Dear readers, sorry if I have been a bit sparing with the blog posts in the last week.  I have been busy preparing for the start of a new quiz show I am hosting on Claremorris Community Radio.  It’s called After the Fact and it’s broadcast on Thursday evenings at 7pm.

The first episode went out last Thursday and it’s now available online via the Claremorrisfm account on mixcloud.com.  Alas, I haven’t yet found a way of embedding mixcloud files directly into this site so the best I can do is point you in the direction of the specific programme. I hope you enjoy it!

Listen here: www.mixcloud.com/claremorrisfm/after-the-fact-alcohol/

I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords…

Great for tablequiz.net, to be sure, but what lies behind this surge in interest?

Well, thanks to the WordPress system’s thorough statistics, we can actually see what search engine terms lead people to wash up on the site.

100 people simply searched for “Theresa Lowe”. Another 55 sought out “Teresa Lowe”, and I can’t slag these people off as that’s how I spelled her name on my old article.

A significant minority were very interested in her age with answers to terms such as “Theresa Lowe date of birth” and “What age is Theresa Lowe?” etc being sought on google by over 20 different people.  Presumably, these folks must think she’s looking well these days.

Theresa's hair - Acceptable in the '80s

Certainly, in terms of hair style, she is!

Age wasn’t the only intimate information being sought.  The person looking for info on “Theresa Lowe dundrum” must have been trying to track her down geographically. Another searcher wondered if she had any sisters whilst the person who wanted to know about “Teresa Lowe and affair” was probably very disappointed when they ended up on this site!

Finally, two people searched on google for “Theresa Lowe barrister”. Perhaps they’re due in court soon?

Update (17/2/2012): It’s happened again! Was Theresa on TV last evening? The site received a huge spike in readership yesterday helped, so the stats system tells me, by over 200 people googling Theresa Lowe last night. I must thank her if our paths ever cross in real life.

It was a tough defeat, as we only lost one of the three rounds. Alas, it was the 1v1 buzzer round, the only one which allows for a large gap between the teams, and that’s what happened to us.  At the end of that round, we were trailing by 16 pts to 9 and, with a maximum of 9 pts available for the final round, it was always going to be very unlikely that we could turn it around.

We did our best and, indeed, we did win the final round by 9 pts to 6, but that left the final score at:

The Mathemagicians 22 – Universally Challenged 18

“But, sure there’s always next year…” we’ve already been told by several, well-meaning friends.

Perhaps.  It’ll depend on a few things. Firstly, will the Ray D’Arcy show team decide to do it again? Secondly, if they ever chance upon this blog, I hope they’ll take some advice and tweak the format of the live quizzes slightly.

Now, before I start I do feel like complimenting the team behind the whole event.  The Sligo qualifier was one of the most enjoyable and well-organised table quizzes I have ever taken part in.  It was professional to the last, with free t-shirts, snacks and sweets, an electronic scoreboard that worked and it even started pretty much on-time (or as near as makes no difference).

The problem is that the event then transformed itself from a table quiz, between table quiz teams, into a three round, 15 minute burst, in which two of the rounds either discourage or don’t allow any team work.  We actually came off best against The Mathemagicians in the two rounds that team work was in play for.  Unfortunately we got stuffed in the single player round.

It’s the same playing field for both teams, I know, but should a single player round be allowed to be so decisive in a quiz designed to find Ireland’s best quiz team?

Anyway, here are my suggestions:

1. Lengthen the live quiz. It’s too short. It lasted 15 minutes, but probably six or seven of these were taken up chatting with Ray and the explanation of the rules etc.  Perhaps the production team have done their research on this and decided that the Irish public’s attention span isn’t long enough to stick with a half-hour quiz but it works fine in the UK where a show like Brain of Britain has been going on for 42 years.
2. Sort out the technology. The teams were communicating with the studio via satellite, and it seemed to work fine, in terms of speaking.  However, the buzzers suffered from a terrible lag. On several occasions, our player, David, hit the button before there’d been a peep from his opponent but, apparently, still didn’t get in on time.  The Today FM staff were obviously aware of this problem as they’d mentioned it to us before we went on-air. However, during the round, when you know there’s only 60 seconds worth of time available, it was very frustrating. We also had an incident in which neither buzzer seemed to register – perhaps they’d been pressed simultaneously? Ray’s suggestion that the players “Buzz again” caught our Dave on the hop and allowed the other guy in.  There’s definitely room for improvement here.  A simple alternative might be, since the buzzer just mimicked a phone number tone, to use a land-line phone instead?
3. Remove (or increase) the 1v1 round. David didn’t feel very good after the quiz was over, putting the blame for the defeat on himself. This seemed a touch cruel on the guy, especially as he had to deal with the problems outlined above.  My main problem is that the 1v1 round goes against the ethos of table-quizzing.  It’s a team sport, where almost every question can be discussed before an answer is given.  Thus your final score will be an accurate reflection of how your combined skills and knowledge coped with the questions on the day.  This round didn’t fit with any of that.  It merely told us that their buzzer guy was better (or just quicker) than our buzzer guy.  How would their other players do against the rest of us? We never got to find out.  So, I’d say either get rid of the individual round altogether or else have four individual rounds, where everyone gets a go.  That way, the final score would indeed reflect the combined knowledge of the team.
4. Pass missed questions to the other side. At a table quiz, you have to answer every question that’s asked on the night.  Practically no quiz on TV or radio provides this feature (with some exceptions, such as Chris Moyles’ Quiz Night and Pointless) but they compensate for this slightly by allowing a missed question to be passed to the other side.  This allows for a double hit on any wrong answer and increases the potential of a swing.  This would also have helped with providing drama for the listener, as five of the eight first round matches featured such a large gap after the individual round as to make round 3 redundant.  In fact, on one day, due to the gap being 12 points, the quiz was declared over and the final round was never heard!

Missed questions:

We only got one question wrong but, for completeness, here it is:

1. Sushi for Beginners, Angels and This Charming Man are all novels by which author?

I am glad that we took part though, if for no other reason than it gave our friends and relations the chance to hear us in action!

I do hope this event comes to a successful conclusion on Friday next.  I’ll still be listening. I also hope it comes back next year and for several years afterwards and, all going well, this first year will be seen as the one where they learned what worked and what didn’t and ironed out those wrinkles.

If you’d like to hear how we get on, or even just want to know what I sound like, then tune in to Today FM (that’s 100-102 MHz in Ireland) or else click on the “Today FM Live!” link in the top-right of www.todayfm.com

We’ll be on-air from about 11.20am tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, in what will be the penultimate first round match.

Wish us luck!

Finally, a request.  I don’t know whereabouts in the country the blog’s readers call home but if anyone is going to the remaining three quizzes in this series, and would feel up to posting a report on the event here, please drop me a mail to quizmaster@tablequiz.net. Thanks.

I was listening to the show this morning and Ray revealed that the questions were written by the same man who did them for Blackboard Jungle (the quiz show, not the movie), back in the day. That’s kinda cute IMO. I do wonder what this fellow’s been doing in the meantime though?!

Answers:

1. Which county is sometimes known as the “Model County”? A> Wexford
2. An ambush is the collective noun for which animal: lions, tigers or bears? A> Tigers
3. Chemistry, Tangled Up and Out of Control are all albums by which group? A> Girls Aloud
4. Three’s a crowd, Someone special and The perfect man and are all books by which author? A> Sheila O’Flanagan
5. Turin is the capital city of which Italian region? A> Piedmont
6. Minister Conor Lenihan is a TD for which constituency? A> Dublin South West
7. Amarillo is in which US state?* A> Texas
8. It’s fifty years since Cliff Richard had his first UK No 1. What was the name of the song? A> Living Doll
9. Andrea Corr got married to whom, in August this year? A> Brett Desmond
10. What age is former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern? A> 58

Photos:

So that’s that.  We had a great night, with an exciting finish, but now it’s time to start thinking about the next one. One game at a time and all that…

The aim of the night was to find four teams who would then go through to 1v1 knockout rounds, live on Today FM, in October.  I’m delighted to say that you’ll be hearing our voices on-air next month as our team, Universally Challenged, managed to finish in the top four – just!

All-in-all, this was one of the best run quizzes I have had the pleasure of taking part in. It kicked-off at 8.15pm and, helped by the fact that, with six rounds of 10, it was more of a sprint than a marathon, was over before 10pm! Recently I was a a quiz in Galway that didn’t start until 9.50pm, so that made a nice change.

The quiz was held in the main conference hall in The Radisson Hotel. This was a very impressive venue, featuring seven projector screens throughout the hall. There was also an excellent PA system which meant that, in spite of the room’s size, no table could claim to have been unable to hear the questions.

Not everything was perfect though, as we were treated to a “meet the tables” piece between each round during which Jenny would visit eight or so tables with a microphone, thus allowing Ray to introduce each team and chat with them. While I could see two points behind this (to make everyone feel special, and to give the correctors some time to work with) it did get a bit tedious after the first few tables.

The questions on the night were varied and well thought out.  I know you’ll say one always feels good about a quiz one has done welll in but I particularly enjoyed the “audio” round (not “music”, as there were clips of dialogue from movies) even though it was our lowest score.

At the end, we finished on 48pts. This caused us both mirth (as we did seem to always score 8pts) and anxiety, as we just scraped into the top four. Going into the final round, we were 2pts behind qualifying but managed to achieve a heretofore impossible 9pts.  This, combined with a team that was ahead of us only getting 6pts, elevated us into joint-third with that team and one other. It had been explained at the outset that any ties would be broken by comparing how the teams had done in the final round. With two of us having scored 9pts, it meant that the Ballymahon team’s 6-pointer had cost them one the double and they were officially fifth. While I obviously felt sorry for them, it did mean that we were through!

There was no picture round on the night so here are the other questions we missed:

1. Which county is sometimes known as the “Model County”?
2. An ambush is the collective noun for which animal: lions, tigers or bears?
3. Chemistry, Tangled Up and Out of Control are all albums by which group?
4. Three’s a crowd, Someone special and The perfect man and are all books by which author?
5. Turin is the capital city of which Italian region?
6. Minister Conor Lenihan is a TD for which constituency?
7. Amarillo is in which US state?*
8. It’s fifty years since Cliff Richard had his first UK No 1. What was the name of the song?
9. Andrea Corr got married to whom, in August this year?
10. What age is former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern?

We missed two further questions but these are audio questions and I don’t have the clips. Sorry.

Update: the answers are here.

* This was actually an audio question, but it’s one that doesn’t really need the song, obviously.