Pub Quiz Results
Quiz #7 - Sunday 14th January, Turf Tavern, Carlisle (Team: 3)
Round 1: Pictures - People (Mixture), 7/10
Round 2: Current Events, 6/10
Round 3: Brit Awards (Music), 2/5
Round 4: US State Capitals, 5/5
Round 5: Alpha Links, 10/10
Round 6: Hidden Link Connections, 5/5
Round 7: Wipeout (General Knowledge), 7/10
Total Score: 42/55 (45.45%),1st/8
Quiz #8 - Wednesday 17th January, Granary, Dumfries (Team: 3)
Round 1: Words ending in "ology", 18/25
Round 2: General Knowledge, 17/20
Total Score: 35/45 (77.78%), 2nd/11
Quiz #9 - Thursday 18th January, Anchor Hotel, Kippford (Team: 6)
Round 1: General Knowledge, 4.5/8
Round 2: Fictional People, 6/8
Round 3: Link Theme - Fire, 7/8
Round 4: Answers containing consecutive letters "eek", 7/8
Round 5: Map of UK (Joker), 12/16
Round 6: World Geography, 2/8
Total Score: 38.5/56, joint 3rd/7
Overall Weekly Score: 115.5/156 (74.04%)
Month-To-Date: 392/595 (65.88%)
Year-To-Date: 392/595 (65.88%)
General Update
I've got an ever-increasing To Do List, and I barely know where to begin, so I'm starting with the thing that will bother me most by not being done, and that's this blog! I'm taking the unusual step this week of ending the week on Thursday, because that's the last of the week's pub quizzes and the whole weekend is a separate event that I'd rather cover in full in next week's roundup, or a separate post. I love being so busy, though I've no idea how I'm going to get everything done as there's no let up for the next few weeks! So let's get to it.
Pub Quizzes
The week began in Carlisle as usual, and L from the Granary quiz was joining me this time. There was a question over Jack's attendance but he was there, so the 3 of us set to work. BEEST were absent again (though will be back going forward, I'm told), and the teachers' team took the form of JDS. That's the same J who has won the quiz alone, and Jack & I have never beaten him when it's just been us. Obviously we still haven't, as L was here, but wow, was this a great win, especially as the margin was 9 points. Well, they had to go for it, getting 9 of the last round, though had they decided to hold back then we'd have won the tiebreaker they faced for 2nd, which they themselves won easily. It all just fell well for us tonight, with some inspired semi-educated guesses accounting for a few points, and our bravery in going for 7 on the last round paying off.
Round 3 was bit of a mess, being 4+ time winners of the International Award at the Brits. We couldn't work out how old the awards were, so didn't go back far enough. That was about the only blip though, and I'm really pleased with how confidently and effectively we all played. Friday's solo win clearly had a good effect on me!
The Granary quiz on Wednesday had been cancelled for 2 weeks but was back on after just 1. I'll not go into the detail of that but it's understandable that some teams hadn't returned for this week, and also that it was the short version of this quiz. Jack wasn't available and M wouldn't have gotten the message, so L and I took on everyone else, which did include the Roofrax, though not UC or SQ.
I'm really happy with how we did in this quiz, those -ologies being tough. Some of them were very obvious but others required real knowledge, like oenology for wine, and oology for eggs. We did miss a couple in GK we should have gotten, the set being as easy as I've seen in the place. Sometimes the host does specify that it's "easier" or "harder" on a GK round but it's generally relative. This though, really did have lots of low-hanging fruit. The winners were clearly decided on the first round, and the Toffees, a team who used to frequent the Ship Inn, were unstopppable on 43/45. They're a legit team, so I know that score was genuine. That's one of our best ever scores at the venue, and we beat the RR by 10 points so job well done!
The last quiz of the week was...a volatile affair. I need to be tactful when describing it, so bear with me. A couple of the girls were back on our team, but an apparently serious illness may restrict our basic number to 4, unless we join with the owners regularly. I must admit, I'd prefer not to do this, though I can't say why here. Emotions were running high this evening, with several questions proving controversial. This led to discussions between teams and with the hosts, in which everyone's respective views were exchanged.
Truth be told, this was not what I was looking for at the end of the week, especially with a potentially difficult journey the next day, having barely made it there at all because of the snow we'd had. It's not the first time there have been issues with the questions at this venue, and there was pettyness involved on all sides. Given those rounds, I'm not surprised at the score, but the round titles tend to be more cryptic than that, especially rounds 3 and 4, so it's not always clear what you're getting. Hence the selection of the joker round, which we'd never have chosen with the knowledge that it would be a map. The score was perfectly good in the end, but the overall atmosphere of the quiz was definitely not what I like to see. Unfortunate.
My Own Quiz
I hosted the Kings Arms, Dalbeattie quiz this week, which was surprising as only 2 of the other 4 had gone after me, though I did essentially have a 4 week break anyway due to the Christmas hiatus the quiz takes. It went quite well, all things considered. It ran very smoothly, and completely on time, I'm delighted to say, and the quiz itself was of reasonably good quality, I think!
If you're reading this and you're interested in doing it, then please let me know as I'll be running this quiz internationally as my 2nd Proxy Pub Quiz! The way this works is, I email the quiz out to people along with rules which essentially recreate the conditions of the pub itself. Those who sign up do the quiz, mark it themselves and return me their score, and I produce a final leaderboard which shows their own scores alongside those of the teams that did the quiz in the pub itself. I've refined the rules slightly for this version, making it slightly less exactly equal to the live version in a way that accomodates the distance side of things better. I'll be running this Wednesday 31st January to Sunday 4th February, and you'll need no more than 2 hours in total, start to finish. If you're interested or would like to hear more, please let me know! If you're reading this after 4th February 2018, I'm afraid this is no longer open, but please do contact me anyway if you're interested in future ones. Even if you're reading this years from now, I might be prepared to start it up again! You never know!
I'm also in talks to potentially do a second quiz, a monthly one, which would be verbal rather than written. Could be a good experience, and I'd look to do that one by proxy as well, by means of recording my reading out the questions. Watch this space for more details on that!
Podcasts
Monday seems to have become the day when I listen to Trivial Warfare; I've finally gotten into a routine with that. The show is released each week at 11.30pm my time, so I listen to it during my walk to and from work and around town at lunchtime; that's enough time to get through a show pretty well.
I've now started on Complete The List, an excellent podcast by Andy Saunders. The premise is simple, but effective, and the name pretty much explains it. 3 players are given 8 categories, some of which have cryptic sounding names. Over the course of 40 minutes or so, players give items in 6 of the 8 lists, getting points for correct answers but more points for unique answers. They take it in turns, of course, and the player going 2nd or 3rd can take the answer of a preceding player. Each player can also choose to double one category during the game for more points. There's also a half-time, which involves guessing the year of 8 given events, each of which happened in a different decade, and a finale that, like TW and Jeopardy, has a betting mechanism.
It's a simple show but doesn't need to be more complicated than that. It's varied in its subjects, its entertaining and it works. I'm only a few episodes in but I'm going to keep at this, and I'm looking forward to hearing them all (38 to date) in the next 2/3 weeks!
Spreadsheets
My main stats sheet is on the list but hasn't been done yet. This is more important, relative to its value, and by compiling the basic stats here I'm making that easier. I'll try and do it tomorrow though as it it's not something I want to leave too long, lest it become overwhelming. I'm saying that in the context of still not having input the data from my last 26 quizzes into last year's spreadsheet, though having not done that straight away that has admittedly fallen down the priority list a bit.
Areas of Study
I've done quite a lot this week, though it's not been of the "sit down at a desk in a quiet room and memorise lists" style. That's not the way I usually do things anyway, even if I could be doing with doing precisely that a bit more often. I've largely memorised the answers from my own quiz, I think/hope, and I was sure to browse trivia books as often as possible in preparation for the weekend. "Little and often", that's what I'm going for, because repetition tends to be how I learn things. If I'm constantly learning, that's a good thing, since there's a huge number of areas I need to improve on. I wasn't working as hard last week as I probably ought to have been, but I am still trying to find the right balance between work and play. I still did a fair bit overall and I'm happy enough.
Week in Summation
I went into this week on a high after the tremendous end to last week, and fortunately I was able to ride that to some more success this week. Sunday's win was tremendous, and we couldn't have done more on Wednesday either. Thursday wasn't the best of nights overall but we salvaged our score and there's clear positives to take.
Beyond the quizzes, yeah my work ethic still needs improving, but things are always a bit weird when I host my quiz. I wasn't as emotionally drained after it as I have been before, which is good to see, and I didn't see my performance drop too badly in the aftermath. I did do a bit less studying but I have made up for that thereafter, and this week I can try and get through my to-do list. Overall it was a successful week that I'm very happy with.
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