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.
1 comment:
The thing that gets me is that this setter can be so hit and miss. You get some connections like the state capitals that could do with a bit of tweaking to really get it right. But then they'll occasionally come out with a great one. Remember the Hillary Mantel connection? It was great.
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