Tuesday 22 November 2016

Welcome to the World of Erudite Esotericism!

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

I'm Adam Lewis, also known as Addy, or by my online aliases, Erudite Esotericist and Quizzing Ronin. I'm 30, Scottish, work in finance for my local authority (standard 9-5), and I'm an avid pub quizzer. Some may call me obsessive, but personally I prefer the word "dedicated". I'm actually a mercenary quizzer in that I generally go to pubs on my own, travelling far and wide to get to them, and offer out my services to any quiz team looking for a little extra support. Where I can't find such, I do the quiz myself!

I've done quizzes since childhood, and pub quizzes since I turned 18, but it's only really since August 2014 that it's become my primary hobby. Until a year and a half prior, I'd been in Glasgow nearly a decade, where I did them quite often. Life circumstances caused me to move back to the town where I grew up, and my friends had all moved on from the place. After 18 months of struggling to socialise, I decided I had nothing to lose by doing something I enjoyed alone; I did okay even by myself, started to meet people and make friends, and so what started as a way to get out of the house once a week has become the fundamental basis of my lifestyle!

This blog is a place for me to discuss my adventures in this capacity, including the quizzes I do, how I get on, the things I'm doing to enhance my performance, and anything else to do with this great hobby that I can think of. Possibly also other things too (I'm certainly open to suggestions) but mostly this. This post specifically is an introduction, I suppose, and I'll try and post regularly once a week at least.

First things first: I'm naturally fairly intelligent, but my long term memory is what gives me an edge, and I need to back that up with studying. To this end, I've been creating audio study guides which I can listen to on the go. And putting them on Youtube in order to share this with others! This here is the introduction video on my channel, which fundamentally consists of simple, basic lists of useful facts and information. I'd love it if you could watch, like, comment, subscribe and share! I'd especially love requests for lists that I could create in future; I have plenty of works in progress naturally, but I'd prefer to prioritise the ideas of others if they might be of benefit.



To give you an idea of what I do, here is my two week schedule. I live in Dumfries, in SW Scotland, and on Mondays I travel about 15 miles (25 minutes by car) to Dalbeattie for the quiz there. Two quizmasters alternate week by week there, with very different speeds and styles; tonight I left the house at 7.50 and was home by 10. Next week will be a longer, slower quiz, though no less enjoyable. I'm a pure mercenary there, and have no permanent team. Due to illness, I've been a long term aide to a team over the last few months, but I'll be back to solo efforts within the next week or two.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are local quizzes, both in Dumfries town centre, and thus I can walk. "Takeaway Tuesday" has become the fashion at the former, so I'll precede the quiz by going to the Chinese takeaway next door. This pub only reopened a year and a half ago, and the quiz started with it. When it was still sparsely attended, I did it alone by necessity, as I was too strong to join the other teams. Nowadays it's busier and harder, so about 6 months ago I finally joined a team I'd been very friendly with since the start. We tend to do well there, and there has been the suggestion that I might guest-host it if the regular quizmaster could do with some assistance one week.

The Wednesday one I've never won in 2.5 years of attempts, though this is partially because there's no limit on team size and I usually only do it with one other person. Unlike any of my other quizzes, there is no fixed format in terms of subjects (though 50 questions is seldom exceeded, and 5 rounds of 10 is the standard layout), which makes it varied and interesting.

My Thursday quiz only runs during the winter, November to April, and is in a gorgeous village called Kippford, about 3 miles beyond Dalbeattie (I drive through the latter town to get there). I started it last year, alone, but half way through the season fell in with a large team that usually splits in two (randomly, so actual team setups change every week) to stay within the size limits. I've become their "secret weapon", though the team was quite strong anyway. It remains to be seen how we'll get on in my first full season with them, though from the first four quizzes, I've come 2nd once and won twice, and the part of the team I wasn't in was 2nd last week. During the summer months I'll sometimes travel as far as Kirkcudbright (35 miles each way) for a quiz there, but that's a long, expensive journey to do every week on top of all my others.

My Friday quiz is fortnightly in the village of Springholm about 15 miles away. Fortnightly because on the other Friday, they do a bingo night. The quiz is 90 questions, with the odd numbered rounds being general knowledge and the others on a theme. The quizmaster insists on coming up with all rounds himself, taking no pre-written rounds from online or quizbooks, which gives the quiz a real authenticity. It was the first quiz I went to alone, but found a team on the first night and stayed with them for ages. It's broken up more recently, so I float around, but there tends to be a couple of people I usually join. I'm recognised as one of the better quizzers there, but my lack of a solid team has long held me back there, and I no longer win as often as I did in the early days.

This Friday is the bingo week in Springholm, so I'm doing four quizzes, and going back up to five next week. As you can see by that, I have a busy routine!

In general, my week nights revolve around quizzing. Leaving the house around 8.15 to go to work, I'm home around 5.30. I leave the house for the quiz at this time each respective night of the week: 7.45, 6.15, 7.00, 7.30, 8.15, and am usually back between 10 and 11 from all except the Friday quiz, in which pub I usually stay until well after midnight talking to the landlord.

This might sound excessive, but the alternative is spending my evenings doing little or nothing; it's impractical and expensive to visit my friends in Glasgow too often, especially during the week, and it feels wasteful to sit around watching TV or lazing online every evening. Admittedly, doing so many quizzes can cause occasional conflicts with other activities, and it pretty much leaves me my weekends for recovery and also for the likes of housework.

Still, it feels like I'm using my time productively by doing this, and I like to think I'm getting better at what I do. I've been keeping statistics for my performances through 2016, and once I've done some calculations on them I should be able to quantify what, if any, improvement I've actually shown.

This will do me nicely for now by way of introduction. If anyone is still reading this - thank you! Means more than you know, especially as I do tend to ramble. I'll post again towards the end of the week, perhaps with an update of how I've done this week. Tonight went well, but I'll have more to say then. Bye for now!

Post Script: I plan to end each post with my best and worst answers given, and the most interesting facts of my recent quizzes. In this case, I'm giving these for last week rather than tonight.

Best answer given: Knowing that Androcles was the slave who helped a lion according to the ancient fable; I was quite pleased with that. I also knew "Mea culpa" as the Latin phrase meaning "Through my fault". Finally, being able to remember "Campbell" as the Donald who broke the land speed record. All three actually came from last Friday's quiz.

Worst answer given: Or "nearly given" as the case may be. From the same quiz, I nearly gave Kentucky as the state that named a fried chicken dish and a biscuit (Maryland is the correct answer). On Wednesday, at a charity quiz I did in lieu of my normal one, I also nearly gave Rupert the Bear rather than Paddington Bear as the fictional character living at 32 Windsor Gardens. Not knowing that isn't so bad in itself, but as I pointed out at the time, I missed out on about £100 because I didn't know it the first time I was asked, and it's come up at least twice since. Mercifully, teammates were on hand to correct my hasty mistakes before we submitted. In both cases, I knew full well what the answer was after actually thinking.

In terms of pure mistakes, on Thursday I didn't go with "Humane Immunodeficiency Virus" as what HIV stands for; I clearly knew it, had it in my head, but got hung up on why that wouldn't be abbreviated as HIDV, despite no one else having a clue. Instincts: trust them!

Most interesting new fact learned: This wasn't from a quiz, but "melanic" being the opposite to albino was fascinating. It makes sense that there would be an opposite, but I'd never thought of the idea. Tonight's quiz taught me that the highest mountain in South America is in Argentina (I thought I'd know that but didn't), and Friday's that the first team out in the Olympic opening ceremony is always Greece (again, that shouldn't have been new. I did know the hosts are always last at least).



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