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by John Nolan

Not long left to vote for ‘After the Fact’

January 28, 2013 in Podcast, Quiz Show

Perhaps you haven’t heard but After the Fact, the quiz show I host on Claremorris Community Radio, was last Autumn nominated for a European Podcast Award.

The (rather long-winded) award process is about to change stages this week. On February 1st, the public voting phase ends and the category shortlists will be announced. A judging panel will then review the remaining podcasts before the winners are announced during March sometime.

So, there are just a few days left to vote for After the Fact! * If you’d like to do so, please click on this link right here: Vote for After the Fact. **

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by John Nolan

A podium place

January 7, 2013 in Quizzes

This time last year our sporting knowledge team had a bit of a nightmare at the annual Claremorris AFC Sports Quiz.

quiz-books-smFor those who don’t recall (and are too lazy to click the link above), our group was in contention throughout the night before taking the lead after round 8. Alas, we came unstuck in the very next round and collapsed to outside of the top 5 places.

This year things didn’t turn out that bad – whilst not being as good either. We seemed to the spend the whole night in third place and where did we end up finishing? Yup, third place.

We did have an enjoyable night all round. This started in the bar before-hand, where we encountered a novel form of fundraising: quiz books! Cancer Care West are selling a series of sports trivia quiz books as a money raiser. Pick up one if you see them as they’re a great idea. Then again, I might be biased!

The main event was very nicely run. Unfortunately for the organisers there wasn’t a huge crowd in. Somewhere in the region of 14 tables took part in what is normally a sell-out event. Consensus decided that a rival sports club’s running of a poker night across town was largely to blame for this.
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by John Nolan

Stand Up and Answers

December 18, 2012 in Culture, Quizzes

stand-up-micDuring 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.
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by John Nolan

A Christmas cracker

December 10, 2012 in Quizzes

My employer, Claremorris Community Radio, is hosting a comedy festival in its home town next weekend. An interesting event for readers of this site will take place on Friday evening. It’s Standup and Answers, a night described as a “mixture of comedy and trivia”.

Comedian Jarlath Regan is your host and he is joined by some very special helpers including Karl Spain, The Viper (Hardy Bucks) and Foil, Arms and Hog (The Savage Eye). The night will feature an actual table quiz (yes, it’s true!), albeit one in which the rounds have a humorous bent. I also believe the helpers will perform a bit of stand-up in between rounds and during the interval etc so it should be both a challenging and a very entertaining night.

The quiz takes place in the funky upstairs venue at Maxwell’s Bar, The Square, in Claremorris. It’s due to start at 9pm and tickets cost €12.50 per person. Tickets are available at Maxwells, on ccr946.ie or on ccr946.eventbrite.ie.

I’ll be there and I hope to see some of you there too.

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by John Nolan

Guess who’s back answers (bonus track)

October 13, 2012 in Gilligan's, Quizzes

Below you will find the answers to the questions I posed in yesterday’s post, Guess who’s back.

I’m getting them posted today for two reasons.  Firstly, myself and Mrs Tablequiz are off to the Irish Blog Awards tonight so, you’d never know, I may need to do another post tomorrow. ;-) Then again, I probably won’t but I intend having a good night in any event!

Secondly, I spotted a nice little quiz on The Journal this morning.  It features 10 lines from Irish literature (or poetry) and you simply have to identify the author and the title of the work.  I surprised myself by getting 7 of the 10 right.  You can have a go at: www.thejournal.ie/can-you-identify-these-irish-literary-quotations-629772-Oct2012/

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by John Nolan

Guess who’s back

October 12, 2012 in Gilligan's, Quizzes

October is here and, right one cue, the Tuesday night quiz at Gilligan’s, Claremorris, started up again on Tuesday last.

Truth be told though, it was due to start the week before but such was the low turnout (I was part of that problem, alas) that it was postponed for seven days.  This Tuesday the crowd was nothing to write home about either but, with 11 people, we were able to press on albeit with only three tables taking part.  Let’s hope that numbers pick up during the weeks ahead.  Certainly for next week, when yours truly is, at short-notice, due to be quiz master. ;-)

My own team-of-three suffered the ignominy of being in joint-first at half-time before collapsing over the second section to finish third.  Yes, that is third out of three!  Our final score of 83 was four behind second place and a further point behind the eventual winners.  Winners who themselves had been ‘last’ at half-time!

Our terrible finish was tempered by going out on a high.  We scored a perfect 12 in the picture round – in spite of the fact that at least three of them were educated guesses.  Quite well-educated, as it turned out..!

You can check the pictures out after the jump, along with the questions that cost us dearly. Go on, give them a go.

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by John Nolan

The luck of the draw?

October 5, 2012 in Quiz Show

My radio show, After the Fact, is now six episodes into its second season on Claremorris Community Radio.

Throughout the whole of the first series, which ran to 28 episodes, we only had one draw (or ‘tie’, if you’re American).

Who knows what’s happened since but, at this early stage, one third of season two has finished with level scores.  Are the questions harder – or easier? Have the contestants gotten smarter – or dumber? Or is it all down to luck?

If you don’t have an answer for those questions yet, why not listen to last night’s show, Europe, via the widget below?! Yes, I guess I am giving away the ending but it’s the journey that’s fun!

Finally, if you’d prefer, you can subscribe to the show via iTunes.

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Avatar of John Nolan

by John Nolan

After the Fact returns – you can watch!

September 1, 2012 in Quiz Show

That’s right quiz fans, After the Fact, the award-winning community radio quiz show returns this evening for its second series.

From next Thursday, it will revert to its regular broadcast slot; that is, Thursdays at 7pm.  However, as part of the Claremorris Community Radio Broadcastathon, we decided to present the debut tonight, Saturday, at 8pm.  As always, you can listen in to the show, via claremorriscommunityradio.ie.

However, this special event comes with special circumstances.  Firstly, we are broadcasting from a new, specially created (and incredibly spacious) studio.  More importantly though, as the Broadcastathon is being filmed and streamed on claremorristv.com, you can tune in there and actually WATCH After the Fact take place.

So please do.  The topic for the show’s questions will be, not too surprisingly, marathons.  Alas, Clancy our robot scorekeeper has already informed me that he’s a bit camera-shy and will probably remain just out of frame.

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