A quiz to get you through the holidays

Belated Christmas wishes to all the site’s readers.  I hope you had a lovely day and didn’t eat too much!

The blog’s Chinese correspondent, Kieran, pointed me in the direction of a quiz billed as the “world’s hardest”.  It was published on The Guardian’s website on December 22.

Secondary school students on the Isle of Man are obviously very knowledgeable – generally.

From the Guardian website:

Pupils at King William’s college on the Isle of Man have been tormented by its annual general knowledge quiz since 1905. Until 1999, the quiz was compulsory, with 300 pupils aged between 11 and 18 having to answer the 100 cryptic questions in a set time – the average score being two.

So, do you think you can beat a score of two? I glanced through it and I think I’ve got about five but they are cryptic and the answers won’t be announced until the middle of January so even I will have to wait and see.

Check it out at: www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/22/king-williams-college-quiz-2011

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Now that’s what I call answers

Here are the answers to the questions posted last week in Now that’s what I call…

I’ll be back later today with a post about a very tough quizzing experience I had last night.

In the meantime, click on the Continue Reading… for the answers.

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Now that’s what I call…

… a Christmas quiz.*

The final quiz of 2011 took place in Gilligan’s, Claremorris, on Tuesday last and, fittingly, it was Christmas themed.

The picture round featured 12 “santas”, there was a round in which we had to name the carols which matched the cryptic clues and we had a round in which the questions were nothing to do with Christmas but the answers were homonyms of things that were.  It was very well done.

I was on the same team for the second week in a row.  That’s right, even though the tables are pulled from a hat, we three (kings) managed to end up together once again.  Thankfully, while we hadn’t been anywhere near winning last week, this time we managed to take home the final prize of the year.

It turns out we know a lot about Christmas.

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Delightfully obscure answers

Here are the answers to the questions posed in yesterday’s last week’s Delightful obscurity post.  I’m sorry these took so long to appear on the site.  I’ve had a very busy last few days. Chief among those activites which kept me away from the site was the upgrade to Mrs tablequiz.net’s website, leavingcertenglish.net. Check it out if you feel like being educated!

Anyway, let’s move on.  Click the continue to see the answers.

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Delightful obscurity

Not long after Mike’s post on questions and how, knowingly or unknowingly, the question setter may ease them for the benefit of the crowd hit this site, I attended the weekly Tuesday quiz in Gilligan’s Bar, Claremorris.

This week’s quizmaster was Mick, my recent team-mate on a couple of successful outings.  He produced a quiz to savour with questions coming from all angles and obscure locations. He opened up with a round featuring songs with numbers in the title. Let me tell you, not alone had I not heard of some of the songs involved, but, in two or three of them, I’d never heard of the artist either!

That set the tone. A couple of rounds were played out to a soundtrack of audible groans from the crowd but, after Bruges and this week’s discussion on difficulty, I found it very entertaining.  Why do we quiz if not to be challenged?

My favourite was a round on Shakespeare.  Yes, we all know “Forsooth I know not why I am so sad…” but do you know what play it’s from? And which character said it? It turned out that I did, although it was an educated guess.

My team finished second on 83, behind the winners’ 91.  These weren’t out of 100 though.  Several of the rounds had 11 questions, many of them had multi-part answers (worth a point each and a bonus awarded to any team who got all) and the picture round had 22. Truth be told, I don’t know what the potential full score was!

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