Until tonight's quiz, completing this roundup will make me fully up to date with them, and I fully intend both getting this week's roundup done this weekend and then moving towards a more regular schedule for such posts. Then I can actually start considering other, non-roundup posts again. At least I'm doing it at all, which is far more than I expected, especially after building up such a backlog as I did. So, in the interests of completing my recovery, here we go!
Quiz # 186 - Sunday 22nd October, Turf Tavern, Carlisle
Strategic Overview
I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this was a night to forget and I knew it would be from the start. It was my understanding that Jack would be there but work kept him away. Which is fair enough. Unfortunately I knew the writing was on the wall from the start as there were no other teams I might have joined, especially as the new manager of the venue was watching and the host needed the numbers up. There were only 5 teams in total, among them a 6 person version of JDCS including a couple of their kids. The other really good team were there too.
The Quiz
I only knew 1 of the pictures to begin with, though at the very end of the quiz I finally remembered Dermot Monaghan's last name - the late actor who played Father Ted. I was luckily able to get a little help from a couplle of the staff at the venue for a couple more, and somehow ended up with 5. Admittedly that's not something I'm ethically inclined towards normally, but it was hardly going to make a big difference overall. Current events also gave me 5, and I can't quite explain that. 10/20 for those two rounds wouldn't be all that bad normally, at least by my normal standards, though of coursse some of those answers didn't come until very late in the day so it looked ominous.
The lists didn't look much better, to be honest. The oldest men ever to win a Best Actor Oscar was probably the hardest list I've seen for some time I got 1. The best selling authors of 2016 was also one of the hardest lists I've seen for a while, which was just my luck really. I changed out the correct answer John Le Carre for another correct answer, John Grisholm, and got the obvious JK Rowling, but that was my lot.
By this time, things were going so badly that I genuinely considered walking out of there, such was my performance and my mood. I don't know that I'd have actually done it, but I was thinking about it. That is not something I can honestly say I've felt since the first quiz of the New Forest holiday, where I did leave. I did, of course, stay, partially at the behest of the host who'd have looked bad if I didn't.
Last week we salvaged things with Alpha Links but even these mostly eluded me and I was restricted to just 4, easily one of my worst ever scores on the round. I even missed a Simpsons question, that's how bad it was, albeit about one of the voice actors. Still though, I should never have done that. The connections round was no gimme either, though I'd have had 4 if I'd not second guessed myself about having the connection - codes - after the answer of Leonardo Da Vinci. I forgot about the book and thus couldn't connect Da Vinci to codes at all, but I did get 2 more for 3 in total.
The Wipeout round presented a conundrum and I ultimately played it cautiously, though someone got one of the harder questions of the round by recognising a description of Angela Merkel's chemist husband. Not many others came though, and I finished with 4.
Outcome
If you've been adding it up as you go through, you'll see I got 24, which is by no means my lowest ever score, as it happens. I was expecting the others to have achieved considerably more, but was surprised to see that the winning score was only 34, and I was actually only 2 points off being not last. I was desperate for the host to not reveal my shameful score, and he did me that great favour. I'm very grateful for that, and won't be making such a request again.
This was too much of a struggle to enjoy, and I genuinely didn't. Even knowing how tough the first two rounds are going to be, that's not something I'll often say about this quiz.I regret that this night happened, though unfortunately precisely because of that, I doubt I'll forget it. In his absence, I was directing my frustration towards Jack, for which I'm truly sorry, though he did laugh when my team name "My coming last is Jack's fault" actually won me the best name prize and thus the two drinks. Not that any of the other names were genuinely funny either this week, admittedly.
Ultimately, it happened and I can't change it. My attitude was appalling but the score could have been far worse, and it was clear that it was a tough quiz generally because 34 was the winning score. I even gave a good answer or two along the way. Time to move on, and work towards preventing repeats.
Result: 24/55 (43.64%), last/5
Quiz #187 - Monday 23rd October, Kings Arms, Dalbeattie (P)
Strategic Overview
If I was going to try and jump-start my quizzing week, this was a good opportunity to do so. Any host other than K means an opportunity to join that host's team, and I had options here - especially since it was the first time I'd been here since my TV victory. That said, my default team will always be BTAS when I get the chance, and that was what I did this week.
The opposition was the usual. and as the host was P, the quiz was going to be difficult and list-based, quite clearly. But also fun, let's not forget that!
The Quiz
The first round wasn't a list, but GK. Okay, so the last 5 questions were sort of a list, in that we were asked for 5 of the Ivy League Universities, which was no issue for me. We did miss a couple, but 17/20 was a pretty decent start. A geography round was inevitable, a map of some place or other. This time, it was Australia. These were difficult, and a couple of mixups meant we only got 10. I doubt we were the only ones, however. The next round wanted the London Overground Terminuses and also London Underground lines themselves. We got most of those, 19/20.
EDIT: I'm coming back to this because the scores don't add up. I wrote 18 in my book but gave 17 here, neither of which gives a total of 78. 19 does and I suspect the issue is that we added our score incorrectly. Which affects the outcome, though I can't change how it was given. Since I can't change the outcome retrospectively, I'd rather the scores be slightly inaccurate. Mistakes can happen and I've lost quizzes in similar ways before. Better that my scores be slightly inaccurate, and this round I cannot remember perfectly anyway. Ultimately, it is what it is - imperfect however it is decided.
Round 4 was a chance for me to really shine. Sport isn't the team's strong suit, but I know my tennis. The ten most recent unique winners of the Wimbledon singles, men and women, were required. The other two could have named a handful of obvious ones I'm sure but it fell to me to get the rest. I didn't know Jana Novotna won Wimbledon and, thought it was one of the ones Kim Cljisters did win and put her instead of Amelie Mauresmo, and I again forgot Michael Stich as the last German to win, but I got the other 17!
That left army and navy officer ranks, with the former being much more familiar than the latter, hence why we got 9 of one and 6 of the other. I could do with studying up on those...
One point to note is that there were bonuses given after each round. The way it worked was that a question was asked to the room, and the first person to shout it out correctly got a point for their team. If they got it wrong, every other team got a point. We got two of these bonuses, but there's no way for me to account for them in the scoring, so for my stats I'm ignoring these points and having the quiz as being out of 100 with our score two fewer. Only way it can be, I reckon.
Outcome
This was a very difficult one to call, but we knew we had done well. Well enough that we were on the podium, with 3rd place scoring 69. We had 80, well clear of that...but so did another team. As there are no tiebreakers at this quiz, we were joint-winners and split the money.
What a turnaround from yesterday! This was a very good score at a tough quiz. I got to show off some tennis knowledge to bring in a healthy number of points, and in general had shown a far better mindset than last time. There was a lot to be pleased with here, proud of, even, and I really am.
Result: 78/100 (78%), joint 1st/unknown
Quiz #188 - Tuesday 24th October, Ship Inn, Dumfries
Strategic Overview
Any question of whether I'd go to the Ship Inn this week was settled by Harry Potter being the specialist round, though S & A finally returning was definitely a factor. It had been a while, thanks to work. B was also with us, and one NCP team were among the opposition. The Pharmacists were also back, and one of the original teams who are two couples. One was absent but the other returned.
The Quiz
The GK round was pretty tough as always, and we had a share of third with our 6, but only managed 5 on Film & TV which meante we dropped back to 5th. Round 3 was a maths round, but this mostly meant questions about maths rather than actual sums. Mostly. Still, even the latter were easy enough and we got a full house without difficulty. Unfortunately the same, or close to it, was probably true for a few other teams as we were still only fourth at the half way point, albeit the 2 point gap had been consistent after all 3 rounds so far.
The picture round was on video game characters, so absolutely my strong subject. In fact, I'm fairly certain it identical to a round we'd had before a good while back. I got 2/3 wrong last time and only one eluded me this time. The gap between us and the leaders now actually grew to 3 points, but we climbed to 3rd, 3 clear of 4th.
So to the Harry Potter round, which ought to have been brilliant for me. We started as though that were the case, getting the first 4, but then we fell away. I've got to say that I really enjoyed this round; these were extremely hard questions that required genuine, serious HP knowledge, but they all made sense, and were theoretically gettable if you had such knowledge. That hasn't always been the case with specialist rounds here. Music remained and it was a struggle as always, so we had to be content with 19 and hope that our newly gained share of 2nd place would remain in tact.
Outcome
As it happened, that wasn't the case, but that was to be expected. We fell to 3rd, so it's still a podium position, but we were well beaten by scores of 61 and 68. With our music knowledge, that was never going to be achievable. I can't complain about that, it's still a great score for this quiz and it was still a great night!
Result: 59/85 (69.41%), 3rd/11
The Rest of the Week
A bit unusual for me to do this, but I need to explain what happened on Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was a "bucket list" moment in that I played in the local quiz league for the first time. I'd been looking for an opportunity to do this, and with L busy elsewhere anyway, the timing was perfect as there was a team looking to sub me in. It was a bit awkward in that the pub is owned by the brother of my best friend from high school - a man whose friendship I dropped for personal reasons some time ago.
Still, this was an opportunity, and it was an interesting experience, though truthfully not one I'm looking to repeat, surprisingly enough. This is clearly a low-key quiz league, its lack of online presence testifying to that, and this pub was doing it for the first time. I was the quizzing backbone of the team, but ultimately we lost 45-42 (out of 60) as I just wasn't good enough. The opposition included one of the guys from that couples team at the Ship Inn, which was cool. 3 of them, 6 of us but they were just stronger.
The league clashes with the Granary quiz, and I am really not wanting to give that up. With the Ship Inn quiz having issues and the Grapes quiz a shadow of its former self, the Granary is my favourite, and I'm like furniture in the place. Me and L are doing increasingly well, especially with help from Jack and M, and it's just a great quiz. I can't give that up, and I'm not going to gain anything in terms of my quizzing advancement from the league that I don't from the Granary, if this week was a fair example.
Thursday night, meanwhile, was supposed to be the first night of the Anchor's new season in Kippford. I say "supposed to" because it didn't work out that way in practice, the quiz being cancelled at short (1 hour) notice because of issues at the venue. That was unfortunate, but it happens, and I can confirm that the quiz did begin again this week, so my first review of the new season for that venue will form part of my next weekly roundup.
This meant that my week was oddly truncated, as I didn't have a quiz on Friday and do not plan to include competitive events like League matches as part of my counted quizzes or these roundups.
Week In Summation
Obviously enough, I'm in no hurry to see the start of this week become the regular way of things, but it picked up after that, definitely. As I said, there are even positives in Sunday, if you get beyond my attitude. Monday and Tuesday were strong performances, and a victory, albeit shared, among them makes any week a positive one. In a roundabout way, I'll take that, though the Wednesday and Thursday situations have clouded things again, and ultimately I think I'd rather forget the week, even with the win. It still counts for my stats as a win, but it wasn't an outright victory, after all...
Total Result:161/240 (67.08%)
No comments:
Post a Comment