Lacrosse takes its name for the French for 'the stick'

Your targets this week:

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

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

The ones that got away
1) Brass is an alloy of which two metals? (1 point for getting both.)
2) How many players on a lacrosse team?
3) Which of these is not a real Steven Seagal movie? Hard to Kill; A Man Under Cover; The Asian Connection; Out for Justice; Fire Down Below.
4) In the musical Book of Mormon, to which country are the two main missionaries sent?
5) The musical Cats ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000. To within 10%, how many shows in total were there?
6) In the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joseph has 11 brothers. One is called Reuben, for 1 point each, name any 2 others.

The answers

1) Copper and zinc
2) 10
3) A Man Under Cover
4) Uganda
5) 7,493 (so 6,744 to 8,242 gets you the point)
6) Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin

Our excuses

1) It's been a while since I've been so angry for getting a question wrong. I've mixed up brass (copper and zinc) with bronze (copper and tin) for years, and always seem to go the wrong way. (I actually thought this exact question was already on the blog, but currently can't find it.) My new plan? You can get a bronze tan, and tan sounds a bit like tin. Here's hoping it sticks.
2) A bigger game over here than back in the UK, perhaps, but my instinct was '10 or 11', but a teammate thought it was a little lower, so we went with 8. The history of lacrosse is pretty interesting, with Wikipedia offering "In the traditional aboriginal Canadian version, each team consisted of about 100 to 1,000 men on a field that stretched from about 500 meters to 3 kilometers long. These games lasted from sunup to sundown for two to three days straight."
3) Given that our guess of The Asian Connection hasn't been released yet, we felt a tiny bit hard done by, but still.
4) Spoilers: the quiz had a round on musicals, which is a common source of trivia trouble for us. Someone had a hunch on Ethiopia for this, which seemed good enough with nothing else to go on.
5) Having been forewarned of the theme, I'd spent a bit of time looking at the list of longest-running musicals, so was quite disappointed to not get this. Applying some maths I got as far as 6,570 assuming one a day, but was gradually talked upwards. At the last moment I switched from 8,000 to 8,500, putting the cherry on top of what was already a spectacularly frustrating cake of quizzing failure.
6) The doctor had been in a production of this, but could only play the 'pick random names' game, coming up with Aaron and Joshua.

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) While most are in fact 'German', which member of an orchestral brass section is often (incorrectly) described by another nationality?
2) Which Canadian ice hockey star was presented with a Tottenham Hotspur shirt this week bearing a slightly mis-spelled version of his name?
3) Which Disney film features a seagull who advises the title character that a salvaged fork is used as a comb? (Seagull? Seagal? Geddit?)
4) Which (real-life) television pioneer (and Mormon) is canonically an ancestor of a (fictional) character from TV series Futurama? Surname suffices.
5) The only real villain in Cats, Macavity's name is a pun based on the names Macheath (of Mack the Knife fame), macuahuitl (an Aztec obsidian sword), and that of which 19th Century literary criminal mastermind, upon whom Macavity himself is supposedly based?
6) Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice shared the 1996 Academy Award for Best Original Song. For 1 point each, what was the song, and what Madonna-starring musical film was it from?

The answers

1) French horn (or, simply, 'horn')
2) Wayne Gretzky
3) The Little Mermaid (the seagull is called Scuttle, and calls a fork a 'dinglehopper')
4) (Philo) Farnsworth
5) (Arthur Conan Doyle's) Professor Moriarty
6) You Must Love Me from Evita

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

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While the title is Moby-Dick, the whale is Moby Dick

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 9: Well done, you beat us!
2+ out of 9: We'd have won with you on our team!

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

The ones that got away
1) What is the name of Captain Ahab's ship in Moby-Dick?
2) What is the name of Quint's boat used to hunt the shark in Jaws?
3) What was the name of Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar?
4) There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) was the only UK number one single for which artist?
5) ...and who played the harmonica solo on that track?
6) What creature features in the Damien Hirst work titled The Wrath of God?
7) Who were the first Italian team to win the European Cup?
8) In cricket, what fielding position is on the off-side near the boundary behind the slips?
9) What is the combined track distance covered in the women's heptathlon?

The answers

1) Pequod
2) Orca
3) HMS Victory
4) Eurythmics
5) Stevie Wonder
6) A shark
7) AC Milan
8) Third man
9) 1100 metres (100 metres hurdles + 200 metres + 800 metres)

Our excuses

1) A round on 'famous ships' went largely our way (I think there were a further nine we got correct), but some slipped through the net. This one was on the tip of our tongues for most of the quiz, and despite my memory of it having a 'Q' in the name, we all assumed I was thinking of Queequeg. We went with the mildly creative Hell's Fury.
2) Not too bothered about missing this one (I'm not sure I've ever sat through the entire film), with "guess a girl's name" (Lucy) unsurprisingly not proving successful.
3) Easily the worst of the bunch to miss and a real kicking-ourselves moment, we put down Invincible (presumably thinking of the Falklands) and didn't give it enough of a second thought.
4) A toss-up between Eurythmics and Annie Lennox (who, it turns out, is yet to have a UK number one single), we jumped the wrong way.
5) In fairness if we'd thought about this a bit more we may well have worked it out. Instead we dismissed it as one of those throwaway, 'ungettable' ones and just put down Bob Dylan as the first harmonica player we could think of.
6) This one was particularly frustrating, as we ruled out shark (knowing that was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living) and cow (knowing that was Mother and Child (Divided)), so we went with sheep as that was one we couldn't remember the name of. Turns out, of course, that he did more than one of each animal, and it was a different shark. Obviously we didn't know enough to get it right, but one of those where I wonder if we'd known slightly less we might have got it.
7) Yawn. While I follow football I've never been one of those who knows the history of the European Cup. Figuring it was as good a reason as any, I took inspiration from the 'old' in The Old Lady and put down Juventus (who first won the cup over 20 years later, in 1985).
8) One I'll be sure to run by our Canadian quiz team, we were left with little to go on other than a few options we could safely eliminate. Unfortunately, our guess of 'deep cover' is nowhere near, so I probably need to hand in my Englishman Licence.
9) What at first seems like a fun question is really just "do you know your heptathlon events?" in disguise. We were some way off, as while we at least knew the 800m, we swapped the 200m for the 100m and forgot that it's only the men who run the 110m hurdles.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (2 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 8

1) Moby-Dick was first published in London under the title The Whale. What dystopian novel's early title was The Last Man in Europe?
2) What movie franchise supposes that Jaws 19 would be playing in cinemas this year?
3) Which naval rank originates from the title given to the commander of ships at the back of a squadron during battle?
4) Eurythmics is an annoying band name to spell, because you'd think it would have an extra 'h' in it. Which American rock band, formed in 1992, also seems to have a missing 'h' in its name, the nickname of its asthmatic vocalist?
5) The Stevie Wonder single Happy Birthday was written to help Wonder's campaign to make whose January 15th birthday a national holiday in the United States?
6) The compound formaldehyde contains what three elements?
7) Which 4-time European Cup winning team are also named after a mythological Greek hero?
8) The name of this suspiciously grasshopper-looking Disney character is a minced oath for what two-word phrase?
9) Simulating the experience of a 19th century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines, which multi-discipline Olympic event sees competitors paired with horses at random?

The answers

1) (Orwell's) Nineteen Eighty-Four
2) Back to the Future (specifically, in the second movie)
3) Rear admiral (vice admirals commanded the lead ships; rear admirals were in less danger, so it's a handy way to remember the order of the ranks)
4) Weezer
5) Martin Luther King
6) Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen
7) Ajax
8) Jesus Christ (the character is Jiminy Cricket)
9) Modern pentathlon

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If Edward VIII hadn't abdicated, Elizabeth II would still be the monarch

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us!
2+ out of 8: We'd have won with you on our team!

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

The ones that got away
1) What are the three largest continents by land area? You get 1 point for getting all three, and 2 points if you can put them in descending order of size.
2) Which three countries share a border with Finland? 1 point for getting all three.
3) How tall is the queen (in feet and inches)?
4) What major London building is located on Ludgate Hill?
5) Which British bridge became a UNESCO World Heritage Site this year?
6) Who is the restaurant critic for the Sunday Times?
7) 'How to be a Better Cook' is a 2014 book by which TV chef?

The answers

1) Asia (1st), Africa (2nd), North America (3rd)
2) Norway, Sweden and Russia
3) 5 feet 4 inches
4) St. Paul's Cathedral
5) The Forth Bridge
6) A. A. Gill
7) Lorraine Pascale

Our excuses

1) We had Asia and Africa, but massively overestimated the size of Antarctica for number three (North America is almost twice its size). I suspect I was also partly affected by the tendency for Antarctica to be a 'surprise' answer on any continents quiz question.
2) Sweden and Russia were the obvious two answers, and knowing Norway shared a border with Russia I was relatively sure that was the third, but the programmer talked me into Estonia. Sadface.
3) Haha, no. Maybe a fun guessing game for some teams, but not my cup of tea at all. We averaged everyone's guesses and wound up with a close(ish) 5 foot 2.
4) While I'm firmly playing the "I don't live in London any more" card on this, the doctor's 20-odd years calling the city home somewhat undermines us.
5) Having coincidentally looked at a list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites shortly before the quiz, I knew the Forth Bridge was on the list but not how recently it had been added. This was actually written on our sheet for most of the round before we switched to Ironbridge. Argh.
6) The programmer provided quite a surprising amount of input on this, but while we could name a few plausible options (include the correct answer) we had little to choose between them and ended up going with Giles Coren.
7) Continuing the foodie theme, and I hadn't even heard of the answer. This time I think Canada takes some of the blame, with most of her televisual exploits seeming to have happened since we moved away.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 point or more)? Would you have helped us win (2 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 3

1) If we use the seven-continent model, which continent has the highest population density, and which has the lowest population density? (1 point for each)
2) Russia's border with Norway is its second-shortest, at 196km. With which country does Russia share an approximately 20km border - by far its shortest?
3) The Queen employs various 'royal standards' depending on which realm she is in. In which country does she use this particular royal standard?
4) Give a year in which St. Paul's designer Sir Christopher Wren was alive.
5) Upon 'inscription' (i.e. becoming recognized as such) UNESCO World Heritage Sites are given a reference number. Which Ecuadorian archipelago, described as a "living

Question 7

museum and showcase of evolution", boasts reference number 1?
6) Which Scottish-born restaurateur did A. A. Gill once describe as "a wonderful chef, just a really second-rate human being"?
7) Pictured are rows zero to five of Pascal's Triangle, which is a pretty fun thing in mathematics. Can you work out what number has been replaced by a question mark?

The answers

1) Asia has the highest, Antarctica has the lowest
2) North Korea
3) New Zealand (the stars are hopefully the giveaway)
4) 1632-1723 (he was heavily involved with the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire in 1666)
5) The Galápagos Islands
6) Gordon Ramsay
7) 10 (each number is equal to the two numbers above it added together)

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

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

Your targets this week:

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

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

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

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

The answers

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

Our excuses

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

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (4 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


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

The answers

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

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Jason Orange isn't in Take That

Your targets this week:

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)

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The music video for the 1999 Comic Relief single featured Saracen from Gladiators and Mystic Meg

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

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Pub Quiz Poll: Strangers joining your team

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.

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