Kryptonite

I apologise in advance, because I know that this whole post is going to sound arrogant.

It’s probably a very immature thing to admit to, but the fact is that in a number of the social quizzes I go to, I do like the feeling of being the top dog in my own backyard as it were. Not so much the rugby club, perhaps. My team does tend to win more quizzes than any other team, but it’s not a case of domination. If Rob and the Lemurs have a full team, then it’s going to be a competitive match, and they win their fair share. Not so the Monday quiz in the Pill Harriers in Newport, either. There’s some good teams that play there every week, and while we win fairly regularly we certainly don’t win more than anyone else. We wouldn’t win all the time even if there were no handicaps either. It’s a competitive quiz.

However there are some other quizzes I go to fairly regularly which I expect to win in the normal course of events. Many of the Sunday night quizzes that we’ve attended in the past few years fall into this category. Now, and here I am beginning to wend my way round to connecting up with the title of this post, when you expect to win a quiz almost as a matter of course, it’s a very short step to beginning to worry that THIS week is going to be the week when you finally lose. This is the week when they will finally discover what your particular quiz kryptonite is.

You’ll know of course that kryptonite is the substance that the writers of the Superman comic strip created when it was becoming difficult to put him into any situation where he could conceivably be in any danger. Without going into long and boring details about the different properties of the different varieties of kryptonite, basically it robs of him of his powers, weakens him, and long enough exposure to it would kill him.

Most quizzers probably have categories of question which they consider to be weaknesses. I certainly do. It’s these subjects that are your quiz kryptonite. All it would take would be for a high proportion of questions on these categories to be injected into an otherwise harmless quiz, and suddenly everyone else would get to see that you’re human after all, and vulnerable. I’ll give you an example. It’s a shame to admit it, but I find cricket a difficult subject. As I think I may have mentioned before, I have nothing against the sport. For example, both the 1981 and the 2005 Ashes series are in my all-time top 10 most enthralling sporting contests. But the fact is that I think my attention span is just too short to be able to immerse myself in it. Lord knows, I do try, but the fact is that cricket facts, and cricket knowledge just don’t seem to stick with me. So if I’m in a quiz, and you want to shove a couple of banana skins underneath my feet, just make with the cricket questions. Now you know.

There are other areas of kryptonite for both John and me as a team, but you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t share them with you now. You never know which question masters might be reading ( and if you are – Hi ! You’re very welcome. ) .

Before we go any further, I’m happy to report that we won last night’s quiz, despite the fact that Rob, his wife Pam, and two quizzing friends made an unexpected appearance. I blame myself – I’ve been going on to him about how good the Sunday night quiz is. So at least we’re still on the pedestal . . . at least until next Sunday, that is.