by John Nolan
November 20, 2011 in Gilligan's, Quizzes
Here are the answers to the two quizzes worth of questions posed in Twofer won. Or should that be “two quiz’s worth”?
I’m on quiz master duty again on Friday evening. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity, please come on in to The Dalton Inn, Claremorris, for a quiz in aid of Claremorris Community Radio. Kick-off is scheduled for 8.30pm, tables of four are €40 and all are welcome!
Right, let’s get on to those answers.
by John Nolan
November 18, 2011 in Gilligan's, Quizzes
If only I had read the full title...
I have been very busy this past week and unable to come to the blog. However, this does mean that today I have a bumper, two-for-one blog for you.
Starting last Thursday, I’ve quizzed twice in the past week and, I’m happy to say, ended up on the winning team both times. The first of those was in The Loft Bar, in Ballina. Ger was the svengali behind this excursion, rounding up Pat and Mick, two of the regulars, at Gilligan’s the previous Tuesday night. Once there, we performed like a wonder team – even more than the sum of our parts – and won out by four points. It’s not often you get to score over 100 points in an Irish quiz so our 107/115 was something to savour. That said, the runners-up must have felt hard done by – they scored 103!
This quiz, which was in aid of Croí, featured three handouts, only one of which was a picture round. The other two were quite clever: Famous slogans and Anagrams of Irish towns. I’ve included them both below. One the whole the quiz was very well organised. We did suffer at the hand of some very pedantic marking though when we weren’t awarded the point for identifying Joe Frazier’s nickname correctly. What we wrote down: Smokin’. What they wanted: Smokin’ Joe. Even a trip to the correctors’ table by one of the guys didn’t result in any flexibility. Ah well, luckily it didn’t matter.
I hadn’t been to Gilligan’s on that previous Tuesday. My head needed some time to recover from Bruges. By all accounts it was a dramatic night with Ger’s team eventually winning on the sixth, sudden-death, playoff question. This Tuesday night my team-mates Mick (the same man as above) and Aidan ensured that the crowd would have no such drama – we scored 92/100 and won by three.
by John Nolan
November 9, 2011 in EQC, Podcast
Mmm, tasty.
Are you ready for some answers? In a moment, I will give you the solutions to those (pretty hard) questions from the Pairs event at the European Quiz Championship that I posted yesterday.
First though, I’d like to point out that, with all the excitement over the weekend, I’ve only just gotten around to putting up the podcast of last week’s After the Fact radio show. The theme of the show is fire and you can listen to it at this address: www.mixcloud.com/claremorrisfm/after-the-fact-fire/
Anyway, back to those questions. Click continue reading to see the answers.
by John Nolan
November 7, 2011 in EQC
Norway and Finland face-off in the Nations Cup final
Our weekend of quizzing is over and I have returned home from the land of expensive tea*. Tired I may be, but I’m also slightly wiser and delighted to have made a slew of new friends.
Sunday morning offered no respite for those with fragile heads as the Pairs event kicked off at 10am. David and myself entered this ‘Duo quiz’ with one aim in mind – try and break the 40 point barrier that had bedevilled our two previous team performances. Big news: we did it! In fact, we scored 52. 
This quiz was more akin to the Individual qualifier than the team quizzes. At the start of each round, we received a sheet with 12 questions. One of these was usually linked to an audio clip which would be played on the PA. The sheets also included small, black-and-white versions of pictures related to (on average) three or four of the questions. Whilst, these pictures were also displayed on the big screen, I did find it surprising throughout the weekend that, at such a well-organised event, no-one was able to find a colour photocopier for the question sheets.
As I’m now back at home, I will return to traditional form and include some of the questions from this quiz at the end of the post. You better get your game face on though!
by John Nolan
October 7, 2011 in Gilligan's, Quizzes
Here are the answers to the (tremendous amount of) questions posed earlier in De ja voodoo.
My mate Ger is next week’s quiz master at Gilligan’s but I’m afraid I won’t be there to report on his quiz. A ticket to next week’s big European Championship qualifier between Ireland and Armenia has come my way so, obviously, I’ll be in Dublin on Tuesday night.
Hopefully, the Ireland team won’t catch the grabbing-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory bug that’s going round.
by John Nolan
October 6, 2011 in Gilligan's, Quizzes
The week is but halfway through and already I have done two quizzes. Whilst one was in Galway (and featured movies, some music and more movies) and the other was in Claremorris (and featured our return to Gilligan’s Bar), they had some striking similarities.
None more obvious than the fact that, in both of them, my team were in a leading position at the start of the final round before throwing it all away. Of course, nemesis rounds do happen from time to time but they seem particularly cruel when they occur in round 10*.
As a post on the movie quiz will require some work (stills and audio clips etc), I’m going to take the easy way out and report on these in reverse order. Thus, let’s start with the opening evening of this year’s Gilligan’s Tuesday quiz night.
by John Nolan
March 15, 2011 in Culture, Quizzes
Here are the answers to the questions posted yesterday in Kids these days… All of them.
It became the post with the most comments ever on this site so it obviously piqued some interest. Yes, I know five comments doesn’t exactly put boards.ie under threat but it’s a big deal here. You’re a quiet bunch.
The questions are pretty impressive. I got into quizzing when I was in primary school but unfortunately I remained the big fish in a small pond as our school quiz team never actually took part in any competitions! I have one vague but pleasant memory of my mother returning home from a parent-teacher meeting and telling me that, whilst academically I was “doing well”, my teacher had been much more impressed that I’d known the name of Cardinal Ó Fiaich* in a quiz he’d called out from a newspaper. It had been about three weeks beforehand but he still remembered it when the P/T meeting came along. Well, I was about 8 at the time!
Anyway, this is just to illustrate my belief that the quizzing kids of today no doubt got most of these questions right.
by John Nolan
March 14, 2011 in Culture, Quizzes
The Irish League of Credit Unions has held a nationwide quiz for primary school teams for the last 20 years.
The quiz takes place over three rounds. Individual Credit Unions hold a local quiz for the schools in their catchment area with the winners of this going on to take part in the ‘Chapter’ round. There are 25 credit union chapters in Ireland, regions basically, and the winners and runners-up from these qualify for an All-Ireland final in Dublin in April. Furthermore, the quiz is divided into two sections: Competition A (for children up to 11 years) and Competition B (children aged 11-13).
This is clearly a very well-run event. The questions are provided centrally and are preceded by a lengthy foreword advising local quiz masters as to how to carry out their duties:
Now, that’s a useful list for all quiz masters and organisers, not just those involving primary school children.
Please create an account to get started.
