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Jessica was question master in the quiz I the rugby club on Thursday. In case you haven’t been with me for long, Jessica is my youngest daughter. She is part of my team in the quiz in the rugby club along with my son in law Dan, our friend Adam, his fiancée Fran, and new recruit, my mother-in-law Jen. Fran couldn’t play on Thursday, and Jen is back in Spain sorting out business. Okay – so, we’re the only team in the quiz where four members of the team set quizzes. And Thursday was Jess.

The little tinker blindsided us. I mean alright, I’m her Dad and that’s bad enough. But to do it to her own husband! She had told both of us that she couldn’t find enough connections so she wasn’t going to do any. Then she did this. We got to the last four questions of round one – they were

-        Whose last album ‘Blackstar’ was released posthumously in 2016, the year of his death?

-        Which electrical device was invented by John Logie Baird?

-        Who was the first footballer to be transferred for £1 million?

Then she said,

-        What is the connection between your last three answers?

Blindsided completely. Sometimes I can spot a connection as the questions are asked. This one I did not see coming and it hit me right between the eyes. Part of the problem was that we’d answered

-        David Bowie

-        Television

-        Trevor Francis

The key to it was answering TV to the second of them. When it finally occurred to me to try TV, then the lyric – ‘TV’s, deep freeze and David Bowie LPs’ gave me it. For some reason I didn’t recall Trevor Francis in the lyric, but of course it is – altogether now – “Trevor Francis tracksuits from a mush in Shepherd’s Bush”.

Nice connection, and to be fair Jess’ quiz seemed to go down really well on Thursday. I should bloody think so too. She’d gone out of her way to cater for the audience. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I turn fifty nine next week, and I’m still one of the young whippersnappers in the quiz. Even if they did shout at Jess at one point when she did a round of (largely) 70s and 80s catchphrases. Now, the traditional Welsh pronunciation of the surname Mainwaring is Main – Wearing, rather than Mannering. Jess has never watched Dad’s Army, so understandably when she gave the answers, she said that ‘You stupid boy’ was the catchphrase of Captain Main Wearing, several of them all shouted at once ‘MANNERING!” The irony of this is that in years gone by Aberavon RFC’s most famous supporter was called Mrs. Mainwaring (mother of Billy) pronounced Main Wearing.

Well, she didn’t let it put her off her stride, and I got the feeling that she was enjoying it as much as the teams were. I rather liked her handout – photographs of twenty five board games. We had 23. I couldn’t dredge up Articulate, and I’ve never actually played Sorry. (Sorry, Lawrence – and if you understand that reference you must be at least as old as me) I’ve never played the Game of Life either for that matter. Or Risk. I never knew I’d led such a sheltered life.

Connections do take time and trouble

I have a feeling that this is going to be a bit of a curmudgeonly post, 28 years ago I introduced the connections quiz to the rugby club. You know what I mean by this – you ask 3 or more seemingly unconnected questions, then ask people to say what the connection is between the answers. Now, I didn’t invent it. I played in a quiz in Neath which did it and thought – ‘I like this, I’m going to steal this idea.’ – so I did. Which means that I’m not going to get on my high horse about someone stealing my gimmick – for one thing it was never mine in the first place.

Jess and Dan have both used connections in their quizzes before, and it’s worked really well. Then there’s another regular setter, who does it. . . and he just doesn’t get it. Or rather he gets it, but still deliberately chooses to do it badly. Not, I hasten to add, in every round. But in pretty much all of his quizzes there’s at least one round where the connection just doesn’t work. Let me give you an example from Thursday night.

In the film “Calendar Girls” which actress spoke the famous line “We’re going to need considerably bigger buns?”

Which castle is nicknamed The Gateway to England?

- And I can’t remember the next question, but the answer had the wod ‘little’ in it.

The connection? American state capital cities. Now, being expected to get Little Rock from just little is bad enough. But Helen Mirren to give us Helena Montana!!!! That’s just bloody lazy. The setter knew that Helena is the capital, but just couldn’t be arsed to work on it to get a question to which the answer was, for the sake of argument, Helena Bonham Carter. I know that Jess and Dan feel the same as I do, that if you do a set of connections, then the connection should be clear if you get all of the answers which are connected. This seems obvious to me.

Now, when I do a connections quiz, for the last round I always do a nine part connection. So did last Thursday’s QM. Well, we had all nine answers, but we couldn’t get it. Neither could any of the other teams. When he realised this the QM was like a dog with two coc tails. Which is another mistake it’s too easy for a question master to make. Because, it really isn’t you, the QM, versus all the teams. I don’t always achieve it, but whenever I make a quiz for the club I try to make something where people will come away thinking – I didn’t know that I knew all that – rather than rubbing in I know something that you all don’t. As for the connection, well, if you took he first letter of each of the answers, it spelled out goodnight. Hat’s actually quite clever but is not without problems. For question 8 we were asked which fictional detective lived in Whitehaven Mansions. Straightaway I wrote down Poirot. Well, there’s no P in goodnight! There is an H, so Hercule Poirot would have done the trick. All it would have needed would be for the QM to say = you need first name and surname for this one -.

Putting together a social quiz for no reward other than a couple of drinks isn’t quick or easy to do. But, I don’t know, you want people to enjoy it as much as possible, and sometimes this means just giving it a little bit more thought, and taking a little bit more care.