Answers:

1. What drink is the main ingredient in the cocktail Kir? A> Wine
2. What was invented by Percy Shaw? A> Cats Eyes
3. What was invented by Jethro Tull? A> The seed drill
4. What was invented by Jesse W. Reno? A> The escalator
5. What was invented by Fick, Calt and Muller? A> Contact lens
6. What is the capital city of Montserrat? A> Plymouth
7. What is the capital city of Fiji? A> Suva
8. In what year did band leader Glen Miller die? A> 1944
9. In what year did climber of Everest Sir Edmund Hillary die? A> 2008
10. Who scored the final point for Clare in the 1995 Munster Hurling final? A> Fergal Hegarty
11. Who is the deputy Mayor of Clare? A> Bill Chambers
12. With which Clare town is associated with traditional musician Mrs Crotty? A> Kilrush
13. In which country was Satsuma Porcelain created? A> Japan
14. Which English county contained 11 potteries in the 18th century? A> Staffordshire
15. Who painted the Angelus? A> Jean-François Millet
16. Who painted American Gothic? A> Grant Wood
17. “My love’s like the melody, that’s sweetly played in tune”. What song? A> A red, red rose
18. “The overpowering feeling that any second, you may suddenly appear”. What song? A> On the street where you live
19. What kind of animal is a bushmaster? A> Snake
20. In the song Spancil Hill, the singer’s sweetheart was whose daughter? A> Mack the Ranger
21. Who sang ’80s hit Broken Wings? A> Mr. Mister

Back to normality tomorrow, and round 10 of the HQ quiz.

When did it start? 8.20pm.  This is indicative of the timing problems that would plague this quiz. At 8pm Clare FM broadcast a news bulletin, followed by an ad break, followed by a Saw Doctors tune. Finally we got to hear the voice of the host but, even then, we still had to listen to his explanation of the rules, in detail once more, before we could kick off.

Round one (the Mixed Round) started off and the host flew through five general knowledge questions. This didn’t seem like a problem at the time as we knew them all. Great start, 5/5, easy!

Round two (Cocktails) followed very quickly. “Cocktails?” I asked out loud. “Good luck to ya, if you’re not a big drinker.” It turned out we weren’t big drinkers. We only knew three of them straight off but, as we do, we noted down the other two to mull over. The only problem being that we weren’t going to get and thinking time as the collectors were out of the blocks almost as soon as he’d finished repeating question 5.

This didn’t seem accidental though as, on air, the host almost immediately proceeded to round three (Inventions). We only got two of these right but I won’t complain about that. Questions are like the cards you’re dealt and everyone who’s in a quiz has to cope with them as best they can. What’s hard to understand though is structuring the quiz itself in such an awkward and unfriendly manner.

On the night there were 11 rounds (10 regular + 1 music). These were read out in bursts, 1-3, 3-6, 6-9 and finally 10-11.  In between these frantic questioning periods we were treated to at least four MOR tunes, several ad breaks and a lot of banter from the studio. While the banter wasn’t too bad (to be fair), it, the music and everything else smacked of filler. Why? Why rush through the rounds (which only had five questions each. Again, why?) and then appear to be padding out the show to fill its two hour running time?

I’m afraid to say it but we were nowhere near being competitive. I guess we need our thinking time. We finished on 33/55, which is pretty terrible. To misquote Larry Gogan, “they didn’t suit us.”  The winning team were based in Carrigaholt and they scored an unbelieveable 51/55 so congrats to them.

Here, to the best of my recollection, are the (20+) questions we got wrong. See how you do:

1. What drink is the main ingredient in the cocktail Kir?
2. What was invented by Percy Shaw*?
3. What was invented by Jethro Tull*?
4. What was invented by Jesse W. Reno?
5. What was invented by Fick, Calt and Muller?
6. What is the capital city of Montserrat?
7. What is the capital city of Fiji?
8. In what year did band leader Glen Miller die*?
9. In what year did climber of Everest Sir Edmund Hillery die?
10. Who scored the final point for Clare in the 1995 Munster Hurling final?
11. Who is the deputy Mayor of Clare?
12. With which Clare town is associated with traditional musician Mrs Crotty*?
13. In which country was Satsuma Porcelain created?
14. Which English county contained 11 potteries in the 18th century?
15. Who painted the Angelus?
16. Who painted American Gothic?
17. “My love’s like the melody, that’s sweetly played in tune”. What song*?
18. “The overpowering feeling that any second, you may suddenly appear”. What song?
19. What kind of animal is a bushmaster?
20. In the song Spancil Hill, the singer’s sweetheart was whose daughter?
21. Who sang ’80s hit Broken Wings?

I’ve put * on the few that we actually knew the answer to but the overwhelming need to rush, rush, rush caused us to discount/not discuss them.  Also I can’t give you the 22nd one we missed as it was a piece of harp music and I’m a bit rusty on the harp these days.

Update: Answers (belatedly) are here.

Rocky - Not a hen

Last Friday night, along with my mrs and two of our two friends, David and Rena, I took part in a table quiz organised by the Social Club of our local county council.  David used to work in said council.

The quiz took place in a (very brightly lit) back room of the Queens Hotel, Ennis.  It wasn’t a very big room, which was handy for the host, who had to shout out the questions.  Obviously someone had forgotten to book an amplifier!

All in all, we had a fun night.  For almost the entire time, my only bug bear would have been standard of questions.  Almost all were far too easy, apart from maybe one in each round, which would be damn near impossible.  Perhaps this was to make up for the preceding questions?  Consider: our team were two points behind the leaders a half-time (5 rounds).  At the start of the final round (9, weirdly) we were still two points behind the leaders – almost everyone had gotten straight 10s for rounds 6 through 8!

How easy?  How about “Who will be the next President of the United States of America?” or “What is the name of the new James Bond film?”.  Taxing, they weren’t.

The hard questions then were very local.  I think most people know what I mean by that.  Questions put in to handicap any ‘blow-ins’.  On this night, questions  went along the lines of“Which Clare hurling club have qualified for the Munster Intermediate hurling final?” To be fair, native Clare people might know that – it just happened that our entire team was made up of ‘immigrants’!

Also, there was an Irish round.  Here the questions were all as gaeilge, and our answers were expected to avoid the use of English also.  This was tough as none of our vocabularies stretched far enough.  One of the questions was to do with what was on the reverse of Irish Euro coins.  We all knew the answer, a harp, but none of us knew what the Irish word for harp was.  FYI it’s cláirseach.  Our 5 out of 10 here would turn out to be costly.

Anyways, getting back to the final round.  Surprinsingly, it was quite a hard round.  Afterwards, when the answers were called out, we had only gotten 8 out of 10 right, so we pretty much knew our chance of winning was gone.  However, our hopes were briefly raised when we noticed the leaders’ score being put up on the board – they had also scored 8.  Obviously we hadn’t won, but perhaps some of our other competitors had scored even less?

This note of optimism was soured when we saw our own score being put on the board – a 7!  Bafflement ensued as we’d heard the answer called out and we knew we’d only missed two.  Everyone else had scored 8, as far as I could see, and sure enough we finished up officially three points off the winners.  Prizes were presented and people started to drift off to the comfortably dim front bar.

A Rhode Island Red. This is a hen, as it happens.

Of course, I had to take myself up to the correctors’ table so see where the mystery point had gone.  It turned out that we had messed up with the following question: “A Rhode Island Red is a type of what animal?”

Now, I say “messed up” but the fact is that we had answered ‘chicken’.

“So what did we do wrong?”, I asked.

“The answer we were looking for was ‘hen’“, answered one of the two correcting ladies.

I. Couldn’t. Believe. It.

“But what’s a hen, but a female chicken?”

“No, a chicken is a young hen.”

“What? That’s a chick.  And besides even a Rhode Island Red chick is still a Rhode Island Red.”

At this point the second corrector came to the assistance of the first.  “A chicken is a chicken and a hen is a hen.  Deal with it.”

At this point, I gave up on these people.  I know it didn’t matter (in a winning or losing sense) but COME ON!

There ends my tale.  I’ve included the picture round from the quiz below.  It showcases the “easy/bitch hard” dynamic quite well.

Picture round:

Answers here…