A Better Film Quiz

Last night was this month’s film quiz in the Gwyn Hall. You may recall that I made a post last month generally saying that I felt that the last quiz could be criticised on a number of levels, not least the way that I felt last month’s quiz was all about the question masters showing off that they knew more than the players did and were by consequence that much smarter than we were. Well. . . I don’t know if any of the QMs happened to read said post, but blow me down, last night’s quiz seemed just better in every way. Apart from the outcome that is. I’ll come to that.

I moaned about the fact that almost all of last month’s questions were about Disney movies from the 21^st century. Well, there was not a ridiculous amount of questions about 20^th century Sci Fi movies, but there was at least a decent proportion. Although they still persist in using ‘in which year’ questions at least they avoided going down the smug ‘trap’ question route. They also put in a fair picture quiz this time, rather than one where if you get the first one wrong you’re likely to get all of them wrong. As a result the quiz they served up was far more satisfying than the last one.

Although the result was the same.

Yeah, we lost on a tie break. But at least, well, at least this one allowed for some kind of rationale. So the question was – when Star Trek – The Motion Picture was first released on VHS in the USA, how much in dollars did it cost to buy? If you weren’t around in the late 70s and early 80s then maybe you don’t know how ridiculously expensive VHS movies were at the time. But I have a distinct memory of spending £40 of my first university grant cheque on the VHS of Doctor Who’s “Revenge of the Cyberman”. Factoring in the exchange rate, the fact it was a few years earlier and the relative popularity of Star Trek, I courted my team’s disbelief by suggesting 80 – 100 bucks. We came down a bit to 70. The answer? 80 dollars – well 79 and about fifty cents. Did we win? Win be damned. Another team went for 80 dollars. What can you do? Win a tie break doesn’t seem to be one of them. If you wanted to buy the VHS of Star Trek the Motion Picture in the USA now according to the QM it would cost over 300 dollars. I have my doubts. You could buy one for about 10 dollars from the USA on ebay, plus postage and packaging.

That's Entertainment?

Here’s a peculiar thing about human beings. For all the amount of time that we spend moaning about things that we hate, it seems to me that we also spend a comparable amount of time moaning about things that we really love. For example, I think that I’ve mentioned before that I love the TV show Doctor Who. Well, let me tell you, there is nobody who moans more about Doctor Who than the real fans. Seriously, as a group of people it seems that nothing makes us happier than bemoaning how bad the show has become. Why? Because we’re the ‘real’ fans and that gives us the right to slag it off because we love it so much.

I use Doctor Who as an extreme example, but I also find that I’m a little prone to indulging in his kind of behaviour about another of my loves, namely quizzes. I only take part in five quizzes a month now (as opposed to five quizzes a week) and I’ll be honest, I do have to remind myself that this is meant to be fun, sometimes. Yes, in case you’re wondering, it was the monthly film quiz in the Gwyn Hall on Wednesday.

Right, let’s begin with some positives. The guys that run it really love their films, and they love their film quizzes. They put a hell of a lot of work into it as well. The second round is always a music round, where songs are speeded up, or slowed down or played backwards. The amount of effort that it must take to make just one of these music rounds is huge, I’m sure. So I’m not for one moment saying that they just shove the quiz together any old how. I’m no great shakes at film quizzes and I’m the weakest member of our team, but I usually enjoy the quiz, as I reckon the majority of players do.

On Wednesday, though, not so much. In the past, when I’ve moaned about this particular quiz it’s been about the ways that tie breaks have been settled, or the ‘prizes’ for winning the league, but not really about the quiz itself. However on Wednesday night, I felt that the organisers made a fundamental error. In any social quiz like this, the fundamental aim is to give people an evening’s entertainment. For the first time I really felt as if the compilers were not so much trying to produce an evening’s entertainment, as to hammer home how clever they are and how much more they know about films than the teams do.

It's just my opinion, of course, and by all means dismiss what I say as sour grapes because we tied in first place and lost the tie-break. The theme of the quiz was Disney movies. There were one or two questions about films made before 1989, but in all honesty it was mostly just about films made in the last twenty five years. So old sods like me who could give you chapter and verse about Disney’s first 60 years were pretty much excluded. Then there was the picture round. Stills from films, all of which were made no earlier than 1989 were shown. We had to put them in order of release. It complicated matters slightly since the organisers neglected to tell us that the years of release were the UK ones. Now, I have an issue with this kind of handout. Let’s suppose you had all of the films in the correct order in relation to each other, apart from the first. So you’d think 2 was 1, 3 was 2, and so on. Because of that one mistake, you’d get zero. I’m sorry, but I can’t get away from the feeling that whatever knowledge you manage to show, you should be rewarded for it.

While I’m at it, I know that a tie break has to be something that is definitely going to separate two teams. But it really doesn’t have to be a complete guessing game. Wednesday night’s tie breaker was ‘How many views on Youtube has the trailer for Snow White had? It was released about a month ago.

I don’t know, there was just a sort of feeling that came across in the quiz that we were all being subtly told – look how little you really know. It was there in a couple of things that the question masters said, especially when boasting about the difficulty of the handout. And that’s not fun. That’s not entertaining.

Settling a tie

I’ve allowed this one to percolate for a while, rather than posting a knee-jerk reaction last week after it happened. What am I talking about? Well, it’s the film quiz in the Gwyn Hall. If you’re a regular reader you might remember the ongoing saga from this time last year of the prizes for winning the League. Well, not last Wednesday but the Wednesday before that we had the first monthly quiz of 2025. The outcome of the League for last year was announced, and it turned out what we were tied at the top with another team. Both teams were told to nominate 1 player. The two players were asked 1 question – with a numerical answer. Closest answer would win the league. No, we didn’t win.

Okay, that’s life. After last year’s prize fiasco I can’t say I was at all bothered about whether we won the league or not. We deliberately gave the last quiz of the year a miss, and we would have been given a point just for turning up, so you could argue (and indeed the organisers did) that we only had ourselves to blame. But it’s just – and Dan pointed this out on the night – I couldn’t help feeling that it was odd to have just the one player from both teams answering. It was even odder considering that the quiz itself on the night had to be also settled by a tie break, and this was open to the whole team.

Oh well, it could have been worse. I’m put in mind of The Office, where Brent and Finchy’s team lose on a tie break, yet decide that they’ve won because Finchy can throw Tim’s shoe over a building. I’m sure I also saw or heard of a tied quiz being settled by both teams building paper airplanes with the winners being the team whose plane flew furthest.

It takes all sorts.

Pizzagate continued

I didn’t go to the monthly film quiz last month. I was feeling completely knackered at the time and rather down. Last night I wasn’t feeling much better if truth be told but I felt that I should go in the hope that it might perk me up a little bit.

Now, the team did go last time when the category was Sci Fi movies and although they were only a few points behind the winners at the end they were not on the podium. So, as we walked in yesterday the organiser who really doesn’t like us very much made a pointed comment about the last quiz. The poor idiot seemed to be labouring under the impression that it would have made much of a difference if I’d played. It wouldn’t have, and I say that with authority being the weakest player on the team (in a modern film quiz).

Yeah we did win. The theme was animated movies and we won fairly comfortably. Ironically this seemed to confirm the organisers’ idea that I really would have made a difference.

Now, if you’re a regular reader, you may recall earlier posts I’ve made this year about the league which ran throughout 2023 in this quiz. No prizes were presented in the end of the year. In the January quiz a couple of months ago it was announced that we would each receive our choice of T-shirt. I wasn’t impressed. I was even less impressed when the team told me that in the February quiz this underwhelming prize was rescinded, and we were each given vouchers for a pizza instead. I can only say that I’m grateful I wasn’t there at the time because I might well have ended up telling them to shove their pizza right up where no sun shines.

The stupid thing is that if they’d said that the league is only a bit of extra fun and there would be no prizes from the start I’d have been perfectly alright with that. Still, there we are.

I did not think that they could rub our noses in it any more than they have already been rubbed. Au contraire. Every quiz there is a consolation prize for the lowest – or sometimes second lowest – scoring team. Guess what it was last night? That’s right – a pizza voucher for each member of the team. The same prize for coming last in ONE quiz as was given to the winners of the whole-year league.

Jess and Dan had their pizzas last night. I wasn’t interested. But I now have visions of giving over my voucher next month and being told its too late to use it!

Pizza? Are you effing kidding me?!

You may remember a rather intemperate post I made some time ago about the league in the Gwyn Hall monthly film quiz. Basically we built up our expectations through the year, religiously checking how each result might affect the overall table. Then, come the December quiz and the grand finale of the league, we were fobbed off with the news that no announcement about the league would be made on the night, but it would be put on Facebook before the next quiz in January. It wasn’t. Still, we turned up to January’s quiz, maybe not full of expectation, only to be told that the grand prize for each of the winning team was going to be a T shirt.

Yes, I was underwhelmed. The stupid thing was, if they had announced that there would be no prize for the league when it started, then I wouldn’t have been disappointed. T-shirt? Meh. Then I was told earlier in the week that we are not in fact going to be given T Shirts. No. Instead the grand prize for winning the league will be . . . a pizza.

My reaction when I heard this was more – are you effing kidding me? – than – oh, well, that makes the League all worthwhile, then.

So, last night was the February quiz. Now, on 19^th February I returned to work after half term which had been preceded by three weeks off with stress, anxiety and depression, which, incidentally, is also the name of the legal firm I used when I took out my mortgage. On my first day back I was told to pi** off, to f**k off and shoved out of the way by a pupil trying to invade my classroom. Those are just the most serious incidents. So I’ve been coming home knackered. That’s not the problem. I’ve been going into work knackered as well, dreading what some of these kids might put me through.

So come last night I just could not shake myself to attend. Just couldn’t. This despite the fact that it was about one of my better categories – Sci fi. I’ll find out how the guys got on when I see them tonight. It was just as well I didn’t go, because the way I was feeling I might have told the organisers to shove their pizza right where the sun don’t shine.

About that League

Okay, so let us return to the subject of the film quiz league that I’ve mentioned once or twice. After promising to post the final positions of the league on Facebook, nothing happened. The firs quiz of this year was last Wednesday. After round 4 there was a brief announcement, and we were told our prize. A  T shirt (of our choice). I’m not really complaining. I’ve had worse prizes in the past, and even no prizes in the past. I’m probably more disappointed over the really perfunctory lack of ceremony over the result. You see, if it hadn’t have been for the prospect of a league presentation then I don’t think I would have gone to the quiz. The subject was films of 2023, and with the best will in the world I knew nothing that the rest of the team didn’t already know.

I hope that they won’t be too upset if I do end up not going to some of he quizzes this year. Now that we’ve won the league once, I just don’t feel quite the same motivation. It’s a funny thing. When I was younger, if I played in a league winning team, then I was eager to win the league the next season, and the one after that, and the next after that. Now though, nah, not so much.

The film quiz league reaches its anti-climax

It was the final film quiz of the year last night, dearly beloved, in the Gwyn Hall in Neath, and as a consequence, also the final quiz of the league, instituted this year.

Normally we don’t attend the Christmas films quiz, because we’re not that interested in them. However, being as we thought that we were going to be proclaimed league champions we were definitely going to turn up.

OK. As for the quiz itself, we thought we were completely out with the washing, after two absolutely dreadful rounds. Much to our surprise we came joint second. It would make no difference to the league, but it was nice to look back on a year of 11 quizzes in which we had won 7 outright, been joint winners in 2 and had a second place and a joint second place.

So, the time came when the scores were announced. Then, as what appeared no more than an afterthought the QM announced – yeah, about the League. . . I’ll put a post on Facebook about it in the New Year.

Let’s put a brave face on it. Maybe he wants to compile everyone’s scores and show every team that took part in any of the 2023 quizzes where they finished in the League. Maybe. But let’s be honest, they knew who the League winners were by the end of last month’s quiz, so they could at least have announced it. One of the more charitable members of our team suggested that maybe it was because they didn’t want to overshadow last night’s winners. Well, again, maybe. Still, I’ll be interested to see what the post says when it eventually appears, and whether, indeed, there is going to be any prize at all. As we all know, no prize is a better prize than panto tickets. But I did feel that last night was an anti-climax.

An appropriate prize for winning the film quiz league?

Here’s a question for you. We’ve been playing in a monthly film quiz for the last couple of years. This year, 2023, the organisers decided that all points scored during the 11 quizzes of the year (no quiz in August) will go into a league and there will be a prize for the league winners at the end of the year. Alright, alright, I’m heading in the vague general direction of the question. The winners of each monthly quiz get free cinema tickets. But. . . we have no idea what the prize will be for winning the league. It may sound arrogant me wondering about prizes before the last quiz has been held, but, well, we have actually already won the league. Even if we don’t turn up on Wednesday we already have an unbeatable points total. Of course, we are going to turn up on Wednesday. Still, between our team there has been a lot of speculation about the question (told you). . . what would be an appropriate prize for winning the League?

Bear in mind that you get cinema tickets for winning just one of the monthly quizzes. So – I don’t know what’s going to happen. We are praying that it won’t be tickets to the pantomime which the venue is hosting. That would, frankly, be worse than no prize at all. Altogether now – Oh yes it would!

Prize Surprise

You know what I’m talking about. That moment when you get given something really nice and thoughtful which you have absolutely no use for? I’ll explain what that has to do with the quiz in the Gwyn Hall in Neath on Wednesday.

Once a month the Hall runs a themed film quiz. Me? Absolutely useless, out with the washing most weeks, but the rest of our team are so good that out of 10 quizzes so far this year (no quiz in August) we’ve outright won 7, been joint winners in 2 and second place in the other. Now the usual prize is a free cinema ticket for each member of the winning team. And I really like that – I’ve seen some great films with it, some good and some just ok. Well, in this Wednesday’s quiz it was announced that there was an extra prize for the winners. It was (drum roll please) two weeks’ free gym membership!

I’m sorry, but a couple of horrible PE teachers at school when I was a kid put me off this sort of thing for life. If I ever feel the need to exercise, then a good, stiff hour’s walk usually does the trick. But, it was certainly a kind thought, and so while other team members have made plans aout how they’re going to take advantage, I just sat and smiled politely.

You know, it’s been a while since I won a prize that I have absolutely no use for. Back in the mists of time, I gave up alcohol. Not because my father was an alcoholic – although I can attest to the fact that growing up with an alcoholic is enough to put you off the stuff for life. Not just because if I had more than two pints on an evening then I would be tired, sluggish and grumpy the next day in school. No, the main reason is, that not that long after my 35^th birthday, it suddenly occurred to me that when you get right down to it, I don’t really like the stuff very much. To my little kid’s palate, all wine tastes like vinegar, and beer not much better. Sorry. So for many years I was going out on a Sunday, often winning a bottle of wine I had absolutely no use for.

In the quiz my son Mike goes to in Bridgend, the main prize tends to be a box of sweeties, Celebrations or the like. Now this is much more palatable to my little kid taste buds – but I’m diabetic, so that’s no good! Come to think of it, this has been much the same over the years at work. I’ve asked various heads of department not to bother getting me a Christmas present, because I don’t drink alcohol and I can’t eat sweet stuff.

On the other side of the coin, in terms of unexpected prizes that I liked, I think that top of the list might well be a very fine snooker cue I won in a sports quiz once. Alright, I don’t play snooker at all now, and didn’t play it much then, but there you go.

Film Quiz

Look, I was just in a very grumpy mood when I wrote this yesterday. Here goes: - 

 I am currently sitting in a theatre on a school INSET day, listening to the ‘expert’ in a particular field. His first mistake was to discard the microphone he was offered. He thinks his voice is perfectly clear and carries to the middle and back of the auditorium. He is wrong. We are sitting around large round tables. I currently have 11 people around mine. He keeps stopping, and I’m guessing that he is asking us to discuss things, judging by the fact that everyone else in the group starts talking. At the same time. I hear snatches of three or four conversations each time. I feel somewhat like I am being beaten over the head with a blunt instrument today.

Which brings me to Wednesday night’s quiz. I enjoyed Wednesday night’s quiz – always do, even though I very rarely provide more than one or two answers. It’s a film quiz, you see. Wednesday night’s theme was movie villains. And we played an absolute blinder. I say we. I had a couple and that was that for me. There’s one quiz every month – with no quiz in August. Of the 8 quizzes so far this year we’ve won 6, tied for first place in another, and been second in the other. This year as well as the individual quizzes it’s being run as a league. Now, on Wednesday night we won by something like 18 points, or put it another way, we could have not played the last round and still won by 8. It’s our biggest win this year, possibly our biggest win ever.

There is a certain irony to this. There are several guys who run the quiz. Most of them we get on with fine, but there’s one of them who makes no secret of the fact that he is extremely frustrated that we win the majority of quizzes. Well, on Wednesday night, as we were in the queue for drinks, this particular guy passed us in the queue. Jess and I turned to each other and at exactly the same time said, “That’s ruined his night.”

If you play in quizzes and you win quite regularly then you’ll have experienced some unpleasantness from other teams or question masters I’m quite sure. On Thursday night Dan said he’d been told that the organisers are considering introducing a handicap system. Hmm. Personally, I would hope that if they do they will hang on until after December, and the end of the league. Changing things before the league ends, somehow that’s not quite cricket.

I have mixed feelings about handicaps. On the positive side, the more teams that take part in a quiz the better as far as the host venues are concerned, and without the venue you can’t have a quiz. I would imagine that playing in a quiz where you know you have a chance of winning is more fun than playing in a quiz where you know that you have no realistic chance of winning. Okay. On the negative side – I don’t really want to say this now, because I don’t come across very well for saying it. But what the hell? The nasty, too serious about the whole thing side of me says – handicaps reward you for not being very good at it. Handicaps remove any incentive to get better at it, and if winning matters that much to you, then you ought to be prepared to put in a bit of effort to get better at it. On a more practical note, I think it’s difficult to do handicaps fairly. Trevor Parry in Newport, who is as good a question master as you are ever going to meet, started using handicaps in his Monday quiz which I used to attend. It was a constant source of frustration to me – even as great a setter as Trevor seemed to have no discernible system of handicapping, just plucking the figures out of thin air each week. Some nights I just wanted to get up and walk out after he announced the handicaps, because we’d be starting so far off the pace there would be no chance of winning, even if we comfortably outscored everyone else.

Well, that’s just me, and I know I do take it all too seriously. If I lived closer to Newport then I’d consider going again, but I cannot in all conscience do a 40 minute journey back on a school night now, even with handicaps.

On the other hand, I would not even make a 40 second journey to a bingo quiz. Bingo quizzes are a firm fixture in the drawer I have labelled ‘NOT FOR ME’. I can’t cope with the idea that you might get all the answers in the quiz right (unlikely but not impossible) and still not win. Quizzing is a broad church, and we can’t all like the same things. If you regularly go to a bingo style quiz and you enjoy it, then good luck to you. As I say, it’s not for me.

 

Ironically, my team are the Boycs - short for Boycott.

It was a tale of two quizzes again this week. Yes, it was the monthly film quiz in the Gwyn Hall. July’s theme was Disney movies. Now way back in the day, some twenty years ago, my late teammate Anne and I always used to say that if we could only win one quiz in the rugby club a year, then we would want it to be the end of year quiz. Well, when it comes to the film quiz in the Gwyn, if there was only one quiz in the year we could win, we’d want it to be this one. We’d put quite a lot of pressure on ourselves with our performance last year, when we had already amassed a winning total before the questions in the last round were even asked. Well, to cut a long story short, we did not amass a winning total before the last round on Wednesday. Thankfully there was daylight between ourselves and the second placed team at the end – but not so much as last year.

As a local quiz, I think that last night’s was the best attended I’ve ever played in. I think that I’m right in saying that there were forty four teams last night, which is remarkable really. Yeah, I know, we would have about a hundred teams sometimes for the Birmingham mega-quiz, but Birmingham is certainly not local.

I mention this because it’s the time of year when attendance at the rugby club quiz becomes a bit sparse at times, what with people going on holiday. In fact we arrived last night to be greeted by Mr. Norwich with a heartfelt plea for my team to provide question masters for quizzes on 10^th and 17^th August. Well, I’m sketching in wonderful wonderful Copenhagen for a few days in early August and I’m not back until the 11^th (don’t blub – I will catch up as soon as I get back.)So Jess is going to do the 10^th and I’ll do the other.

I think it was Adam who made the very pertinent point to Dai – wouldn’t it be a good idea if all of the teams took it in turns to provide a quiz and a question master. I have known places where this is the norm and it has worked successfully. However, we’re walking a bit of a precarious line at the club at the moment. We have only five regular teams, and to be fair four of these teams do provide at least one question master on a regular or semi-regular basis. However there’s no obligation for them to do so. Our fear is that if were to become a regular obligation, then we might end up losing teams, which is something we just can’t afford. So we’ve ended up with this situation whereby one team never provides a question master, while our team provides four.

It isn’t a perfect world, so it’s sometimes necessary to accept an imperfect situation like this. I would far rather put in the time and effort tto make a quiz now and then, than have weeks when there’s no quiz because there’s no question master.

However, that doesn’t mean I think we should give in to threats along the lines of one I was told of last night. If you read my post about last week’s quiz, you might remember that it really was not very enjoyable in my opinion. Well, it turns out this was an opinion shared by pretty much everyone who expressed one. Mr. N. said that he’d had his ear bent by members of all of the other teams. In particular he said that one team had threatened that if last week’s setter were to do it again, they would not be turning up for the quiz.

This is a tricky one. It’s not actually black and white. I mean, if you really don’t enjoy a quiz set by a particular setter should you really be under any obligation to attend it? Well, maybe not. But in our particular situation, though, I kind of think that it’s rather churlish if you do start to give a particular question master a miss. Most of us come week in, week out, expecting that there will be a quiz for us. Of the 20 – 30 regular players, less than 10 produce a quiz for everyone else on anything like a regular basis. So I don’t think it’s unfair to expect the rest to show some appreciation by turning up whenever possible.

Yeah, I know I was moaning about the quiz last week. However, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t turn up next time this setter does it. Lord knows, in the last 28 years we’ve had a couple of very poor setters in the quiz but I’ve always turned up for them if I could. There was only one setter I boycotted I the club ad as I’ve explained in the past, that was personal issue, not because her quizzes were frankly mediocre at best (which they were).

I’d like to think that I’ve mellowed a bit in the years we’ve known each other, dearly beloved. So I’m not going to say – hey, if you never do a quiz yourself you’ve got no right to boycott someone else’s quiz. However, I can’t help feeling that if you don’t like someone else’s quiz, have a go at one yourself and try to show them how it should be done.

From Page To Screen

Let’s not finish April with my rant in my last post still ringing in our collective ears, shall we. I’ve mentioned in the past that I do attend one other quiz than the rugby club. This is the Movie quiz in the Gwyn Hall in Neath. It only takes place once a month, and it is well attended. To give you an example, April’s quiz which took place on Wednesday was themed ‘From Page To Screen’. Traditionally this is not one of the most popular films, in the way that, for the sake of argument, Disney movies is. Yet there were still 23 teams playing on Wednesday evening.

It's a funny theme, From Page to Screen. Basically, any fim adaptation of a book is fair game, which does at least mean that you can have a wide and varied range of questions.

Yeah, alright, we won. One new thing this year is that there’s a winning team each month, but the results all contribute to a League throughout the year. With a third of the year now done, we’ve won three and been second once. That was the musicals quiz which was, I think in February. Now I’m usually of a pessimistic cast of mind when contemplating our chances before the final scores are announced. I’m not sure why – as I always say, if it’s hard for us, then it’s hard for everyone else as well. Maybe it’s because in a General Knowledge quiz at the very least I’m usually at least a pretty good contributor to the team, whereas in a film quiz I’m at best an auxiliary, chipping in the odd one or two when I can. So I really didn’t know how well we’d done. I hoped hat we’d one by a point or two. As it turned out though we won by 8, which is a comfortable margin in this quiz.

Look, if you have a good time and enjoy the quiz, as we did, then winning is a bonus. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that it doesn’t matter to me. I’m far too immature for that.