Sunday, 9 July 2023

Back to the blog

I know, I know. I didn’t post much in June, and it’s now well over a week into July. I wouldn’t have blamed you for thinking – oh, that’s it, we’re not going to hear from him again for another 18 months. As it happens I did have another bout of depression in May going into June, but that’s not why I didn’t pos. No, it was really just a consequence of not having a great deal to say – I know, that’s never stopped me in the past , and suffering from tendonitis in right wrist and shoulder which is made worse when I type.

So, what do we need to talk about today? Well, I am tempted to review Lucy Worsley’s Puzzling. However I have only watched one edition so far, and in the interests of fairness, I feel I ought to watch another couple before passing judgement.

The quiz in the club, then. Many years ago, before LAM, even before the SOBM (Season of Blessed Memory) of Mastermind my team, Boycs, went through a whole quiz in he club and answered every question correctly. It had never been done by any team before, and it’s never been done since. We did come lose a few years later, but in the very last round my mate Rob, who was QM at the time, refused to accept Sony for Sony Ericsson. There you go.

Well, it was Dan’s quiz on Thursday nigh, and we had one of those nights when the questions were just falling for us. We completed the first half of the quiz without dropping a point. In fact it was round 7 before we really had to guess any answers. We guessed that the percentage answer for the railway station with the most platforms in the world is Grand Central, New York. So, going into the last round it was definitely ‘on’. With three questions to go, all of which we knew we’d answered correctly we were asked about how old a National Hunt horse has to be in order to be allowed to race. Well, we are none of us students of the turf, and not to put too fine a point on it, our answer was wrong.

It was a shame, but then we had also had two answers wrong in the handout. We were given 25 official abbreviations of US states, and we had 2 wrong. Mind you, that’s not too bad, considering that on quite a few occasions there is more than one state that starts with the same two letters – I think that Arizona and Arkansas presented us with a difficult choice, for example.

Well, that’s just about it for today, well, other from the welcome piece of news that University Challenge is back a week tomorrow, on the 17th July. Good news!

And as a bonus, here's one of the paintings I made during the challenge in June



1 comment:

Daniel Ayres said...

Pipped at the poet by the horse racing question. I did think you were going to get full marks by the end of round seven. Glad you enjoyed anyway.