A Case of the Pot and the Kettle

It was my turn to be question master in the club last Thursday. It has been an incredibly stressful week – I won’t go into details – and I did consider whether I needed to cry off. I had several offers to do the quiz for me under the circumstances. But I made the decision to do it.

31 years ago I introduced the concept of the connections question to the quiz, having stolen the idea from an open quiz I’d attended in Neath. I tend to use them whenever I do a quiz at the Rugby Club – between 3 and five seemingly unconnected questions in a round, and the teams have to decide what connects the answers. Now in the last round I always do a nine part connection. When I was making the quiz, I found that the lyrics of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” are a treasure trove of question sources. So much so that not only did I use them in a nine part connection for the last round but I also used them for a nine part connection for round four, the last before the half time break.

Now, as the papers were being handed back after the last round, one of the players made quite an audible comment that this was an unfair connection. Now, in one way, I can kind of see where he was coming from. After all, if nobody in your team knew the song very well, then not only were you going to be unable to answer one connection, you were going to be unable to answer two. But I couldn’t take the criticism quite as philosophically as that because of the person making the criticism. It was none other than Captain Slapdash. I called out to him that I felt that this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black and left it at that.

You see, the good Captain will persist in using his own connections questions. And the problem is that although capable of coming up with the occasional connection so good that I wish that I’d come up with it myself, his general slapdashery means that a lot of his connections are pretty poor, and for want of a better word – cheats. I’ll try my best to explain that.

I don’t know if everybody works this way, but the way I do it is to come up with what I think is a good idea for a connection. Then I have to find, or improvise questions that have answers that fit the connection. If I cannot quite make at least three that perfectly fit the connection, then I bin it. The captain doesn’t work like that. So many of his connections use answers that might be close to the connection, but don’t actually work. For example, the Captain often uses connections of US state Capitals. One time one of the questions leading there was – which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in The Queen? Who of course was HELEN Mirren. Well, Captain, there ain’t no US Capital called Helen. Or Mirren for that matter. Well, as far as the Captain was concerned Helen is close enough to HELENA, and what the hell, he couldn’t be arsed to create a question about, say, Helena Bonham Carter , which actually would have worked. Or the time that he got mixed up between Thomas the Tank Engine and Ivor the Engine that I’ve written about several times before. I mean I do feel that if you've made a quiz at the club you have more right to criticise than someone who has never tried, so I give the Captain that much, but it just rankled with me that someone who has perpetrated more bad connection sets at the club than the rest of us put together would criticise mine. 

So hopefully you can understand why I was feeling a little prickly about someone with his track record criticising my connections. Never mind.

University Challenge First Round - Birmingham v. Leicester

The Teams

Brimingham University

Elif Cetin

Teddy Fogel

Waleed Ghani (Capt)

Zhangir Satzanov

Leicester University

Abu Burton

Emma Hague-Wright

Samuel Carlier (Capt)

Patrick Loughrey

We kicked off with historical events in Portugal, which fell to Zhangir Satzanov with a fine early buzz. Birmingham took two bonuses on environmental disasters. Emma Hague-Wright worked out that cephalophores are saints traditionally depicted carrying their own heads. Knowing about time dilation brought me a lap of honour around the Clark sofa and Leicester a full house. Who knew that there was a region in Argentina called Mesopotamia? I didn’t at the start of the question but I’d worked it out by the end. So had Emma Hague-Wright. Disrupted weddings in Victorian Literature saw them fail to score on a gettable set. The picture starter showed us a map showing a disputed region of India. -Can’t be as easy as Kashmir – said I and I was right to say so. What was required was Jammu and Kashmir as supplied by captain Waleed Ghani of Birmingham. Three capitals of Indian states that lose some of their government functions during the winter brought their own full house. A Science starter sent me into Slumberland. When I woke up slightly later nobody had answered it correctly. For the next starter on “Why I Never Became a Dancer” by Tracey Emin, Teddy Fogel took his first correct buzz. Teddy, of course, was a semi finalist in last year’s Mastermind. He played like it in the second half of this contest too. Two bonuses on 1645 followed and provided Birmingham with a lead of 60-35 on 10 minutes.

Birmingham came in too early for the next starter allowing Leicester to listen until it became clear was looking for the term intermezzo, supplied by Patrick Loughrey, which delighted him no end. Greek mythological characters brought two correct answers. The Jikji Memory of the World Prize was another of those questions you had to wait and wait and then pounce. Best pouncer in this race was Samuel Carlier, who correctly answered that the country required was South Korea. Organs of the human body stubbornly refused to yield any points. None of the youngsters in both teams had a sufficient knowledge of rather obscure 80s chart acts to get Heaven 17 for the next starter. Another body parts question saw Elif Cetin actually know the right answer, but give it in the wrong way, giving the whole word rather than the initial asked for, and so Emma Hague-Wright knocked that ball into the open goal. This earned the musical bonuses on other groups or artists’ songs referencing A Clockwork Orange. A full house meant Leicester were steaming ahead. Brimingham came back when Teddy Fogel recognised various Fairy Queens for the next starter. Two bonuses on Oscar winning choreographers narrowed the gap further. Nobody quite managed to get the phrase balance of trade for the next starter. Samuel Carlier knew ground state (perfumery, stationery and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food going up.. . yeah, ask your grandparents) Islands that have declared energy self sufficiency brought two bonuses and so at the 20 minute mark Leicester had a decent lead of 110 – 70.

Saoirse Ronan brought Patrick Loughrey the next starter and this time he only did a single fist pump as opposed to the doubler he did earlier. Words of Malay origin used in English only yielded one bonus with orangutan – they’ll be kicking themselves about missing tea caddy. For the second picture starter we saw what was obviously an Impressionist painting, but nobody managed to zag with Monet, so it went begging. The next starter allowed Teddy Fogel to answer Shane Warne and Amol to remind us that Shane Warne is his hero. I thought that was Bertrand Russell – who , to be fair, never took quite as many test wickets as Shane Warne. This earned the picture bonuses on pine tree paintings, and they recognised the one by Cezanne. Says who? Various clues gave Teddy Fogel the word Liberty for the next starter. Moons of the Solar System brought us both a full house. Waleed Ghani knew the derivation of the word doula. A bonus on capitals of the state of Tennessee brought the scores level but all of the momentum was with Birmingham. Teddy Fogel knew that of the African countries with the furthest east , north, west and south points on the continental mainland only Tunisia did not begin with the same letter as the others. Solipsism, which provided me with a rare philosophy bonus, and brought Birmingham 2 bonuses. Teddy Fogel knew some Polish Nobel laureates and suddenly the bookies would have let you name your own price if you wanted to bet on Leicester. Foods associated with Milan brought a full house, and there was no need to ask for which of these teams the bell tolled. Elif Cetin hammered another nail in the coffin lid by giving the answer ligand for the next starter. 2 bonuses on biology applied a little more gloss to Birmingham’s score, and they won by 190 – 125.

In the end Birmingham outlasted Leicester and ended with a BCR of 70%, while Leicester achieved 52.3% which tells its own story.

Amol Watch

A good safe job done again. Well done, sir.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

Saints depicted on Art carrying their own heads are called cephalophores.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Answer as soon as your name is called. Giving the names of the two scientists – one French, one Scottish – who, in the 19^th century posited hypothetical entities to argue respectively for a deterministic view of the universe and against the second law of thermodynamics – (incorrect interruption) – both of which are commonly described as demons? – After a break of a fortnight it’s welcome back ridiculously long and complex questions. I haven’t missed you. That would be dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 7

It’s heat 7 and up to now although we have seen much honest endeavour it seems to me that the series has been in need of a little bit of quality. Did we get it at the 7^th time of asking? Well, see what you think.

Lewis Demmon was first into the chair, answering on the Essays of George Orwell. It’s not a subject about which I know a great deal as demonstrated by my 2 points, so I don’t know just how much he wrote and I don’t know whether the questions Lewis was asked were a particularly tough lot. Whatever the case Lewis struggled with his round, and by the end of it he had only accrued 4 points. Hard lines.

By way of contrast Jane Gibbons achieved a perfect 12 from 12 on her round on the films of Madonna. I had 3 of these – which surprised me, since the only one of these films I’ve watched all the way through is A League of Their Own. Whatever your subject may be getting a perfect score is hard to do. I never managed it – my best performance was dropping just 1 point in the semi-final. If she could nail the landing on the GK she could end up with a really good score. Quality.

If Ali Morgan was daunted by Jane’s round, she certainly didn’t let it show. Answering on Pauline Gower she too whacked in a perfect 12 from 12. Me? Well, shame though it is to admit it, I don’t recall ever hearing abut Pauline Gower before, and I earned the precise total of nowt. Like Jane’s round before, this was a fine display of a contender knowing her subject inside and out, and I reckon she could have gone on for another two minutes and would still have had them all right. Quality.

So to Chris Matterface, answering on the 2000AD comics of the 80s and 90s. Well, whichever way you look at it, that’s a hell of a lot of comics. Me? Well, I thought I was a little too old for comics by the time the 80s came round (which was wrong. You’re never too old for comics) and I’d never read the comic before. So my aggregate stayed at the 5 points I’d scored in the first two rounds. It would have been remarkable had Chris also scored a perfect round. Well, he didn’t quite do that and with a veery good double figure round of 10 he was still in contention with the two leaders at the turnaround.

So then Lewis returned to the chair for the GK round. Put yourself in his position. For whatever reason your specialist round really hasn’t worked out. Then you watch all three contenders make a seemingly effortless show of posting excellent scores. You’re way behind and seem to have no chance of winning. So what do you do? Well, in Lewis’ place he kept his head, and scored a good 8, at least putting his night’s efforts into the honest endeavour category.

Chris Matterface then returned to the chair. Now, it’s dangerous to read too much into a contender’s face while they’re answering questions. But during Chris’ round he never looked uncomfortable, and even though it seemed as if there might be a few guesses in his answers, one of the marks of a good quizzer is that when they have to guess, they make guesses that have a good chance of being right. Chris delivered what has become a very rara avis indeed in this series, a score in the teens and posted 13 to take his total to 23. The two remaining contenders were going to need extremely good GK rounds of their own to beat him. Quality

Jane Gibbons gave it a lash. In several of the shows we’ve seen this series her 9 points, a good score in its own right, would have seen her into the winner’s enclosure. Not this time, though. But I think she can be very pleased with her evening’s work, and sometimes, that’s enough to be going home with.

Ali Morgan did not, sadly, do quite as well in her own GK. She zigged when she should have zagged with a couple of the answers, was caught out by a few others and ended the round with a decent 7 to take her score to 19. Putting Ali’s evening into perspective, what she can take away is that she has joined the pretty exclusive ‘perfect club’ for people who achieved a perfect round on specialist and believe me that’s something special.

But the laurels go to Chris, and rightfully so. That was actually a really good all-round performance. When I’m looking at heat winners with the potential to go further I particularly look for those who can really learn a specialist and can hack it at GK. On admittedly just one show’s evidence, Chris seems to have that. Very well done sir. Best of luck in the semi-finals.

Good show.

The Details

Lewis Demmon	The Essays of George Orwell	4	2	8	2	12	4
Jane Gibbons	The Films of Madonna	12	0	9	2	21	2
Ali Morgan	Pauline Gower	12	0	7	2	19	2
Chris Matterface	The 2000 AD comics of the 80s and 90s	10	1	13	1	23	2

Ah say, boy, ah say.

This is pretty irrelevant – so what’s new – but a work colleague and friend plays in a quiz every week, and knowing my quiz background we often chat about how she did in the quiz on a Wednesday evening. She told me that last week, her team lost on a question she didn’t think was very fair – Colonel Harlan Sanders was born in which US state? Of course, they put Kentucky. I wrote about this some time ago in the blog, because he was actually born in Indiana. Now, putting Kentucky makes sense, because you have already done a bit of working out to realise that Colonel Harlan Sanders was the jolly bearded guy on the KFC logo. Knowing he wasn’t born in Kentucky, well you might guess that. But if you don’t actually know he was from Indiana, well, you’re hardly likely to pluck it out of thin air. So I get what my friend meant – it was asking for some quite specialised knowledge. But then I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with asking one or two like that in a pub quiz where they probably won’t know the answer, but somebody just might in a straight pub quiz.

Incidentally, I took my grandson to see the Wile E Coyote vs. Acme film at the weekend. Foghorn Leghorn was one of the important characters in it. Now, I don’t recall ever having seen or heard a recording of Colonel Sanders talking, but I have ALWAYS imagined him talking in the same voice and manner as Foghorn Leghorn. Which is pretty ironic, when you think about it.

University Challenge First Round LSE v King's Cambridge

The Teams

London School of Economics

David Worley

Diya Khatri

Henry Jameson (Capt)

Daniel Yang

King’s College Cambridge

Niall Kim

Ben Lafond

Claire McLellan-Cassivi

Adhyan Shukla

September already, peeps! I give my heartfelt commiseration to all of my siblings of the chalkface who are returning to the classroom this week. That’s one of many things I don’t miss about my former profession.

The LSE skipper, Henry Jameson was the first to recognise clues to Taiwan for the first starter. Questions on the Romanian revolution provided 1 bonus. I visited Bucharest in February of 2024, and if you do the same I would heartily recommend a coach trip up to Transylvania to visit the Peles Palace and Bram Castle. Ben Lafond opened the Cambridge side’s account knowing a book about Esperanto. Fictional characters with the surname Archer brought King’s one bonus too. Claire McLellan-Cassivi knew the video game series Persona to take the next. Chapter headings of the former Mr. Romanadvoratrelundar (if you know, you know), Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene brought King’s a full set. The picture starter saw Ben Lafond identify the symbol for IUPAC (wasn’t he shot in Las Vegas in 1996?). 3 ore logos of authorities I’ve never heard of brought the team nowt. With the next starter we were asked for an adjective preceding several words. It all sounded rather like gibberish until we were given convertor. Henry Jameson won the buzzer race to give catalytic, and got a little angry with himself for giving the answer before Roger Tilling had finished giving his name. Three questions on Altaic languages yielded nothing. On the 10 minute mark King’s led by 50 – 2, after what had been as tough a 10 minutes on the show as I can remember for some time. Slim pickings for Dave last night.

LSE lost five of those points on the next starter allowing Niall Kim to recognise several depictions of oranges in Art. Music in the films of Wong Kar-Wai brought a single bonus to King’s. Daniel Yang recognised a reference to Switzerland in the next starter. Plant pollination by mammals allowed the LSE to take two bonuses. Now, in a music starter which is by a British Composer you won’t be far off with Vaughan Williams and it was Niall Kim who gave this percentage answer. To me it sounded more like Elgar and Henry Jameson certainly felt so and was right. More pieces being conducted by former PM Edward Heath (remember him? Didn’t think so.) refused to yield any further points on the set. The next starter earned my lap of honour for the night, when, like Henry Jameson, I correctly identified the star system Alpha Centauri.  The UN’s Responsibility to Protect schema brought LSE a rare full house and the lead. A lead which widened when the irrepressible Henry Jameson took another starter, identifying the work of Messiaen, ( he’s not the Messiaen, he’s a very naughty boy.) The architect, the late Terry Farrell, Ben Lafond stopped the rot for King’s with Fragments of Sappho. A set of noble gases, each of which questions nobly resisted the temptation to drone on for clause after clause after clause for once yielded two bonuses. Ben Lafond then took a double, recognising terms from voodoo. North African cities brought two bonuses and meant, as we swiftly approached the 20 minute mark King’s led by 110 to 90.

Thence to the second picture starter and Niall Kim identified the word of Mark Rothko, (who was played by Ron Moody in the early 80s kids TV show Into the Labyrinth). 3 more paintings depicting clouds brought 1 bonus. Claire McLellan-Cassivi recognised clues to the term truss (‘Blink and you’ll miss ‘er prime minister was not one, though). Bonuses on melancholia (I prefer coca-cholia) brought 2 bonuses. Niall Kim interrupted the economics starter that followed just before it could stray into baby elephant walk territory with interest rates. Three questions on UC hardy perennial Paul Dirac yielded a full set, and suddenly King’s seemed a long way ahead. Daniel Yang knew that the Sykes – Picot agreement set out to carves up the Ottoman Empire. German Economist Klara Tisch didn’t exactly promise a barrel of laughs, but at least it gave LSE two bonuses. Niall Kim correctly guessed that the next question referred to crustaceans. So I guess that makes the answer from King’s a King’s Crustacean, as opposed to a Charing Crustacean. As well as that appalling pun this also earned them a set of bonuses on Olives – none of them being Olive Oyl or Olive Fromonthebuses. They took just the one bonus, but had they listened to the question they might have had a full house. Daniel Yang knew that the city after which the criteria for eligibility to join the EU is named is Copenhagen. One bonus on years known as the year of three (kings – kaisers – popes) was taken. David Worley knew that the word poodle comes from the German word for to splash. 2 bonuses followed for them on the Geography of Spain. The LSE revival continued as skipper Henry Jameson identified the mathematical term hyper. Terms in biology with female given names sounded a rum old set but proved to be straightforward and LSE took two. Amazingly a full house would now give them the lead. But their answer was wrong, and they lost five. The gong sounded an end to the contest with King’s holding on to win 185 – 160.

Both teams had the same number of bonus chances, with LSE having a BCR of 46.6% and King’s 56.6%. That was enough to seal the deal for the Cambridge side. Wouldn’t be totally flabbergasted if LSE make the repechage, though.

Amol Watch

One of Amol’s defaults at the start of the show is to tell both teams they look scared. He said it again this week even though both teams were grinning in anticipation!

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

Taiwan translates as Terraced Bay.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Well done setters! Nothing of a ridiculous length this week!

Mastermind 2027 - Heat 7 Preview

I really don’t pretend to understand why Mastermind has been taken off for another week. This time its replaced by Grand Tours of Scotland’s Lochs. Which I’m sure will be interesting and picturesque, but hardly necessitating the disruption of the normal schedules, I would have thought.

Well, when heat 7 is aired a week today the specialist subjects will be –

Essays of George Orwell

The films of Madonna

The Pilot Pauline Gower

The 2000 AD comics of the 1980s and 1990s

I would like to think I will get a couple of points. Not in each round, but as an overall aggregate. None of the subjects can I pretend to know anything about. I think the only Madonna film I have watched all the way through is “A League of their Own.” I have never read any of the essays of George Orwell. Nor, for that matter, 2000 AD. I have never heard of the pilot Pauline Gower, to my shame. So hopefully general knowledge will help me scramble a couple of pieces of low hanging fruit.

Thankfully there’s still Mastermind 1977 on BBC Four, and it’s the only edition of Mastermind to see Sir David Hunt beaten, I believe. He won the repechage semi and the final and then won the 1982 Champion of Champions series.

Last night at the club

You must have been in this position before. You’re in an ordinary pub quiz and you hear a question and you just know that something about it is wrong with it. Last night we were asked this:-

What is the name of the object hit in a game of hockey? –

Now to me, that question had to be asking what you hit in a game of ICE hockey. I just can’t see that you’d ask it if the answer was ball. So I asked Anne, the question master, if that was what she meant. She fell back on the old excuse of question masters who haven’t checked their answers properly – oh, the source of the question just said hockey . – Then she looked at the answer and said – but it looks like the answer means it must be ice hockey. – This sort of thing is one reason I say that with quite a few of our question masters it does seem that they can’t be arsed to check their quizzes before they ask them. That aside, the quiz last night was okay, and there were a couple of really rather good questions. Did you know that the US version of Gogglebox is called “The People’s Couch” ? I didn’t, although my team guessed it. Unfortunately, I’m sitting here this morning with my ears ringing. The thing about Anne is she does shout into the microphone, and with her voice being a bit shrill in the high registers it is actually quite painful. We even asked for the mic to be surreptitiously turned down at half time, but the damage had been done by then.

The damage also appears to have been done to what I have come to refer to as the ‘suspect’ team. There have been 6 quizzes since we instituted the swap your answers over marking policy. The team I suspect of making up their own scores have not played in any of those quizzes – despite turning up to two of them. They didn’t come last night. I feel that the longer they leave it to come back and play, the harder it will be for them to do so. Or are they maybe waiting for everyone to forget what their scores were like when you marked your own answers? Well, sorry guys, but it’ll be a long time before I do. If you are going to come back, it’s better to rip that sticking plaster off now.