Captain Slapdash Rides Again

About the quiz in the club last night, then. Firstly I have to commiserate with the team who came runners up last night. They played exceptionally well all evening to tie with us on the question rounds and we only won because we top scored in the hand out. Well, we have puzzle solver Dan in our team, you see. But I commiserate with them for having played so well and still not quite done it.

Now as regards the ongoing story of the team whose scores in the mark your own era were so suspect, well, they did turn up last night, four of them which is practically a full team. They did accept answer papers and handouts from Captain Slapdash and they did listen attentively when the swapover procedures were explained. Once again, at the handover after round 1 they decided they weren’t playing. Now, okay, this time they did make an excuse – one of them said something about a problem with eyes. Might have been true, I don’t know. If I was going to be mean- and I am -  I would say that they did the first round, looked at their answers and realised that there was every good chance they would not score well and decided not to play at that point. But I don’t know. And frankly, I’m reaching the point where I don’t care that much. Guys, play if you want to, don’t play if you don’t want to, but if you play, tell us what you actually scored rather than what you want us to think that you scored.

As for Captain Slapdash. Well, rounds 2- 8 seemed relatively error free, fair play. Granted, too many themes and gimmicks for my liking, but each to their own. But he made a very characteristic howler in round 1. He asked this set:-

Which is the largest castle in England?

Who commanded the British 8^th Army at El Alamein?

Which children’s song has these lines at the end of its first verse - Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, And come with your playfellows into the street.?

In Greek mythology which Goddess was known for her sporting prowess especially in Hunting?

What is the connection between your last 4 answers?

Now, to give him a little credit he did qualify that Windsor was not the answer to the castle questions, although he burbled some crap about it not qualifying because it is inhabited. So this gave us Dover.

Question 2 was going to be Bernard Law Montgomery. So at this point we had two US state Capitals.

The Song was Boys and Girls come out to play, we knew. Couldn’t see the capital yet.

Now, the mythology question as asked only admits one answer – Artemis. But even using the captain’s very slipshod standards, you can’t turn that around to make a state capital. However, if you take out goddess and substitute heroine in its place then you might also answer Atalanta. Which suddenly occurred to me. Is the Captain capable of making such an error? I asked myself. Too bloody right he is, I thought. And as for the basic wrongness of Atalanta being rendered as Atlanta, well, that’s small potatoes to Captain Slapdash. Boys and girls come out to play? Oh, you’ll have worked that out. Boise City, Idaho, obviously. Doesn’t even work on paper, let alone phonetically.

Now, in one way I was quite proud of having been able to work through the convoluted processes to get the answers that the Captain had down. But the petty, obsessive, small-minded pedant in me rails against his whole attitude of – oh, it’s close enough, it’ll do because I can’t be arsed to put the effort in to make the connection actually work- I introduced connections to the quiz over 30 years ago, and if you’re going to use this gimmick, you should bloody work at it and do it properly. Grrr!