Quiz Brains Race - Update

Well - I have to say that the Mayday in Melincryddan Quiz didn't turn out exactly as I thought it would back on Wednesday night.

If you read my blog last week, you'll know that this is a quiz that is very dear to my heart. Normally I play as captain of a team made up from my colleagues at the school, who are all non quizzers. Last year we were beaten on a tie break by a team containing my best quiz mate and mentor John. So this year I invited him to fill one of the vacancies on our team created by the head of Mathematics taking up a Deputy Headteacher post at another school.

John, being an all round good chap, agreed. Then disaster struck in the form of a chest infection. John couldn't make it on Wednesday. Ok - well, the way I looked on it was that at least he wouldn't be playing against us, even if he wasn't playing for us. Then my Head of Department said that he couldn't make it. The last member of the team was unavailable too. So by Wednesday morning the school team was down to just one member. Me.

I suppose that I asked for it inviting John to join the school team. Still, I couldn't persuade any of the other staff to give up valuable marking and preparation time on a Wednesday evening, and so I was joined by my oldest daughter Phillippa. Phillippa is currently a learning support assistant at the school, so does qualify for the team as of right.

The quiz wasn't well attended. The long serving member of the committee who got the quiz going again a couple of years ago has stepped down, and I'm afraid the people who took over didn't manage to publicise it as well as he had. More importantly, there was no obvious opposition. There were about 6 teams, ranging from our team of 2 to a team of 7 or 8, but there was no obvious quizzer amongst the opposition. Linsey, our QM had thought of this, and so in a break from tradition half of the points for the evening would be awarded for a picture round. Now, if you're a regular reader you'll appreciate that this prospect did not actually fill me with joy. However when he gave out the pictures, I suddenly realised that we were unlikely to lose. They were pictures of classic British sitcoms from the last 50 years.

So we scored 100% on the pictures, and dropped 5 points out of 50 on the actual quiz, enough to win by a comfortable margin.

Ah, the terrible price of victory ! I promised to set the questions and act as QM for next year's event.