TV Watch - Good Question - Set Questions

Ok, well where shall we start ? I guess that The Chase is as good a place as any. Its coming to an end of its initial run this week - watch out next week for a new quiz called The Fuse. ITV will thus have given us in quick succession Divided, then the Chase, then the Fuse. hat next ? Is there to be some great viewers vote to choose which will continue, and which will face the chop ? Personally I prefer The Chase to Divided, yet a lot of my non quizzing friends - yes, I do have some - are firmly in favour of Divided. Who knows, maybe The Fuse will blow them all out of the water. Watch this space.

Back to The Chase. Its confession time now. 5pm can sometimes be a quite awkward time for me to be trying to watch TV, and so I often watch the show using Virgin On Demand. Thing is, when I do that I play each contestant's initial round at normal speed, but all the chase rounds at fast forward - until the final Chase. That's becoming compulsive viewing for me. This week already Mark has won one and lost one. It was also interesting to see what happened when all four contestants were eliminated in their individual rounds. They were given a total of £4000 to play for, and they nominated one to face 2 minutes of questions. Without having to buzz in this actually gave the contestant a decent chance - even though he only started one step forward he ended up on 20 - that's good play. Mark got him in the end, but only just. I think that I've seen Shaun lose once as well. I hope that its a show that ITV will bring back.

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Right, I want to post about a couple of questions. Firstly, in praise of what I thought was a great question we were asked in Newport on Monday night - a real Trevor special.

Phonetically speaking, what connects Cary Grant with Liverpool FC, Middlesbrough FC, Sheffield Utd. , Cardiff City, Fulham FC, Arsenal FC, Tottenham Hotspur FC and a host of other football clubs ?

If you've read Simon Inglis' marvellous book about the football grounds of England and Wales, then its gettable. Archibald Leitch designed stands or part of the grounds, present or past, of all of those football clubs, and many more. As Trevor said, if the question is about who designed a particular ground, or stand, then chances are he's the answer.

As I'm sure you've worked out, Archibald Leitch is pronounced exactly the same as Archibald Leach. Which was Cary Grant's real name. Incidentally, it was also the name of John Cleese's character in "A Fish Called Wanda", although that wasn't part of the question.

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Then last night over to Cowbridge, for the Duke of Wellington quiz. Good quiz as usual. One of the features of the quiz is that the last question of the quiz proper is always a multiple point question. Last night it was ,
Name (the ) five inert gases
Now, I was away the day we did Science at school, or some such excuse. Put it this way - its far from my best subject. To be honest, I hadn't a clue. Neither had John. So what we did was to start writing down names of what we thought were the Noble Gases - Helium, Radon , Neon, Argon and Krypton. We had a point for each of them except Argon, with Xenon being given. I've spent a couple of minutes today looking up the Noble gases, and Inert gases, and trying to see the difference, but I have to admit I'm a bit stumped - although I was delighted to take the points and run on this one. However I did find that Argon is also a noble gas. So did he mean inert gases, or did he mean Noble gases ? Or are they the same thing ?

I ask this, because there's a certain type of question where you know there are two similar sets of things, and its very easy to get one confused with the other. For example - the Leeward Islands, and the Windward Islands. You know the two groups probably, but which is which ?

Good quiz. Any quiz which asks you things that you think you should know, but either can't remember, or find out that you don't, is probably hitting a lot of the right buttons.