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by John Nolan

Fancy a spot on the Quiz World Rankings?

February 27, 2012 in Quizzes

I received an email last week from Jane Allen, Managing Director of the International Quizzing Association.  In it she outlines the organization’s new initiative – The Hot 100.

The Hot 100 will be an ongoing event, with rounds taking place each month.  You won’t have to go too far if you want to take part.  All they need is two or more people to come together to form an impromptu quizzing cell.  Between them they can mark each other’s scores with these then bring emailed back to the IQA for the compilation of a World Quizzing Ranking.

The event will cost competitors the (small) fee of $5 per month.  At the moment, that works out at roughly €3.75 (or £3.20).

I’d be willing to organise a group here in the West/Midlands.  If you’re interested, please let me know at quizmaster@tablequiz.net.

If you’d like some more thorough info, I’ve included the full email after the Read the rest…

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by John Nolan

Very sporting quizzing

February 24, 2012 in Culture

A bit of an omnibus post this, as I’ve got a few small things to mention.

Firstly, Ciarán Murphy and Eoin McDevitt, two of my three* favourite sports wafflers had an entertaining chat about table quizzes during the Murph’s Country Pages slot on their Off the Ball show this week.  You can check it out by subscribing to their podcast or listen right here:

  

 

If you’re in the mood for some actual sports questions, you might like to check out my new slot on Claremorris Community Radio.  Now that my Friday Five Trivia has come to an end, I’m going to keep the Audioboo feed alive with a weekly set of sports questions, which we’re calling Wednesday’s Know Your Sport.  I know, it’s not the most original name!  It features on a new sports show I’m co-anchoring called Half-time Team Talk, which is on-air each Wednesday between 7 and 8pm.  My co-host is John Mullarkey, who you will also here in this week’s quiz.  Again, you can either subscribe to the feed or listen right here:

  

* Ken Early wasn’t part of the conversation. Alas. I’d say he’d kick their asses in a quiz.

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by John Nolan

Ceisteanna do mhuintir na hÉireann

February 21, 2012 in Interactive, Quizzes

A few weeks back, I mentioned my intention to take part in the Scór national quiz.  As a warm up, I was invited by the same organiser, Hugh, to take part in an Irish language equivalent.

This Trath na gCeist was organised by the Roscommon County GAA Board and took place in its main headquarters on Wednesday night last.  Tables representing 11 Roscommon GAA clubs took part.  Format-wise, it was just a table quiz in which the questions were called out ‘as Gaeilge’.

On the whole, I can say two things:

  1. My Irish isn’t half as bad as I thought it was.  Throughout the course of the night, only one question completely stumped me and, in that case, it was only one word that caused the problem.
  2. My knowledge of Ireland isn’t deep enough.  This is a funny one, given Dave’s article from before Christmas, but, as you’ll see from the questions below, this quiz featured 80 questions that were all about Ireland and NOTHING ELSE.

Our team, Éire Óg, featured myself, Hugh and two other guys, Seamus and Justin.  It was a very entertaining group to be part of.  However, we didn’t translate this good team dynamic into a podium finish.  This was a shame as there were trophies on offer for the first three teams. Actual trophies!

Our 62/80 was a good enough score – good enough, in fact, for fifth. It was nowhere near the top three though, who finished on 69, 70 and 71 points respectively.  They now go on to represent Roscommon in the Connacht round of competition. AND they get those trophies!

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by John Nolan

Questions pour un Irlandais

February 13, 2012 in Quiz Show

Still miss Going for Gold?  Well, move to France where its spinoff show, Questions pour un champion, still airs – as it has done since November 1988.

I’m currently in France (on holiday – thankfully not as an attendee at this match) and I happened upon an episode of it last night on French TV.  I was struck by the format, which is identical to Going for Gold, and the all-action host – who is nothing like Henry Kelly!

I intended just putting up any old clip for you to check out but I found something even better.  It’s an episode form last March and features an Irish man – Sean Dingle from Dublin.  Have a watch and see how he got on.

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by Mike Coyne

Pedantic answers

February 8, 2012 in Movies, Quizzes

Since I got my waffle out of the way yesterday, straight to the answers ;-)

Congratulations again to the winners who scored an impressive 71/80. The next movie quiz was announced for 5th March.

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by Mike Coyne

Pedantic, moi?

February 7, 2012 in Movies, Quizzes

Correcting quizzes is essentially a thankless task. Writing questions is fun. Hosting is fun (though less so for the audience if your host-with-the-most persona is a git). Marking sheets and totting up scores is free of any such glamour. All you need is a red pen and a bit of cop-on. Which brings me neatly to the pedantry at this week’s quiz.

What constitutes a right answer is a long-standing bugbear of mine. Most quizzes accept surnames without firstnames, though some penalise for incorrect attempts at both (a bit harsh, but you’re usually forewarned). Phonetic answers are usually acccepted, unless you’re asked to spell Schwarzenegger or similar. In my book though, what’s crucial is whether the stem of the answer is in place. In movie quizzes, that identifier may distinguish a movie from another entry in a franchise, or a movie with a similar title. However, I’d challenge whether denying us a point in the last movie quiz for identifying the poster for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is truly in the spirit of quizzing. Surely we gave the pertinent information? Likewise for giving Bella’s full name from Twilight series as Bella Swann (as in the Wiki entry) as they only accepted Isabella. Pendantic or what?!

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by John Nolan

Looking out for No. 1

February 7, 2012 in Interactive, Quizzes

Here’s a quick post, just to publish the audio round from last Friday night’s Gorthaganny National School quiz.  As I said in my previous post, the theme was simple: each song features a number in its title. Teams had to identify the number in each case and enter it in to their swanky buzzer.

You can listen to the 10 tracks by clicking the ‘Read the rest….’ link.

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by John Nolan

Behold, the future!

February 5, 2012 in Interactive, Quizzes

Here it is.  The buzzer with which my team took part in last Friday night’s quiz in Ballyhaunis Golf Club.

The quiz was a fundraiser for Gorthaganny National School for, as the headmaster said at the end of the quiz, it’s now a case of “back to the ’80s” in the schools sector with fundraising events becoming common once again.  The money raised at this event will go towards the purchase of the this very buzzer system.  If it provides the school children with as much entertainment value as we got on Friday night, it will be money well spent.

The quiz itself was broken up into four sections: 40 trivia questions, 10 picture questions, 40 trivia questions and 10 music questions.  The trivia questions were, as I predicted, just like questions on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, with four options.  The picture round was funny but a tad easy, as each question showed a famous person and a professional look-a-like, with us having to enter A or B to identify who was the real deal.  The music round showed off another of the buzzer’s modes.  Each of the songs featured a number in the title and we had to type this number into the device.

On the whole, it was a very enjoyable quiz which is testament to the school staff who created it.  The first 40 questions dragged on a bit as no time limit was enforced on the participants.  However, after the interval, they did introduce a limit of 30 seconds on each question so they obviously had noticed the slow pace themselves.

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