A Question of Numbers

What do you think about number questions? I’ll tell you why I ask. It was Dai Norwich’s quiz on Thursday. You remember Dai? So called because his name is david and – oh, you do remember. Fair enough. Well, as I said, it was Dai’s quiz on Thursday, and he had a greater than usual number of number questions in his quiz.

Now, you probably know what I’m going to say. I’m not a great numbers man myself. Oh, don’t get me wrong, back in the days when I was serious about my quizzing I worked on such number related things as would guarantee a pay out over the long haul – binary, roman numerals etc. – stuff I had learned in the primary school but really needed to brush up on. But as a subject, I’m afraid that numbers don’t really interest me. Trust me, I was very happy, on receipt of my gentleman’s grade C in O Level Maths, to take the money and run, dropping the subject like a hot potato.

When it comes to quizzes, or course there’s a place fo number questions. For example, in last week’s quiz we were given a figure and asked what was it a measurement of. After rejecting seconds in a day, we (alright, Dan) came up with inches in a mile. Bingo. I think it’s a good question because you can work it out. What I really don’t like are the kind of questions where a) there’s no way of working it out – and – b) there’s no interest or profit in knowing the answer (apart from earning a point in the quiz. You know the sort of thing – what percentage of pet owners in the UK own a dachshund called Dennis? Who cares?

I’m being a little unfair, I know. If we take the only one from Thursday that I can remember – What percentage of people born in the UK do not speak any foreign language – you can at least apply a little working out. Basing it on the fact that, taken as a whole nation, we are lazy linguists, probably because our own language is so widespread as a second language we reckoned a little over 60 and it was given as 65. But like a lot of kinds of question, a little goes a long way.

Personally, I wouldn’t ask more than one or two number questions in the same quiz anyway. If I did ask a number questions where I didn’t think there was anything in the question giving you a chance, and there was not a way of working it out, then at least I’d give some options to choose from.

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I was delighted to see the return of regular Bridge of Lies this last week.  It might seem a relatively simple thing to come up with a daytime quiz that makes a virtue of just getting on with it, which offers a chance to even the quiz novice and yet has plenty to keep the serious quizzer in the audience occupied. For all this, I’d argue that the number of quizzes that manage to do this is relatively small. So I am pleased that the 2022 Best New Show LAMMY winner continues to provide excellent entertainment.