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by John Nolan

Something to sink your teeth into 2

April 8, 2013 in Quizzes

Before I begin, I’d like to invite anyone around Galway to come along to a quiz I’m hosting in aid of YAP Ireland in Flannery’s Hotel, Renmore, on Thursday evening, at 8pm. It should be a great night and it’s definitely a great cause.

Odlums-editIt’s time for me to reveal the answers to the questions I posed in last weekend’s Food Quiz-related article.

In that article, I forgot to mention the contribution a team called ‘The Louisiana Purchase’ made to the night’s entertainment. These were four American students who were always at a disadvantage following Round 3, the Irish food company logos (see below). However, they accepted their handicap with good grace and played on for the rest of the night, even finishing less than 10 points behind their nearest rivals.

As a reward, we threatened them with a glass of the slops of the liquid tasting round but, you’ll be glad to learn, that didn’t come true. In fact, the bar gave them a round on the house. I think they were happy with this outcome. ;-)

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Avatar of John Nolan

by John Nolan

Something to sink your teeth into

April 6, 2013 in Quizzes

food-quiz-screenLast Monday night, the second annual Galway Food Festival came to a close. Like its first year, the final event of the weekend was a table quiz hosted by The King’s Head, High Street. Also, like last year, I was the quiz masterchef.

It’s rare, even for me, to do the exact same event one year on. This did enable me to put into action some of the advice/feedback I received 12 months ago, following that first food quiz.

In 2012, everyone had loved the taster round (which included the likes of cumin seed, thyme and cardamon) so this year we had two! I added a liquid-based taster round to programme. Thankfully, everyone enjoyed it. There were even calls for a second round of samples! :-)

That was about the height of it for drink fans though. Last year’s feedback had also included an email telling me that there were too many drink questions! So, I made the quiz almost entirely food-based this year. Well, it is a food festival, to be fair.

The first year’s champions, The Kitchen, were invited up on stage at the start of the night to be presented with a commemorative plate, designed by Judy Greene. Would they be returning to the stage again at the end of the night, I wondered…
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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

Something tasty – answers

April 12, 2012 in Quizzes

Here are the answers to the picture rounds posted in the Something tasty post on Tuesday.  You’ll find them after the read the rest… link.

In other, surprising, news last week’s episode of After the Fact wasn’t, it turns out, the final show in the series.  In honour of today’s significant anniversary, tonight will see a special Titanic-themed episode of the show being broadcast on Claremorris Community Radio at 7pm.  Visit the website around then and click on the Listen Live link to hear the show.

It should be an interesting show.  For a start, I’m going to be on the receiving end this week and a guest host will be asking the questions!

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by John Nolan

Something tasty

April 10, 2012 in Interactive, Quizzes

The first-ever Galway Food Festival came to an end last night with a quiz, hosted by yours truly, in The King’s Head, on High Street.

What a great night! Everything worked, the crowd were lovely (and copious – there were 31 tables!) and the questions hit the right standard (the winning score was 88/100). The King’s Head itself is a great venue for a quiz as its large screen is visible from both floors and the front of the bar can be curtained off, so as to allow non-quizzers to revel away without bothering everyone else.

I was only given one brief when asked to create a quiz for a food festival: make it general enough that the chefs aren’t guaranteed to win. Well, I didn’t quite manage that as the winning team, the Bronze Turkeys, was made up of the staff from The Kitchen, the restaurant in the Galway City Museum. They were delighted with their achievement and told me that they intend to display the Galway Crystal trophy* in the restaurant for the coming year!

To decrease the inherent advantage of food experts, I included a music round (where the song titles included a food term), a round featuring the posters from 10 films which have food in their titles and a round featuring 10 uniquely shaped bottles.  You can see the last two at the end of this post.

However, to boost up the foodies, I did include an interactive round in which each team received a plate with five small bun cases.  Within each case was a seed, herb or spice and the teams had five minutes to identify the substances.  Everyone seemed to love that and most teams got all five correct!  Obviously, I won’t be including this round here on the site. :-)

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by John Nolan

The song remains the same: answers

June 6, 2011 in Quizzes

I will be putting up two blog posts today as I’ve had a very notable weekend, quiz-wise.

However, there’s no point putting the cart before the horse.  Some of you are waiting on the answers from last Friday’s post, The song remains the same, and I will put those online first.

A funny thing happened last Thursday night at the quiz.  When we were asked “What is the largest lake in the Republic of Ireland?” debate ensued between proponents of two answers: Lough Corrib and Lough Ree.  Someone came up with a genius solution: “Let’s pop outside and look at the map on the wall.”  Our pub, The Corner Bar, does indeed feature a large map on its gable wall.

So, off our intrepid researcher went.  He came back in about 10 seconds.  “Erm, it’s just a map of Mayo!”

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Avatar of John Nolan

by John Nolan

The song remains the same

June 3, 2011 in Podcast, Quizzes

This time last year*, The Corner Bar team scored 88/100 in the Ballyhaunis Inter-pub quiz.  A good score you’d think.  However, it turned out that our efforts were nowhere near good enough as the winners got 99 points.

Believe or not, the exact same scenario was played out again last night when we emulated our score of last year.  And, yet again, it turned out we were 11 points behind the winner.  Winners, actually, as there was a tie at the top.  Paddy Phillip’s and The Hazel had to go through an extra round before the former was declared the winner.

The winning score in this round was never announced so I can’t say how close our 7/10 was.  Not that it matters, of course.  Our 88/100 was only good enough to finish third-last in the field of 12!

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by John Nolan

Wanna help a pub out?

May 31, 2011 in Quizzes

The annual Inter-Pub Quiz takes place in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, on Thursday night next at 9pm.  Indeed, it is the opening event in this year’s Ballyhaunis Summer Festival.

For those who didn’t see my report on last year’s event, this quiz is quite a novel one.  Basically, everyone who wants to take part gets in to their pub of choice by 9pm.  There is only one answer sheet per pub so, thus, everyone who is inside the door is on that pub’s team.  The pub’s radio is then tuned to a local, community frequency and the questions are read out over the airwaves.  The quiz gets physical in between rounds as each pub has to dispatch a runner to return their answer sheet back to quiz HQ.

Last year’s event produced some amazing final scores.  At the time, this prompted me to suggest that this year we’d gather as many blog fans as we could and attempt to wrestle victory from the mighty Gill’s.  However, I’m afraid it has snuck up on me.

Still, if anyone’s near enough Ballyhaunis (or feels like travelling), you’re more than welcome.  Email me and I’ll let you know where the tablequiz.net approved pub is. :-)

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