After the drama of last week, it was nice have something of a more normal week this week. My status as a regular host of the Dalbeattie quiz was confirmed, with the previous 2 being upped now to 5. There were 4 quizzes this week, which made it seem pretty truncated, but that should be the way it is every second week until October now, except for the holidays I have planned.
Speaking of which, next week I'll be in Nottingham, attempting to relax and sampling the local quizzes. I did this last year, so I'll be going to a few of the same ones, and actually reviewing them this time since I wasn't blogging at the time. I'm not sure what kind of a balance I'll find between working on my quiz stuff and enjoying doing non-quiz things, but enjoyment full stop is the primary goal. I'll certainly be keeping the scores and planning for the reviews one way or the other, and I'll try and get it posted in decent time, next weekend. For now, here's me finally getting up to date with these roundups!
Quiz #100 - Sunday 21st May, Turf Tavern, Carlisle - MILESTONE MOMENT!
Yep, 142 days into the year it was my 100th quiz, meaning my weekly average is just shy of 5. That will drop a bit over the summer, but it still puts me on course to easily exceed my full year total from last year, 208 quizzes. The notion had been suggested of the host joining me, with his other half taking over doing the quiz, but that didn't happen and it was business as usual. The dominant team I've spoken of recently were there in full, using what I think is their regular name, the Sultans of Shrimp. I'll probably refer to them as such, or SOS, if they keep using it. For my part, M was back, and I also joined J and A again, though A left at the half way point.
As with last week, it was hard going from the start, and our 4 on the pictures and 6 on current events were pretty typical scores really. Unremarkable. The lists started badly, with the first being the places that the top names on the Forbes Rich List came from, except for the USA. We could have had Mexico had we not gone the wrong way with Brazil in a 50/50, but totally missed all the others. I was sure India and Russia and China were there, the UAE being our other one, and the team agreed, but nope, France, Spain etc were right. The second list was number 1 songs that also won Eurovision, and we got 3 of those to restore some pride...
Alpha Links is usually reliable, but we missed the first 3 and only finished with 5. Still, that's usually our connections score so we were good with that, right? Uh, no. Only 1 point earned in a tricky set on cartoon families. We just didn't know them, except for the first. This left us in the awkward position of needing lots of points on Wipeout, but being unable to risk much, either. Again it proved the easiest round in the quiz, and we got 7. I knew Edinburgh Zoo as the location of Britain's giant pandas because of the old Scottish joke that there are more of them in the country (2) than Conservative MPs. A joke but true actually! I knew King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, so that gave us the king who reigned until 1216, M got one about 80s music, and I knew that Marco Polo was in Venice because of my own quizzes.
Our score wasn't the greatest in the end, but the SOS also struggled, wiping out not helping them. They had 29, we had 26, but a surprise team won. Fair play to them! For us, better luck next time, in a fortnight. The quiz won't be on anyway, but I'll be doing a Redtooth on Wednesday. Meanwhile, here's to the next 100 quizzes!
Result: 26/55 (47.27%), joint 3rd/6
Quiz #101 - Monday 21st May, Kings Arms, Dalbeattie (K)
Seems a while since I've done one of K's quizzes! We were upstairs in the smaller room due to refurbishments, and it seemed to be a quiet night. I knew Big Tams were away, but a couple of others seemed missing as well. It seemed I had the choice of joining host G's team, as other host S and her partner were absent, or No Kan Do, because one of them seemed not to be there. I was struggling for the courage to ask either, but asked the latter. Only for their other member to later turn up and be forced to join G. Oops, my bad! No harm done though.
The first round was 4 sets of 5 questions. 1 and 3 were "3 definitions, 1 word", which is similar to the "2 clues, 1 answer" round I've done before. We got all 10 of those, thanks to my recognising "fell" as a definition of "cruel or ruthless" among other things. The other 2 rounds were Pot Luck, and we got 7 of those, for 17 in total.
The next round was also split in two. The first was abbreviations and they were reasonable. We got almost all of them, but two were a half point for 9 in total. The others were linked by schools, and I appreciated the Simpsons question given my proven expertise! The next round saw all the answers rhyme; they all had an "ill" sound at the end, so "Jack and Jill", "Clavicle", tec. They gave us 8.
Next was a picture round, and I wasn't much help but the team knew their stuff and ensured we got all 12. Before a final played music round, on which we got 11, came two "descending answers" wipeout rounds in the style of G's quizzes. The first was a film, and we waited until a 4th clue before it became obvious - others didn't and wiped out. The second was a cartoon and we had no idea until the third clue, before deciding which of our various suggestions was right (Yogi Bear; I can't remember the film).
4 and 6 respectively thus ensured we finished an excellent 2nd - half a point ahead of G's team. I felt a bit guilty but no matter. It was a great score to end a really good quiz!
Result: 76/97 (78.35%), 2nd/7 teams
Quiz #102 - Tuesday 23rd May, Ship Inn, Dumfries
Business as usual at the Ship Inn, except for the fact that the owner of the White Hart hotel, a former haunt of mine in my student days, joined S, A & me for this quiz. I'm a little short on time here so I'll try and move quicker with these last two reviews.
We started in excellent style, leading the pack with an unlikely 7 on GK. I have to take a fair bit of the credit for that, as the questions fell well for me. Food & Drink followed, and it was, as ever, a very tough round for this quiz. I was overruled a couple of times on correct answers, which meant we only got 4. Transport was even worse as we only gained 2, and our fall to 2nd after round 2 continued and we stood 4th after round 3.
More transport followed in place of the usual picture - cryptic transport, specifically models of cars. We got a creditable 16/20, but that didn't change our position. We did increase our standing by 1 place after the predictably disastrous wrestling round, on which we had 3. Says a lot about how the other teams did! If only J were with us, alas. The music provided a decent end to the quiz, but we couldn't improve our position with our 20. After a miscount, we ended up half a point behind 2nd, and 11.5 ahead of the winners - full credit to them.
Another strong performance from us in a tough quiz, but the wins continue to elude us. I'll miss it next week, but hopefully the team do well without me!
Result: 52/92 (56.92%), 3rd/9
Quiz #103 - Wednesday 24th May, Granary, Dumfries
J joined L and me for the Granary quiz, which ran quite quickly because the football was on. Fair enough, my review will likewise move quickly. Though not if it keeps taking me 5 attempts to spell the word "quickly" correctly... Anyway, we started with an unusual round on cartoons that was double length. We escaped with 11, which is what I'd reasonably expect I think.
The 1980s followed, another 20, and this was surprisingly easy in places, given our ages. Okay so we only got 12, but that's more than it looked like being at the start of the round. A standard GK round ended the quiz, and our 6 meant it was a perfectly average score in truth. But we'd still done enough for 4th, and would have tied 3rd had J not inadvertently given Sporting Quizbon an answer! He knows not to do that anymore, heh. We were only 1 point behind each of the 3 teams above us, and out of 14 teams, that's a great result from a tough quiz.
A solid end to the week!
Result: 29/50 (58%), 4th/14
Week in Summation
To be honest, this was a fairly unremarkable week, but that's not to say it wasn't enjoyable or good in its own way! If not for J's accident in helping the competition, we'd have been on the podium every day this week, and that's not bad going. It's genuinely no issue though, and we still did well we 3 against their numbers. No wins but to be honest that's the difference between good and superlative. The odd number here or there makes all the difference. Thems the breaks, and I've no complaints. Looking forward to my holiday, a whole new set of quizzes and a whole new set of challenges and, hopefully, team mates! See you next week!
Total Result: 183/295 (62.03%)
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