Monday 30 January 2017

Weekly Round-Up, W/E 27/01/2017

Two posts in one night! I'm determined to keep this blog up to date, however, even if no one is reading it. If you are, please let me know!

Yeah, it was a truncated week, as with last week, which is unfortunate but unavoidable. I'm not stupid enough to jeopardise my health or that of others by quizzing when I've got 'flu. I still had a good week, as this post will show.

Wednesday's Quiz

I returned to quizzing after a week off, but it was my first solo quiz of the year because my friend was ill herself. Luckily she wasn't hit as bad as I was, but she took the week off as a precaution. How would I handle things alone? Not as well as I hoped, in truth. General knowledge at this quiz is something I'm decent on, and I was annoyed to only get 11 from 20 here. There were a few I just didn't know, but one or two I definitely should have had. Definitely an ego-exposing and limitations-revealing round, that one.

Music from the 2000s is the sort of round this quiz does very often, and I suppose I'd likely heard a few of the questions before, not that I can specifically recall it. Still, I stunned myself with 7, and could even have done better, but for an album's name escaping me even though I could picture it. I'll not make the mistake again, however.

Sport from 2016 (ugh, another 2016 round) yielded 4, which is par for the course for me and sport really, but I only managed the same on Film and TV, which should have been better than that for me. Still, those rounds are often broad enough that one is trusting to luck, and there were some fairly obscure questions thrown in.

Ultimately, I equalled my score from last week, and I'm not sure my friend would have known many more that I didn't. One or two of the music ones, perhaps, which might have taken us to 30. Oh well, I had worse solo scores last year, so I'll take it for a first go. My being alone was announced to the rest of the attendees, and props to the QM for contextualising my score. Also, I beat a team of 8 sitting beside me, which I was happy with.

Result: 26/50 (52%), 9th/11

Thursday's Quiz

I was glad to return to my hunting grounds in Kippford last week, having started 2017 with two storming wins before my absence prevented three in a row. Again, my usual team were absent however, some also being ill. One of the QM's also had it, as did the wife of the QM who was present. This required a stand-in second QM, who jokingly advised me that I shouldn't answer some of her questions, as I may have heard them at another quiz she previously hosted.

This was back in November, actually, just before I started this blog, so it wasn't covered then. It was a combined Ship Inn/Granary team that came third in that quiz, which was tough. This time, I joined the team I'd been with for the first quiz of the year, who were again a man short. A stern test of my memory awaited.

As it happened, several of the questions were indeed taken from the earlier quiz, including one which caused debate last time - the working dog named for a Canadian island. Now the province is named Newfoundland and Labrador, and these are both dogs, so what was asked for? I was fairly sure that the answer was the former alone, which is what we ultimately went with last time, but couldn't be sure and the debate ensued again. We actually put the latter in brackets, which was a questionable compromise (in that it could be seen as giving ourselves two bites of the cherry) but did cover ourselves because of the province name. I've actually looked it up now and it turns out Newfoundland is the only island, as Labrador is on the mainland. That makes things much less ambiguous with hindsight. There were no other controversies with the round, as we took a full 8.

I spoke a bit last week about the issues with geography rounds, and it proved troublesome here tonight, giving us only 4. It was a tough round, in fairness, and we could have done little else. Food & drink was taken almost wholly from the earlier quiz, and saw another debate in the form of the question of what fruit is used in a fish sauce "Veronique". Lemon was too obvious, as we'd know it was called that if it was, and we found ourselves debating between grape and olive. Lemon too, as one person insisted it might have been that. We also weren't sure if olives are even fruits (they are), and I pushed for grape after spending most of the round wracking my memory for confirmation. It was right, and that was important, as this was our joker round. A full 16 left us in a very good position at the halfway point.

Round 4 was anagrams, a handout in place of the usual 5th round pictures. They were UK prime ministers, and we had them all fairly easily between us. No drama there. Round 5 was another from the previous quiz, childrens books. It was a tough round, and I did well to recall Wilbur as the name of the pig from Charlotte's Web, and Wormwood as Matilda's surname. We missed one, but that was forgiveable.

Rounding out the quiz was science and technology, another risky proposition, but with a few chestnuts there, such as the only vowel on a computer keyboard that isn't on the top row. Remember, QWERTYUIOP is the top row, so it's A. One more missed answer was no concern, as we had done enough to get to 50, a record for me.

My 3rd successive victory at the quiz, leaving me unbeaten there in 2017 where I've actually attended. It was a high scoring quiz so we needed almost every point, but it was well-earned. I'm delighted with how it went.

Result: 50/56 (89.29%), 1st/5

Friday's Quiz

It was good to be back at the Grapes on Friday, a quiz I've always loved. One of our team couldn't make it, so we drafted a pub regular who doesn't normally play. We needed him, too, as a very strong team who hadn't been in a while were back.

We started with 7 on general knowledge, but could have had all 10 had I been on top form. I should have remembered that Marie Antoinette was Austrian (knew she wasn't French, and in fairness the QM was sure until that morning she was Swiss, and was glad we put the same!), that MLK was assassinated in Memphis (which I mixed up with his speech locations) and that Chaucer was the first poet buried in Poet's Corner. None of us were sure, though me and one other did suggest Chaucer. Should have gone for it!

The first specialist round was a "Which came first" history which also brought us 7, thanks largely to me I don't mind admitting as I knew the context for a lot of them. That kept us level with those tough returners, whose scores we were marking.

A full 10 followed in the next general knowledge thanks to my remembering at the last minute that the late Gene Cernan's claim to fame was as the last man to walk on the moon. I also got some tough others, such as Andy Murray's wife's maiden name (Sears), though as a tennis fan that's bread and butter for me. Fictional bars was a disaster for us though, as it has been when its come up in the Granary. A dire 3.

The next general knowledge gave us 8, as we weren't sure when France last used the guillotine (70s - I was closer with the 50s than the others at least) and a trick question about Ross Kemp wanted Emmerdale, not his more famous outing in Eastenders. An initials round that followed from the previous quiz's such round was good for another 7, and by this point we knew we were ahead of the team we were marking.

The penultimate GK round was disappointing, with 6, though I'm glad I remembered that cordate means "heartshaped". The final specialist round was a connections round, and I had the connection after two questions. The first had the answer Nelson Mandela, meaning there were only 3 options - Simpsons characters, Only Fools & Horses or British naval somethings or others. It was the second, as confirmed by Albert Einstein on the next question. We missed a couple, but 8 was perfectly fine there.

Going into the last round, apparently two teams could win. We knew weren't last so we had a chance, and a storming 9 meant we had comprehensively beaten all the others. A win by 8 points! Anything above 60 at that quiz is highly respectable, so to get 65 meant we'd done ourselves proud. Despite the margin of victory, it still felt very hard-fought, and the other teams certainly deserve more credit than the scoreline suggests. It's my first win there for a while it has to be said, and we did very well indeed for it! Brilliant quiz, brilliant result!

Result: 65/90 (72.22%), 1st/4.

Overall

I can't say how the first couple of quizzes would have gone, had I been there, though I understand that the Ship Inn one was punishing even by its own standards. Of the ones I was able to go to, I did pretty well. I'm not too happy with how Wednesday went, as I aim higher than that, but the other two results were ideal. If I could repeat those sort of performances every time I went to a quiz, I'd be very happy indeed!

Certainly this bodes well going into the new month this week, and I'll be impressed if I can build on this week's achievements in Dalbeattie and Dumfries to round off January. I've clearly got it in me to do so, this has proven it!

Total Result: 141/196 (71.94%)

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