Vowels and bowels: answers

Here are the answers to the questions posted yesterday.

By the by, I forgot to mention that my team won out on the night. We scored 83 out of 94, leaving us six clear of second place.

Anyways, to begin, here are those two questions we got right:

• What two parts of the body are anagrams of each other? A> Elbow and bowel
• Which tree’s name features all five vowels and just two other letters? A> Sequoia

It was entertaining to see how the room behaved when asked that question about the body parts.  You’d have sworn that everyone was miming Heads, shoulders, knees and toes. 🙂

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Vowels and bowels

This Tuesday night’s quiz in Gilligans, Claremorris, was hosted by Galway man John. He’s one of several Johns, yours truly included, who come along to this regular quiz night.  Perhaps, Johns are predisposed to quizzing? Perhaps John is just a popular name round these parts? Who can say?

This John, anyway, is a big fan of anagrams and letter play. He asked several questions of a literal nature. Some of these stumped my team and are, obviously, included in the usual list after the ‘Continue’.

We did manage to get these ones though:

• What two parts of the body are anagrams of each other?
• Which tree’s name features all five vowels and just two other letters?

My team-mates on the night were Pat and Jimmy.  Jimmy’s a bit of a genius when it comes to geography.  Before I had even turned my head in his direction, he told me that Kigali is the capital of Rwanda! Handy man to have on the team.

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I predict a riot … over answers

Here are the answers to the questions posed in yesterday’s top secret, under the radar, edition of this site.

My informant has contacted me again to say that he/she thinks that the picture I chose for the article did a good job of not accurately reflecting their appearance. Keep going like this, and we’ll end up recreating Donald Rumsfeld’s famous “known unknowns” speech.

Let’s just hope wikileaks don’t get hold of our emails…

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I predict a riot

During my brief time in the media spotlight, the week before last, I told of how I saw a near-riot at a quiz in NUI Galway College Bar one night, when a question was asked  about the date of foundation of the Irish Free State.

Yesterday I received a report on an annual quiz which took place in Ballyhaunis on Friday last.  Controversy was in attendance on the night.  So much so, that my correspondent has asked me to keep his/her identity a secret.  I’ll let them tell you what happened.

There was actually some small town controversy at the quiz on Friday.

The defending champions were there and were the favourites.  Anyway, to cut to the chase, they won again.  They bet the second place guys by 1 point.  Now, the question that separated them was in the picture round. A black-and-white picture of a young guy playing under-14 football.  Turned out to be one of the guys on the winning team! Could only happen in the ‘haunis…

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Table Quizzin’ in the USA…nswers

I’d like to thank Kevin Dillon for that great article on his experiences quizzing in Washington, DC.  Let’s hope his team have a good run in the upcoming eight-week tournament.  We’ll keep you up-to-date here on his progress.

While his post didn’t include a slew of questions, I think you’ll agree that they were quite hard.  No shame in missing them, at all.  For my own part, I only knew (i.e. guessed) the answer to one of them, #1.

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Table Quizzin’ in the USA

Here’s a guest blog from Kevin Dillon, an Irishman living in the USA, who emailed this week.

Last September I fled, for a while, from the harsh economic winds assailing Ireland, to Washington DC where I was quick to find the tradition of table quizzes (referred to as Trivia Night or Pub Quiz over here) alive and well in Irish pubs across the District.

However, there are some notable differences in quizzes on the American side of the pond. They tend to be shorter. Our regular haunt in James Hoban’s, DuPont Circle, on a Wednesday night is only 30 questions spread over four rounds with double points in the last two rounds. Insert American attention span joke here. The first two rounds cover general knowledge, the third round is music where you listen to a piece and answer the song and the band while the last round is film where a topic is chosen, such as Ridley Scott films, a quote read out and you have to answer what the movie is. I am quite enjoying this quiz although I would like an extra general knowledge round thrown in to lengthen it out just a bit.

This week’s quiz had some interesting general knowledge questions which we failed to get:

1. What is the only country whose capital is an anagram of its former capital?
2. Which band released the song Radio Active Man*? (Admittedly as young, hip professionals we should have got this)
3. What Mr. Potato Head piece was removed in 1987?

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Rise of the machines

Just a quick diversion from our normal fare.  As the video’s subtitle succinctly puts it, “IBM’s Watson supercomputer destroys all humans in Jeopardy.”

I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords…

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From Dogger Bank to Rockall to answers

Here are the answers to the questions posed in yesterday’s blog post.

As I said then, my team ended up winners on the night.  Our 94 points was enough to leave us four points clear at the end.  This margin was a good thing, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

My team-mates, Andrew, Colin and Aidan, all contributed to the win. Just for the record here are the things I learned at this quiz:

• The debris from a glacier is called a moraine (Colin)
• Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926 (Andrew)
• Roy Keane comes from Mayfield (Aidan)
• Silvio Berlusconi is the politician who is embroiled in the ‘Rubygate‘ scandal (the tired and emotional man at the next table)

It’s that last fact that is slightly bothersome. We didn’t know the answer, that’s true, but we didn’t seek it out.  This chap was in the process of leaving the bar and, after putting on his coat, he glanced over at us and, presumably, saw the blank looks on our faces.  So he just told us. Now, once you’ve heard the right answer, you can’t just forget it again! So we walked the moral tightrope and put it down on our answer sheet.

Still, I’m glad we didn’t win by a single point. 🙂

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From Dogger Bank to Rockall

The rules were relaxed a little for last night’s quiz in Gilligan’s, Claremorris, certainly in relation to my own participation.  Upon arrival, I bumped into a couple of chaps I know from the local community radio station and I ended up sitting with them as we waited for the quiz to begin.  I didn’t expect things to remain this way as the names would shortly be drawn out of the hat. However, when that did occur, we were told that we could just stay where we were – which was a nice gesture.

We promptly adopted the team name of “CCR 94.6 FM”.  Well, it was one of those rare occasions when a team genuinely had a unifying fact to justify their grouping!

This week’s quiz was hosted by Liam, a local gent who was quite complimentary about my efforts last week.  I’m pleased to say that, after his quiz last night, the feeling is definitely mutual. Liam’s a fan of weather-related questions, by-the-way – both of the names in the post’s title came up last night. 🙂

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Listen to me answers

It’s answer time.  Hopefully you found yesterday’s questions to be of a good standard and nicely varied.  That’s what I was aiming for anyway.

The team that won, ‘Brasso Polish’, scored 80/100 – which is pretty much bang on what I’d aim for. Like Goldilocks, I prefer when things are neither too hot nor too cold. 😉

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