Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Quizzing (aka The Art of Stealing Other Peoples' Money)
Had a reasonably successful last few days for quizzes.
Last night, Bert, Lint, GD and I went to the Ackhorne, a quiz we've previously won, but one we've also done disastrously badly at before too. Our first half went fairly averagely, despite a little help from the quizmaster (I think we also cheered GD up no end with the comment "Short is good"), and the second half was more of the same. We expected to have acquitted ourselves adequately, but not really a sterling performance.
Until we lucked out with the team to whom we gave the paper to mark! I came up with one of two theories for their marking. First, they were very very very drunk. Second, they weren't listening to the quiz guy as he read the answers out, they were instead assuming that where our answer agreed with what they'd put down, we must be right.
I'm at a loss as to how to explain it otherwise. They gave us 6 extra marks (out of 40), and marked one wrong which was correct (we put vernal equinox, which is the technical name for the spring equinox, the answer the quizmaster had). This gave us a mark of 34 (whereas we really only had 29), which was enough to win by a single point. Shamelessly, we took the money!
Tonight's usual OWS quiz was very successful. We had a near-perfect second round, missing only 2 questions (both with numerical answers, where we were out by 1 in both cases). If only I'd known when Kelly Holmes' birthday was, or known when Madonna was born.
Overall, however, it was quite close. Another team got the same number of questions right as we did, but the bizarrities of Ian's scoring system meant we carried the day, winning a pleasant £8.90 each.
Third and final quiz (for now) is one done through work. Someone's been very busy creating anagrams - I like anagrams. 10 each of actors, actresses, football teams, criminals and famous historical people. I somehow plucked Cowdenbeath (football team) out of thin air - I didn't know it was a football team, and am only vaguely aware of its existence as a real place. Still got a few left, but I haven't really concentrated on the historical people yet.
(Cowdenbeath reminds me of the time when one of the secretaries at my old job got quite scared - she gave me 4 anagrams with a common theme. I looked for ages at it, and said "All I can get from this one is Hufflepuff, and that's not even a word." "Oh well that's obvious then isn't it?" she said. "Erm...no." Her jaw drops - "you've never read Harry Potter?" "No, not really interested." (This was before the 3rd book was out, I think, so just the time he was becoming really popular.) "How on earth did you get that then?!" "I...don't know.")
Last night, Bert, Lint, GD and I went to the Ackhorne, a quiz we've previously won, but one we've also done disastrously badly at before too. Our first half went fairly averagely, despite a little help from the quizmaster (I think we also cheered GD up no end with the comment "Short is good"), and the second half was more of the same. We expected to have acquitted ourselves adequately, but not really a sterling performance.
Until we lucked out with the team to whom we gave the paper to mark! I came up with one of two theories for their marking. First, they were very very very drunk. Second, they weren't listening to the quiz guy as he read the answers out, they were instead assuming that where our answer agreed with what they'd put down, we must be right.
I'm at a loss as to how to explain it otherwise. They gave us 6 extra marks (out of 40), and marked one wrong which was correct (we put vernal equinox, which is the technical name for the spring equinox, the answer the quizmaster had). This gave us a mark of 34 (whereas we really only had 29), which was enough to win by a single point. Shamelessly, we took the money!
Tonight's usual OWS quiz was very successful. We had a near-perfect second round, missing only 2 questions (both with numerical answers, where we were out by 1 in both cases). If only I'd known when Kelly Holmes' birthday was, or known when Madonna was born.
Overall, however, it was quite close. Another team got the same number of questions right as we did, but the bizarrities of Ian's scoring system meant we carried the day, winning a pleasant £8.90 each.
Third and final quiz (for now) is one done through work. Someone's been very busy creating anagrams - I like anagrams. 10 each of actors, actresses, football teams, criminals and famous historical people. I somehow plucked Cowdenbeath (football team) out of thin air - I didn't know it was a football team, and am only vaguely aware of its existence as a real place. Still got a few left, but I haven't really concentrated on the historical people yet.
(Cowdenbeath reminds me of the time when one of the secretaries at my old job got quite scared - she gave me 4 anagrams with a common theme. I looked for ages at it, and said "All I can get from this one is Hufflepuff, and that's not even a word." "Oh well that's obvious then isn't it?" she said. "Erm...no." Her jaw drops - "you've never read Harry Potter?" "No, not really interested." (This was before the 3rd book was out, I think, so just the time he was becoming really popular.) "How on earth did you get that then?!" "I...don't know.")
posted by Chip : 00:17
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