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!

Well, if you do, you’re in luck because The Last Word on Today FM kicked off their new weekly quiz, The Last Word of the Week, last Friday.  It will take the form of a head-to-head quiz between a member of the public and a celebrity.

Anyone can enter, via this handy online form, but you will have to come up with a good answer to why you want to be a contestant (in 50 words or less). I wonder if my opening paragraph would suffice…

To get the ball rolling, last Friday saw an initial quiz-off between Fintan O’Toole and Joe O’Shea – a heavyweight pairing to be sure.  That said, the person you’d expect to win, does.

You can listen for yourself by clicking on More…