Wednesday, 9 April 2025

The Seventeen Year Itch

Last Thursday evening we did something that I’ve rarely done before anywhere, and only once at the club. Or twice. We went through the whole evening and we had every question right. I say that some would say that we have done it twice before because on the alleged second occasion we had every question right until the very last one. My old quiz friend Rob Merrill refused to accept Sony for Sony Ericsson. So officially we had it wrong and didn’t score another full house. Some of my team always counted it as a correct answer, though.

O Thursday though it was a serendipitous performance, where every member of the team supplied answers that nobody else had. If any of us hadn’t have been there then we would not have been able to go through the card like that. Adam of our team was question master and I can vouch for the fact that this was certainly not a ridiculously easy quiz – a glance at the other teams’ scores would confirm that. It was just one of those rare occasions when you choose correctly between potential answers, and everyone of your fifty fifties ends up heads.

I’ve played in teams that have done it in other quizzes as well, but precious few. The last time we did it in the rugby club was 17 years ago. A couple of years before that my oldest daughter, Phillippa and my sadly missed quiz mate John went through the card in a Sunday evening quiz in the Dynevor. The team who marked out papers even went so far as to give us a standing ovation. That was something. In a lot of the pub quizzes I’ve been to since it’s pretty likely you’d be accused of cheating somehow if you did.

Coming back to Thursday, it wouldn’t have been quite so good if we had actually known all of the answers straightaway. The fact that we had to work for some of them somehow made it all the more satisfying. So, working on the principle of a 17 year gap between perfect performances, I can expect another one along in 2042 when I’ll be pushing 78. Looking forward to it. 

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