University Challenge - Round 1 - Episode 4 - July 25th

The current series of University Challenge continued last night with two cities competing who I have vested interests in. Belfast is a city I have visited on several occasions and always found it to be friendly and welcoming, but my support was for the local side Newcastle and didn't they do well?

Form the off it was clear Newcastle had the edge and once they started to build a lead there was no stopping them. 235-80 is a very impressive score and we are seeing some strong teams this year. Newcastle have a really strong team, the captain (Helena Turner) was very decisive and took the lead in answering questions without time consuming conference if she knew it. Ben Dunbar also deserves credit for a stellar performance.

And what more can you ask for than a round on Eurovision! How dare Paxman insult the holy grail.......:)

Quiz Pet Hates #3

A small pet hate for the day to continue my series of Quiz Pet Hates.....Quizmasters who ask questions based on their own personal interests!

One certain quiz I attend, the guy running is obviously a massive Creedance Clearwater Revival Fan and thus questions arise each week regarding that band. Another one is clearly a massive admirer of Doctor Who so sure enough each week Doctor Who questions emerge.

Clearly, quizmasters need to separate what their personal interests are in the sake of a good quiz. This isn’t a special subject round of Mastermind, its the pub quiz and when some quiz masters fail to recognise that, its another of my pet hates!

TV Review - In It To Win It - Saturday 23rd July

One of the quiz shows which I tend to catch on a Saturday Night, if I am in, is the latest Lottery show whichever that may be. At the moment we have Dale Winton's In It To Win It, which is perhaps one of the longest running Lottery shows (I will have to look that up!).

I am sure most people reading this have caught the show before so I wont explain how it works but new for this series I believe is the ability to play along at home via the red button (no prizes, just a score at the end).

Anyway, last nights show was the usual fare with quite a low total being earned at £30,000. I thought the questions were very easy last night and had a few more decent quizzers been on the line up the total would have been much higher.

Bringing me to my main point, as with most prime time quiz shows these days, In It To Win It obviously does not want knowledgeable players in the line up. That is no disrespect to anyone who has been on the show but given the standard of questions last night I firmly believe a decent quizzer could have sat through the entire show, provided they got the luck of getting into the winners row, and answered every question right. Having only 3 multiple choices plus a basic set of questions would play right into the hands of experience quizzers to be able to win big money.

But of course the producers want better television and in this case they got what they wanted with not much prize money actually given away, plenty of Red Zone Action and every contestant with a chance at Winners Row.

Personally even though this is a good source of light entertainment for a Saturday Night I would love to see a version in this format with decent questions, no choices and good quiz players. The Format is good, but the execution could be way better!

Quiz Questions - Architecture Quiz

Well for todays quiz I’m going to have a bit of an Architectural Theme……Answers as usual to your yourself, in comment box or to fully234@hotmail.com

1. Name the famous architect who designed the town plan for Chandigarh, India?
2. In 1851 Joseph Paxton designed which building for the Great Exhibition?
3. Name the school of architecture founded by Walter Gropius in 1919?
4. Which Prize, often known as “architectures nobel” began in 1979 and has been issued annual ever since to a living architect for  their lifetime of achievement?
5. Which building this week, constructed for an event to be held in London next year, was announced as the front runner for the Stirling Prize?
6. Who was the main architect behind the Great London Plan of 1944 to rebuild the city after the war?
7. John Fowler and whom worked together to complete both the Forth Rail Bridge and London Underground System?
8. Which architect and landscape gardener earned the nickname “Capability” due to his stock reply that every garden he worked on had “excellent capabilities”?
9. Which American Architect is often referred to as the Father of Modernism and he Father of the Skyscraper?
10. Which Scottish Architect was responsible for the Caledonian Canal?
11. What was the nationality of the architect who designed the Sydney Opera House?
12. Coventry Cathedral was designed by whom?
13. What is a Campanile?
14. Brunel built which of his Bridges over the Tamra?
15. And finally……..The Albert Memorial and St Pancreas Station were built by whom?

Next week Ill choose a different theme but hope you enjoy this weeks Architecture Quiz!

Help settle a debate.........

Hopefully someone out there will take my side in a quiz related debate I have been having with a friend.

This is what occurred........

At the local quiz a question was asked....What is the state capital of Hawaii? This was around question 15 of a 60 question quiz. Then around question 46.....What is the most populous city in Hawaii?

My friends first thought was.....that is lazy quiz writing. I begged to differ. Yes, the research into that question could have been taken from the same sentence in a reference book or indeed on Wikipedia but that doesn’t make it lazy quiz writing. In fact I think its a nifty little ploy.

I was quizzing without team mates to bounce answers off on this occasion but if I had this would have made a good debate. In my head I was thinking Honolulu must be the right answers, I was scratching my brain to think of other Hawaiian cities I knew. Was it a trick question? Could two answers be the same? It gets you thinking and that is why I think rather than being a lazy peice of quiz writing it was a good idea.  

Quiz Answers...

Here are the answers from the set of questions I issued on Wednesday.......More to come soon.

1.                  Brazil

2.                  3 Minutes

3.                  Honolulu

4.                  Black Pig

5.                  Family Guy

6.                  Southampton, Northampton, West Ham, West Brom, Southend, Preston North End

7.                  Brooklyn

8.                  Addis Abada

9.                  Belguim

10.              Grasmere

11.              Oddjob

12.              Thumbelina

13.              Da vinci Airport

14.              Taverna

15.              Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

16.              Nixon

17.              Endeavour

18.              Hair

19.              New York

20.              Nicola Kidman

Friday Night Quiz....too good to be true!

Darn it!

The quiz I intended to attend last night as the first Friday Night quiz, and only one, I am aware of around my area did not happen due to it being a charity night and the quiz being pushed back into the middle of the Bingo which usually means in the case of local areas, 15 questions where most people dont play and use the time to refill pints before the bingo restarts! I did venture out though attending a local band playing at The Moorcock in Peterlee (my home on Sunday for quizzing). Just a quick shout to the band, 101, who were actually excellent.

So the search for new homes on Friday, Saturday and now Wednesday continues!

Quiz Pet Hates #2

Depending on where and how you quiz you may never have noticed this before but I am sure anyone quizzing for any length of time has noticed it, perhaps not happening to them, but to others.......and what I am talking about is “The Pitying Quizmaster”. A situation in which the quizmaster will in someway aid a team who he knows, or thinks, are going to fair badly for some reason.

My personal example’s are typical ones. I am 25 and my girlfriend is 22 (I hope I have her age right!), see picture to the left on the top of the blog. Although we do play with other team members on a regular basis, most of the time it boils down to me and her. So we walk into the quiz, especially new ones, as usually the youngest team and the smallest one. In most quizmasters this brings out a few simple reactions......

a)      They sometimes will not even offer us a quiz paper assuming we are not there for the quiz. It surprises me that even quizzes we go to  every week, or every other week, do this. New quizmasters always have the same reaction and try to downplay our efforts.

b)      Coming round in the interval suggesting answers,, asking us if we have “any blanks” on the sheet or in some strange way, apologising to us.....”Sorry about the 60’s questions?” for example.

c)       Marking up....which is my pet hate and something I intend to post about separately as it grinds me so much.

And the same thing always tends to happen near the end, especially at new quizzes. If someone else is marking they will say something like “Very good considering there is only the two of you” or if its a pitying quizmaster he may say “It was hard tonight, its tough with just two”.

 Now really I am quizzing alone as my girlfriend isn’t into quizzing at all, but imagine I did go alone, the pitying would surely increase!

I can see why the Quizmaster does this. Part of his “job” is to ensure that the quiz is popular, so to do this he/she needs to set about making everyone feel welcome to encourage them back the following week. But why so many quizmasters take pity on us and offer us help and feel the need to comment about certain issues is beyond me. I am obviously there for the quiz, my pens are on the desk, I am eyeing up the quizmaster as he hands the sheets out and my entrance money is on the desk.

Don’t get me wrong, I like some chat with the quizmaster, talking about the quiz and general chit chat but when the quizmaster does his “rounds” and simply pities us....thats a pet hate!

Another New Quiz for Thursdays....

As I have mentioned in various other posts I am currently looking for new quizzes in the local area and this week found out that Peterlee Catholic Club hosted a regular quiz night each Thursday. It was a pleasant evening so myself and my other half took a leisurely 30 minute walk up to the venue in the hope I had found a new home, or at least an alternative one, for my quizzing needs on a Thursday night.

Its been years since I have been in the Peterlee Catholic Club and certainly have never been in the upstairs room where the quiz is played before but the impressions were good. Very smartly decorated with a nice atmosphere, friendly service and there were around 9 teams (other than us it was at least 5 per team) playing so it was a decent turnout. For anyone who is local the quiz starts at 9pm and took around an hour and a half to complete.

The format is quite simple. 10 picture questions open the quiz followed by 5 General Knowledge, 5 Current Affairs and 5 Sports Questions. There is no easing in here, the question are all teasing and in some case quite tough so we had to be on the ball straight away. 

Following this there were 5 questions on identifying Singers and Songs from pieces of music and straight after the break there was another 5. That means 20 points in a quiz out of 55 are music tracks. I don't so much mind these, and it certainly gives a bit of variation to the quiz, but due to me being 25 and my girlfriend being 22 some of the music we just have no clue so we struggled a little bit picking up very few points. It was fun still though as there were a few songs we spent a while thinking about and ended up getting, and rounds like this give my other half, who isnt into normal quizzing, something to get her teeth into.

The round ends with 5 General Knowledge and 5 Sports questions and that is the end of the main quiz. The Peterlee Catholic Club also hold a Jackpot question for no extra cost with a small cash prize although last nights was  very hard being based on knowing what was the first cruiser class to be fitted with anti torpedo missles! Hasten to say I could not even pout together a decent guess and the Jackpot was not won.

In the end we came a respectable 7th out of 9 teams which considering team size and the music round I was happy with. I got all the questions I should be getting and it was a good quiz.

All in this seems to have been a very very good week for finding new Quizzes to add to my weekly rounds. there is some competition on a Thursday Night around here, by far the most popular quiz night other than Sunday, but the quiz at the Peterlee Catholic Club is likely to be my home for the next few weeks for Thursday Night Quzzing! 

A well run, friendly and welcoming quiz!

If you overhear an answer..................

Now, when it comes to quizzing I am a bit of a purist I suppose like most quizzers. In the quiz room I do not like receiving any help from anyone outside the team, hate when quizmasters give out answers and cannot abide cheating. However, what happens when you hear an answer or are told an answer that you simply cannot avoid hearing? Do you put it down?

Now, I will give you the scenario I was in last night. The venue was the Southside Social Club and it was the break after 25 questions. I knew at this point, from talking to the locals that it was a tough quiz to win and being only really myself (my girlfriend was with me but she isn't into quizzing at all!) I knew I did not have a hope of winning. I walked to the bar to get a mid quiz pint when I heard this....

----To Barman "That Creedence Clearwater Revival question...it'll be Bad Moon rising won't it?".....

Now, the guy asking the question was not playing the quiz. Earlier a question had come up asking for the name of Creedence Clearwater Revival's first number one record (I think). I honestly did not know exposing a huge blackspot in my knowledge, the song is way before my time and I just have never been interested in the band so it never has been in my mind. I could not even guess because of my lack of knowledge of the band. 

But suddenly thanks to the bloke at the bar, I had heard the answer, or an answer, which I could  not avoid. Do I go back and put it down or do I simply stick to my guns and ignore it? What would you do in this scenario?

What I choose to do was ignore it. I wanted a fair score and a fair placing in the rankings and I would never have said Bad Moon rising in a million years and being the first time at Southside Social Club in Easington Village I wanted to see where I genuinely would have come. To me hearing that answer was akin to going on my phone and finding the name of Captain Pughwash's creator which was another question I didn't know. I wouldn't consider using the phone ever so I decided not to use the answer I had heard. 

What would others do in that situation? 

Friday Quiz Found But Wednesday Disappears !

Imagine my delight if you will this week when after months of trying I found a Quiz that runs on a Friday night. Easington Colliery Club host a quiz at 9pm, I have no idea of format, prizes or indeed difficulty but a quiz on a Friday night is so rare around these parts it has to be worth a shout.

So there I was, happy I now had 6 nights of quizzing I could potentially attend (with vast options on Thursdays and Sundays) when all of a sudden, Wednesday has vanished! Southside Social Club is my new home for Tuesdays, the usual Moorcock in Peterlee will remain my Sunday home with varied quizzes in between but now I am left without any quiz action on a Wednesday.

Is this normal? I assumed Wednesday Nights would be ideal quiz nights for pub’s, middle of the week droughts et al.  But a local pub has just cancelled its quiz and there is nothing within 20 miles at least of here and due to bad bus services and the expense of taxi’s I am left with no real options on a Wednesday night, so its time to hunt down some quizzing action for a midweek fix!

Saturday remains quizless too!

Friday and Saturday Night Quizzing

Do many fellow quizzers attend quizzes on Friday and Saturday nights??

Its a question I have been meaning to ask on a wider scale for some time but have never got round to it. In my ideal week I would love to attend a quiz every night and there are definitely certain weekends where the Sunday cannot come soon enough, and I crave a quiz on a Friday or Saturday evening. I am just interested to see if other quizzers get the chance to do so?

There are very very few if any around my local area and it would involve a decent travel to the nearest one, although I am not confident it still runs. A fellow friend of mine told me there are only two quizzes in the whole county on a Saturday Night and both are hardcore but both seem to have either shut, or simply I cant confirm whether it still runs save for actually taking the 30 minute trip to find out.

It is of course obvious why this happens....quizzes are used to help bring in trade on nights when trade is usually slow. For many pubs these days, particularly in this area, they live and die by their takings on a Friday and Saturday Night so do all they can to get the regular drinkers in who will spend the night pouring all sorts of drinks and shorts down their necks and keep the tills rolling. On the opposite of this, Quizzes tend not to bring in bigger spenders and whereas is a two hour quiz a team may have just two pints each, on a night out a group of friends will consume far more with just a bit of music and dancing.

Even the older, more traditional social clubs arent interested round here. People are prepared to sit in silence and play bingo on a Friday and Saturday, take part in key draws and such like and in the club I am a member off the weekend entertainment is a pub singer, break fro bingo and key draw, rounded off by the singer but for most people the bingo is key. Surely if people are prepared to play Bingo at 9.30pm on a Saturday night, then there is a market for quizzes.

 Surely in bigger cities there are quizzes ran on weekends? I am interested to know other peoples experiences. Sunday and Thursday are the biggest quiz nights in these parts, and there are still ample quizzes Monday-Wednesday but the only chance of quiz action on a weekend is the take-all-your-money quiz machines located in every single pub around this area.

Return of Quiz Questions

I am going to start to place a series of Quiz Questions up on TQA again on a weekly basis. Feel free to either answer them to yourself, email me at fully234@hotmail.com or post answers in the comments. Either way hope you enjoy these....

1. In terms of size, what is the largest country in the Southern Hemisphere?
2. What is the maximum length of a song allowed for it to be eligible for the Eurovision Song Contest?
3. What is the state capital of Hawaii?
4. What was the name of Captain Pugwash’s ship?
5. In which animated TV show would you find the Griffin family?
6. Name the six clubs in the English Football League (Top 4 Divisions) to have a direction in their name (North, East, South or West)?
7. What is the Christian name of David Beckhams first son?
8. Name the capital city of Ethiopia?

9. From which country does the drink Stella Artois originate? 
10. Dove Cottage, the home of William Wordsworth, is in which village? 
11. In the Bond film Goldfinger, what was the name of Goldfinger's bodyguard?
12. In the Hans Christian Andersen story, which little girl was found inside the petals of a flower?
13. What is the name of Italy's largest airport, situated in Rome?
14. What is the Greek word for restaurant?
15. What does AIDS, as in the disease, stand for?
16. Which American President withdrew American troops from Vietnam?
17. What was the name of Captain Cook's famous ship?
18. What is a rhinoceros' horn made of?
19. Which city became the capital of the USA in 1788?
20. Who, upon splitting with her partner said, "At least I can wear high heels now."? 

Quizzing - New Quiz - Found a new home for Tuesday Nights.....

Well, as always when a quiz is on the horizon, I was in a very good mood yesterday and even more so as the quiz we were attending last night was one I have been meaning to attend for some time. It was at the Southside Social Club in Easington Village. Here is a link to the street view of the place on google as I cannot for the life of me find a picture of it online....

Southside Social Club

Anyway the funny thing about this quiz is that I am a member of the club, have been going for years and my family have been members there for longer than I have been born. But it just so happens with the quiz being quite late on a Tuesday and Easington being the next village away from me I have never got round to going.

But alas last night we gave it a go and I must say, it was right up my street!

The quiz takes a simple format. 60 General Knowledge questions.....making it one of the few round here not to use pictures and/or music. There is no entry fee, thus the prizes are a quite reasonable 10 pint cheques, followed by 6 and 4 with a couple for the team in second off last.  It starts around 9.15 pm for anyone in the local are wishing to go and the quizmaster, who according to the sheet is John, does a good job of just getting through the questions. The pace is good, there is not too much sitting around waiting for the next set or a massive interval inbetweeen...its just a quick fire general knowledge quiz!

How about the questions then? Well it covered last night a range of areas from current affairs and history to usual quiz fodder such as American State Capitals and Capital Cities. There is a nice range of questions, one or two with bonus points and towards the end there are questions worth 2,3,4 and 5 points which last night were things such as 5 countries with the highest Jewish Population, first 4 novels by Rushdie etc etc. Really good mix.

I thoroughly enjoyed this quiz and Southside Social Club was busier than I imagined  showing it must be in a good state. The only one minor complaint I have about it, and its very minor as I found this to be a superb quiz, was the fact the opening 5 questions are too easy and he seemed to give away another 6-7 points to make sure teams got a score of some sort. For instance...."Which Global conflict took place between 1939-45?" and "Which newspaper shut recently mind hacking allegations?". Plus just as a matter of personal taste, there were three question on Captain Pugwash which is a bit overkill. Easy questions gets the quiz started I suppose but its only a minor gripe as in all this was an excellent quiz and I shall be returning to the Southside Social Club in Easington Village on a weekly basis for a quiz fix!

Which Questions Give You Most Satisfaction?

Now, don't ask me how, but a conversation I was having yesterday turned into a discussion on the various types of quiz questions out there and I was asked "So what question do you get the most pleasure out of?" and it really got me thinking so I thought I would open it up to readers.

In a normal quiz I see a few options for getting questions right........

a) An easy question. You just knew, pure and simple. Did not require thinking.
b) A hard question that few seem to know, but you do instantly.
c) A guess whether using educated guesses or not, a question you didn't know but managed to guess.
d) A question you argue with over a team mate, your answer gets the nod and you get it right.
e) A question you spend time trying to recall and mulling over and eventually get it at the last second.

Now obviously the definition of "easy" and "hard" is very loose indeed but I hope you get my point. My friend claimed the only questions that gave him any sort of "buzz" these days was questions he didn't know but was able to make educated guesses at. I saw his point to a certain extent and I must admit although I generally hate guessing, if I make a solid educated guess at a question using some form of logic and it turns out to be right, the it does give me more satisfaction than a question I just know! Don't ask me why but when the question master is going through the answer, the ones I know are right seem to have little impact but the ones I have made a good educated guess at always have me a bit excited to know if I am right!

However I take little pleasure from complete guesses being right so that category comes half and half for me.

I am not the sort either to argue with a team mate for more than is necessary over a question. Obviously both team mates, if arguing over an answer, have some logic behind it. I know a lot of people, and have played with a lot of people in teams, who are only there to prove they are better than team mates. Little care is given to the overall result as long as the team knows who is the best. Not my style at all.

Knowing a hard question is always satisfying. Having your long hard reading and studying work rewarded by a question that only you and a few others know is a good feeling and if you are keen on winning then its a point gained so even better.

However, the questions I prefer to get right and the ones that give me the most satisfaction are the ones which I have to rack my brains and really think about it get. The ones that may not come straight away but require a level of deducing, elimination and thought. Getting a question right after a few minutes thinking for me gives far more satisfaction that the ones that I know off the top of my head.

Thoughts of others? Is a right answer the same for you either way or do you take more pleasure in certain ones?