New teams -What do you do when you know what's wrong, but don't know what's right ?

Two new teams contested the weekly quiz at Aberavon Rugby club last night. Anything so unusual in that ? Well, yes, and again, no. We do have new teams from time to time, but two on the same evening is unprecedented. They competed well for much of the quiz, one of them finishing in the top 4, after being just a couple of points behind the leaders at the halfway stage, and the other being one of only two teams to score a full house on any of the rounds.

Hardly newsworthy, you might think, and of course you'd be right. I just couldn't help thinking that its always nice to see new teams, but even more than that, its nice when teams come in and are competitive. We've got a pretty good record at keeping new teams once they start with us so I've high hopes that they'll be back again next week. Judging by the scores there are a few quizzers amongst them, which makes interesting speculation whether they've only just discovered us, or whether they used to play in another Thursday nighter which has folded, or they've had enough of.

While on the subject of last night's quiz, we had one of those interesting questions where you KNOW that the answer your team want to put down is wrong, but you haven't got another alternative answer.

The question was something along the lines of : -
Which element of the periodic table - atomic number 83 - is often given to patients with heartburn or an upset stomach ?
The answer the team came up with was Magnesium - as in Milk of Magnesia. That's not a daft answer at all - but the problem was that I knew that Magnesium is number 12 . I'm not boasting about this, I just got lucky that we took a group of kids from the school to a presentation about memory techniques once, and one of the tricks he showed us he used the first 15 elements for as an example. It worked so well that I've never forgotten them since - but its only the first 15.
However, the problem was that I still had no idea which number 83 was. In such a case, we did the only thing you can do in such a case , and put down the plausible wrong answer in the hope that the QM had made a mistake. Of course he hadn't. The answer is Bismuth - as in Pepto-Bismol.

-----------------------------------------

Re: The Chase

As Anne kindly pointed out in response to my last post, we now know that there are two resident Chasers, and they are Mark Labbett and Shaun Wallace. As I'm sure most readers will know, Shaun was the 2004 Mastermind champion, and also the runner up in last year's Are You An Egghead - so there's no question about his TV quiz credentials.

I've never actually met Shaun . Its ironic really, since he's from Wembley and I'm originally from down the road in Ealing, yet he's the only Humphrys - era champion I don't know at all, so my comments need to be viewed in this light. But he has some screen presence, and I like him as the Chaser. I know he's a barrister, and I wouldn't be surprised if a few defendants have wilted under his cross-examination. Still, he came a little bit of a cropper last night. He was set a target of 20, which is formidable, but no more than he managed on Tuesday. A number of tricky questions later, which the team kept getting right to peg him back, and he fell short by a few steps. I can't say anything - I doubt very much whether I'd have done much better with that particular set of questions.

I love the last round, or The Final Chase as they call it. Yet I have friends who really like the head to head rounds, but don't like the final, because it goes too fast. Its all a question of personal taste I suppose. I personally think that quick fire rounds taste better than not - so- quickfire, or flippin-slowfire rounds, that's all .