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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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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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That’s entertainment

March 9, 2012 in Interactive, Movies, Quizzes

At quite short notice we discovered that the monthly movie quiz in Kelly’s Bar, Galway, was going ahead last Monday.  The people who run the quiz seem to put great stock in keeping in contact with their regulars.  For example, we’re encouraged to put down a contact email for the team on our answer books.  However, something definitely went wrong last weekend as the word didn’t get out until Monday afternoon that the quiz was going ahead.  And that was on their Facebook wall which, thankfully, one of our number happened to check.

While I’m on the topic of communication, this quiz also fell foul of one of my personal bugbears.  The score. To whit, what is it? How are we getting on? They announced the score on just two occasions: half-time and full-time.  At half-time, two teams were way out in front (on 37 and 36 out of 40) and we were leading the peloton on 32.  We continued as we had been, safe in the knowledge that surely we were too far behind to win and we’d hopefully hang on to third.  Yet when the final scores were announced we’d come in second – two points ahead of third and just two points behind the winners. If only we’d known we were in the hunt!

They’re not the worst, mind you.  Last Friday night I attended a quiz in Claremorris Golf Club where the score wasn’t called out for the entire night! My team finished on 84/100 and hadn’t a clue if that was a good, bad or indifferent score.  We came fourth, if you’re interested, with the teams above us finishing on 86, 89 and 91 points.

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Don’t work… too hard: answers

October 22, 2011 in Quizzes

Some breaking news: the low scores earned by the teams on Monday night last mustn’t have deterred me, as I have agreed to be the quiz master once again, on Friday night next (October 28) in Warde’s Pub, Claremorris.  The quiz starts at 8.30pm and you’re all invited! See the calendar for more details.

Anyway, back to the post.  Here are the answers to the (quite difficult, I admit) questions posted in yesterday’s Don’t work… too hard.

I wrote a bit about the concept of ‘quiz knowledge’ yesterday.  To flesh this out a little more, my point is that all knowledge is (or should be) valid.  It’s just a case of a situation arising where the more (shall we say) ‘obscure’ bit of your knowledge become useful.  But… shouldn’t the probability of any particular question coming up be identical across all fields? *

It isn’t. I knew almost nothing in the Popular Culture round below but that has never really mattered before.  99% of the time, in Irish table quizzes, questions like these never, ever, come up.  Is that ‘right’?

Consider the flip side: you might know someone who would do very well in the round being discussed but, if you asked them, would tell you that they are “terrible” at table quizzes and never take part in them. Surely there’s a flaw here?

By which I mean: is there a flaw in the way most Irish table quizzes are created? Do question setters, perhaps, consider their potential crowd and then design a quiz to suit them more than to really test them? Probably not consciously but almost certainly.  To take it further, is there a vernacular in the Irish table quiz world? Could the spectrum of knowledge tested at table quizzes be considered a ‘specialist subject‘ in-and-of itself?

This is a disquieting notion.

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Don’t work… too hard

October 20, 2011 in Quizzes

Question: How do you know the quiz you’ve (partially) written was too hard?

Answer: When the winning table scores 49/100.

That’s right, just 49%. And there was a playoff.

The night before its students decided to abandon Rag Week, NUI Galway played host to yours truly on the microphone, calling out questions in the back room of the College Bar.  I created three of the rounds used on the night (one of which you can see below).  The others were created by the members of my regular team so it was a rare occasion in that all four of us were at the top table, with the others collecting and correcting at various times.

Knowledge, or what one could consider ‘useful (quiz) knowledge’, is subjective and differs from person to person.  Even with my own abilities, this quiz featured a round I would have scored 2/10 in.  Of course, I’ve also included that for you to have a go.

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Today’s news today

October 17, 2011 in Housekeeping, Podcast, Quizzes

Good morning everyone.  Here’s a short post to invite anyone in the Galway area to come along to the Comedy Soc quiz which is taking place tonight in the NUI Galway College Bar.  It kicks off at 7.30pm (or thereabouts) and will feature questions written by myself and some of the team that will be representing Ireland in the European Quizzing Championship in Bruges next month.  I may even be MC for the night but that isn’t definite yet.

So come one, come all.   First prize is €200 and the night will also feature a raffle and, as the poster proudly proclaims, free food!  Admission is €20 for a table of four.

Few other things:

Round 10: The B*st*rd answers

October 11, 2011 in Movies, Quizzes

Good day to you all.  Here are the answers to those fiendish questions posted in yesterday’s blog.

It’s a good job I typed up yesterday’s post when I did as I have since lost the piece of paper on which the featured questions reside.  Thus, I will have to do the round all over again.  That said, it is a lot easier when you’ve heard the answers within the past week!

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Round 10: The B*st*rd

October 10, 2011 in Movies, Quizzes

The title of this post is the name by which the quiz master at the Kelly’s monthly movie quiz always refers to the final round.  He’s clearly proud of it.  He must spend a lot of his week before the quiz going through Halliwell’s Film Guide, looking for the most obscure movie facts he can find.

Normally we do ‘ok’ in this round – by which I mean 6 points, or thereabouts. However, if you’ve read my post from last week, you won’t be surprised when I reveal that we scored a miserable 3 points this time out.  I’m going to include the whole round below, as a separate set of questions to let you have a go.

We had been joint-leaders at half-time on 35 points but, after that final round, we ended up third on 64 points.  That being said, we only lost by 3 points.  Everyone else must also have found the final round to be a bit of a b*st*rd…

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