3 horse race

How are you doing, then? Me? Oh, having a lovely weekend, thanks for asking, and looking forward to Mastermind coming back tomorrow – that’s taking it for granted that tomorrow’s events don’t cause it to be postponed. If they do, well, that’s just one of those things.

You know, I have posted this before, but sometimes, when Jess or Dan is the question master for the Thursday night quiz in the club, I can’t help seeing myself 27 years ago when I started there. They both seem to really enjoy setting the quiz, and even though they’ve only been doing it for a year, they’re both committed to refining the way they do it, and to finding different ways of making the quiz they deliver that bit better and bit more interesting. I was like that, once upon a time.

Case in point. Jess made the quiz on Thursday night. Now, she could quite easily have just produced the standard club quiz – 8 rounds of ten general knowledge questions, and a handout of twenty – twenty five pictures. And don’t get me wrong, I think everyone would have been grateful. However, she also used connections – 3 questions in each round which are unconnected in themselves, but their answers all connect with each other. I talked to Jess about this, and she feels that coming up with the connections, and refining them into a form that works, is what she really enjoys when putting the quiz together. -That’s my girl!- I thought to myself as she said this. There are other setters in the club from other teams who just don’t seem to get the point of refining the questions, or just don’t care about it, which results in a desperately uneven set. One of these setters I've alluded to can, in the same quiz, produce a connection of undoubted brilliance, then, in the next round, produce something which you’d need a team of Bletchley Park codebreakers to unscramble.

But it’s not just about connections. Jess also produced a handout of photographs of actors and actresses portraying various Kings and Queens. A tricky set this, and it took real team work to get them. Interesting – something above the usual page of bland, vapid celebrity mugshots of the sort that other setters – alright, me – produce.

Not satisfied, Jess also included an anagram in each round. I’d like to think that I don’t lecture Jess, Dan and Adam too much about my own quiz values, but they just seem to get it. Variety is the spice of life as the best question setter in my time at the club, Brian Jones, used to say. Something for everyone.

The sad thing about the quiz is that for all the effort and thought and care that Jess put into the quiz, there were only three teams there altogether. It deserved more. Hopefully this was just a blip because of seasonal holidays.