by John Nolan
February 8, 2011 in Housekeeping, Quizzes
Sometimes, my memory isn’t quite what you’d expect the memory of a person who writes about quizzes to be.
Case in point, yesterday I added the 12 questions that had accompanied the Independent article in the paper to the bottom of my post about the same article.
Today, I completely forgot to post the answers to the questions (until now, that is)! Sorry if you were waiting on them.
by John Nolan
February 7, 2011 in Housekeeping, Quizzes
Eddie Boyle, John Nolan and Ger Slattery at a quiz in Gilligan's Bar. Photo: Brian Farrell
After a short delay, no doubt caused by the small matter of the general election campaign, the much mentioned article featuring this website was published in today’s Irish Independent. Huzzah!
John Meagher’s article is on page 34 of the Metro edition I have in front of me.
If you can’t make it to the shops today or, who knows, that paper is sold out due to excessive demand, you can still view the article at this address: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/lets-get-quizzical-damien-owens-trivia-writer-2527992.html
by John Nolan
February 6, 2011 in Housekeeping
Here is the mp3 file of my appearance on the Tubridy radio show. Just click the play button to listen at your leisure.
I’m putting this here just in case the podcast link on the RTÉ site becomes defunct some day.
by John Nolan
February 3, 2011 in Housekeeping
Good afternoon all. Firstly, I’ll be posting the answers to yesterday’s questions later on today. But first I’m going to fill you in on how my day has been.
This morning started off with a disappointment as I received an email which told me that the article in the Irish Independent had been put back until “early next week”. Sad, true, but what can one do? When I hear any more about it I’ll let you know.
Not being a big fan of driving in the early morning, I had travelled up to Dublin last night and stayed with my friends Bob, Keith and Maurice, who very kindly gave me a bed and a parking space. Thanks lads. I had been asked to present myself at the RTÉ Radio Centre at 10am, with my appearance on-air scheduled for 10.15.
I was quite surprised to find that, after kicking up my heels in a waiting room, I was basically brought straight into the studio when the call came. I had presumed I’d meet the team beforehand, perhaps during the 10am news. I was introduced to Ryan Tubridy during an ad break, so obviously our preliminaries were quite rushed. I wonder if all radio presenters have Tubridy’s ability to engage in banter while keeping an eye on a clock counting down? I hadn’t even noticed he was doing it until, just at the end of a sentence (in our private chat), he pushed up a fader and, almost in the same cadence, announced “And we’re back …” into the microphone!
by John Nolan
December 4, 2010 in Housekeeping, Quiz Show
Anyone who lives in Ireland knows that we’ve been hit with a week of shockingly cold weather.
OK, it’s not that shocking if you’re from a country where it gets really cold, but to us it’s meant that schools are closed, roads are “treacherous” and, most appalingly of all, quizzes are cancelled.
Well, certainly the Claremorris GAA Quiz I was due to go to last Friday night was called off. Gilligan’s quiz may still be going on every Tuesday night but I’m not willing to drive over and find out.
In other news, the Zodiak Media Group have been in contact with the blog, asking me to inform my readers that contestants are being sought for the fifth series of Only Connect.
The only drawback is that you have to be a resident of the UK – so the only way I could enter a team (of three) would be to pretend I live across the border! Still, if you do live in the right place, and wouldn’t mind meeting Victoria Coren 
, you can request an application form at onlyconnect@presentable.co.uk.
For more info on the show, check www.bbc.co.uk/onlyconnect
by John Nolan
July 24, 2009 in Housekeeping
If you didn’t know already, a quick browse through this blog would have told you that quizzing (in Ireland, anyway) isn’t really a summer activity.
Quizzing is a nocturnal animal and, with the evenings still bright past 10pm, it leaves our shores for a summer holiday, not returning until the leaves start to fall off the trees.
Adding this post won’t do anything to change this fact. Neither will it do anything to divert you, or even keep your interest temporarily.
I’m only doing it to nip rumours that I had fallen off the side of the planet in the bud. Besides, the world is round…
by John Nolan
May 25, 2009 in Competition
The blog’s first Quiz Challenge ended on Friday evening last and I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to enter. I did my best to reply to everyone promptly with their score but, if it took a little bit longer than you expected, I’m sorry for that.
I hope everyone liked the format of the challenge. The thinking behind it was this: if I’d simply posted 10 questions, I’m sure I’d have gotten several contestants scoring 10/10. This is the era of google and all. So, as every answer has several possible questions, this format brought a little touch of lottery to the whole thing.
And so it turned out as no-one scored higher than 7. I then had to co-opt the services of my good lady wife, who did her duty by randomly picking one of the six contestants who had reached that score. So congratulations to Pearse Ward from Dublin whose name was first out of the hat! A copy of Trivial Pursuit will shortly be winging its way to his house.
Click read more… to have a look at the actual questions.
by John Nolan
May 19, 2009 in Competition
There are only four days to go in the blog’s first Quiz Challenge and I can now announce the potential prizes that are up for grabs.
Before I do that though I must thank everyone who’s entered so far. The top score, at this point, is 7 so, if you haven’t entered yet and you think you can do better, be sure and email me the 10 questions you think I used to arrive at the Challenge answers to quizmaster@tablequiz.net.
Now there is a recession on after all, so the blog (i.e. me) can only afford to one prize this time. With that in mind, the winner will be able to choose between these two fabulous quiz-related prizes:
