Yes , my team and I have been comparing ideas, and after hours of drawing up shortlists, and ruthlessly whittling down the entries, here are what we believe to be the top five most annoying sayings quizzers use : -
Number 5) Its on the Tip of my Tongue
This particular phrase is usually the prelude to minutes of faffing around as a member of your team struggles in vain to remember something that they probably never knew in the first place.
Number 4) I Should Know This One
Usually the team are too polite to issue the deserved response to this one - namely - you're right , you should know it - so why the hell don't you ?
Number 3 ) Trust Me
Look, you'd never buy a used car from someone who said this to you, would you ? So why would you want to buy a precious answer from someone who says it ? Especially if it is a particularly dodgy answer, and lets be honest, the person would never have asked you to trust them if it wasn't a dodgy answer.
Number 2) I'll know it when he tells us the answer
The judging panel had a huge amount of difficulty deciding between this one, and the next as to which should be awarded the top spot in our cavalcade of cringeworthiness. On reflection this just loses out, but is still highly commended for its irritation factor. It is a statement of stunning obviousness, none of which is mitigated by the fact that it is in fact verbal shorthand for - I know the answer to this one, but it won't come, and I won't actually remember it until we are given the answer, when I will be thoroughly ashamed that I couldn't actually remember it. - Of course, the purpose of saying it is to prove to your team that you're not completely useless, and on another day at another time you'd have had the answer like a shot. The trouble is your team won't believe you anyway.Number 1) The Question Master Is Always Right
The judging panel felt that they had to award this venerable old warhorse the top slot, simply because of the way that it is so often criminally used to defend the indefensible. It doesn't matter how obvious the question master's mistake may be, when he asks, for example,
What is the capital of Tanzania ?
and then informs you that the answer is
Dar Es Salaam
and you try to tactfully inform him that Dodoma became the capital decades ago, you will be verbally beaten down on all sides by this chant -
The Question Master Is Always Right.
1 comment:
The one that annoys me most is "it was a bit before my time", a favourite of contestants on Eggheads (generally in response to questions on pop music of the '60s). History is, presumably, pretty much off limits in schools these days as most of it is before everyone's time..
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