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by John Nolan

That’s entertainment

March 9, 2012 in Interactive, Movies, Quizzes

At quite short notice we discovered that the monthly movie quiz in Kelly’s Bar, Galway, was going ahead last Monday.  The people who run the quiz seem to put great stock in keeping in contact with their regulars.  For example, we’re encouraged to put down a contact email for the team on our answer books.  However, something definitely went wrong last weekend as the word didn’t get out until Monday afternoon that the quiz was going ahead.  And that was on their Facebook wall which, thankfully, one of our number happened to check.

While I’m on the topic of communication, this quiz also fell foul of one of my personal bugbears.  The score. To whit, what is it? How are we getting on? They announced the score on just two occasions: half-time and full-time.  At half-time, two teams were way out in front (on 37 and 36 out of 40) and we were leading the peloton on 32.  We continued as we had been, safe in the knowledge that surely we were too far behind to win and we’d hopefully hang on to third.  Yet when the final scores were announced we’d come in second – two points ahead of third and just two points behind the winners. If only we’d known we were in the hunt!

They’re not the worst, mind you.  Last Friday night I attended a quiz in Claremorris Golf Club where the score wasn’t called out for the entire night! My team finished on 84/100 and hadn’t a clue if that was a good, bad or indifferent score.  We came fourth, if you’re interested, with the teams above us finishing on 86, 89 and 91 points.

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by John Nolan

This’ll test ya

March 1, 2012 in Gilligan's, Interactive, Quizzes

After several weeks of building it up, I’m delighted to announce that our Quiz Rankings page is now online.  You can access it from the main menu or via this address: tablequiz.net/quiz-rankings/

To get your name on the ranking list, simply make sure you’ve logged-in before completing one of our new (fancy shmancy) interactive quizzes.  Your score will automatically be added to the list. Owing to the fact that the quizzes already published have been of differing lengths (and will be in the future, no doubt) I’ve decided to use the percentage mark from each quiz as a points score.  This makes for a level playing field I think.  Come the end of the year, we’ll have an official final table and the bigging-up of the winner.

Until then though, you’ll probably want to get quizzing.  Well, blow me over, don’t I have a quiz here for you!

Last Tuesday night’s quiz in Gilligan’s, Claremorris, was tough.  I was lucky enough to be on the winning team and we only scored 72/104.  It also featured a genius picture round, which I will put up tomorrow, as it deserves its own post.

Click the Read on…, to see some of the questions we missed.

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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 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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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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