They don’t do a medal for fourth, answers

Following on from yesterday’s photographic treat, here are the answers to those questions from last Friday’s Rehab All-Ireland Quiz final.

As Mike mentioned in Sunday’s post, Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh is a host par excellance. He supervised the giving out of a spot prize at every gap between the rounds.  Nothing novel about that you’ll say but, in this case, prizes could only be claimed by knowing the answer to a question dreamt up by the man himself. He does have a talent for coming up with tiny links between questions and GAA trivia and most of the questions followed this template.  On one occasion however, he outdid himself and pretty much gave away the answer to one of the actual questions from the previous round, well before the collectors had completed their duty.

The question  (in the round) had been “In which sport does a team have to travel 2.5 metres to win?”

At the end of the round, Mícheál then offered a spot prize to the first person who could tell him who was the first man to have an All-Ireland winner’s medal and an Olympic gold medal.  “And I think it was actually for tug-of-war, funnily enough.” Cue groans from the teams that had already written said answer down. 🙂

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They don’t do a medal for fourth, pictures

Thanks very much to my team-mate Mike for taking care of yesterday’s blog post.  His blog was entertaining and told the tale perfectly. Curse you, ‘Name the Year‘ round!

I’ll be posting the answers to the featured questions later. In the meantime, I’ve included a rarity on tablequiz.net: a gallery of photos!

Click ‘Continue…’ to check them out.

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They don’t do a medal for fourth, do they?

John’s away this week, so Mike here to give a brief account of Friday’s All-Ireland Table Quiz final.

I’m sure Eamonn Coghlan could tell it in an interviewer’s face when the question approaches: “Tell us about when you finished fourth in the Olympics”. Gentleman that he is, he no doubt responds with a smile and a query: “Are you referring to the 1500 meters in 1976 or the 5000 meters in 1980?” Fourth place stings. Fifth? Sound. “You were off the pace. It wasn’t your day.” Sixth? “Ah, sure you tried your best?” This gentle intro has no doubt informed you that John, Dave, Shelly and I finished fourth on Friday night. Chronological order be damned: stick the important fact up front. If the scoreboard is to be believed, we’re the best quiz team in Galway (West of the Shannon, even), but we were pipped to the cash prizes. More about that in a while.

First up, it was an enjoyable quiz, with Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh pretty much an ideal quizmaster. How he managed to connect a question about the Indian Ocean (and many more besides) to a random bit of GAA trivia was quite an achievement. Such tangents have not been seen since Bugs Bunny missed that left turn at Albuquerque and ended up in ancient Rome. It was a fairly brisk ten rounds of six questions, all posted up on the big screen: a presentation tool that we’d recommend for every big quiz, especially when hosting duties are delegated to Mumblor the Magnificient. The standard of questions was pretty high, as the few we missed should suggest, as were the contestants. I don’t recall at what stage I looked at the scoreboard – again, very professionally done and often updated – but there were 23 teams within three points of the leaders!

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Odd ones in answers

It’s bumper-bonus-tonnes-o-quiz week here on the blog, as I am mid-way through three quizzes in six days. I’ll be posting a report of and some questions from quiz #2 later today.

In the meantime, here are the answers to the questions I posted yesterday in Odd ones in.

Remember, if you’d like to enter the Rehab All-Ireland Pub Quiz, there’s still plenty of time.  You can check out the list of venues and dates at this address: www.rehab.ie/foundation/pdfs/Pub-Quiz-Dates.pdf

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Odd ones in

Flashback: It’s October 2007, and three-quarters of my regular team are doing quite well in the Galway qualifier for the Rehab All-Ireland Pub Quiz. In fact, we’re two points ahead going into the final round. Alas, that final round was on food and drink and, while we rarely need a ‘Phone a friend’ lifeline, we could have done with some help that night.  A score of 4/8 saw us plummet from first to third and out of the competition.

Last night saw our full team line out in the Clayton Hotel for this year’s event.  Unlike three years ago, we did have the relative comfort of knowing that the top two teams were now going through. Yes, I know, that would’t have helped in 2007 but it did take away a bit of the pressure. Given the level of the questions we received, it turned out to be a night of very light pressure.  Pressure so lacking as to almost be a vacuum, in fact.

The night featured 10 rounds of six questions. We finished up on 56/60, one behind the winners.  Unfortunately, we were tied in second place with another team. As they only wanted two qualifiers, a tie-break was announced – we were both to face another round of six questions. This didn’t separate us though, both teams got all six right. Neither did another round of six. Or a third round after that! So, after 18 extra questions, the organisers made the fair decision that we should both go through. Huzzah! See you in Athlone!

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