No quiz this week :(

Sorry! Illness has got the better of me.

Tweet

Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in 21 categories

Your targets this week:

We won this week, but can you do even better?
The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin

The ones that got away
1) What is the only movie to be based on a novel by Stephen King and to star Christopher Walken?
2) The term sesquibicentennial represents how many years?
3) What are the first names of the two main characters in the Neil Simon play The Odd Couple? You need both for the point.
4) Pro-wrestler Daniel Bryan, whose catchphrase is 'No! No! No!', once teamed up with another wrestler called Kane, who is the Undertaker's demon brother. What was the name of this tag team?
5) In what movie can you see a counter-terrorism agent played by Jean-Claude Van Damme team up with a weapons dealer played by Dennis Rodman?
6) 2 point question: Starting with a 1, add 0s until you have the (approximate) number of times the International Space Station has orbited the Earth.
7) Who wrote the (Pulitzer Prize-winning) novel All the King's Men?

The answers

1) The Dead Zone
2) 250
3) Felix and Oscar
4) Team Hell No
5) Double Team
6) 100,000
7) Robert Penn Warren

The doctor's excuses

1) I tend to prefer not to consume horror fiction directly, instead preferring to enjoy it in Wikipedia synopsis form. As a result I was able to tell the team the broad outline of the plot of The Dead Zone - about a dude with psychometric powers, but this was unable to alter the fact that nobody had seen the movie in question. We put "Thinner" which is either about AIDS or witchcraft, or both (or possibly neither... just so I've fully covered my back).
2) Sesquipedelian words, according to the Schott's Miscellany I had as a teen, were those which could be described as being "a foot and a half" long. So we had the 2 and a half component, and then we brainfarted and missed the centennial bit. NICE ONE, US.
3) I know The Odd Couple is a super famous thing, but it's currently in the same box as "Gone With The Wind" where it's basically "Media To Experience If I Run Out Of Literally Any Other Things To Do". So obviously, I didn't know about the names of the characters. Someone knew Oscar though, which was pretty good going, I thought.
4) "Find Out What The Deal Is With WWE And US Professional Wrestling" is yet another bullet point on my quest-log, which I suspect shall go uncompleted for my entire life. I sort of abstractly understand the appeal, but what little of it I've seen makes it clear that it's not really my cup of tea.
5) I think I've watched literally 2 movies in which the cast had been blessed by the divine presence of The Muscles From Brussels, but this was not one of them. Another close one though as our team went with Double Trouble (probably the sequel).
6) Our answer was 10,000 - making us out by a factor of ten. This was because we thought that it maybe orbited the Earth 1-2x a day. It seems pretty alarming that anyone's able to get anything done at all up there given how fast they're whizzing around, but that's space for you I guess.
7) According to Wikipedia, All The King's Men is a book that I can't easily summarise in one sentence as part of an excuse for why we didn't know who wrote it. It's like, about a politician who's a dick but people like him? Something like that. We suggested John Grisham because he is a noted writer of books.

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


My alternative questions

Question 5

1) Essential' trivia time: what two words follow "Rita Hayworth and" to complete a Stephen King novella. It was later adapted for a film that, despite regular citations as 'one of the greatest movies of all time', failed to win a single Academy Award.
2) Originally intended to be a 2 euro coin before the French blocked the plans, the Belgian commemorative 2.5 euro coin commemorates what event of 1815?
3) For 1 point each, give the first name of any former member of pop group Girls Aloud, and the surname of any member of Russian composer group The Mighty Handful. (Then imagine what beautiful music they'd make together.)
4) The story of Cain and Abel is a major theme in what 1952 John Steinbeck novel?

Question 6

5) Pictured is the poster from one of the greatest Jean-Claude Van Damme movies of all time. What video game series is it based on?
6) Pictured is a space version of something almost all of us use every day. What?
7) Humpty Dumpty is sometimes used to illustrate the second law of thermodynamics, which describes what 7-letter process? (Extra hint: it starts with 'e'.)

The answers

1) Shawshank Redemption
2) Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo (Battle of Waterloo, or similar answers, also acceptable)
3) Nadine, Cheryl, Sarah, Nicola, Kimberley and Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korskakov, Borodin (I'll let you work out which list is which)
4) East of Eden
5) Street Fighter
6) A toilet
7) Entropy

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

Tweet

The most-watched YouTube that isn't a song is a collection of nursery rhymes

Your targets this week:

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

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away

Question 6!

1) In Friends, how many categories of towel does Monica have?
2) YouTube co-founders Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim met while working for what e-commerce company?
3) Easybird, rise, and toaster are (in a social media context) examples of what?
4) In what year was Pluto demoted to 'dwarf planet' status by the International Astronomical Union?
5) Name all the planets in the Solar System which have rings. (You need all of them for the point.)
6) This is a picture of a moon in the solar system. For 1 point, name the moon and the planet it orbits.
7) Which is the densest planet in the solar system?
8) Which company beat SpaceX to become the first to launch and land the same rocket twice?

The answers

1) 11
2) PayPal
3) Instagram filters
4) 2006
5) Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
6) Io, Jupiter
7) Earth
8) Blue Origin

The doctor's excuses

1) ahahahahahaha, what a cracker of a question. This is basically "do you remember this one specific episode of Friends?" and the answer is either a) "no, I am a normal person", or b) "yes, what do you think Rachel smells like?"
2) We'll totally cop to the fact that we were wrong, but this question *is* muddied by the fact that (I believe) PayPal was *owned* by eBay at the time :3
3) This is actually probably a fair-ish question, like... I wouldn't think a question about Twitter was dumb and this was the social media round (I think). I just don't like/am not good at taking photos so I've never used Insta (as the kids call it... don't check that, I didn't actually ask any kids).
4) The Statistician's father was actually part of the group of astronomy people who were all like "yeah, F Pluto tbh", so we should have probably known this. Questions where it's just like "what year was this" are pretty much the worst. It's either like, "this is something *ridiculously* famous like the moon landing (or like, the date the Illuminati lizard-people faked the moon landing, if you like) OR it's like, nobody knows and nobody cares. These are the only two options. Also I don't know when the moon landing was because I am rubbish, sorry.
5) Jupiter has rings. God dammit. I bloody knew that. (We had the others, obvs.)
6) We're not *great* on moons, but I thought the image looked like a moon covered in ice... and the only one I know that's like that is Europa... turns out that was completely wrong, but that was the thought process at least.
7) Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, there's really not much in it, I don't think this is a good question.... we put Mercury because like, maybe the sun baked it or something. We didn't have any strong feelings other than "it's probably not a gas planet", really.
8) Huh, apparently Blue Origin is the rocket project of Amazon, that's kinda crazy! Who are they gonna deliver parcels to up there? Unless... does this mean there are BEINGS!?! LIVING ON THE MOOOON!? ORDERING BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!?!?!!! ... the answer is "yes, probably, what else would they be doing?".

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


Our alternative questions
1) Towel Day, celebrated on 25 May, is a tribute to which author?
2) In summer 2010, YouTube added a button which would add the sound of what to 'enhance' watching videos?
3) What two words is 'instagram' a portmanteau of?
4) The debate surrounding Pluto involved the creation of a formal definition of a 'planet'. This definition states that in the Solar System, a planet is a celestial body that has 'cleared the neighbourhood' around its orbit, has sufficient mass to assume a nearly round shape, and what other property?
5) Excluding moons of Jupiter, name any of the other 3 moons in the Solar System with a larger volume than Pluto.
6) .io is the Internet country code top-level domain for what British overseas territory?
7) It's a bit of a quizzing 'chestnut' that osmium is the densest element. What element is the least dense?
8) Talk of relaunching rockets inevitably makes me think of Thunderbirds, and since I already asked one portmanteau, here's another. Made famous by Thunderbirds, the 'Supermarionation' puppetry technique is a portmanteau of what three words?

The answers

1) Douglas Adams
2) Vuvuzelas
3) Instant telegram
4) It orbits the Sun
5) (In decreasing order of size): Titan, Earth's moon, Triton
6) British Indian Ocean Territory
7) Hydrogen
8) Super marionette animation

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

Tweet

The original script had E.T. lured by M&Ms, but Mars turned the opportunity down

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 10: Well done, you beat us!
4+ out of 10: We'd have won with you on our team!

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

The ones that got away
1) Within 10%, what is the total distance covered in an Ironman triathlon? (You can answer in miles or kilometres)
2) What brand of beer did E.T. get drunk on in the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?
3) Which of these is not a real lizard: a) Australian Thorny Devil; b) Legitimate Night Lizard; c) Mutilating Gecko; d) Ornate Crevice Dragon; e) Variable Blood Sucker
4) Prior to the recent relocation of the St Louis Rams (back) to Los Angeles, which NFL team had most recently relocated?

Questions 8 and 9

5) Which 2 films earned the most Oscar nominations (12 and 10) this year? You need both for the point.
6) According to the US Department of Agriculture, how hot should the internal temperature of chicken be to consume safely?
7) The quote "Old and busted, new hotness" is from which film and said by what actor? You need both for the point.
8) Name this character, played by Alan Rickman in the movie Galaxy Quest.
9) 2 point question: Name the character played by Alan Rickman here, and the movie. 1 point for each.

The answers

1) 140.6 miles or 226.2 km (so 126-155 miles or 203-249 km gets you the point; it's a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a 26.2 mile run)
2) Coors
3) Legitimate Night Lizard
4) Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans
5) Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road
6) 165 F/75 C
7) Men in Black 2, Will Smith
8) Alexander Dane/Dr Lazarus
9) Colonel Brandon, Sense and Sensibility

The doctor's excuses

1) A person I know once did an Ironman triathlon and I basically spent the whole time being annoyed that there weren't special athletic events for other Marvel heroes. Also I don't care about how long distances in a race are. It's number 7 in my top 10 list of "things I don't care about". (Our answer was 115km, after the statistician remembered our previous wrong answer when we were asked about Ironman distances.)
2) All we could remember, as a group was, "it's one of those terrible American beers", and we were right! ... we just got the wrong beer (Miller), that's all.
3) Hahahahahaha, Ornate Crevice Dragon XD
4) Maaaaaaaaaan, there's a lot of North American sport, huh? This whole thing where teams can be relocated between cities is pretty messed up too. Like it's kind of fun I guess, but defo also pretty messed up. Kind of the whole US in microcosm really. We put Bengals (Cincinatti) because I like their hats.
5) I actually looked at the Oscar nominations but there's too much stuff like "best editing" and "fanciest camerawork" and stuff so I got super bored super quickly. We knew "The Revenant" was one right answer, but missed Fury Road. Instead we plumped for The Martian, as it was, like, the only other major film of the year we could remember the name of.
6) Holy poultry, Batman! Another question with a numerical answer based on a topic I know nothing about! This must be the work of The Riddler! Oh no, it looks like he's uszzing sleeeeeping gasssz zzzzzzzzzz. *Snore*
7) I wasn't super familiar with the quote in question, but one of our team thought it was "a fat white guy" who said it, so we went for Jonah Hill in The 40 Year-old Virgin. An almost impressively wrong answer.
8) Alan Rickman died, it's all very sad (mainly for him, I suspect). That said, we hadn't quite gotten around to rewatching Galaxy Quest, which is a pity! It's a good one. As such we were basically poop out of luck in terms of remembering such a deliberately generic and immemorable name. Sorry Al, RIP :(
9) We spaffed this one pretty hard, because one of our team had a feeling that it was Sense and Sensibility, but because nobody could remember a plausible character and we needed both points to stand a chance we went for Mr. Wickham (since he definitely was in Pride and Prejudice). I'm generally pretty pleased that we at least spotted that it was an Austen novel, TBH.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more point)? Would you have helped us win (4 or more points)? 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!


Our alternative questions
1) As with more standard triathlons, there is no 'overall' world record for the Ironman. However, records are kept for the annual Hawaiian Ironman, considered one of the most prestigious events. With that in mind, what is the current fastest recorded time for this Ironman? You get the point if your time lies between the men's record and the women's record. (Hint: the women's record is 48 minutes, 18 seconds slower.)
2) The Coors Brewing Company boasts a large portfolio of other beer brands. What beer, whose name is the portugese word for 'snake', did it buy a controlling interest in in 2011?
3) Lizard Point is, of course, the most southerly point on mainland Britain. But in which country can you find Cape Froward, the most southerly point of any 'mainland' territory? (For clarification: I'm looking for the country whose southernmost mainland point is more southerly than any other country's - so forget about islands and overseas territories and Antarctica.)

Question 4

4) Before they relocated and became the Tennessee Titans, the Houston Oilers shared their nickname with the NHL's Edmonton Oilers. Pictured are the logos of two more pairs of teams who each share an animal nickname. For 1 point each, I need the nickname of each team. As a bonus hint, the two NFL teams pictured played each other this past weekend!
5) Attempts were made to shoot Fury Road in 2001 and 2003, but were postponed. The first delay was caused by the September 11th attacks, while the second was caused by what, amid fears it would now be considered a 'politically sensitive' film?
6) Give the first name of either the Celsius or Fahrenheit after whom the tempreature scales are named. (If you know both then feel free to show off, but it's still only worth 1 point!)
7) What 3-syllable word completes this couplet from the Men in Black rap: "But yo we ain't on no government list, we straight don't exist, no names and no ________"?
8) Alan Rickman's final film role will be in an upcoming adapation of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. What animal, given the name Absolem in Tim Burton's films, does he voice?
9) Austen's first novel, Sense and Sensibility was written under what two-word pseudonym? (Hint: if you place an 'M' in front of the pseudonym, and ignore the space between the words, you get a 6-letter word for a disease or ailment.)

The answers

1) If your answer is between 8 hours, 3 minutes, 56 seconds (men's) and 8 hours, 52 minutes, 14 seconds (women's) you get the point
2) Cobra
3) Chile
4) Cardinals (Arizona in the NFL, St. Louis in MLB) and Panthers (Carolina in the NFL, Florida in the NHL)
5) The outbreak of the Iraq War
6) Anders (Celsius) and Daniel (Fahrenheit)
7) Fingerprints
8) The Caterpillar
9) A Lady (with an M you get 'Malady')

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

Tweet

The picture on Wikipedia for 'friend zone' is great

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 10: Well done, you beat us!
3+ out of 10: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The secret German
4) The metallurgist
5) The rich-person otherkin
6) The fire spitter
7) The whiskey guy

The ones that got away
1) 2 point question: which TV series popularized the term 'friend zone', and which character in that series was called the 'mayor of the friend zone'? (1 point for each.)
2) Which of these is not a real dating website: a) 420 Dating; b) Cheapskate Match; c) Gluten Free Singles; d) Meet an Inmate; e) Salad Match
3) Which former French international soccer player is now the coach of Real Madrid?

Question 7

4) During 2015, only two movies grossed more than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. For 1 point, name both. (To clarify: Star Wars has subsequently grossed more than the other 2 films, but we're just talking about revenue during 2015 itself.)
5) The top 'how to' search by Canadians using google in 2015 was 'How to vote'. What app completes "How to use _____" to give the second-most searched?
6) 2 point question: Which US state is the only one where execution by firing squad remains an option? (N.B. This question does not concern Oklahoma, where the firing squad is an option if lethal injection is found unconstitutional.)
7) 2 point question: Which major talking point or meme of 2015 is represented by this 'abstracted' image?

The answers

1) Friends, Ross (Geller)
2) Cheapskate Match
3) Zinedine Zidane
4) Jurassic World and Furious 7 (also known as Fast Seven, and Fast & Furious 7)
5) Snapchat
6) Utah
7) Pizza rat

The doctor's excuses

1) I think we were all moderately surprised to hear that 'friend zone' was originally a term from a TV show, so that was a pretty fun little revelation. It's also doubly fun that it was popularised by 'Friends (although the "that seems to neat/obvious" trap caught us out here). Basically, this question is nice and I like it... apart from the bit where we got it wrong. We had it correctly pegged as "a very 90s term" and went for a split bet of Seinfeld + Dawson Leary from Dawson's Creek. 90s-tastic!
2) I dunno, man... I've almost literally never dated anyone, and I know that the love world is a weird place these days. All of these seemed fairly ridiculous and *thus* plausible. We went with Salad Match, and I fully expect it to be a real thing by the time this post is published, TBH.
3) Despite The Statistician being all about dem footballz, this was a thing that had only happened that afternoon (or something) and thus was a totally acceptable miss... despite being super big news. We said Thierry Henry, and could not have been more wrong, in both a literal and a follicular sense.
4) We had Jurassic World, but (not being big cinema-goers) went with one of the only other movies we'd seen in 2015 - Avengers: The One Where Tony Accidentally Makes A Genocidal Robot.
5) So, as far as I understand it, Snapchat is where one can take photos, put text on them, send them to another person, and rest assured in the knowledge that the picture will self-delete after a predetermined time period *and* (perhaps most importantly) be told if the recipient took a screencap of your intimate missive. So, if that's true, I can see how that's not particularly straightforward. We put Tinder, because it's popular and people might well be too dumb to know which direction left and right are. Final fact: THE SPOOKY SPECTRE THAT'S THE MASCOT OF SNAPCHAT IS CALLED "GHOSTFACE CHILLAH"!!!!!!!!!!!!
6) We had not very much time for this answer, I think, but even if we had had time I feel we wouldn't have had a great chance of a correct answer. The only think that Utah makes me think of is Normandy landings, Mormons, and that one film festival... I don't particularly think of it as a firing squad sort of place. Well anyway, I'm updating my "things I associate Utah with" list, is what I'm saying... I guess.
7) I think this abstracted picture actually captures the essence of Pizza Rat (which we had heard of... although I prefer that crab with the cigarette), but it just hadn't been a big enough of a deal for any of us to think of it. We suggested that maybe it was a "drone" in some way. Clutching at straws 4 dayz.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more point)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions

Question 1

1) Unsurprisingly, Friends has won many awards over the years. Pictured are two examples of awards the show has won - for 1 point each, can you identify them? (I just want the generic name of each award, rather than the specific category.) 
2) Which religious group is served by the dating website LDSsingles.com?
3) Zidane is nicknamed 'Zizou', which sounds a bit like 'Zazu', the bird (pictured) voiced by Rowan Atkinson in Disney's The Lion King. What type of bird is Zazu?
4) At time of writing, the 3rd most-watched YouTube video is the song See You Again recorded for the soundtrack of Furious 7, by Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth. For 1 point each, name the two artists behind the videos that occupy second and first place.

Question 3

5) What video/voice chat application was embroiled in legal issues last year, when an EU court ruled its name was too similar to that of a broadcasting company?
6) Of the 6 US cities to have hosted an Olympic Games (summer or winter), only 2 are currently state capitals. Salt Lake City (capital of Utah) is one, what's the other?
7) Also the term for a historical Italian chief of state, what four-letter term is used to describe this meme (pictured)? For a second point, what breed of dog is featured?

Question 7

The answers

1) Golden Globe, Emmy
2) Mormons/Latter Day Saints
3) Hornbill
4) Psy (for Gangnam Style) and Taylor Swift (for Blank Space)
5) Skype
6) Atlanta (Georgia)
7) Doge, Shiba Inu

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

Tweet

Despite looking like one, the BB in BB-8 maybe doesn't stand for basketball

Your targets this week:

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

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) What disease has killed more people in human history than any other?
2) Name the 3 main leaders of the Axis Powers for the majority of World War 2. You need all 3 for the point.
3) Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is thought to be a portrait of who?
4) Last month, Star Wars: The Force Awakens broke the record for opening weekend sales. Which movie did it overtake?
5) Meaning 'attendant' or 'sexton', what is the name of the extra light in a Menorah typically set higher than the other eight?
6) In order, name the top 4 all-time points scorers in the National Hockey League. You need all 4, in the correct order, for the points.

The answers

1) Smallpox (although I haven't found a source for this)
2) Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito
3) Lisa Gherardini (although 'la Giocondo' was also accepted)
4) Jurassic World
5) Shamash
6) (From 1st to 4th) Gretzky, Messier, Howe, Jágr

My excuses

1) Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia doesn't have a list of diseases ordered by "number of deaths in the entirety of human history", and some cursory extra-credit googling would seem to indicate that this whole question is... complicated, to put it charitably. Malaria is a pretty savage disease if left untreated and unlike smallpox, has not been eradicated yet. If you're asked about modern diseases, ischaemic heart disease (one of my suggestions for this question) is currently Top Gun in terms of people killed recently.
2) Evidence once again that we don't leave out the embarrassing ones. There is no excuse. You don't get through GCSE history (or, indeed, life) in the UK without knowing this stuff. It's basic. Our only defence is festive spirit (by which I mean, beer). Take our embarrassment as a cautionary tale in double-checking!
3) We actually knew that this painting was sometimes referred to as "La Giaconda" (it's the Italian name for it) but didn't think this likely to be good enough, as the QM kept banging on about how they wanted "the specific name" of the portraitee (or something like that). Anyway, we just sort of pulled Andrea of Perugia out of nowhere on a vague feeling.
4) We had seem Jurassic World quite recently (though a long time after it was in cinemas) and agreed that it was "a bit pants". As such, we didn't even really consider it. We put Avatar, since we knew that made a boatload of cash (that is not meant to be a Titanic reference... iceberg).
5) We'd both looked at the Wikipedia page of the humble menorah in preparation for festive questions of this nature. Unfortunately apparently looking was all we did, as clearly neither of us read any of it.
6) This seems oddly familiar... [VIDEO] (At least we remembered Wayne Gretzky this time.) Bonus fact: this question was actually worth 8 points on the night, but since we won anyway the statistician couldn't be bothered to add an extra 8 options to the poll.

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


My alternative questions

Question 2 (click for a bigger version!)

1) Essential quizzing knowledge to start. The word 'malaria' derives from the Medieval Italian for what two-word phrase, describing quite literally what was originally thought to cause the disease?
2) Very few countries remained neutral throughout World War II, with those that did highlighted in grey on this map. Most of these were either European nations or their colonies, along with the (unrecognized) state of Tibet and the former Kingdom of Yemen. Which Asian nation (highlighted) also maintained neutrality?

Question 4

3) What da Vinci drawing is based on the work of an ancient Roman architect?
4) This (very) minor character in the latest Star Wars installment went a little bit viral. It was later discovered (from one of the books, no less) their official designation was FN-2199, but the Internet initially gave them the name TR-8R because they utter what word?
5) What is the interior angle of a regular hexagon? If you can't remember the formula from school, you could try sketching a Star of David and make use of each 'point' being an equilateral triangle.

Question 6

6) Which Premier League football club were left red-faced earlier this season, after presenting Wayne 'The Great One' Gretzky with this mis-spelled shirt? (If you think you have no idea, a closer look at the picture may reveal a clue or two.)

The answers

1) Bad air (if you have something similar I'll trust you to judge whether it's 'close enough')
2) Afghanistan
3) Vitruvian Man
4) Traitor
5) 120 degrees
6) Tottenham Hotspur

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

Tweet

2016 has been designated as the International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 12: Well done, you beat us!
3+ 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) What is the first name of (Canadian Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau's wife?
2) Who directed Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back? (Hint: it's not George Lucas)
3) By area, what is the second-largest lake in the world?
4) What song's second verse begins "It's always tease tease tease. You're happy when I'm on my knees."? (You just need the song, not the band.)
5) Harrison Ford's second-biggest grossing film is now Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What movie did it relegate to second?
6) Introduced in September, who is the current principal of South Park Elementary School?
7) What country did the Romans refer to as Hibernia?
8) As of December 30, 2015, which singer is the most-followed person on Twitter? They overtook Justin Bieber for the honour.
9) 2 point question: Which (American) football team plays at Lambeau Field?
10) 2 point question: The international airport serving Budapest, Hungary, is named after which composer?

The answers

1) Sophie
2) Irvin Kershner
3) Lake Superior
4) Should I Stay or Should I Go (by The Clash)
5) Star Wars: A New Hope ('Star Wars', or 'Star Wars Episode IV' are also fine)
6) PC Principal ('Principal' alone does not suffice)
7) Ireland (technically the island of Ireland, but Ireland was the expected answer)
8) Katy Perry
9) Green Bay Packers
10) Liszt

My excuses

1) The perils of Canadian quizzing. We briefly considered bargaining with the quizmaster for half points for knowing David Cameron's wife's name, but decided better of it. Instead, we tried to think of the most French lady name we could, coming up with the slightly close 'Marie'.
2) Despite having marathonned the entire series in preparation for seeing the newest installment, not to mention the doctor's predictably encyclopaedic knowledge of such things, he wasn't able to bring this name to mind. Sadtimes.
3) Canadian quizzes so seldom ask geography questions we've become quite bad at it. Here we tied ourselves in knots thinking the biggest lake was Lake Baikal, when (obviously) it's the deepest. On the plus side, we did correctly deduce that the largest lake that wasn't Lake Baikal was the Caspian Sea, but by that point that wasn't much help.
4) With no idea we decided to put Whip/Nae Nae by Silentó, a song neither of us has actually heard but is rapidly becoming our go-to for any music question here.
5) The second Star Wars question dropped of the night risked the doctor being sent over the edge. Luckily he decided this technically doesn't count as a Star Wars question so that's ok. We put Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which is a tantalizingly close third.
6) Having no idea I speculated (fairly optimistically) that he might 'hilariously' be called something like Mr. Principal, so wrote down 'Principal'. I was (almost) outraged not to be given it.
7) Haha, oh dear again. Being tricked by the existence of Hibernian FC we went with Scotland. This in spite of the fact that we were both fairly sure we'd got a question about Caledonia being Scotland wrong on another quiz some years ago.
8) Incredibly, I'd written a question about this very topic about 2 weeks previously as part of a Christmas quiz I'd planned to administer to the doctor and some friends. Predictably I never actually got around to running the quiz, and couldn't remember the answer myself. We went with the old Twitter staple of Lady Gaga who now ranks at number 7.
9) The quizmaster described this as "a really easy one", which is always a good sign with North American sports questions. With things like this we usually just put whatever team comes to mind first, which in this case was the Baltimore Ravens (who play at the highly memorable M&T Bank Stadium).
10) A final embarrassment to round things off. We both immediately said Liszt and then second-guessed ourselves with Brahms because of his ludicrously famous Hungarian Dances. (We also have a strategy on 'high brow' questions here to always go for the most famous option.) Had we remembered his first name was Johannes we might have saved ourselves, but it was not to be.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more point)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below!



(No alternative questions this week as we've been too busy being festive, sorry!)

Tweet