Quiz #43 - Sunday 5th March, Turf Tavern Carlisle
The first quiz of the week started with optimism from the QM that I might win it, as there were relatively few teams. I'm still convinced such optimism is misplaced, though it's flattering all the same. Some justification for it came with my best picture round so far, as I scored 6. Okay, so a couple of them I had help for - the team next to me were rather loud with their deliberations. I can't help that I overheard and it put ideas in my head though, especially since a couple of them were pictures I hadn't even glanced at yet. Remember, folks - keep the volume down if you don't want to accidentally help the competition!
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capitalise on current events as I laboured to just 4. I only had two from the first of the top 5 lists - songs with "China" in the title", but could have had all 5 from the most populated cities in 5 given countries. I say "could have" because there were a few 50-50s, and a couple went the wrong way. Shame, but none in the 3 I got.
Alpha Links next, and after last week's misfortune, it was back to business. The American word for a courgette - zucchini - gave me the start of the chain immediately, and only Aviator sunglasses eluded me. They were relatively tame questions, but then I do know about things like Game of Thrones and Dick Dastardly. I've also visited Bletchley Park twice, and thus seen a real Enigma machine. The connections round took a couple of answers for me to get, but I eventually worked out that they were all things you can hold and gained a full house of 5.
The GK Wipeout would end the contest, and I suppose I should have seen a disaster coming here, sooner or later. Not many questions fell my way anyway, but the problem was a standard geography question, the only two countries in South America that don't border Brazil. I deliberated over answering for quite a while, but decided that it was worth it as I only had 3 other answers. I gave my answer - to the wrong question. Shockingly, the countries I actually gave were the two landlocked countries on the continent. I have no idea how I managed that, but it's annoying.
On the plus side, there was no real consequence to it. I finished last, but 2 points behind of 4th, 5 behind of the teams tied 2nd, and 11 behind the winners. There's nothing I could have done about that. Not a bad start to the week!
Result: 29/55 (52.73%), 5th/5
Quiz #44 - Monday 6th March, Kings Arms Dalbeattie (K)
I was a bit wary of going into one of K's quizzes alone, but those fears were immediately allayed when I got the chance to join Big Tam's, and it was the 3-man version of the team again. That didn't help us win last time, but perhaps on the second go? It was a solid start at least, with 17/20 on GK to our credit, and we followed that with a perfectly reasonable 7/10 on sport. Unfortunately I don't have the question sheets on hand so I can't give specific examples of what we faced.
Round 3 was another split round, like he did last time. Science and Nature, unplayed music and pot luck all had 5 questions each; we managed all of the former, 4 of the latter and 3 of the second. No complaints there! What followed was a rare picture round, which we had not seen here for quite a while. Most of them came okay, including Gary Barlow of Take That, who distinctly resembled Justin Beiber in his youth! The age of the picture proved who it was, however. Again, a couple escaped us, and this unfortunately would be the measure of the night.
Now with true or false rounds at this quiz, you have to assume there are landmines present in the questions. We knew a couple of them to be certainly true, but also spotted a couple of falsehoods - the gang from A Clockwork Orange had its name reversed, and the idea that the Great Wall of China can be seen from space is a common myth. We chanced that the rest were all true, though I wasn't certain on that. I was right there - the first half were all true, the second were all false. I've known the entire round to be true or false though, sometimes with a single exception, so this was nothing unexpected and we still had 7.
Played music meant that my contribution to the night was effectively over, and my occasional value in getting more modern tracks wasn't required here. We started well enough, and even I knew several of the earlier ones, but we couldn't maintain momentum and were restricted to 10/16.
I don't know where we placed, but it wasn't top 3. It was relatively close, but we were still 5.5 away from the win, which the odd question here or there wouldn't have given us. The team were surprised by the low score on music, but even a full house there wouldn't have been enough for the win. I won £6 on the bingo though, so walked away with a profit!
Result: 61/81 (75.31%), unknown(not last)/unknown
Quiz #45 - Tuesday 7th March, Ship Inn Dumfries
It was back to normal at the Ship Inn, with the Quizlamic Extremists returned. Half of them, anyway, as per usual. It was nice to be back with the usual team, however fun it has been joining forces with the Newbridge Caravan Park for the last couple of weeks. We started solidly with 6 on GK, which was similar to what other teams got. A round on Scottish history, I recognised - from the Granary, a while back. That meant I could predict a couple of the questions, but things like Annie Lennox's first band I just couldn't remember. Still, our 3-way tie on third had become a 3-way tie on 2nd, a couple of points behind the leaders. I'm not sure if they were the NCP, but probably they were.
Catchphrases of famous people proved very tricky, especially as the likes of Dr Seuss and Bruce Lee were included, so we only haf half of those. Dingbats are usually quite good for me if not the rest of the team, but recently the subject hasn't paid out good dividends and so it was again as we only picked up 12 from 18. We were punished for this, and now languished in 4th.
Now what followed was the specialist subject, and I've alluded in the past to the difficulty of these subjects. This has been perceived negatively by myself and other regulars at the quiz for some time, particularly since the QM changed quite a while ago. The point of the round is to give the previous week's last placed team an advantage, but the questions are deliberately so difficult that this simply doesn't happen. It has in fact been boasted about that any attempt to research the specialist subject will be wasted effort, because the questions will deliberately avoid the kind of things that one might look up. Tonight was a case in point - the 7 teams collectively managed just 18/70 points on this round. The team who chose it had 4, which was bettered by none, and we had only a single point. I've been forced to raise this directly with the QM, because I honestly think that another normal round would make more sense than a specialist round which is designed to ensure the teams get as few points as possible. I mean no disrespect to the quiz or its host, because I honestly think both are great - but this round is an issue and I know for a fact that I'm not the only person who feels this way.
While I am being, and I regret to say it, negative, I'm also going to admit to having queried the length of the quiz. The last bus back for a few people is at 10pm and this quiz finishes at 10.30. For a quiz that starts at 7.30pm on Tuesday, that's very late, and with 6 rounds, there's no real need for it that I can see. Again, no disrespect is intended, but I believe that it's a factor in less people coming to the quiz than there could be and that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Several regulars need to leave before the quiz is over, which is concern.
Moving on, music has done me few favours no matter which team I've joined, and I was unable to break this streak this time. Going into the final round, we were still in 4th, 11 points behind the leaders but at least more or less assured of not coming in last. We actually gained a placing with our 17/30, making this my 3rd consecutive 3rd place finish. That's pretty good going, and I'll leave it at that.
Result: 48/88 (54.55%), 3rd/7
Quiz #46 - Wednesday 8th March, The Granary Dumfries (K)
The Granary's quiz started with the surprising news that the usual host had the night off, so his duties were being covered by the guy who usually does this in such situations. That seems to be pretty seldom, though there have been several-week periods when it's happened in the past. They're infrequent enough that it was not my intention to separate them from the usual Granary quizzes in my stats. That changed after this one, which I cannot in good conscience include with others at this venue. I'm afraid I have very little that is positive to say about this quiz.
I'll start with the sugar before I move to the vinegar: the QM is clearly inexperienced at hosting such events. I believe he is a DJ by trade, and despite the similarities, they are very different jobs. The Granary's usual host has, I believe, a decade of experience, and has an almost military level of efficiency. Those are no easy shoes to fill, and I don't know how much notice the guest host had, as he appeared to arrive quite close to the starting time. The fact that the host had prepared played music rounds, which seldom ever feature in this quiz, does however indicate that he was aware that he'd be doing it that night. It's not an easy quiz for an inexperienced host to do, because there are a lot ot teams, it runs quickly and smoothly to a high standard. I can fully understand someone getting flustered in the attempt, and things not going wholly to plan.
Unfortunately though, I'm also a consumer, and I cannot hide the fact that the usual standards of this quiz simply were not met tonight. It was a shambolic farce, from start to finish, and if there were entry fees then I'd have wanted them refunded.
The late start was forgivable, though it was indicative of a clear lack of organisation. In an attempt to make up for lost time, he raced through the 10 GK questions in short order. I barely had enough time to write down the answers before the next question came, and that was despite knowing most of them. In general, they seemed easier than usual, and the structure of the round confirmed that this was not a quiz that was pre-made by the usual host. I was surprised to see as many as 3 film and TV questions, considering no less than 3 other rounds in the quiz were already confirmed to be on those subjects. Ultimately, we had 8 whch seemed pretty reasonable.
Marking at this quiz is usually a simple matter - we hand the sheets into the QM, who marks them and hands them out personally. No strict time limit is called on handing the sheets in, presumably because it's just known that you need to get them in quickly, and by the honour system everyone does. This time, "5 seconds left" was called what felt like 20 seconds after the last question was asked, and it was impossible to say how serious the host was being. More of an issue than that was the way they were returned - he simply left the pile of papers beside him and got the teams ourselves to come up and get our sheets. It looked and felt a mess.
Round 2 was film soundtracks. Sounds fair enough, and a bit novel for this quiz, except that he refused to say when one track stopped and the next began. In any venue, especially a big open one like this, that's a questionable decision, but it's worse when it's not clear where that divide is. I thought the last part of track 1 was part of track 2, and had to be corrected by my friend. If that sounds bad, it was nothing compared to the QM not even knowing how many questions were in the round! He announced question 13 when I was sure we were at 15, and that continued to the end of the round. He said there were 20 questions, I was sure we had 22, and at least one team thought 23 - presumably because of that perceived split on track 1. Of course, the tracks were not repeated. Farcically, the flustered host realised his mistake - in the list of tracks, it went 10, 11, 12, 11, 12. Evidently he had made up that list before making the tracks, so had indeed made 22. He announced points would be given for the films even if they weren't in the right order. Even the marking was wrong, though this did work in our favour. I just can't understand how it all went so wrong, but we had 14/22 in the end.
The papers were returned in a no less weird way from round 2 on - he called out team names as he finished marking individual sheets and we went up to collect them. I just don't get that. Round 3 was sport, and the round itself was fine (we scored 6), but afterwards he realised that he had forgotten to take a note of the running scores in the quiz thus far. This meant the QM correcting himself by calling out team names and asking us to shout out our scores! I've honestly never seen anything like it, and I hope never to again. Even the QM seemed to realise how bad an idea this was, as he sheepishly abandoned it half way through and decided to catch himself up on the scores at the end of the next round.
Round 4 was a film round that just fell badly for us.5 is poor, but we zigged when we should have zagged a couple of times, and others we didn't know. It was supposed to be film and TV, but there wasn't a single TV question in it. That left the final round, TV soundtracks. Even this was not straightforward, as there were exactly 19 questions for some reason. At least there was no confusion over which was which, this time. We had 13, and only Keeping Up Appearances could we realistically have gotten that we didn't.
Sadly, we were not done with the problems of the night. Only the top 3 scores were announced, rather than all of them - and the scores were completely wrong. I know for a fact that we had 46, because I always keep my scores of course. That should have put us in 2nd according to the scores that were read out. Clearly, we weren't actually second. Clearly, perennial winners Sporting Quizbon were up there - but there is no way they scored as few as the 51 we were told they got. I can only assume an entire round worth of questions were omitted from the final scores, presumably because of what happened after round 3. So I have no idea where we finished and will not be counting the scores announced in my leaderboard lists.
I know I sound very negative here, perhaps almost raving. And yet, my comments are fair, because they reflect what actually happened. This quiz has standards, which were not met. My sympathies for the host are genuine as expressed above, but he made huge mistakes and as a consumer I feel entitled to my sense of aggrievement about that. If I were doing this quiz for the first time, I would never go back. One final comment I will add is that last time he hosted, he made offensive "jokes" about high scoring teams being "nerds and geeks" who "need to get out more". So my expectations were already rock bottom going into this, and I know of teams who boycott the quiz when he hosts. I'll be doing the same next time, I think.
Result: 46/71 (64.79%), unknown/unknown
Quiz #47 - Thursday 9th March, Anchor Hotel Kippford
Okay, a new day means a new quiz, and for the third week in a row I was with the Disciples. We were a whole couple short this time, so it was the third week of a different lineup. GK was, as has been the case often of late, very difficult, and we were restricted to 5. A general round on famous people had promised little among an uncertain list of categories, and proved even worse with 4.
Round 3 was "The Bear Necessities", and that left us wondering. I assumed it would be about famous bears, but such rounds are risky choices for the joker so we decided against it. It wasn't half bad, however, giving us a 7. I was surprised not to see Baloo from the Jungle Book there, but questions about Sooty, Rupert the Bear, and Paddington Bear did appear.
Round 4 was science and technology, and the sort of round I tend to like but which has done me in before. The team were not keen, but it gave us a solid 6. For the joker, there seemed little to tempt us and last week's poor result on Dingbats made that seem a poor choice. It was the best we had, however, and so we entered the breach once more. We went in all guns blazing, but couldn't quite match our round 3 score. 12 was still good, but it meant 4 missed points that might have made a difference.
We finished with a round on "living things" - which meant animals, basically, as it usually does. It was another solid round, but we mixed up "largest eye" with "largest brain" and went for the blue whale - I'll remember that one for the future. As should anyone reading this, as it's likely to appear in a future quiz of mine!
The last two weeks, we tied for second, 1 point behind the winners. This time, we were tied for third, 4 points behind the winners - but we were tied with the team that won the last two times. So those dingbat points could have made the difference, but so could anything else, so I'm taking the philosophical approach. I think I was showing signs of frustration at times, which does tend to become very apparent with this very light-hearted and easygoing team, but I can't help that I take my craft seriously and my increasing winless streak is disappointing. So there's that.
Result: 40/56 (71.43%), joint 3rd/7
Quiz #48 - Friday 10th March, The Grapes, Springholm
So again to the Grapes for the week's last chance of glory. The turnout was massive, as it was a charity quiz for the Kirkpatrick Durham Church, and they were out in force. The KPD often supply the winning team, but their regular attendees are far fewer than those here tonight. A semi-regular actually joined us; it was the first time I'd quizzed with the man, though we used to play chess many years ago when I was in the town's club in the latter days of my schooling. That made us up to a four, as we were unable to persuade our occasional guest member to join us, and one of the regulars was absent.
The stage was set for a good night, and it was certainly that, though we were never in the quiz itself. We started well enough, with 8 on the first GK. Only Nicola Sturgeon's official residence and a line of "My favourite things" eluded us, and the former shouldn't have been a problem for me. Bizarrely, the first specialist round was called "The Bear Necessities". It was totally coincidental that there was one called this the night before at the Anchor, and amazingly, none of the questions were the same. Only one even related to the same bear - Paddington. Our 6 was okay, but we were marking the Teddy Bears, and they had 19/20 I think.
Our fortunes did not improve in R3. In keeping with most rounds this night, I pushed for an answer but was overruled, but that's okay, it happens. We collectively worked out a few answers between us, though could only manage 5 in total. Words beginning with successive letters of the alphabet saw most of them, perhaps inevitably, start "def". Embarassingly, we missed Nicola Sturgeon, though none of us knew her husband's name which was the clue. The other 9 meant we were being consistent, but also consistently below the Teddy Bears.
It was more of the same on the next GK, where I combined a mistake with some decent answers as part of our 6. We made hard work of our 7 on answers with the initials EC or PC, but we had the majority. We failed to identify Elvis Costello as another rockstar not called Eric Clapton as an EC or PC, and despite knowing that one question wanted Postman Pat's real name none of us could remember his surname, Clifton.
The penultimate pair was more of the same, really, as we scored another 14 between them. GK started well as we managed the first 4, but only 1 of the remaining 6. The last two, we couldn't even guess at. The last specialist round though was a hidden link connections round, and I'll be coy about the details because it's a connection I'm going to use myself in future. One of the team struggled with the concept, but fortunately I'd worked out the connection itself on the basis of questions 2 and 4, which helped us to 9 in total. It was a bit frenetic, especially due to the misunderstanding over the nature of the round, but we got there! As did our opponents, mores the pity. In a strange irony, the one question we missed contained the name of one of our team! The same team member who struggled on the subject but who recognised the song required.
That left us the final round only for redemption, but we were quite sure we were out of it. We gave it a go nonetheless, but 6 was never going to be enough. We still managed 3rd overall, and it will be interesting to see how many of those I've had in the last few weeks once my stats are finally updated, but we were 5 points behind 2nd - the strongest of the regular KPD teams - and 9 behind the runaway Teddy Bears. It was another good night, though it was a shame we had no chance of victory right from the start. Always good to see so many teams though, even if few will return any time soon.
Result: 61/90 (67.78%), 3rd/unknown
Week in Summation
Well, it was a rocky week, as my comments make clear. There's various non-quizzing related stress-inducing things going on in my life at the moment, which helps none, and I'm desperate for just a little bit of extra luck to give me a win or two. I'm still very much enjoying it all though, which is the main thing, but a week after the fact, I do still stand by my comments about Tuesday and Wednesday. I oblige no one to agree with me, my views thus remaining my own, but I'm sure I'm not alone in holding them about the events of either night.
It may be considered uncouth to post such comments online, on a public blog, especially one I know has some readers among people I quiz with and even quizmasters. To which I ultimately respond that I'm essentially a consumer of an event, someone who has spent time, money and effort in the attending of said event, and I'm not obligated to hold a positive opinion of it for any reason. In this blog, I review quizzes - I'm quick to praise, and generally restrained for the sake of tact in being negative. This week I saw cause to be open, and I hope I'm not begrudged that right.
The Tuesday quiz at least was still very much enjoyable, as I hope is clear, as has been the week generally. I'l keep soldiering on in my quest for more wins, and I'll keep quizzing whether I get them or not! I've already done 3 of this week's 5 quizzes as of the writing of this summation, and I already have stories to tell from those. As always, they will be told in due course! For now, I'm off to bed (well, after more blog writing anyway), with another quiz awaiting tomorrow evening. Perhaps I'll get a win there, maybe adding to ones I've already had in these 3 days!
Total Score: 285/441 (64.63%)
Tuesday, 14 March 2017
Saturday, 11 March 2017
Weekly Round-Up, W/E 03/03/2017
Apologies that last week's blog is late! It's been a busy week and I've not managed to get it done before now! This week's round-up will also be posted today, I hope.
Quiz #37 - Sunday 26th February, Turf Tavern Carlisle
I've done the Turf's quiz often enough now for a pattern to be starting to emerge. My 3 results prior to this one indicated that most of my points would come from the Alpha Links round, with the Picture round being effectively a write-off. It's never a good thing to rely on one round, because sooner or later, you'll inevitably roll snake-eyes on it, tanking your score.
This was on my mind throughout this quiz, and picture round did indeed go according to the form book when I got 3. Joe Perry was a rather obscure snooker player to choose for that sport, but as I do follow that sport, I was glad of the point that I knew others might miss. I was nervous going into Current Events as I didn't think I'd followed the news very closely last week, but I needn't have worried since I managed 7 for my best score on the round yet. Of course, I wasn't to know that until the end of the quiz.
The top 5 lists yet again went with the most populated cities in a given location, Spain this time. Spanish was the language I studied for 5 years in high school, but my knowledge of its cities is rather limited. It's one of those cases where football knowledge can help, but unfortunately I don't have much of that either. Still, Barcelona, Madrid and Seville were pretty obvious. Missing Valencia was a fairly bad mistake, but I just couldn't remember it. The other half of this round was to do with the most common pub names in England that begin with the letter R. I have to doubt the QM's assertion, in response to my quip about being from the wrong side of the border for this question, that the most common pub names are probably the same on both sides; I just can't see any Scottish publican thinking that "Rose and Crown" would be a sensible name here! In any case, I was restricted to 2.
I was wary about assuming I'd do well in Alpha Links again, though conscious that I needed to, and duly it wasn't to be. The questions just didn't fall, and I had only 4. Cricket followed by music was a nightmare start which just set the tone. Connections was also a bust, and I only managed a pair.
This meant I was faced with a potential difficult decision or two when it came to gambling on the Wipeout round. In a rare bit of luck, the first four questions were all answerable - albeit the third, the square root of 576, required a bit of working out. The fifth was the sort of question where I'd have had a brilliant, correct answer in a normal quiz; it was the victory over Russians in which cannons were captured from which Victoria Crosses would be made. Now this to me was probably Sevastapol, as a famous win over the Russians in Victoria's reign would have to be during the Crimean War. Was I heck going to put 5 points on the line for it here though! I did add a fifth, though I left the last four alone.
Ultimately I managed 26, which was not my lowest score on the quiz and which still left me comfortably placed. The QM wants me to win this quiz; to be honest, I think I've got a chance if I can get a few extra points on the pictures one week. Time will tell, but for now, this was an acceptable start to the week.
Result: 26/55 (47.27%), joint 4th/8
Quiz #38 - Monday 27th February, Kings Arms Dalbeattie (A)
I must admit that it takes either bravery or stupidity to knowingly attempt A's quiz alone, and I'll further confess to being possessed of something of both. Granted, my highest solo score last year did come at one of these quizzes, but I've experienced some humblings too. Big Tam's were at full strength, as were No Kan Do, and the Stooges were absent, so there were my team options gone.
My fears seemed to be realised right away with a disastrous GK. 3 just isn't good enough, though these were tough. Fortunately I had and took an immediate opportunity to redeem myself with a film round - I got all 10. 6 months ago I would have missed a couple of these, but that just shows how my knowledge is improving, so there's no denying that I earned these. That could not really be said about a round on homophones that followed, since it was the exact same round on homophones I got 9 on at the Granary last week. Still, that's hardly a slight on me, and the free 10 points (the last would not elude me this time) were much appreciated. 23/30 at least ensured that my score would be somewhat respectable when the curtain closed, especially considering that my standards for this quiz are lower than for others.
Sport was never likely to help me continue that mini-run, and to be honest 3 is fairly typical for me on the subject. The best I can say is that Big Tam's got the same score, and that I avoided the trap of the "highest possible break in snooker" question. The answer is 155, because of the free-ball rule. That is, if your opponent fouls and you can't see both sides of the target ball, you can play on any ball and call it a red. Therefore if you get a free ball with all 15 reds still on the table, you can thus get such an extra red, then the colour, and then go on to make a normal maximum, 147, giving 155 in total if the extra colour is a black. Of course, actually getting a free ball with so many target balls on the table is close to impossible, thus the feat has never been achieved in recognised competition. Still, it's possible in theory at least, and that complicates the question.
Moving on, arts and literature followed, and 6 was acceptable. The 7 I got at in the night's other GK round was welcome also, compensating somewhat for my first round disaster. When all was said and done, I therefore had a very healthy score for a solo effort! Nowhere near the winners, but that was no matter. I wasn't last, I heard too.
Speaking of which, there was a bit of controversy again, in that the winners were supposedly Big Tam's with 54.5. As noted above though, they lost 7 points on Sport alone, so I'm fairly certain they actually only got 44.5. A great score, no question, but that would only have put them in 3rd. It doesn't affect me of course, but I was marking them and I know they didn't get 5 10s. I'm not complaining or judging anyone, simply noting the potential mixup.
Result: 39/60 (65%), unknown (outwith top 3, not last)/8
Quiz #39 - Tuesday 28th February, Ship Inn Dumfries
Once again my usual team were absent, and this time I'd known about it in advance. Fortunately, I was again able to join the NCP, which again was a split team. Mostly, I was with the same people as last week, and we started well with 7/10 on GK. Both our teams had taken the bull by the horns, and my side was just a point behind the other, which led the contest at this early stage.
Sport was our subject for round 2, and this proved surprisingly fruitful for me, especially given I had noted to the team that I was unlikely to be of much help. The first several questions immediately rolled off the tongue though, including one that is now becoming a classic - the winner of Britain's first medal at the Rio Olympics. There were a few two-point question in the mix, so this was out of 14 rather than 10, the latter figure being our score. The others fell a bit by the wayside on this one, and we now led them by 4 points, and our closest rivals by 3.5.
This situation would be reversed on, of all things, geography, however. To be fair, we just overthought a few things, and a couple of times we had the correct answer and then changed our minds. It happens. We still had the lead after this round, but were now tied with the other team. That remained the case after the pictures, which was another map of Europe. I was delighted to redeem my Austria/Czech Republic mixup from last Thursday, and relieved that one of the team was about to make the same mistake before I pointed out that Austria has a border with Italy. Gettng these the right way around also guaranteed us Slovakia, and my memory of where Bulgaria sat ensured that those eastern nations were placed in the correct order. Both of us had a full house of 15, which put daylight between us and the other teams.
The specialist round was always going to be brutal, however, since it was hotel chains as chosen by the QM himself. We both fell to tied second after managing but a pair each. We further knew that we would be unable to win on music, as proved the case last week and indeed this week. Our 21 was by all means respectable, but their 24 was unbeatable. I can't tell the order of the other teams, but that looks likely to have been the best round in the room too.
There's really no argument about the result here, I think it's a fair reflection. Both of us faltered on one round, and they just managed a couple of extra points where it counted. A 1-2 for the teams is always nice to see, and hopefully I'll be back fighting next week with my own guys.
Result: 55/89 (65.12%), 2nd/8
Quiz #40 - Wednesday 1st March, The Granary Dumfries
One of the things I like most about the Granary's quiz is the variety of it; since there's no fixed structure, only a baseline 50 questions, you never get the same quiz in consecutive weeks. Round 1 was one I can't recall having seen before. It was a history round of sorts, in that we had 15 groups of four things to sort into chronological order. They ran the gamut from battles to inventions to Olympic venues to Dr Who actors. A run round, spoiled only by us not getting the answer sheets back at the end, which meant that the answers were a mere stream of meaningless letters.
Still, I knew that we had gotten some right, guessed a few and made at least one stupid mistake (on US presidents, of all things). It was the kind of round that exposes the lack of breadth of knowledge within the team; my own knowledge is certainly strong and varied, but I'll be the first to admit that it's incomplete, and my teammate's own strengths are relatively specialised. That's meaning no disrespect to her of course, but we could really have done with a couple of other bodies with knowledge of other things, and that holds true most weeks at the Granary. Our 9/15 was nothing to sniff at though, especially given I was confident we'd gotten a few right that others would have gotten wrong.
Round 2 was 20 GK questions, and it's been well-established by now that we only tend to score averagely on such rounds. This, it has to be said, was a tough round. A few questions came easily, a couple were well-guessed or worked out, but a few more eluded us, among them the odd unfortunate mixup such as Tanzania for Kenya with regards the location of Serengeti National Park. To be fair on that one, Serengeti itself is partially in Kenya, even if the Park isn't. I'll call our 11 par for the course, ultimately.
The final round was also 20 questions, for an overall 55 for the evening, with the subject this time being food and drink. That's not a great subject for either of us, though I was hopeful that I might see a question or two that I'd written myself in last week's set. I also couldn't help but regret that I'd done food and drink before seing these, as there were certainly a few usable questions here. By "usable", I mean of course "difficult", and the first two or three went immediately begging. We seemed to improve a lot after that, however, and by my own tally we had 15!
I'm not totally convinced that's correct, but it must have been up there, surprisingly. That meant our score was a bit lower than last week, but it felt harder earned and more deserved, given that I'd heard a couple of last week's rounds before. It also saw us place better, especially considering there were more teams than last week. We're under no illusions that it may be months more before we win this quiz again, but our scores are generally, gradually, improving, and we're happy about that.
Result: 35/55 (63.64%), joint 3rd/19
Quiz #41 - Thursday 2nd March, Anchor Hotel Kippford
I'm going to start at the end wth this one: last week, I joined the Disciples, scored well but tied for 2nd, 1 point behind the winning team. All of those things happened this week, too, though it was a different team member who was absent to allow me a space, and the overall score was lower. That was reflected generally, however, effectively proving that it was a harder quiz.
It started badly, with a carcrash on GK. I made a criminal error on the first question by giving Local Access Network rather than Local Area Network as the expansion for LAN. I had it written down as well and still repeatedly missed it. I can only assume I somehow confused it with Random Access Memory, but it frustrates me because that's the sort of error I'm trying to stop making. I could have had a point later in the same round, however, if I hadn't been overuled by the team as to the correct spelling of Pharaoh. Our 4 overall felt lucky, and we struggled to a 5 on geography after that.
A link round connected by "Charlie" was better as we went to 6, which was also what we scored on an initials round which I'd recommended for our joker round. I've the type of analytical mind that does well when given an extra clue, such as the first letter of the answer, though the team were more confident on Dingbats which was the picture round. I can't argue with that, as it's a strength for me as well, and the initials turned out to be TV shows which is why we missed a couple.
Unfortunately, we blew it on the joker. These were tougher than we were used to seeing, and we could only manage half of them. That's unusual between 6 of us, especially given that this is a team that actually likes them (my Ship Inn team vehemently hates them). That just left us sport to try and get over the line, and as I've already revealed, we couldn't quite do it. 6 was still good though; certainly it's better than many of more scores on it have been.
It was a shame that we fell so agonisingly short again, but the scores overall were lower. A few coin flips here and there, including in our selection of the joker round, and it could have gone the other way. As I tend to point out at such times though, our correct guesses could have also gone against us - so it evens itself out.
Result: 36/56 (64.29%), joint 2nd/9
Quiz #42, Friday 3rd March, Laurie Arms, Haugh of Urr
This was only my second visit to the Haugh, a small, insulated vilage nestled cosily between Dalbeattie and Castle Douglas. Last time I was able to join a couple of nice old ladies and I had the notion that I might do so again. Of course, I don't know the place, and I had no way of knowing who might be there. They weren't, so I assumed I'd be playing solo, until the somewhat awkward "Should I ask if I can join them, maybe glances in their direction will somehow lead to conversation" situation I was in with a couple sitting nearby resolved itself with our tables being combined. They were new to the area - they moved here from Burton-on-Trent, of all places. That's near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where I grew up 25 years ago! An amazing coincidence which gave us things to talk about immediately.
They seemed a nice couple, and their lack of local knowledge wasn't a huge issue, though it did cost us a point on GK. As I pointed out, however, "local" in this area can mean a lot of things, as my region is extremely broad - it's over 100 miles from one end to the other, so I didn't have it either. We got most of the others for 8. One of the pair was a teacher, which is always an advantage.
"The natural world" followed, and it was basically science and nature, with a couple of geography questions thrown in. We had 7, and went better than that with 9 on sport. The husband in the pair appeared to be a football fan, and got most of those, while I made a couple of contributions myself. The penultimate round was our joker, entertainment. We chose that figuring that our combined knowledge would get us most of the answers, and it did 9/10 for 18/20. There was a mix of questions, but between us we got them.
Those rounds are consistent at this quiz, with only the last changing. We were told it was "dates" which turned out to be things like Mother's Day, Shrove Tuesday, etc. I worked out Easter Sunday because I knew April Fool's Day was a Saturday; I looked that up to see if I was in the office and could therefore consider pranking the people I work with. Unfortunately we missed Remembrance Sunday, not realising that November 12th was close enough that it probably was the nearest Sunday to the 11th.
No matter though, our total was a solid 51/60 after that final 9/10. It was a high scoring quiz but we finished 3rd. Typically of recent quizzes I've done, we were only two points away from the win. A nice evening with a nice couple who seemed happy for me to join them again. I'd love to do that, though I believe the first of the month conflicts with the quiz at The Grapes until July now, and I have to say, I'll always favour the latter. That's no disrespect to the Laurie Arms, it's a decent quiz, but it's a straight choice and I can't deny my personal preference. I don't doubt I'll be back, however, and a visit on a light summer's evening might be quite nice!
Result: 51/60 (85%), 3rd/8
Week in Summation
After last week's controversies, this was a fairly unremarkable week, if I'm honest. I don't mean that in a bad way; it was very enjoyable, there was some decent scoring and I met some lovely people. I just don't see anything here making my proverbial highlight reel at the end of the year, is all. It could be that my memory is just already fading because this post is late, but I honestly can't think of anything else to say!
Total Score: 242/375 (64.53%)
Quiz #37 - Sunday 26th February, Turf Tavern Carlisle
I've done the Turf's quiz often enough now for a pattern to be starting to emerge. My 3 results prior to this one indicated that most of my points would come from the Alpha Links round, with the Picture round being effectively a write-off. It's never a good thing to rely on one round, because sooner or later, you'll inevitably roll snake-eyes on it, tanking your score.
This was on my mind throughout this quiz, and picture round did indeed go according to the form book when I got 3. Joe Perry was a rather obscure snooker player to choose for that sport, but as I do follow that sport, I was glad of the point that I knew others might miss. I was nervous going into Current Events as I didn't think I'd followed the news very closely last week, but I needn't have worried since I managed 7 for my best score on the round yet. Of course, I wasn't to know that until the end of the quiz.
The top 5 lists yet again went with the most populated cities in a given location, Spain this time. Spanish was the language I studied for 5 years in high school, but my knowledge of its cities is rather limited. It's one of those cases where football knowledge can help, but unfortunately I don't have much of that either. Still, Barcelona, Madrid and Seville were pretty obvious. Missing Valencia was a fairly bad mistake, but I just couldn't remember it. The other half of this round was to do with the most common pub names in England that begin with the letter R. I have to doubt the QM's assertion, in response to my quip about being from the wrong side of the border for this question, that the most common pub names are probably the same on both sides; I just can't see any Scottish publican thinking that "Rose and Crown" would be a sensible name here! In any case, I was restricted to 2.
I was wary about assuming I'd do well in Alpha Links again, though conscious that I needed to, and duly it wasn't to be. The questions just didn't fall, and I had only 4. Cricket followed by music was a nightmare start which just set the tone. Connections was also a bust, and I only managed a pair.
This meant I was faced with a potential difficult decision or two when it came to gambling on the Wipeout round. In a rare bit of luck, the first four questions were all answerable - albeit the third, the square root of 576, required a bit of working out. The fifth was the sort of question where I'd have had a brilliant, correct answer in a normal quiz; it was the victory over Russians in which cannons were captured from which Victoria Crosses would be made. Now this to me was probably Sevastapol, as a famous win over the Russians in Victoria's reign would have to be during the Crimean War. Was I heck going to put 5 points on the line for it here though! I did add a fifth, though I left the last four alone.
Ultimately I managed 26, which was not my lowest score on the quiz and which still left me comfortably placed. The QM wants me to win this quiz; to be honest, I think I've got a chance if I can get a few extra points on the pictures one week. Time will tell, but for now, this was an acceptable start to the week.
Result: 26/55 (47.27%), joint 4th/8
Quiz #38 - Monday 27th February, Kings Arms Dalbeattie (A)
I must admit that it takes either bravery or stupidity to knowingly attempt A's quiz alone, and I'll further confess to being possessed of something of both. Granted, my highest solo score last year did come at one of these quizzes, but I've experienced some humblings too. Big Tam's were at full strength, as were No Kan Do, and the Stooges were absent, so there were my team options gone.
My fears seemed to be realised right away with a disastrous GK. 3 just isn't good enough, though these were tough. Fortunately I had and took an immediate opportunity to redeem myself with a film round - I got all 10. 6 months ago I would have missed a couple of these, but that just shows how my knowledge is improving, so there's no denying that I earned these. That could not really be said about a round on homophones that followed, since it was the exact same round on homophones I got 9 on at the Granary last week. Still, that's hardly a slight on me, and the free 10 points (the last would not elude me this time) were much appreciated. 23/30 at least ensured that my score would be somewhat respectable when the curtain closed, especially considering that my standards for this quiz are lower than for others.
Sport was never likely to help me continue that mini-run, and to be honest 3 is fairly typical for me on the subject. The best I can say is that Big Tam's got the same score, and that I avoided the trap of the "highest possible break in snooker" question. The answer is 155, because of the free-ball rule. That is, if your opponent fouls and you can't see both sides of the target ball, you can play on any ball and call it a red. Therefore if you get a free ball with all 15 reds still on the table, you can thus get such an extra red, then the colour, and then go on to make a normal maximum, 147, giving 155 in total if the extra colour is a black. Of course, actually getting a free ball with so many target balls on the table is close to impossible, thus the feat has never been achieved in recognised competition. Still, it's possible in theory at least, and that complicates the question.
Moving on, arts and literature followed, and 6 was acceptable. The 7 I got at in the night's other GK round was welcome also, compensating somewhat for my first round disaster. When all was said and done, I therefore had a very healthy score for a solo effort! Nowhere near the winners, but that was no matter. I wasn't last, I heard too.
Speaking of which, there was a bit of controversy again, in that the winners were supposedly Big Tam's with 54.5. As noted above though, they lost 7 points on Sport alone, so I'm fairly certain they actually only got 44.5. A great score, no question, but that would only have put them in 3rd. It doesn't affect me of course, but I was marking them and I know they didn't get 5 10s. I'm not complaining or judging anyone, simply noting the potential mixup.
Result: 39/60 (65%), unknown (outwith top 3, not last)/8
Quiz #39 - Tuesday 28th February, Ship Inn Dumfries
Once again my usual team were absent, and this time I'd known about it in advance. Fortunately, I was again able to join the NCP, which again was a split team. Mostly, I was with the same people as last week, and we started well with 7/10 on GK. Both our teams had taken the bull by the horns, and my side was just a point behind the other, which led the contest at this early stage.
Sport was our subject for round 2, and this proved surprisingly fruitful for me, especially given I had noted to the team that I was unlikely to be of much help. The first several questions immediately rolled off the tongue though, including one that is now becoming a classic - the winner of Britain's first medal at the Rio Olympics. There were a few two-point question in the mix, so this was out of 14 rather than 10, the latter figure being our score. The others fell a bit by the wayside on this one, and we now led them by 4 points, and our closest rivals by 3.5.
This situation would be reversed on, of all things, geography, however. To be fair, we just overthought a few things, and a couple of times we had the correct answer and then changed our minds. It happens. We still had the lead after this round, but were now tied with the other team. That remained the case after the pictures, which was another map of Europe. I was delighted to redeem my Austria/Czech Republic mixup from last Thursday, and relieved that one of the team was about to make the same mistake before I pointed out that Austria has a border with Italy. Gettng these the right way around also guaranteed us Slovakia, and my memory of where Bulgaria sat ensured that those eastern nations were placed in the correct order. Both of us had a full house of 15, which put daylight between us and the other teams.
The specialist round was always going to be brutal, however, since it was hotel chains as chosen by the QM himself. We both fell to tied second after managing but a pair each. We further knew that we would be unable to win on music, as proved the case last week and indeed this week. Our 21 was by all means respectable, but their 24 was unbeatable. I can't tell the order of the other teams, but that looks likely to have been the best round in the room too.
There's really no argument about the result here, I think it's a fair reflection. Both of us faltered on one round, and they just managed a couple of extra points where it counted. A 1-2 for the teams is always nice to see, and hopefully I'll be back fighting next week with my own guys.
Result: 55/89 (65.12%), 2nd/8
Quiz #40 - Wednesday 1st March, The Granary Dumfries
One of the things I like most about the Granary's quiz is the variety of it; since there's no fixed structure, only a baseline 50 questions, you never get the same quiz in consecutive weeks. Round 1 was one I can't recall having seen before. It was a history round of sorts, in that we had 15 groups of four things to sort into chronological order. They ran the gamut from battles to inventions to Olympic venues to Dr Who actors. A run round, spoiled only by us not getting the answer sheets back at the end, which meant that the answers were a mere stream of meaningless letters.
Still, I knew that we had gotten some right, guessed a few and made at least one stupid mistake (on US presidents, of all things). It was the kind of round that exposes the lack of breadth of knowledge within the team; my own knowledge is certainly strong and varied, but I'll be the first to admit that it's incomplete, and my teammate's own strengths are relatively specialised. That's meaning no disrespect to her of course, but we could really have done with a couple of other bodies with knowledge of other things, and that holds true most weeks at the Granary. Our 9/15 was nothing to sniff at though, especially given I was confident we'd gotten a few right that others would have gotten wrong.
Round 2 was 20 GK questions, and it's been well-established by now that we only tend to score averagely on such rounds. This, it has to be said, was a tough round. A few questions came easily, a couple were well-guessed or worked out, but a few more eluded us, among them the odd unfortunate mixup such as Tanzania for Kenya with regards the location of Serengeti National Park. To be fair on that one, Serengeti itself is partially in Kenya, even if the Park isn't. I'll call our 11 par for the course, ultimately.
The final round was also 20 questions, for an overall 55 for the evening, with the subject this time being food and drink. That's not a great subject for either of us, though I was hopeful that I might see a question or two that I'd written myself in last week's set. I also couldn't help but regret that I'd done food and drink before seing these, as there were certainly a few usable questions here. By "usable", I mean of course "difficult", and the first two or three went immediately begging. We seemed to improve a lot after that, however, and by my own tally we had 15!
I'm not totally convinced that's correct, but it must have been up there, surprisingly. That meant our score was a bit lower than last week, but it felt harder earned and more deserved, given that I'd heard a couple of last week's rounds before. It also saw us place better, especially considering there were more teams than last week. We're under no illusions that it may be months more before we win this quiz again, but our scores are generally, gradually, improving, and we're happy about that.
Result: 35/55 (63.64%), joint 3rd/19
Quiz #41 - Thursday 2nd March, Anchor Hotel Kippford
I'm going to start at the end wth this one: last week, I joined the Disciples, scored well but tied for 2nd, 1 point behind the winning team. All of those things happened this week, too, though it was a different team member who was absent to allow me a space, and the overall score was lower. That was reflected generally, however, effectively proving that it was a harder quiz.
It started badly, with a carcrash on GK. I made a criminal error on the first question by giving Local Access Network rather than Local Area Network as the expansion for LAN. I had it written down as well and still repeatedly missed it. I can only assume I somehow confused it with Random Access Memory, but it frustrates me because that's the sort of error I'm trying to stop making. I could have had a point later in the same round, however, if I hadn't been overuled by the team as to the correct spelling of Pharaoh. Our 4 overall felt lucky, and we struggled to a 5 on geography after that.
A link round connected by "Charlie" was better as we went to 6, which was also what we scored on an initials round which I'd recommended for our joker round. I've the type of analytical mind that does well when given an extra clue, such as the first letter of the answer, though the team were more confident on Dingbats which was the picture round. I can't argue with that, as it's a strength for me as well, and the initials turned out to be TV shows which is why we missed a couple.
Unfortunately, we blew it on the joker. These were tougher than we were used to seeing, and we could only manage half of them. That's unusual between 6 of us, especially given that this is a team that actually likes them (my Ship Inn team vehemently hates them). That just left us sport to try and get over the line, and as I've already revealed, we couldn't quite do it. 6 was still good though; certainly it's better than many of more scores on it have been.
It was a shame that we fell so agonisingly short again, but the scores overall were lower. A few coin flips here and there, including in our selection of the joker round, and it could have gone the other way. As I tend to point out at such times though, our correct guesses could have also gone against us - so it evens itself out.
Result: 36/56 (64.29%), joint 2nd/9
Quiz #42, Friday 3rd March, Laurie Arms, Haugh of Urr
This was only my second visit to the Haugh, a small, insulated vilage nestled cosily between Dalbeattie and Castle Douglas. Last time I was able to join a couple of nice old ladies and I had the notion that I might do so again. Of course, I don't know the place, and I had no way of knowing who might be there. They weren't, so I assumed I'd be playing solo, until the somewhat awkward "Should I ask if I can join them, maybe glances in their direction will somehow lead to conversation" situation I was in with a couple sitting nearby resolved itself with our tables being combined. They were new to the area - they moved here from Burton-on-Trent, of all places. That's near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where I grew up 25 years ago! An amazing coincidence which gave us things to talk about immediately.
They seemed a nice couple, and their lack of local knowledge wasn't a huge issue, though it did cost us a point on GK. As I pointed out, however, "local" in this area can mean a lot of things, as my region is extremely broad - it's over 100 miles from one end to the other, so I didn't have it either. We got most of the others for 8. One of the pair was a teacher, which is always an advantage.
"The natural world" followed, and it was basically science and nature, with a couple of geography questions thrown in. We had 7, and went better than that with 9 on sport. The husband in the pair appeared to be a football fan, and got most of those, while I made a couple of contributions myself. The penultimate round was our joker, entertainment. We chose that figuring that our combined knowledge would get us most of the answers, and it did 9/10 for 18/20. There was a mix of questions, but between us we got them.
Those rounds are consistent at this quiz, with only the last changing. We were told it was "dates" which turned out to be things like Mother's Day, Shrove Tuesday, etc. I worked out Easter Sunday because I knew April Fool's Day was a Saturday; I looked that up to see if I was in the office and could therefore consider pranking the people I work with. Unfortunately we missed Remembrance Sunday, not realising that November 12th was close enough that it probably was the nearest Sunday to the 11th.
No matter though, our total was a solid 51/60 after that final 9/10. It was a high scoring quiz but we finished 3rd. Typically of recent quizzes I've done, we were only two points away from the win. A nice evening with a nice couple who seemed happy for me to join them again. I'd love to do that, though I believe the first of the month conflicts with the quiz at The Grapes until July now, and I have to say, I'll always favour the latter. That's no disrespect to the Laurie Arms, it's a decent quiz, but it's a straight choice and I can't deny my personal preference. I don't doubt I'll be back, however, and a visit on a light summer's evening might be quite nice!
Result: 51/60 (85%), 3rd/8
Week in Summation
After last week's controversies, this was a fairly unremarkable week, if I'm honest. I don't mean that in a bad way; it was very enjoyable, there was some decent scoring and I met some lovely people. I just don't see anything here making my proverbial highlight reel at the end of the year, is all. It could be that my memory is just already fading because this post is late, but I honestly can't think of anything else to say!
Total Score: 242/375 (64.53%)
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