In my last post, I said what I needed to say. It's done, I'm moving on! A new half year awaits, and many more quizzes! In the case of this week it was less than usual, due to missing the Monday quiz for reasons I can't explain in this space. Still, I was able to attend the Laurie Arms quiz on Friday, so I had 4 to go to. I want to make the tone of this review more positive than the last one, but would the results reflect that desire?
I honestly can't remember off the top of my head if they do or not because I haven't checked my scores. I should do that before I start writing...
Quiz #127 - Sunday 2nd July, Turf Tavern, Carlisle
I am very glad that I was able to find my answer sheet for this quiz, as to my horror I realised just how, 2 weeks after this quiz, that I hadn't actually written anything but the subjects for this quiz. Well, the final scores too, but I would have no idea of the breakdown. Luckily I have it, so I've got all I need. My team was M & J again, and we called ourselves the Perrenial Runners Up as JDSS were there. Well, sort of, a couple of them weren't there and they had new people in their place. This raised the obvious question of how the team would do with this lineup. We were assuming they'd still destroy us, but we'd give it all we had regardless.
Last week we started with 7 and 7, this time it was 6 on pictures and 8 on current events. Not the best of starts but thoroughly decent all the same. The first list was very easy, the teams who have ever been in the Premier League that begin with W. There have been 6 and we needed 5. We struggled on the most local of them, Wigan Athletic, for quite sometime but had the other 5, and ultimately went with Wigan anyway simply to cover ourselves. The other list was US geography, and wanted the US states adjacent to South Dakota. Cue deep discussion between myself and J, in which we mixed up the location of South Dakota to lose 2 points. We had the other 3, however.
Alpha Links was easy enough this week, thanks to the 3 of us combining our knowledge well, again, and we got 9 as we only missed a US TV question. The connections round was tougher this week, being clearly music based - members of a band. We were lucky to be given the point for Sonny without adding his surname, Bono when it was U2 who was the connection, but given it was the other half of Cher being asked for, it was a correct answer to the question itself. We also got Adam and Larry, but guessed Maroon Five (based on Adam Levine) instead of U2. A shame, but 3 points all the same.
The Wipeout round remained, and we were trying to tread that fine line between going for enough questions and not getting them wrong. We were too conservative last time, to be sure. We started awkwardly, only certainly knowing one of the first 4, and debating for a while over the motorway that 3 given junctions belonged to. In a normal GK round we'd have definitely gone the way that turned out to be right, but we hesitated this time and didn't. Fortunately we were sure of the final 6, which gave us 7 for the round and 41 in total.
In the end, JDSS hadn't done as well as usual, finishing with 36. A new team of 5 got 40 - which gave them 2nd, so we had won by 1 point! That's my 3rd victory in total at this quiz, and my first with J. Absolutely brilliant result, a superb start to the 2nd half of the year!
Result: 41/55 (74.55%)
Quiz #128 - Tuesday 4th July, Ship Inn, Dumfries
As I said, I missed G's Kings Arms quiz, so I was back to the Ship for my next one, going for what I believe is a first ever 3 wins in a row streak. We were packing almost a full house, with A, S, D and B all with us. The male A was absent this week, as was R as per usual. The Mastermind semi-finalist M was with the NCP again, for the last time this visit. Looked like some good teams present, with the pharmacists returning and a lawyer coming back after what appears to have been an extended absence. Was good to see her again as she was one of the teams who played at or near the start of this quiz. She wasn't with her usual team, but would be the following week. Cree West's team weren't here, and it seems we may have seen the last of them as I think most of them have new jobs now. Shame, that, they'll be missed, especially my former counsellor.
We started significantly better than we have done lately, with 8 on GK. That was a common theme of the round, with the lowest score being 2.5, and highest 9, which is rare. Food & Drink followed but the difficulty of this quiz means that the NCP having a chef in their ranks doesn't necessarily help; we got 6, remaining on 2nd 1 point behind the NCP. That was also the case after the 3rd round, Film & TV, which saw us get only 4. S & A don't have a TV, which helps none.
The pictures were back to beng Dingbats, and were another tough set that saw distance emerge between the NCP and the others. We were tied 2nd again on 31 after our 13, 4 behind the leaders. The specialist round was 1988, which had caused confusion because it was supposed to be 1888, and some people had studied for that. It really didn't help us at all, one of our team being among those who studied for the earlier date, and we only got a dismal 1.5, worse even than our football score last week. This only dropped us to 3rd, however, so not too much damage was done.
Music...we got 16, again, a fairly common score for us these days in this round. Much of it was fairly obscure, and we honestly didn't have a chance. Even with 4 others (I hardly count) we couldn't do it. We finished tied 3rd, which is reasonable enough really in the circumstances. I'll take it! 3 wins in a row inevitably means getting either the Ship or the Granary, and realistically that's pushing the limits of viability. Some day, perhaps!
Result: 48.5/88 (55.11%)
Quiz #129 - Wednesday 5th July, Granary, Dumfries
Nothing specifically standout about Wednesday's quiz this week, really. Me and L against 5 rounds of 10 questions. I'm always disappointed when I fall down on film rounds, and our 4 was definitely frustrating as an opener, but we recovered with 7 on GK, so that's okay. A sport round spelled doom from the off, but somehow it was our best of the night, as we got 9! A rare feat indeed but I'll not complain and I'll not ask questions.
The next round was a call back to the dear, departed Grapes quiz - add a letter. L unfortunately isn't any good with such rounds by her own admission, and with the time constraints, I was struggling myself. Granted, not many of these were easy anyway even with the answers, so our 6 was fair. We matched that on current events for 32 in total, a much more respectable score than last week, though no better in terms of placing. We were 6th again, but no matter. It was a fairly close quiz, and I'm fine with how we did.
Result: 32/50(64%), 6th/11
Quiz #130 - Friday 7th July, Laurie Arms, Haugh of Urr
I've been to the Laurie Arms twice before now, in January and February. Conflicts with the Grapes have prevented my return since. I joined different pairs on those occasions, and I found that this time they have since joined each other to form one team, and I was more than welcome within it to make 5, that being the size limit! I was very happy with that, very happy indeed.
The format is simple enough, 5 rounds of 10 questions including one joker. We decided to go with Entertainment, figuring we had enough demographic variety between us to get a good score. That was the 4th round, and before that we had GK. That was a solid round, and we got a full house of 10!
A nice start, and we repeated that on The Natural World, which was a combination of science, nature and geography. All three are subjects that suit me, and clearly they suited the team as well. Our first dropped point of the night was on Sport, predictably enough. Credit for our other 9 points goes largely to one of the team, especially as he got both questions on a specific recent rugby match.
It was time for our joker round, and we again got 9, though of course in this round it counted double, which was unfortunate. Still, even though it wasn't a maximum score, it was still okay as joker choices go. The final round was tennis, awesome! Much of the bar was paying attention to Andy Murray's tennis match which was being played on a TV there, and the fact that we'd started the night by talking about tennis was a good sign that the others were fans. Specifically, it was true or false questions about Wimbledon. I was looking for a pattern from the start, and was fairly sure I'd found an alternating true/false one. The team agreed, though it did look like there was one exception, probably deliberately to throw off people looking for a pattern. To be fair, we did know many of the answers anyway, the pattern just filled in the gap. There was actually a second switch, with 5 and 10 being essentially swapped, but we only lost 1 point so no biggie.
It was a high scoring quiz, the lowest score being 29/60, and we knew we had done better than that. We ended up with 56, with only 4 dropped points and 3 missed questions. That is a strong early contender for the best score of the year, but it only tied us for 1st with the usual winners, so that meant a tiebreaker! Fortunately this was a team effort, a "closest to the number gets it" type question.
Specifically, it was the length of the Titanic, a question I've heard before. I couldn't recall the answer, but I did know that it's always shorter than one might think. There's two reasons for this: 1. Ships were smaller in those days. 2. Many of the passengers would have been crammed in like sardines, thus they wouldn't need much space. As it happened, we still got the answer wrong by nearly doubling the length, but the other team went bigger than that, so we won!
Absolutely delighted with that, a storming win with a great team. Topping that this year will be very difficult. Fantastic end to the week! I've even decided to curtail my holiday by a day so I can come back next month and try defending the title, that's how much I loved this.
Result: 56/60 (93.33%), 1st/13 (after tiebreak)
Week in Summation
As with last week, it seems that the first and last quizzes of the week were the standouts, in this case in more extreme circumstances. The margin of victory was greater last week, but the overall score was far bigger this time, and our win on Sunday was superb. Tuesday's result was still respectable, ultimately, and even Wednesday wasn't all that bad.
I'm very happy with how I performed, and I'm looking to repeat those efforts in the very near future.
Total Result: 177.5/253 (70.16%)
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