This week's moan

I have a bad habit. I can’t help trying to get inside the mind of a question setter when I’m playing in a quiz. For the most part, it’s just to help decide between two possible answers. For example, last night we were asked ‘In Celtic mythology, what is the name of the island of Blessed Souls? NowI have never heard this question, but two names which kind of vaguely fit the bill occurred – Lyonesse and Avalon. I thought that the most likely one other teams would know would be Avalon, so picked it, thinking no quiz master should knowingly ask a question where they think none of the teams would know the answer. I’ve discussed whythe’ells before. You remember – whythe’ell is he/she asking that question?

Well, Avalon turned out to be the right answer. But there were quite a few whythe’ells in the mix too. An example of the kind of whythe’ell that I particularly hate would be something along the lines of ‘How much did a UK TV license cost in 1964?”  I don’t know. There is no reason why I would know, and no reason why I would ever go to the trouble of researching it. There would be no benefit to me if I did know it. Well, and example were asked last night was ‘When did 405 line TV transmission end in the UK ?” I thought it would be late 60s, when 625 was coming in. No, it was 1985. Try as I might, I just can’t imagine why a question master would want to ask it. It’s obscure. It’s not the least interesting. There’s nothing in the question to help you get it. It’s the sort of question which should only be asked if you give multiple choice answers to pick from.