This is what really happened. My son, Mike, plays in a quiz in Bridgend every Tuesday night. A few months ago his team couldn’t make it, so Jess, Dan, Zara and I went down to help him out. Well and good. Tuesday afternoon he put a message into the family group chat to the effect that his team couldn’t make it, and did anyone fancy coming along to play? Well, I don’t know, he must have just got me on the right day. I was QM in the Thursday quiz last week, so I haven’t actually played in a quiz since the week before that, so I quite fancied it.
The way it turned out was that nobody else could play, so
it was just Mike and me. Now, let me state this from the start. The quiz in
question is run by the teams involved. All money raised goes to charity. All of
the teams provide a question master from time to time, who compiles the quiz,
and it’s all done for the love of doing it. Honestly, that’s totally
praiseworthy in every way. And it means that I feel a bit of a heel, making the
criticisms that I’m going to make. That’s one reason why I’m not mentioning the
name of the pub involved. But it was a fascinating quiz on Tuesday night, even though
I venture to say that in my opinion, the QM did commit a few errors.
Not factual ones though, as far as I could tell. No. The
problems with this particular quiz were more conceptual, in my opinion. Let us
begin with the handouts. Yes, plural. First of all there was a set of 15
pictures – all caricatures of well known people. Well, you may well be aware
that I have difficulty identifying famous people from clear photographs, so
right up my street this was not. Thankfully Mike is much better at this sort of
thing than I am. Then there was a word handout. This was an ingenious thing,
culled, I would think, from the puzzle pages of the i newspaper, which involved
words linked either by rhyme, meaning, or one letter change. This was more my
sort of thing, and I worked them all out. Finally there were two number
squares, again culled from the I newspaper puzzle pages. Eventually I worked
them out.
Now, just these handouts presented a quite testing mental
workout even before the quiz began. Then we were onto the quiz proper. In the
first round of 20 questions, 16 or 17 of them were all about Religion. Now,
don’t get me wrong, religion is a perfectly valid and even fruitful topic for
quiz questions. But the best part of a whole long round of them is overkill.
Especially considering that most of them had a part a and a part b. Some of
them even had as many as 4 answers – for example – which are the 4 religions
permitted by the state in China? Now, that’s a question ripe for 2 points for
all 4, 1 point for 3 out of 4. Nope. Our question master gave 1 point for all
4. If you’ve been with me for any great length of time you might well be aware
of my opinions about themed quizzes – that is – a little goes a long way.
Then for the next 10 questions we switched to general
knowledge. Well, that was what we were told. Actually 5 of them were on British
politics of the noughties, and the rest were on History. Then we had another
handout. The handout had 10 questions, all on food and drink. The first five
gave names of dishes, and four possible definitions, and you had to pick the
right one. Guessing game. The next five were anagrams of well known dishes. Again,
quite a bit of serious brain work required, and I’m sorry to say we didn’t do
very well on that round. Ten more multiple answer questions to finish.
Right – criticisms. I walked out of the quiz feeling as if I’d
just had a two hour examination. For a pub quiz, this called for some serious thinking
and working out. Now, that’s not necessarily intrinsically a bad thing, but this
was an ordinary pub quiz. I found it a little overwhelming, so heaven alone
knows how the ‘only here for the craic’ brigade found it. Then there was the
huge religion content. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind betting that the question
master really likes religion as a subject. Which is all well and good – but for
me it led to him making a very basic error when putting his quiz together.
Because you’re making the quiz for everyone. Actually, that’s not strictly
true. You’re making the quiz for everyone participating in the quiz, except for
yourself as question master. Therefore your own likes and dislikes in a quiz
are irrelevant. Because you’re not playing in it. It’s about what is going to
be entertaining and fun for the players.
Well, we got to the end of the quiz, and the way that they
find out who won is by calling out – anyone got over 20? – Anyone got over 30
etc. etc. This went on for some time. By the time we got to 90 there were still
two teams left – a legacy of having so many multiple point questions. In the
end, we were the only team to score more than 100. But there’s an issue in
itself. You see, it’s one thing being in a quiz where the winning team scored
in the 60s and your team only managed a score in the 40s. It’s a completely
different thing when you score in the 50s, and the winning team score in the
100’s. So, all in all it was an interesting evening.
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Wednesday evening brought the monthly film quiz in the Gwyn
Hall. I’ll be honest, this was not the first time since my lost weekend period
that I’ve attended two quizzes on consecutive evenings – whenever I’ve played
in the monthly quiz I’ve usually gone to the club quiz on the following
evening. However it’s the first time that I’ve embarked on quizzes on 3
consecutive evenings since the lost weekend.
The theme was British films – although that theme was
rather widely interpreted, and probably with good reason. I don’t always play
in this one. Jess and Dan usually play, along with our friends Adam and Fran.
Adam is a very, very fine film quizzer, and Fran is no slouch, so the upshot
has been that they’ve won something like 8 out of the 10 they’ve played in. We
nearly didn’t win on Wednesday night, mind you. In the end we won by half a
point.
The prize is a free cinema ticket each to the Gwyn Hall’s
cinema. Wroth having without doubt. Now, maybe we’re being paranoid, but it did
seem to us that there was a hint of the gritted teeth in the congratulations
from the organisers this time. Well, there was a month ago as well, if I’m
honest, but it was even more obvious on Wednesday. As it happens, next month’s
quiz falls on my birthday, and we’ve pretty much decided to let it go. Of
course, the ironic thing is that Adam and Fran are away I think, so we’d be extremely
unlikely to win anyway.
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Last night in the rugby club, then, made up the final leg
of the trilogy. nd the upshot of it was that I went into the quiz caring far
more about winning than I normally do. Now, okay, when a quiz actually starts and
the adrenaline starts flowing I never play to lose. I can’t deliberately give a
wrong answer. I give wrong answers all the time, but when I do I am actually
trying to give a right answer, if you see what I mean.
But last time, I was building myself up to it for hours
beforehand. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I was if anything
taking it far too seriously. If we had lost, for example, what difference would
it have made? Would I have had to give back the prizes from Wednesday and
Tuesday? No. Would it have meant that I didn’t have an unbeaten run stretching
from August 2021 until the day before? No. And with hindsight, again, I don’t
really like the way it made me treat this quiz more seriously.
I don’t recall getting up to challenge a question or an
answer in the quizzes in the club I’ve been to since returning last summer. I
did it twice last night. Granted, I was right both times, but it’s still not
something I’m proud of. Last night’s quiz had connections in some of the
rounds. The QM asked the question “In which book by Daniel Defoe did Captain
Nemo appear?” We did pause for a moment, because Defoe wrote tons of novels,
even though only Robinson Crusoe and to a lesser extent Moll Flanders are
actually read any more. But Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea” fitted the connection perfectly. So I went up and asked “Are you SURE it
was Deniel Defoe?” He realised the error.
After that, he asked “Which was the first Carry On film
shot in colour?” I wrote down Cruising, then he added – “was it Cruising or
Abroad?” Then he went and gave the answer as Abroad. I went and told him that I
was really sorry, but the answer is Cruising, and what is more every time that
the question has been asked in this very quiz – which is many – the answer has
always been Cruising. I think that I should admit that we were about 10 points
ahead by the time this happened.
So while on the one hand I am very pleased and smug that I
went three for three on consecutive evenings this week, I’m really not proud of
taking it so seriously last night.
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