course how this would affect our pub quizzing which, given our average of about 2.5 a week for the last year in the UK, was set to take a bit of a nosedive. Fortunately we didn't make the decision to move country without serious preparation, so during a visit to Montreal last September we gave a Canadian quiz a test run. We scored 38/40 and won a $50 bar tab, so figured it was probably safe to cross the pond.

We've now been here a month and played rather more quizzes than I'd care to admit, so I thought I'd put (electronic) pen to paper to record my thoughts on what small part of the Canadian (and specifically Montreal) quiz scene I've been exposed to. Suffice to say this isn't the largest sample so I make no claims of it being particularly representative of the country at large, but there are hopefully some insights here which may be of interest.

The expectations

When it comes to expectations of 'the scene' abroad the first thing to acknowledge is that the UK is a bit weird about quizzes. As a nation we're responsible for some huge quiz show franchises (Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Weakest Link are the world's two largest) and even when we're not we have a tendency for putting our own rather unique spin on things (anyone who has seen the US version of Deal or No Deal and compared it to ours will know what I'm talking about). Off-screen, meanwhile, British quizzers dominate the World Quiz Rankings and since its inception in 2003 an Englishman (usually Kevin Ashman or Pat Gibson) has won every single World Quiz Championship title. Then, of course, there's the humble pub quiz. I don't think I know anyone who has never been to at least one, and a 2009 survey estimated there were 22,445 quizzes a week in the UK to choose from. That's a lot of Quiz Team Aguileras.

All this feeds into the expectation that the British are good at quizzing and, by extension, everyone else should be bad at it. Similarly, I didn't expect to find many pub quizzes here, let alone good ones, but was quietly hopeful that any I might find may prove a tad easier to win than those back home. The former proved to be a reasonable concern; there are certainly fewer options to scratch your quizular itch, but we have found a few, and I'll start with what the mood is like.

The atmosphere

One of the biggest differences I've noticed between quizzes here and in England is the noise. The British are, by our very nature, more than a little reserved. We don't care much for making a fuss, or shouting, or cheering (years of supporting our various sporting endeavours has presumably trained us out of this last one). You can forget about that here. Audience participation, be it applauding other teams, beating 'drum rolls' on the table, and even (to my horror) celebrating victory are both encouraged and expected. At our first quiz since moving here we were caught by surprise when it was revealed we'd won, and were subsequently admonished by the quizmaster for not celebrating properly. We have now taken to engaging in utterly hopeless high fives and suchlike despite it seeming terribly poor form.

A more minor observation, but interesting nonetheless, is that I've yet to encounter a quiz which expects you to cough up an entry fee. The prize is a modest bar tab ($50 or thereabouts) rather than a chunk of cash which, when compared with UK quizzes where prizes in the region of £100 are commonplace, could well discourage anyone from taking things too seriously (let alone cheating).

The questions

The style and subject of questions have, for the most part, been quite similar to what you'd expect in a UK quiz. It may be the types of venues we've been frequenting, but I can recall only one question about (ice) hockey and no more than half a dozen about North American politics or current affairs (where the British media's obsession with all things transatlantic has stood us in fairly good stead). The UK quiz obsession with US states, meanwhile, has prepared us reasonably well for some geography questions, although we're relatively weak in what I'd call 'peri-American geography' (Caribbean islands and the like) which carries an understandably higher trivia profile here. There are similar North American slants on history and culture, while music and film seem relatively similar to what we're used to.

The difficulty

Overall I'd have to say that Canadian quizzes (so far, at least) seem a touch easier than the UK. However, a significant part of this is, inevitably, down to the quality of the opposition. At time of writing the only quizzes we've lost were conducted in French, and while we weren't suicidal enough to go into them without a translator, there were some very French-centric questions that make them slightly anomalous from an anglophone's quizzing perspective. This isn't to say that we've been particularly spectacular though, as a look at our first Canadian ones that got away testifies. It seems that what constitutes 'standard' trivia to a regular UK quizzer is considered a bit more esoteric over here.

Regardless, I think it's fair to say that questions themselves are often fairly easy, even on areas we might not be expected to know. Dealing with the North American bias has proven fairly straightforward thanks to a passing familiarity with the most notable of famous literary and historical contributions of the continent, while we've been able to gain big advantages on any questions that stray into European or even UK-centric territory. (One quiz, to my continued disbelief, expected a pubful of Canadians to know which county Leeds Castle is in.)

The conclusion

So that's my (all of one month's) experience of quizzing abroad. Overall, a quiz is a quiz, and Canadians seem just as capable at putting them together as we are back home. They may be a bit noisier, but I'll put that down to British sensitivity over North American brashness, and to make up for it teams seem much quicker (and much more genuine) to offer congratulations to the winners. A less serious atmosphere, though not to everyone's liking, makes for a nice change, while the difficulty has seen us pick up enough winnings to make the moderately extortionate beer prices easier to swallow.

Tweet

29/07/13: Off holiday!

The preamble

We have now successfully moved to Canda, home of maple syrup, moose and (eventually, I'm told) snow. They also have quizzes, although not as many as old blighty. There will be a Bonus Question about what Canadian quizzing is like in due course but for now I thought it was time to get back in the saddle of missed questions. Here, then, are the ones that got away from our first Canadian quiz.

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The (retired) doctor

The ones that got away
1) What does UNESCO stand for?
2) Who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates?
3) In which year was the first Godfather movie released?
4) To which order did Mother Teresa belong?
5) How many US States begin with the same letter as their capital?
6) In which year did Elvis Presley die?
7) Which is the largest desert in the world?
8) Which country established the first permanent 'dark-sky preserve' - an area kept free of artificial light to promote astronomy?
9) In the TV series Dallas, who shot JR?

The answers

1) The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
2) Paul Allen
3) 1972
4) Sisters of Loreto
5) Four (Dover, Delaware; Honolulu, Hawaii; Indianapolis, Indiana; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
6) 1977
7) The Antarctic Desert
8) Canada
9) Kristin Shepherd

Poll results! 7 votes with 1 scoring 6/9, 1 scoring 4/9, 2 scoring 3/9, 2 scoring 1/9 and 1 scoring 0/9.

The average voter scored 2.5 out of 9!

The excuses
1) The first of many trivia chestnuts that you will see from our Canadian quizzing caper. A question I'm pretty sure we've missed before (but can't seem to find it in this blog's archives) and certainly an inauspicious start. We made the same mistake I think we've made more than once before of thinking the E stood for 'environmental'.
2) Another one we really should have known (but equally would never have got with a week to think about it). We went straight for CEO Steve Ballmer, largely (in)famous for this particularly amusing video.
3) Another classic bit of trivia (although I've never understood the expectation that quizzers would know, let alone care, what year movies came out). I think we were asked something relating to this twice in one week vaguely recently in the UK, so another frustrating miss. Especially as we were one year out with 1973.
4) This one seemed bizarrely hard compared to the other questions we were getting wrong, but still perfectly fair game from a trivia perspective, I think.
5) The standard list question 'strategy' of "work out as many as you can and then add one for the one you've probably missed" cost us here; we identified the four and assumed we'd missed one. Fun question, though.
6) Yet another chestnut. I'm pretty sure we've been asked this on a UK quiz before but many, many years ago.
7) Oops. Worst miss of the night. It has been a long time since a QM has asked a question about deserts without prefacing it with "excluding the Antarctic/Arctic" so I really should have noticed the lack of this qualifier here. We of course went for the Sahara, the largest (non-ice) desert.
8) A first example of how quizzing abroad affects one's judgment. Had we been playing in any other country I would have guessed Canada, but assumed that were that correct it would seem a pretty strange/easy question to ask so went for somewhere in Scandinavia.
9) The fifth (and mercifully final) question of the night where we got it wrong despite having been asked it at previous quizzes. For some reason I'd got it into my head that no-one shot JR and it was all a dream, but it seems that was an entirely different Dallas storyline (see the 'live-action TV' section here).

The alternative questions
1) Which country has the most UNESCO World Heritage sites, with 49?
2) Which two words are abbreviated to form the name Microsoft?
3) Marlon Brando (awarded the Best Actor Oscar) and Al Pacino (nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar) both refused to attend that year's Academy Awards ceremony. One point for each actor's reason for not attending.
4) In what modern day country was Mother Teresa born?
5) How many US State capitals have hosted the Olympics (summer or winter)?
6) Who achieved a UK number one single with a remix of Presley's 1968 A Little Less Conversation in 2002?
7) What name was given to a 169,000 square mile section of Antarctica by the British government in December 2012?
8) According to a 2013 study, which city had the worst light pollution in the world?
9) Which UK soap opera's 2001-2003 revival ended with the revelation that the entire series had been the dream of a supermarket worker?

The answers

1) Italy (China is second with 45, Spain third with 44)
2) Microcomputer and software
3) Brando turned down the Oscar in protest at the depiction of native Americans in Hollywood and television. Pacino claimed he had more screen time than Brando and so should have received a Best Actor nomination.
4) Republic of Macedeonia. She is usually described as Albanian, but was born in Skopje when it was part of the Ottoman Empire, but which is now the Macedonian capital. Some cursory Wikipediaing suggests that 'Albanian' can refer both to the country as well as an ethnic group, a fact to which I was previously ignorant.
5) Two: Atlanta (Georgia, summer 1996) and Salt Lake City (Utah, winter 2002).
6) JXL
7) Queen Elizabeth Land (and I'd be pretty strict on the answer here)
8) Hong Kong
9) Crossroads

Tweet

On holiday!

The ones that got away is moving to Canada, so this place will be a bit dead for a bit while we move country, find a place to live, and get hold of some delicious Canadian Internet (I hear it tastes of maple syrup).

Tweet

08/07/13: Abu Qatada was born in Bethlehem

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
4) The misandrist
5) The saxophonist

Questions 1 and 7

The ones that got away
1) Who's this chap (pictured)?
2) In what year was the film (500) Days of Summer released?
3) Which British newspaper was the first to feature ditloids?
4) Identify the film from its tagline: "You won't believe your eye"
5) Which Labour Prime Minister coined the phrase "A week is a long time in politics"?
6) Abu Qatada was finally deported to Jordan this week, how many years did the legal battle over his extradition last?
7) Who does this logo belong to (pictured)?

The answers

1) Damien Hirst
2) 2009
3) The Daily Express
4) Monsters, Inc.
5) Harold Wilson
6) 8 years
7) PETA

Poll results! 5 votes with 1 scoring 5/7, 1 scoring 4/7, 1 scoring 2/7 and 2 joining us on zero.

The average voter scored 2 out of 7.

The excuses
1) Somewhat unusually, we did propose the correct answer for this one, but were pretty sure Damien Hirst didn't look like that. Admittedly the same could be said for Danny Boyle, which is what we put down.
2) Zigged with 2008 :(
3) Not convinced this is especially gettable (we went with the Telegraph, who were the first to feature Sudoku) and we were disappointed the quizmaster didn't go with his original question which I've shamelessly stolen for the next section.
4) The misandrist suggested the correct answer, we all thought it seemed like a good shout but weren't completely certain so left it blank to fill in at the end if we didn't think of anything better. After we swapped sheets for marking I realized to my horror (not even exaggerating) that I'd forgotten to put it in, and of course it was correct. Ultimately it cost us a tie-breaker for second place, so not as bad as missing out on top spot but still enough to make me feel terrible. Just goes to show the importance of double checking.
5) Strangely, I think everyone on the team independently thought of Callaghan, which is usually a pretty reliable indicator that you've hit upon the correct answer.
6) Zagged with 7 years :( Although looking at his Wikipedia page, it seems rather more complicated and I'm not convinced that there's a non-ambiguous answer to this one.
7) We spent almost the entire quiz convinced this was a sports brand, but unsurprisingly couldn't place it.

The alternative questions

1) Damien Hirst won the 1995 Turner Prize for work including one of his more notorious sculptures Mother and Child, Divided. What animals feature in this work?
2) Name 2 of the 4 English quarter days, traditionally when servants were hired and rents due.
3) The first ditloid was the ingenious 1 DITLOID - can you solve it?
4) Monsters, Inc. was the fourth film produced by Pixar and released by Disney. What was the first?
5) How many general elections did Harold Wilson fight as leader of the Labour party?
6) For 2 points, give the capital of Jordan (the country), for 1 point, give the real name of Jordan (the person).
7) One of PETA's more curious campaigns involved portraying fish as 'kittens of the sea' (pictured), but what foodstuff is marketed under the American brand Chicken of the Sea?

The answers

1) Cows (a mother a calf)
2) Lady Day (25 March), Midsummer Day (24 June), Michaelmas (29 September), Christmas (25 December)
3) 1 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
4) Toy Story
5) 5: 1964, 1966, 1970, February 1974 and October 1974. He 'won' four of them (including forming a minority government in the first of the two elections in 1974)
6) Amman/Katie Price (hopefully you can work out which is which)
7) Tuna

Tweet

08/07/13: it is too hot to come up with a subject line fact

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away

1) What were the names of the three tunnels in The Great Escape?
2) What is the name of Channel 4's longest running sitcom? Airing during the 90s, it was set in a Peckham hairdresser.
3) What song wakes up Bill Murray on his radio alarm clock every morning in Groundhog Day?
4) Which 1998 hit song had words from its chorus replaced with 'Anna Friel', much to the amusement of most of the British public?
5) Which badly behaved French striker was signed by West Bromwich Albion last week?
6) Which football team's ground is on White Hart Lane?
7) What does John Major only have one of when most men have two?
8) Which two countries sit either side of Ireland in the UN General Assembly? (You need both for the point.)

The answers

1) Tom, Dick and Harry
2) Desmond's
3) Sunny and Cher's I Got You Babe
4) Madonna's Ray of Light (o/ Anna Friel, like I just got home o/ apparently)
5) Nicolas Anelka
6) Haringey Borough FC
7) Kneecap
8) Iraq and Israel

Update: Poll results! 7 votes with 1 scoring 5/8, 2 scoring 3/8, 2 scoring 2/8, 1 scoring 1/8, and 1 joining us on zero.

The average voter scored 2 out of 8.

The excuses
1) No idea on this one, but obviously a film we'd both seen more than once. We went for the rather boring Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.
2) I had at least heard of it, but all I could think of at the time was Bread, which was on the wrong channel, in the wrong city, but still....
3) Curiously, I make this the third Bill Murray-related question I've had to stick on this blog in the last few months, and the second one about Groundhog Day. I guess we should watch that film again.
4) Not the tightest of questions, and no-one in the pub got it. Our answer was, coincidentally, another Madonna song: Don't Cry for me Anna Friel...
5) A frustrating miss given the number of football clubs I follow on Twitter, but as I wasn't aware Anelka was particularly badly behaved he didn't even come to mind.
6) Almost a trick question, mitigated by the pub being a couple of bus stops away from the stadium. The other White Hart Lane is on a rather generic High Road.
7) The deliberate inclusion of the word 'men' in this one threw us, as we assumed it must be testicle. If it was a deliberate bit of misdirection on the part of the quizmaster I'd say it was a tad unnecessary.
8) It's been a long time since I've been so disappointed to miss a question, especially when we then missed the money by one point. Obviously the 'trick' here is to realize the UN is ordered alphabetically, which got me to Iraq and Italy quite quickly. Countries of the world are one of my quiz specialties, and I've little doubt that had I been thorough (by going through the world geographically rather than just trying to think of countries at random) I'd've got Israel eventually. Unfortunately, I was too quick to assume there wasn't a country starting Is and ultimately it cost us. Lesson: if you know you have the knowledge to be certain an answer, don't be lazy!

The alternative questions

1) What links The Great Escape and the winner of the 1999 Turner Prize?
2) What was the first programme aired on Channel 4 when it launched in 1982?
3) In which Pennsylvanian borough is Groundhog Day set?
4) Madonna's 2005 hit Hung Up sampled from which Abba song?
5) A couple of years ago there were three teams, along with West Brom, who between them fought 12 midland derbies in the English Premier League each season. Name all three, please.
6) What type of animal is a hart?
7) Who succeeded John Major as leader of the Conservative Party?
8) Along with Ireland, two other countries have flags consisting of only green, white and orange. Name one of them (or both, I can't really stop you).

The answers

1) Steve McQueen (one was an actor in the film, the other won the Turner Prize)
2) Countdown
3) Punxsutawney
4) Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!
5) Birmingham City (relegated 2011), Wolverhampton Wanderers (relegated 2012), and Aston Villa (not quite relegated 2013).
6) Deer
7) William Hague
8) Ivory Coast and Niger

Tweet