Since returning to the rugby club quiz in 2021 I’ve said that I’m not really interested in setting the quiz on a regular basis any more, but I will do it now and again if I’m asked to. Well, I got hoist with my own petard when Dai N. asked me to do the quiz this coming Thursday.
It’s done now, just needs printing. I think it’s alright.
But I must admit that I was a little bit tempted to mess around a bit. Back in
the nineties when I started compiling the quiz, I was always on the lookout for
a new gimmick I could introduce. Few of them worked out and were reused.
Well, when I sat down to start compiling this one a rather
stupid idea came to me. You see, Jess, and some of the kids at school have said
that some times I come out with something silly and because it’s delivered with
conviction and I have the reputation of being a know-all they don’t know if
it’s true or if I’m joking. A lot of the
kids say far worse things about me than that, however we all have our crosses to
bear. So I did think about putting at least one deliberate wrong ‘un in each
round, such as “Which Hollywood star also invented the pop-up toaster? Answer –
Clark Gable. Which of course is a steaming load of Arsenal since it was a guy called
Chares Perkins Strite. Then I thought at the end of each round I could ask them
for the 10th question to say which question in the round was bogus.
No, I didn’t do it. I’ve got enough of a reputation for
being a smartarse at the quiz as it is anyway, a reputation I only enhanced on
Thursday by telling the QM that what he called and oviposter is actually
pronounced ovipositor, and that Beowulf in fact defeated three monsters, rather
than just the one. That second one does not reflect that well on me since I knew
damn well that the answer he would want was Grendel, but dash it all, sir, I didn’t
go through all the difficulty or translating that whole poem from Anglo Saxon
into modern English at university to have it misrepresented in that way! For the record,
after he defeated Grendel, Grendel’s mum came up out of the mire looking for
revenge, so Beowulf dived into the mire and sent her to the same place he'd sent
her son, and then at the end of the poem Beowulf, who is now old, has inherited
the kingdom of the Geats, which is threatened by a dragon. Incidentally Tolkein’s
Smaug is taken directly from this same dragon. Beowulf, deserted by all of his
men save a young shaver called Wiglaf, defeats the dragon but is mortally
wounded in the process.
Have a good week.
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