1+ out of 12: Well done, you beat us! 7+ out of 12: We'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor
The ones that got away 1) To within 25km, how far south-east of Newfoundland, Canada, did the Titanic sink? Hint: the answer is between 0 and 750km. 2) What name was Mickey Mouse originally going to be called? 3) Who was the first US president to live in the White House? 4) What was Ernest Hemingway's first published novel? 5) Which Frenchman was born seven months after his friend and colleague in the development of cubism, Pablo Picasso? 6) Which boxer, who won a gold medal in the 1992 Olympics, was nicknamed 'The Golden Boy'? 7) How did Virginia Woolf commit suicide? 8) Who was the first First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union? 9) What is O. J. Simpson's nickname? 10) In which US state was Oprah Winfrey born? 11) In Reservoir Dogs a number of characters use a pseudonym of 'mister' followed by a colour. What colour was used by Tim Roth's character? 12) How high an IQ score do you need to be classified a genius?
The answers
1) 640km (so 615km to 665km, or 383-413 miles gets you the point) 2) Mortimer 3) John Adams 4) The Sun Also Rises 5)(Georges) Braque 6)Oscar De La Hoya 7) Drowning (in the River Ouse) 8) (Nikita) Khrushchev 9) The Juice 10) Mississippi 11) Orange 12) 140
Our excuses
1) The quizmaster added the 'hint' seemingly as an afterthought, and I'm not sure it really helped us much. I was already thinking around 300km and then the hint, if anything, offered mild reassurance (my rationale was that it would likely be in the lower half of the range offered). On a more general note it seems odd to offer a range on a question like this; the degree of accuracy required should be enough of a hint to the (rough) size of the answer. 2) This one was painful as I knew I'd read the answer a few weeks previously (when another quiz threatened to have a Disney round). Alas, we couldn't drag the correct answer out of our brains, and while we resisted the urge to put Willie (Steamboat Willie refers to the song Steamboat Bill Mickey whistles) our "plausible names starting with M" left us with Maxwell. 3) Our discussion on this one was interrupted by a woman who recognized the doctor from University Challenge, and so our initial guess of Ulysses S. Grant ("he was the president in Wild Wild West, and I think they were doing something with the White House in that?") went uncorrected. Had we given it more thought I'd like to think we would at least have gone for one of the early presidents, as we knew it must have been around in the 1810s when the Canadians burned it down. 4) This one seemed strangely tough (although I know very little of Hemingway so this probably just reflects my ignorance) and we were left struggling to remember any Hemingway novels. All we could come up with was Death in the Afternoon which isn't even a novel (it's a non-fiction book about bullfighting). 5) Another one that wouldn't seem out of place on University Challenge. The doctor spent a long time trying to remember a French cubist before remembering, with considerable relief, Piet Mondrian at the last minute. Unfortunately he's not French (he's Dutch) and wasn't a cubist. Instead, "he evolved a non-representational form which he termed neoplasticism". As you do. 6) I'm not sure we've ever got a question about boxing correct on a quiz, but this name at least rang a bell. I struggle to find anything interesting to say about boxers, but Wikipedia reckons (at least as of a few years ago) that he's generated more money than any other boxer in the sport, so if true that's possibly exciting. 7) I can't help feel slightly uncomfortable when quizmasters set questions about the relatively morbid, and based on the reactions of other (more normal) participants I'm not the only one. We made a blind guess of sleeping pills. 8) A somewhat confusing question (not least because at first the quizmaster seemed to say "the first Secretary" rather than "the first First Secretary"). Part of the confusion arises because there have been five titles given to the leader of the Communist Party over the years (Technical Secretary, Chairman of the Secretariat, Responsible Secretary, and General Secretary being the other four). Thinking that the founder of the party at least seemed a reasonable bet, we went down the "if you don't know just put Lenin" route. 9) We were starting to despair a little by this point, and barely gave this any thought. I vaguely remembered the name 'Nugget', thus becoming the first person to ever confuse NFL superstar/convicted felon O.J. Simpson with Plumstead snooker player/cookbook author Steve Davis. 10) Like most people (I imagine) we could at least hear Oprah Winfrey's voice in our heads, but as she was just shouting "You Get a Car! You Get a Car! Everybody gets a Caaaaar!" this didn't help much. 11) What is it about pub quizzes and Reservoir Dogs? You'd think by now we'd have finally got the message and watched it, but no. Instead we managed to rule out Brown (he's played by Quentin Tarantino, which we learned at a pub quiz a month or two ago) and Pink (he's played by John Steve Buscemi, which I learned last week when researching P!nk), which still left Blue, Blonde, Orange and our eventual guess of White. 12) A question to which you know there won't be a definitive answer, and so it's a matter of guessing a number and hoping it matches whichever source the quizmaster happened to use. What's more, an IQ score is meaningless if you don't know what scale it's on (hence why if someone tells you their IQ but doesn't know on what scale, they're probably not as clever as they want you to believe). Surprisingly, the doctor immediately offered the correct answer, but I wasn't convinced. I knew that Mensa requires something around 130, but that seemed far too low to be a 'genius', whereas 150 seemed to me a more likely round number for that sort of cut-off.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (7 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 3 (click for big!)
1) What do the letters RMS (as in, for example, RMS Titanic) stand for? 2) Mickey Mouse was originally created as a replacement for an earlier Disney cartoon character. Named Oswald, what type of animal was Mickey's predecessor? 3) Based on this image of the White House's West Wing, in which numbered office would you expect to find the Vice-President? 4)Death in the Afternoon is a cocktail invented by Hemingway for a 1935 cocktail book with contributions from famous authors. His instructions were: "Pour one jigger ______ into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly". Can you fill in the missing (and highly alcoholic) ingredient?
Question 5
5) Pictured is a charcoal drawing by Picasso of which figure shortly after his death in 1953? Inexplicably, it was not met with universal acclaim. 6) The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the Untied States, but to a player in what position - and for what achievement - is the Golden Glove awarded in football's Premier League? 7) Virginia Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury Set, a group of influential English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists. Which of its more notable members had the initials JMK? (Surname alone will do.) 8) Since the position was established in 1991, how many different men have served as President of Russia? 9) Give the three words which complete the rhyming (catch)phrase from O. J. Simpson's trial, concerning a single leather glove: "If it doesn't fit, ...". 10) Since 1999 Forbes magazine has compiled an annual list of the most powerful celebrities of the year. Oprah Winfrey is the only person to appear in the top 10 of this list for each of the 16 years it has been running. Just two other people make more than ten appearances, one who works in the film industry and the other in sports. Name either. 11) Which orange Mr. Men character - the first in the Roger Hargreaves series of books - begins his story by eating a biscuit without getting out of bed? 12) What comes next in this sequence?
DENSWO
CWENSP
BSWENQ
__________
The answers
1) Royal Mail Ship ('Steam-ship' and 'Steamer' are acceptable alternatives) 2) A rabbit (his 'full name' is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit) 3)9 4) Absinthe 5)(Joseph) Stalin 6) The goalkeeper with the most clean sheets (most games where no goals were conceded) 7) (John Maynard) Keynes 8) Three - Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin (twice) and Dmitry Medvedev 9) "you must acquit" 10) Tiger Woods (12 appearances) and Steven Spielberg (11 appearances) 11) Mr. Tickle 12) ANSWER (the first letters form the sequence DCBA the last letters form the sequence OPQR and the middle four are the letters NSWE being shifted forward one letter each time)
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Warning: the following contains spoilers for Series 10, Episode 6 of Only Connect, first broadcast on BBC Two on Monday 6th October. If you haven't seen it yet go and watch it on iPlayer!
Missed last week's recap of the Coders vs. the Gamesmasters? Check it out here!
It was a 'welcome back' to one of tonight's teams, as the Chessmen (Nick Mills, Henry Pertinez and Stephen 'Alex Ferguson' Pearson) returned after 'only' finishing third in Series 2. Following in the footsteps of the History Boys they're now the second team this series who were previously defeated by the Rugby Boys so I'm expecting the Series 2 runners-up Cambridge Quiz Society to show up soon to complete the set. They're up against the Linguists (Virginia Fassnidge, Gail La Carbonara and Tom Fassnidge) who got my support for a) being newbies, and b) having excellent surnames.
Victoria Coren Mitchell opened with some Klingon, which elicited this comment from an associate: "Her Klingon accent is quite poor. I don't think she could pass as a native." I'm afraid to say we both agree, but here's hoping the new tie break decider is Bat'leths at dawn.
Round 1: What's the connection?
The questions 1) N.E. Smith; Jon E.-S.; T (or K); D. O'Lenz 2) Bundeskanzlerin; Boat Race dead heat; English pope; Black US president 3) 19 hand in cribbage; 'Cry Baby' by Jemini; Don Bradman's last Test innings; Blank tile in Scrabble 4) Music: Take a Bow (Rihanna); Hold me now (Thompson Twins); Love Can Build a Bridge (Children for Rwanada, I think); Deck the Halls (some choir business) 5) Pictures: Dad's Army title card; An Easyjet plane; Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys; Only Connect title card 6) Apt; Apposite; Awl; Anion
The answers
1) The Monkees 2) Only one 3) 0 4) All parts of a ship 5) Same typeface 6) Opt, Opposite, Owl, Onion
Our thoughts 1) A decidedly odd one to start, we thought, as after two it seemed too obvious that these were (not particularly well) disguised surnames. The Linguists knew what they were doing, however, and recognized these as not only surnames, but the surnames of the members of the Monkees for a strong opening to the show. This seems like an 'easy or impossible' one, but being entirely unfamiliar with the Monkees (beyond knowing that they, allegedly, monkey around), it's difficult to judge. We spotted that names were going on but couldn't get any further than that. 2) The Chessmen knew their German well enough to recognize that the first clue meant female chancellor (I got as far as remembering that Bundes, as in Bundesliga, means 'federal' or 'nationwide'), and that plus "Boat Race dead heat" was enough to give them three points in return. I think most quizzers would have had this on two, as there's very little to know about the English Pope other than there was only one and his name sounds a bit like Shakespeare, but the opening clue offered an elegant route in for three. 3) Unlike the previous question, here knowing enough about any one of the clues would probably give you the answer. The Linguists (like me) knew their terrible British Eurovision entries well enough to get it for three, and deduced that a 19 in cribbage was something to do with zero (this seems to be more of a colloquialism than an actual gameplay mechanic, though, but thanks to Gavin in the comments, below, who provides an explanation). 4) After a very strong start the music question brought everyone back down to earth with what seemed a spectacularly tough ask. Unusually for us at home we identified the first song correctly and were immediately trying to think of things that Take a Bow could somehow fit into. The next two meant nothing to us, however, and with Deck the Halls coming too late to give any serious thought we joined the contestants in scoring as many as Donald Bradman in his last Test innings. Even if you knew all the songs, picking out the words Bow, Hold, Bridge and Deck seems frightfully tough, and I think you'd need at least three to stand any chance. A fun idea (the titles alone could have been a question without the extra musical challenge) but perhaps one that was a touch too hard, especially for a first round game. 5) Onto the pictures and another one that stumped the contestants but was perhaps easier at home (rather than staring at monitors across a studio floor). It would take particularly sharp eyes to spot Cooper Black lurking in the first three pictures, but the clever use of the Only Connect title card was enough to make you think that something wasn't quite right. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems there were a number of other options that could have been used for this question, and I'll be sure to bring up my knowledge of the Tootsie Roll font to impress my North American friends. 6) A straightforward wordy one to finish the round, of a format I expect to see more of over the series. Once again the key is realizing as soon as possible that there really can't be anything linking the actual things listed, and while it took all four at home for this particular penny to drop, the Chessmen had it after three and ended the round trailing by 5 points to 6.
Round 2: What comes fourth?
The questions 1) Thames; Dover; Wight 2) Birmingham 1992; Manchester 1996; Manchester 2000 3) Move MS Word scrollbar left; Bleaching allowed; Play 4) (e.g.) SDR, DDR; Berry, Buck, Mills, Stipe; Blackberry creators 5) 4th: Exploded on stage; 3rd: Spontaneously combusted; 2nd: Choked on vomit 6) Pictures: A still; Muddy Waters; People going for a run
The answers
1) Portland (Shipping areas east to west) 2) London 2012 (British Olympic bids) 3) Give way (Rotating triangles) 4) (e.g.) Read-Only Memory (RAM, REM, RIM, ROM) 5) 1st: Bizarre gardening accident (Fates of Spın̈al Tap drummers) 6) e.g. the blue sea (Still waters run deep)
Our thoughts 1) No-one was falling for a possible 'longest rivers' trap here, as any fule kno the Thames is the second-longest in the UK so unlikely to start or end a sequence. After Dover that quiz classic shipping forecasts seemed likely, and at home we were already resigning ourselves to zero points. The Linguists took an impressive two points, however, knowing their late night Radio 4 action well enough to produce the answer Portland. This seemed a bit unsatisfying to me, as I expected to at least think "oh, huh, that makes sense" when the answer was revealed. I assume this means I need to spend more time on the (radio) waves. 2) The years immediately point to Olympics, and the presence of Manchester did hint rather strongly at British bids. Both teams were thinking along similar lines but missed that there weren't any bids between 2000 and 2012, with the sequence 1992, 1996, 2000 making it all-too tempting to opt for 2004. Another plausible thought was that the London bid for the 2012 games was made in 2004 (it was actually in 2003). I think my future tactic for any Olympics sequence question will now be "are we absolutely certain it's not just London 2012 again?". 3) I'd love to know how often knowledge of clothes washing labels helps in a quiz compared with how often it helps with, y'know, washing clothes. I'm pretty sure for me it's entirely on one side of the equation (not that I don't wash my clothes, I hasten to add, just that my wardrobe is hardly one that screams domestic god). The first clue was, however, a bit confusing (the phrasing made me think of keyboard shortcuts rather than the little arrow you can click on the scrollbar) and like the Linguists we needed to see 'Play' to work out what was going on. With a touch more lateral thinking this would seem a fun one to get for three. 4) DDR makes me think of either East Germany or the video game Dance Dance Revolution (an important pair not to mix up), whereas the name Stipe gave the doctor REM. Having seen a similar question of this form the other week (Pep, Pip, Pop, Pup) I'd got my eye in and figured the first clue must be RAM and that it was another progression of vowels. The Chessmen, without the advantage of having seen previous episodes this series, needed to recognize RIM (an impressive feat in itself) and got to the answer from there. 5) Speaking of other questions from this series, this one seemed cut from a similar cloth to the Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey affair of a couple of weeks back. If you know your Spın̈al Tap it's just a matter of when you work out what's going on (and a bit of brain-wracking) while the rest of us look on blankly. The Linguists seemed to have this on clue one, but after a (very) long bit of thinking quickly raced through two and three to make sure. 6) Another new 'type' of question that we've seen since the change of question editor in Series 9. I'm still not convinced by these and this one hangs a little too heavily on recognizing Muddy Waters. Without him I think you're nowhere, although even with him it's not easy, and the Chessmen picked up a good two points to head into the walls 9-12 behind.
The walls were, atypically for this series and last, both solved perfectly, complete with the unusual experience for us of spotting a group of four and being sure there were no red herrings (Greek letter homophones). I was pleased to see Star Trek inventions make an appearance (even though I'm sure it means VCM's opening Klingon joke will spawn the usual conspiracy theories). A three point gap in missing vowels is very little, but it made the difference as the Linguists managed to (just) run out winners 26-24 in a very well fought game.
Question of the Week
After an easy decision last week, picking a standout option from this episode has proven much trickier. However, after some serious deliberation (by which I mean, a chat and a cup of tea) we've decided that our Question of the Week goes to Same typeface. While maybe a bit tough on contestants in the studio, for those of us at home this offered a real test of observational skills while the final clue worked as a trigger as you try to figure out why something didn't seem quite right.
It's a very hard one to call this week, however, so do please let me know which questions you enjoyed with the poll below!
1+ out of 11: Well done, you beat us! 7+ out of 11: We'd have won with you on our team!
Note that a couple of questions this week are worth more than 1 point so be sure to keep that in mind when totting up your scores!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The game dev 4) The Klingon 5) The chef
The ones that got away
Yep.
1) Based on passenger traffic, three of the four busiest airports in the world are in Atlanta (USA), Beijing (China) and London (UK). Also in Asia, give either the airport code or the city of the fourth busiest airport in the world. 2) Alcia Beth Moore is the real name of which singer: Lady Gaga, Lorde, P!nk, or Rihanna? 3) Which title character's name from a children's movie comes from the Yiddish word for fear or fright? 4) In South Park what is the supervillain alter ego of the character Leopold "Butters" Scotch? 5) Identify the movie from the last line of one its characters: "Lucius is safe." 6) Along the New York highway system signs for 'Rest Stops' are being replaced, instead now advertising the same locations as '____ Stops' - what four letter verb fills in the blank? 7) 2 Point Question! Which is the only US state to have a royal palace, once used as an official residence of a reigning monarch? 8) 3 Point Question! Which everyday liquid did the Romans use to whiten their teeth?
The answers
1) Dubai (code DXB or OMDB) 2) P!nk (Lady Gaga is Stefani Germanotta, Lorde is Ella Yelich O'Connor, and Rihanna is Robyn Fenty - Rihanna is her middle name) 3) Shrek 4) Professor Chaos (note: you need the 'professor' bit) 5) Gladiator (spoken by the main character Maximus) 6) Text (in an attempt to discourage texting while driving) 7) Hawaii (ʻIolani Palace in Honolulu was the residence of the reigning Hawaiian sovereign) 8) Urine
Our excuses
1) The question on the night asked for all four (with the additional clue that two were in Asia, one in North America and one in Europe) and the three listed in the question above were the three we got. I was a tad frustrated not to get all four, as I'd read up a little on this list after an incident on Channel 4's Five Minutes to a Fortune last year. There a couple were asked to name five of the top ten 'cities with the busiest airports' but went away with nothing. On the show this was supposed to mean 'cities which have one of the world's 10 busiest airports', but after broadcast the contestants claimed that the phrasing was ambiguous. They argued that an answer of New York City (ruled out as incorrect at the time) should have counted as it would be in the top 10 list of cities with the busiest airports combined. New York, of course, has numerous airports which between them add up to a huge number of passengers, but busiest JFK alone only ranks as 18th in the world. Nevertheless the ambiguity meant the contestants went away with £26,000 after all. Dubai seems a very hard get here, although our guess of Shanghai (19th in the world) was still some way off. 2) Celebrity real names are quizzing bread and butter, but not something we've ever been particularly good at. We could at least narrow it down to three (knowing Lady Gaga's real name) but otherwise this was just a one in three guess. 3) We really should have got this, but almost didn't even manage a guess until the doctor hit upon Fieval Mousekewtiz from An American Tail: Fieval Goes West. I'll confess we were quietly quite confident of this (it begins with an F, at least), but were really kicking ourselves when the correct answer was revealed. 4) So near and yet so far. The doctor got halfway with this but put down Doctor Chaos instead of the all important Professor. 5) The name 'Lucius' had us thinking of either Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter franchise or Lucius Fox from Batman comics (and played by Morgan Freeman in the recent movies). The quote didn't really make sense for what we knew of either, however, and we went with a fairly unconvincing guess of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. This seems a very tough question to me, so well done if you managed this tricky bit of movie trivia. 6) Another tough one, but we were on the right lines thinking it would be some sort of safety message. Unfortunately we couldn't think of a four letter word for 'sleep' (the only reason we'd though of for why you may be encouraged to take a break) and ended up going for 'fuel stops' as at least fitting the rules of the question and vaguely making sense. 7) We were kicking ourselves again here, as having theorized the word 'monarch' may not necessarily mean a British one, we nevertheless didn't even think about Hawaii. I remembered that Maryland is the only state whose flag is based on English heraldry, and that its capital Annapolis is named after Queen Anne, which seemed better than nothing. 8) Sometimes you can infer a great deal from how a question is phrased, and I'm typically my team's biggest proponent of this bit of 'meta' game. I wasn't persuasive enough here, however, as after narrowing down our options to vinegar and urine, my argument of "every day liquid would be an odd way to phrase it if the answer was vinegar" ultimately went unheeded.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (7 points or more)? 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) In which country can you find airports with the codes NUE, HAM, MUC and CGN? 2) P!nk is one of many artists to include punctuation in her name. Which similarly inclined individual is associated with the 'insignia' pictured? 3) One scene in Shrek references which classic Disney movie with the line "You might have seen a house fly, maybe even a super fly, but I bet you ain't never seen a donkey fly"? 4) The primary ingredients of butterscotch are butter and brown sugar. What substance in brown sugar - a by-product of refining sugarcane into sugar - makes it brown? 5) One of the Gladiators in the classic UK TV series was called Saracen, a European medieval term for members of which religion? 6) Back in the day Nokia mobile phones had a standard text message alert of three short beeps followed by two long beeps and then another three short beeps. What appropriate initialism does this spell out in Morse code? 7) 4 point question! The current official Hawaiian alphabet contains just seven consonants (along with the 'okina - a glottal stop). Three of these consonants - H, N and W - appear in the word Hawaiian. For one point each, name the other four. 8) First name Roman, spell (correctly!) the last name of the Russian businessman and owner of Chelsea Football Club.
The answers
1) Germany (NUE = Nuremberg, HAM = Hamburg, MUC = Munich and CGN = Cologne) 2) will.i.am (the insignia was used as a promotional tool for his #willpower album) 3) Dumbo ('Did you ever see an elephant fly?') 4) Treacle (or molasses) 5)Islam 6) SMS (which stands for Short Message Service) 7) K, L, M and P 8) Abramovich
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
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Warning: the following contains spoilers for Series 10, Episode 5 of Only Connect, first broadcast on BBC Two on Monday 29th September. If you haven't seen it yet go and watch it on iPlayer!
Missed last week's recap of the QI Elves vs. the Bibliophiles? Check it out here!
There'll be some unashamed bias in this week's coverage as Internet-acquaintances of mine make their debut. The Gamesmasters will be familiar to many thanks to the presence of University Challenge champion (and Roger Tilling nemesis) Filip Drnovšek Zorko but he's accompanied with some fresher facers to the quizzing scene (James Robson and Frederic Heath-Renn). They're up against the Coders (Zoe Cunningham, Richard Bradley and captain David Simons), who apparently used to work with Board Gamer Hywel Carver, so loyalties are split across our team!
Round 1: What's the connection?
The questions 1) Doctor; Neighbour; Friend; Spook 2) 155; 300; 27 up 27 down; 501 in 9 3) Music: Blackjack (by Ray Charles); Patience (by Take That); Under the Bridge (by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers); Poker Face (by Lady Gaga) 4) Pictures: Little Dorrit; Little Voice; Little Mix; Little Britain 5) The Little Yellow God; The Jack of Hearts; Wenlock and Mandeville; Darning needle 6) We all stand together; Brekekekex koax koax; It's not easy bein' green; Ribbit
The answers
1) Add an 's' for a TV show 2) Perfect games 3) Card games 4) 'Little _____' 5) One eye 6) Said by frogs
Our thoughts 1) A straightforward start which the Coders had after two but took a third to be safe. We were less cautious at home but almost fell for the trap of going too specific with daytime TV shows. 2) This was courtesy of a certain Richard Osman, apparently, and one that could reward the right kind of snooker nerd. The Gamesmasters were thinking sport after 300 but didn't know the technicalities of snooker quite well enough to remember that you can get a 155 break if your opponent fouls and leaves you in a free ball situation before anything is potted. It's effectively unheard of, however, hence why 147 is referred to as the maximum. The Gamesmasters ultimately needed all four for this but still safely got themselves off the mark. (I, being a huge snooker nerd, had it after two and spent the rest of the time trying - and failing - to explain to the doctor how a 155 works.) 3) A tough one to get without all four, I think, as you probably need two of the first three to have a chance at the connection. The Coders managed to spot Under the Bridge and Poker Face to take a well-earned point. 4) Neither team had this one, although the Gamesmasters had an excellent better-than-nothing guess with 'things on a Tube map'. I staggered the doctor by recognizing Little Mix (at least one of their songs is quite nice) and he reverse-engineered Little Dorrit from that because "it looked a bit Victorian". I think the setter is probably expecting a similar strategy; Little Dorrit is in 'good answer on Pointless' range for Dickens novels, so spotting the frontispiece with no clues would take some pretty expert knowledge. 5) The perils of social media were cast in stark relief as Victoria Coren Mitchell Tweeted clues two and three earlier in the day. (Scandal, public inquiry, duck island, etc.) Fortunately it didn't make any difference to me, at least, as the first clue meant nothing (The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God is a J. Milton Hayes poem, apparently). A minor issue with this is that you can argue that both the Jack of Hearts as well as Wenlock and Mandeville (together) have two eyes, not one, although I think most players would probably decide that one eye seems a more fitting link. Wenlock or Mandeville, perhaps? 6) While there are a few options for 'We all stand together', 'brekekekex koax koax' will either mean nothing to you, or (as it did the Gamesmasters) tell you exactly what the answer will be. Some solid Aristophanes knowledge meant they picked up a valuable three points ending the round down 5 points to 4.
Round 2: What comes fourth?
The questions 1) Galaxy; Universe; Everything 2) Best; Caff; Edgh 3) Mount Rushmore; Eve (1957 Joanne Woodward film); A chess clock 4) Pictures: A red bow; The Red Arrows; An asparagus spear 5) 1947: Norman Hartnell; 1981: David and Elizabeth Emanuel; 2005: Robinson Valentine 6) Hampshire; Jersey; Mexico
The answers
1) Fish ('Hitchhiker's Guide...' novels) 2) Loon (Gutted UK capitals) 3) (e.g.) Ek Mukhi Rudraksha bead (Number of faces) 4) A chariot of fire ('Jerusalem') 5) 2011: Sarah Burton (Royal wedding dress designers) 6) York (US 'New' states)
Our thoughts 1) Round 2 started off with a fairly standard general knowledge sequence, with the Gamesmasters happy to pick up a bonus after the Coders couldn't spot the Hitchhiker's link. One nice feature of this question is that you might (as happened to me) have the connection triggered by seeing 'Universe' and 'Everything' together (as in Life, the Universe and Everything, y'see). 2) A great question that defeated us at home, but not the Gamesmasters who took a valuable 2 points. The gradual change from a normal word, to something that might be read as a slang cafe, to something that's very obviously not a word, gives this a lovely gradient. 3) This one, meanwhile, was a much more straightforward sequence but with much more of a chance at five points. After seeing Mount Rushmore there's not too much more to say than 'four presidents/faces' and it would be incredibly tempting to take a punt on 'one president/face'. The second clue is a somewhat obscure opportunity to confirm or deny this (unless, of course, you're familiar with the film, which did win Joanne Woodward a Best Acress Oscar) while chess clocks gave the Coders - and us - the certainty we needed for the points. 4) The Gamesmasters couldn't quite place this and the Coders picked up their first bonus of the show. With both the first two clues being obviously 'red something' I felt there was the faintest hint of the 2-clue misdirection we've seen a few times now this series. Nevertheless, by the third it's fairly clear we're looking at weapons, but spotting the final connection was nevertheless tricky. 5) A very tough question which (I think unsurprisingly) was missed by both teams. I was somehow onto the connection after the second clue (apparently the only notable thing I can ever remember about 1981 is the wedding of Charles and Diana) but knew I'd have no chance at the final answer. This is a nice idea for a question, as the years and names provide a couple of ways into it, but there is a question of how well-defined the connection is given how many royal weddings there have been. Victoria mentioned 'future monarchs' but this seems a bit presumptuous. 6) A question that has the potential to be fun, but is just a bit too easy for the potential distraction of Hampshire and Jersey being around the British Isles to work. Making the sequence alphabetical is also a tad weak (increasing population size would seem less arbitrary but would mean Hampshire and Mexico would be the first two clues). A bit of a gift for the Gamesmasters to finish off the round here, I think, and they duly took two points to lead by 9 points to 8 going into the walls.
It was the walls which would seem to prove decisive, with an alarmingly quick solve from the Gamesmasters and a bit of a stumble from the Coders seeing the gap stretch to 19-12. Any hope of a comeback were soon dashed by the almost terrifying performance of the Gamesmasters in missing vowels, however, who took the round 11-1(!) and ran out the winners 30 points to 13. Yowzers.
Question of the Week
For the first time this series my question of the week is an easy decision: Gutted UK capitals takes the plaudits for being deceptively simple (and, if you're the doctor, rack your brains trying to think of footballers called 'Caff' and 'Edgh'). If you'd like a second opinion Series 9's Welsh Learner Stu Hern does his own weekly recaps over on his blog here (although this week we've agreed for once!).
As always though, I'd love to know what you think with the poll below!
There's a new Only Connect app in town! For £1.49 on iOS (£1.99 on Android) you can get your connecting wall fix on the go while a new challenge mode adds some missing vowels to proceedings. It's a solid app, with a respectable chunk of content, just don't expect anything revolutionary.
The app's home screen complete with non-round numbers.
The basics
An Only Connect app is always going to be about the walls and there are a whopping 108 included (the previous version stopped at just 40). 66 of these are presented as 'standalone' walls while the remaining 42 are included in the all-new 'challenge' mode.
Standalone walls are as close to the show as you can get and near-identical in gameplay to those on the Only Connect website. You have three minutes to find the groups and guess the connections with scoring just like the programme (except because this is a computer game everything is multiplied by 100). The main novelty comes in the mechanics of answering: rather than getting a single guess for each connection you can instead try out as many answers as you want until you hit on something the game accepts. While this may offend some purists it does mean much of the potential frustration caused by poor answer parsing (or merely fat fingers) is mitigated.
As long as the correct answer is in there somewhere you're fine.
CHL LNGMD
The challenge mode is an attempt to add a bit of variety, with missing vowels-style questions providing the opportunity to earn some extra time to solve a wall. Challenges are split into three rounds of four (unrelated) missing vowels clues all of which need to be solved within a fixed time limit. Each correct answer earns you five seconds of extra time (on top of a baseline two minutes) for that challenge's wall.
After each round you choose either to face the wall with the time you have or face some more clues to try and earn some extra seconds. Going for the wall early will earn you bonus points (200 after one round of missing vowels, 100 after two) but reduces how much extra time you could earn. Like the walls you can try as many guesses as you like for each missing vowels clue (which seems a little generous) as well as skip and come back to any that prove tricky.
"I don't know about you but I play 'muscle chairs' all the time."
Wall to wall walls
Overall the app is a perfectly fine way to add some connecting walls to your life but there's not much more to it than that. The challenge mode is a nice idea but doesn't really add too much to proceedings. Extra time on walls is seldom that useful and thus the 'dilemma' of scoring more points or playing more missing vowels isn't a particularly engaging one. Similarly the idea of trying to set high scores seems a little misplaced - you're only really interested in how you do on your first try.
Gameplay mechanics are fairly smooth, albeit with a touch of lag at the end of rounds. Answer parsing on walls, meanwhile, seems to err on the side of caution (I got away with 'TV' instead of 'TV sitcoms', for example), which is probably for the best, although good spelling remains crucial both to walls and missing vowels. American players may wish to take note of this second point; in an early game I tried 'theaters' to no avail.
With 108 walls you're looking at 1.4p per game (1.8p on Android), which isn''t too shabby, and it of course remains to be seen whether more content will be added as time goes on. As far as I can tell the walls are original but at least some of the missing vowels seem recycled from the show (not that this really affects gameplay much). While there are arguably better web-based options for both walls and missing vowels out there (not to mention the the official Only Connect site) this remains a good option for commutes and similar 'off-the-grid' occasions.
We won this week :D But could you have done even better? The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor
The ones that got away 1) How long is a ten pin bowling alley (from the foul line to the front pin)? If you get within five feet you get the point. 2) Identify the song and artist from these lyrics (you need both for the point): "I'm waking up to ash and dust \ I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust \ I'm breathing in the chemicals". 3) From which country did Bangladesh declare independence in 1971? 4) Which Texas chapel, built in 1744, takes its now famous name from the Spanish for 'cottonwood'? 5) The first Space Shuttle, unveiled in 1976, was going to be called Constitution before Gerald Ford received over 100,000 letters asking him to change it to what name instead? 6) What 1980s US TV show is name dropped in the Prince song Kiss?
The answers
1) 60 feet or 18.3 metres (55-65 feet or 16.764-19.812 metres gets you the point) or 2)Radioactive by Imagine Dragons [VIDEO] 3) Pakistan 4)The Alamo 5)Enterprise (the campaign was, of course, by Star Trek fans) 6) Dynasty [VIDEO] (the line in question is "You don't have to watch Dynasty to have an attitude")
Our excuses
1) As one who values getting a quiz question correct over looking like an idiot, I promptly got out of my seat and attempted to judge the length of a bowling alley in the bar, before pacing it out (much to some other quizzers' bemusement). This led to a guess of 50 feet, which I felt reasonably sure was an underestimate, but the doctor thought the opposite. Given that I'm blind in one eye (and so have no depth perception) I was inclined to trust the binocular member of our team, but of course on retrospect was rather frustrated. 2) I've probably said it before, but I think lyrics questions are exceptionally hard to gauge the difficulty of. When the answer was revealed it still didn't ring a bell so I assumed it was some super obscure song I'd never heard of (though I am vaguely familiar with the band name). On listening, however, I recognized it instantly, and while I'm not entirely sure where I knew it from, Wikipedia has a fairly long list of options (with Assassin's Creed III advertising the likeliest suspect). 3) Horrible. I said at the time that if this was asked on a UK quiz I would have said Pakistan with some certainty, but geography questions in North American quizzes are often just a case of knowing roughly which countries border each other. As such, I talked myself into putting down India, reassured by the knowledge of the crazy multi-level enclaves along their border suggesting their previous unity. If you're unfamiliar with this particularly odd part of international boundaries, do have a look here. 4) Considering this quiz ended with a tie-break I was incredibly relieved to win as I basically cost us a point here through sheer stupidity. The doctor initially suggested the correct answer, but didn't give any reason why other than "the battle of the Alamo is a famous thing that happened in Texas, right?". I, meanwhile, in a flash of brilliance decided that there wasn't much reason for a church to share a name with a battle and ultimately put down a last-second guess of "Westboro Baptist Church" which is fairly obviously not in Texas and very obviously not derived from the Spanish for cottonwood. I still have no idea why I was so sure Alomo wasn't right; I can only blame the bucket of beers we won at half time. 5) One of those questions where on another night our brains might have happened down the correct train of thought to get to the answer. This was certainly work-outable but we could only imagine a letter-writing campaign might be about a past President or some similarly nationalistic topic. I also had the vague idea that all the Space Shuttles had names starting with C, knowing of Challenger and Columbia. While we could rule out Challenger, Columbia seemed somewhat plausible. In fact, Columbia was the first 'space-rated' Space Shuttle (its first flight taking place in 1981), whereas the Enterprise - though technically the first Space Shuttle - was only used for test flights. 6) Another song lyric question that passed us by, with Cheers our default 80s TV show guess. This time, at least, we knew the song well enough to vaguely hum through it not that it helped.
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) What comes fourth in this sequence? A standard UK 13 amp plug; A 7-10 split in bowling; A Blue Peter badge. 2) Despite the Welsh flag being super rad, only two other countries feature dragons on their national flags. One is a landlocked country in South Asia (with quite a big dragon), the other is a Mediterranean island nation (with a very small one). Name either.
Question 3
3) Pictured is an estimated distribution of what specific subspecies of mammal, the national animal of both India and Bangladesh? 4) Which American folk hero, who died at the Battle of the Alamo, is mentioned in the same line of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire as Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, and Disneyland? 5) Along with the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters, 1986 also saw the Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon, when a limnic eruption caused the deaths of some 1,700 people - how did they die? 6) There are currently eleven official Disney Princesses. The names of four of them (Snow White, Cinderella, Pocahontas and Mulan) feature in the titles of their respective films. Can you match up the other seven with their original Disney films below? You need a perfect set to get the point!
The answers
1) Something with no pins, such as an angry baker who has had their rolling pin stolen (these are things with 3, 2, and 1 pin, respectively) 2) Bhutan and Malta - the flag of Malta features a representation of the George Cross, awarded to Malta in 1942, which contains a depiction of St. George and the Dragon
The flag of Bhutan, Malta, and a slight close-up on that George Cross.
3) The Bengal tiger 4) Davy Crockett 5) Suffocation (a limnic eruption is when carbon dioxide is suddenly released from a lake, displacing all the air nearby) 6) Those princesses and films match up as follows:
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
Scroll down for this week's Question of the Week poll!
Warning: the following contains spoilers for Series 10, Episode 4 of Only Connect, first broadcast on BBC Two on Monday 22nd September. If you haven't seen it yet go and watch it on iPlayer!
Missed last week's recap of the Wandering Minstrels vs. the Gallifreyans? Check it out here!
There's some showbiz swagger in the studio this week, with the QI Elves showing remarkable bravery by putting their reputations on the line. Of course, they're incredibly lovely and humble, and are immediately given the opportunity to clarify that they probably don't know everything about everything. They're up against the Bibliophiles, who immediately got my support for having (at least) two maths graduates on the team. Let's see what the Only Connect gods/devils (delete as applicable) had in store this week.
Round 1: What's the connection?
The questions 1) Music: Year of the Cat (Al Stewart); The Very Thought of You (Al Bowlly); Sonny Boy (Al Jolson); Let's Stay Together (Al Green) 2) Serious; Frame and Fortune; G'day Ya Pommie B.....!; It's not about the Bike 3) Millard Fillmore; Lace; Abolition of slavery; Floor of Roky Erickson's Elevators 4) Rose (in red); Tree (in blue); Pound (in purple); Bird (in yellow) 5) Ford Prefect; David Brent; Sherlock Holmes; Gandalf 6) Pictures: Trevor Peacock; Jonnie Peacock; The NBC logo; Mrs. Peacock (on a Cluedo board)
The answers
1) You can call them Al 2) Sportspersons' autobiographies 3) 13th 4) UK national parties 5) Associates played by Martin Freeman 6) Peacocks
Our thoughts 1) A tough one to start, I thought, with recognition of at least two of the singers essential (not much chance of educated guesswork here) and both teams were duly stumped. The closest I could get was vaguely recognizing the clip of Al Green. I suspect some may have known Al Jolson's Sonny Boy as the first American record to sell over one million copies, but beyond that this seemed one to only cement the music question's reputation as the show's toughest. 2) A slightly friendlier bit of standard general knowledge here although some lateral thinking could also clue you in to these being book titles related to sports or sportsmen. Playing along at home I managed to recognize Lance Armstrong's It's not about the Bike but then we foolishly went too specific with cyclist's autobiographies, supposing that Frame and Fortune was some sort of bike-related pun. Not easy, and the teams were evaded again, but I absolutely loved the Elves' idea of TV shows' names when exported to other countries (anyone else who's looked up the international versions of Come Dine With Me will agree, I'm sure). 3) After two tricky openers another question we thought was difficult but the Elves came in for an impressive point (despite having the answer on the first clue with the remainder not reassuring them any further). I'll have to admit ignorance of the 13th Floor Elevators and given their fairly sparse discography I'd imagine I'm not alone. The Elves knew Fillmore was the 13th President straight off the bat, and I presume the thinking in the question is there's not much else to know him for, although Wikipedia tells me he who was the last President was neither a Republican or a Democrat (he was a Whig), which is nice. The other clues are 'classic trivia' territory, with anniversary gifts and the number of US amendments largely the preserve of pub quizzes and not much else. 4) At this point I was starting to wonder if the show had decided "right, we've given BBC Two their easy-ish shows to lure in the new punters, now it's back to the hard stuff" and then this question popped up. A lovely idea, and a really nice question, just a touch unfortunate to come straight after three relatively difficult ones. As always, though, this is a matter of judgement and I typically find those questions with a touch more lateral thinking tend to be the hardest to gauge. The Bibliophiles had this for two, and both teams were up and running. 5) I'll admit that we found this one a touch odd. After two clues we had the answer but the link seemed sufficiently vague that we took a third expecting to work out something more specific. Perhaps a slightly harsh criticism, but I like to think that's more a testament to how tight the vast majority of the show's questions are. 6) A case of "can you recognize what's in these pictures?" but with the inclusion of the NBC logo and the Cluedo pieces providing some enjoyable alternative routes for those of us who struggle to recognize people. The Bibliophiles got the peacock link on the logo, and (I think quite impressively) deduced that either the actor or the Vicar of Dibley character he plays was called Peacock as well.
Round 2: What comes fourth?
The questions 1) First Manfred Mann hit; 2010 Noel Clark film; Gameshow featuring Dusty Bin 2) Tar Heel, NC; Palmetto, SC; Peach, GA 3) 1990: Johnson; 1997: Booth; 2007: Macaulay 4) Arthur Drewry; Stanley Rous; João Havelange 5) 1 of 4: Battleships; 2 of 4: Clue; 3 of 4: NFL Super Bowl Electric Football 6) Pictures: The Only Connect title card extremely pixellated; The Only Connect title card rather pixellated; The Only Connect title card slightly pixellated
The answers
1) (e.g.) Upper second-class degree (5-4-3-2-1, 4.3.2.1, 3-2-1, 2:1) 2) Sunshine, FL (US state nicknames along the east coast) 3) 2010: Sheffield (Prime ministers' spouses) 4) Sepp Blatter (Presidents of Fifa) 5) 4 of 4: Twister (Bill & Ted v Death in 'Bogus Journey') 6) The Only Connect title card (not at all pixellated)
Our thoughts 1) A fun sequence, and one of those gems where recognizing two clues gives it away, but recognizing just one still gives you a chance. We were in the latter camp, being familiar with 3-2-1 (thanks Challenge!), but pushed for time ended up deciding a sequence of 1, 2-1, 3-2-1, 4-3-2-1 seemed (slightly) more plausible. This was partly because we knew there was a film called 21, whereas a film called 4-3-2-1 seemed ridiculous. (The flipside, of course, is that it's much easier to think of an example of 2-1 than 4-3-2-1 for the answer, which should have tipped us off.) The Elves knew their Manfred Mann to give them the connection and the all-important direction to take two points. 2) A test of geography and either quizzing knowledge or quick thinking, here. If you know your state nicknames (see above re: wedding anniversaries), or could infer that's what they were, then you had half of this but would still need to recognize the state abbreviations and know where those states were. A lot going on, then, but the Bibliophiles managed to unravel it all for two good points of their own. 3) Back to some standard general knowledge (with the very slight challenge of recognizing Prime Ministerial years; bread and butter to veteran Only Connect viewers) where most teams would probably have the link after two but not know what the answer was. The Elves were in this camp, and smartly didn't bother asking for the third, while the Bibliophiles managed to sneak in for the bonus. I'll admit I was expecting/hoping to kick myself when the answer was revealed, but Sheffield only rang the very faintest of bells. 4) Another case of straight general knowledge which evaded the Bibliophiles (and us) but not the Elves. As a fairly avid football fan I think I'm going to claim a tiny bit of "before my time" on this; Havelange reigned for a whopping 24 years before finally being replaced in 1998. 5) One I suspect you'll either love or complain is ridiculously obscure. The doctor had this after Clue, but I was so sceptical of it really being the answer I insisted on a third to be sure. Neither team had it, and given that if you're going to be familiar with Bill and Ted's travels at all it's likely with their Excellent Adventure, I can't really blame them. Still, one of the reasons we all love Only Connect is the almost absurd range of trivia they consider fair game. 6) This, meanwhile, was somewhat at the other end of the spectrum. I'd file this under 'cute', but it felt a little like a question from a celebrity special. The doctor, remarkably, was thinking along the right lines after just one clue, and by the second we were sure. In the studio the Bibliophiles took it after three, by which point (and I don't mean this as a disservice to the team, of course) I find it hard to believe anyone would have been stumped.
Question of the Week
A rather mixed bag this week and overall somewhat tougher than the episodes we've seen on BBC Two so far. Nevertheless, it was close at the top and both '5-4-3-2-1' and 'Sportspersons' autobiographies' deserve honourable mentions, but for us Question of the Week goes to UK national parties. While it may have seemed a bit easy at home, I still think this is a great example of an Only Connect question, having the potential to seem impenetrable at first with a great "a-ha!" moment when the penny drops.
Of course, if you disagree (or even if you don't) let us know what your favourite questions were with the poll below!
