Connections do take time and trouble

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.