And now for something completely different…
May 21, 2013 in Culture
Which famous Communist would win in a quiz about football and popular culture? The Monty Python team find out.
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by John Nolan
by John Nolan
A new departure (well, section)
May 7, 2013 in Culture, Housekeeping, Quizzes
Over the course of the weekend, I’ve made a few changes to the layout of this, very humble, site.
Tablequiz.net now has an international section, which will host details of past and future international quizzing events and provide links and resoruces for anyone interested in venturing into the world of cross-border quizzes.
The first major addition to this section is a page all about the recent Celtic Nations quizzing championship. The page features results, standings, how the scoring system worked and an archive of (a lot of) the questions asked during this inaugural event. Thank you to everyone who contributed the information here, especially the question setters, and Welsh legend David Edwards, who compiled the scores.
In the debit column, I have demoted the site’s interactive quiz rankings. Changes to the system the site uses resulted in an annoying bug (or perhaps it was intentional?) which provided quiz participants with zero feedback after doing a set of questions.
Besides, Irish quizzing now has its own rankings system, in which anyone can take part. If you’d like to give that a go, you can find out more on the Irish Quiz Organisation’s web site.
by John Nolan
Ken Jennings
April 24, 2013 in Culture, Quiz Show
Check out this cool TED Talk given by famous American quizzer, Ken Jennings, in which he outlines his life as a trivia obsessive and what it was like to take on IBM’s supercomputer.
by John Nolan
Is it wrong to use a phone to prove you’re right?
April 20, 2013 in Culture, Quizzes
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an ethical dilemma for you all to consider. It’s also been a while since we spoke about phones and their use at quizzes. Well, this post will unite those strands.
I was at a quiz last night and my team (table 9) ended up tied for the lead at the end of round 10. Cue tie-breaker. Both tables received a fresh answer sheet and were asked four new questions.
Here they are:
- Who played Red in The Shawshank Redemption?
- Name either of the robots in the Star Wars series of films
- Which geographic region is shared between Argentina and Chile?
- In what year’s Summer Olympics did Ben Johnson win the 100m before being banned?
As far as I knew, we had answered all four correctly when we handed up the sheet. We’d even written down the names of both robots. Our opponents (table 12) weren’t as quick as ourselves but, even so, looked confident when they submitted their answers.
After a quick check, the quizmistress announced “We have a winner.”, followed by “Table 9 have three [really?] and table 12 have two [no way!]“. However when she went through the questions she noticed that whilst table 12 had only gotten one of the robots, that’s all she’d asked for. So, another tie-break?
The thing is, Q3 (as phrased) has two correct answers. She was looking for Tierra del Fuego but we had answered the other one: Patagonia.
by John Nolan
Merry Quiz-mas
December 25, 2012 in Culture
It had to be said…
Have a good one everybody!
We’ll be back quizzing after Stephen’s Day.
In the meantime, enjoy a few games of Trivial Pursuit after Christmas dinner. 
by John Nolan
Stand Up and Answers
December 18, 2012 in Culture, Quizzes
During the second half of my time in university, Galway was a hotbed for quiz innovation. A thriving quiz scene produced a few unique experiences.
First up, there was an event called the Alternative Table Quiz. Run by several members of the University Ents Crew, this featured a scoreboard of QI-like irrelevance, questions about the price of calves in the marts and sufficient casual nudity to ensure that it got mentioned on RTÉ Radio’s Liveline programme the following day.
For my own part, I was part of the team that created the Performance Table Quiz. Part of the University Arts Festival of 2004, it featured Book-a-minute summaries, hit songs performed in the Club Style, intros performed live on guitar and our own filmed re-enactments of famous film scenes. The only quiz I’ve hosted in which the crowd at the end was much larger than it had been at the beginning, it’s also one of my proudest achievements in the world of quizzing.
So why am I mentioning these events now? Well, it’s because last Friday night I attended an event which remined me of those halycon days.
Friday night at the Claremorris Festive Festival featured Stand Up and Answers, the work of comedian Jarlath Regan. As the name implies (well, it did to me, anyway), it’s a mix of quizzing and comedy.
It features four rounds of questions with each gap being filled by comedy, of one form or another. Filling these gaps were Foil Arms and Hog, The Hardy Bucks‘ Eddie Durkan (aka Martin Maloney*) and Eric Lalor. All were very funny.
But I’m not a comedy reviewing blogger so I’ll move on to discuss the quizzing.
Read the rest of this entry →
by John Nolan
The Big Question: quizzing for Crumlin Children’s Hospital
November 16, 2012 in Culture, Quizzes
Sile Seoige, at the launch of The Big Question.
Next Thursday, November 22nd, sees the first ever holding of The Big Question, a national fundraising campaign to encourage family, friends, companies, organisations, teams and groups all over Ireland to come together this November and host a table quiz in aid of the Children’s Medical and Research Foundation at Our Lady’s Children Hospital, Crumlin.
It’s an event akin to the National Coffee Morning, in aid of local hospices, except in this case the organisers are looking for people to organise and host table quizzes!
All quiz organisers and the winning team from each quiz will be in with a chance to win a trip for four people to New York City with accommodation provided by Fitzpatrick Hotels. Even if you can’t organise a quiz you can still take part by texting Crumlin to 5700 to show your support with a €2.50 donation.
Children are sick, right now,” Dr. Orla Franklin, Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist at Our Lady’s Hospital, says. “Every year 550 children in Ireland have serious congenital heart disease for which surgery is the only option. The National Children’s Heart centre in Crumlin offers a life line to these children and their families. These tough life struggles are happening in cramped and out of date facilities. This has to change. They get world-class care but they need quality facilities.”
by John Nolan
The craic table
October 15, 2012 in Culture, Housekeeping
Tablequiz.net came up short at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night last. We were defeated in the Best Popculture category, as I had predicted earlier in the day, by the excellent A Year of Festivals in Ireland. Seriously, check it out.
The big event took place in the Osprey Hotel in Naas and saw awards being handed out to winners in 28 categories, the presentations being interspersed with the three courses of a lovely meal. In spite of the whole non-winning thing, myself and Mrs TQ.net had a great night, thanks majorly to the other nominees who shared our table (Table #9).
In a big picture sense, we were all losers. Literally, five of the seven of us were nominees so you’d have expected that the chances of at least one award (or vase, in this case) sitting on our table by the end of the night were good. Alas, none of us got called to the stage.
This was a shame for us of course. It was also a shame for the organisers as we were ACTUALLY THERE. By my count seven categories were won by bloggers who, for various reasons I’m sure, hadn’t travelled to Naas. One particular chap took on the role of phantom collector and, by the end of the night, he was getting cheers every time he appeared!
This wasn’t the only wrinkle the organisers had to deal with. While the hotel is pretty new, and the rooms were quite swanky, their sound system is awful. That’s not the organisers’ fault though. On the flip side, I was a bit disappointed for the winners of the first 10 awards (handed out before the starter course) as they weren’t even asked if they’d like to say a few words. Presumably some of them must have been annoyed at this as the MC announced at the start of the second 10 awards that winners could now give a speech, if they so chose. Great for them but those first 10 winners never did get a chance to come back to the stage.
The night’s big winners were Wise Words, winner of four awards including the blue riband Blog of the Year gong (an even bigger vase), and Molly Moo, the winner of three awards. Our own table of ‘winners’ featured: The World’s Talking, Nessa’s Family Kitchen, Bake for the Border and Greig Houghton Photography (the last two being a high-achieving husband-and-wife). Ok, we won nothing but I’m claiming an honourary ‘Loudest Table’ prize as even the MC was forced to acknowledge us. Then again, we were probably louder than she was, due to the crap microphone.
