That Christmas Quiz

Well, once again I have been shown that I don't know what I'm talking about. Last week I pontificated that IMHO themed quizzes suck, to use the vernacular. Well, last night John and I contested the Christmas themed quiz in the Culverhouse Hotel in Cardiff, and I have to say. . . it was pretty good.

Why did it succeed ? Well, even though every question was connected with Christmas there was still a wide variety of different topics, and a good variation in difficulty between the questions. Let me give you an example. Here are five questions all taken from the first round.

1) Christmas 1993 The Sun newspaper got itself into trouble for publishing what ?

2) Who discovered The Christmas Islands ?

3) What is the literal meaning of Bethlehem - either the Arabic or the Hebraic meaning ?

4) Which song was Michael Jackson's only christmas number 1 ?

5) What did Ebeneezer Scrooge buy immediately after the visit of all of the ghosts ?

Answers at the bottom of this blog

Not bad, eh ? I will confess that I had done a little homework yesterday afternoon before I set off for the quiz. John, though, was outstanding. I reckon that by myself I would have dropped 8 points - which means that I would have won by 11 points. However we dropped just one point - a bonus point for explaining why Santa used to be dressed in green. Our answer was close - that it was symbolic of living and growing things - but the QM wanted the words 'symbolic of Spring' in the answer. Fair enough. The only point I brought to the table that John didn't know himself was the name of the little girl who caught the Grinch stealing the presents - Cindy Lou Who.

So, a good evening , but there's no quiz next week, unfortunately. As for the 5th January, we'll have to give that one a miss to allow people a chance to win one before we go back there.

Answers to the questions

1) Details of the Queen's Speech
2) Captain Cook
3) Arabic - House of Meat , Hebraic- House of Bread
4) Earth Song
5) A massive turkey