The song remains the same: answers

I will be putting up two blog posts today as I’ve had a very notable weekend, quiz-wise.

However, there’s no point putting the cart before the horse.  Some of you are waiting on the answers from last Friday’s post, The song remains the same, and I will put those online first.

A funny thing happened last Thursday night at the quiz.  When we were asked “What is the largest lake in the Republic of Ireland?” debate ensued between proponents of two answers: Lough Corrib and Lough Ree.  Someone came up with a genius solution: “Let’s pop outside and look at the map on the wall.”  Our pub, The Corner Bar, does indeed feature a large map on its gable wall.

So, off our intrepid researcher went.  He came back in about 10 seconds.  “Erm, it’s just a map of Mayo!”

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The song remains the same

This time last year*, The Corner Bar team scored 88/100 in the Ballyhaunis Inter-pub quiz.  A good score you’d think.  However, it turned out that our efforts were nowhere near good enough as the winners got 99 points.

Believe or not, the exact same scenario was played out again last night when we emulated our score of last year.  And, yet again, it turned out we were 11 points behind the winner.  Winners, actually, as there was a tie at the top.  Paddy Phillip’s and The Hazel had to go through an extra round before the former was declared the winner.

The winning score in this round was never announced so I can’t say how close our 7/10 was.  Not that it matters, of course.  Our 88/100 was only good enough to finish third-last in the field of 12!

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Wanna help a pub out?

The annual Inter-Pub Quiz takes place in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, on Thursday night next at 9pm.  Indeed, it is the opening event in this year’s Ballyhaunis Summer Festival.

For those who didn’t see my report on last year’s event, this quiz is quite a novel one.  Basically, everyone who wants to take part gets in to their pub of choice by 9pm.  There is only one answer sheet per pub so, thus, everyone who is inside the door is on that pub’s team.  The pub’s radio is then tuned to a local, community frequency and the questions are read out over the airwaves.  The quiz gets physical in between rounds as each pub has to dispatch a runner to return their answer sheet back to quiz HQ.

Last year’s event produced some amazing final scores.  At the time, this prompted me to suggest that this year we’d gather as many blog fans as we could and attempt to wrestle victory from the mighty Gill’s.  However, I’m afraid it has snuck up on me.

Still, if anyone’s near enough Ballyhaunis (or feels like travelling), you’re more than welcome.  Email me and I’ll let you know where the tablequiz.net approved pub is. 🙂

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Chasing perfection … answers

Here are the answers to the questions I posted yesterday, which were taken from the 2010 Ballyhaunis Inter-Pubs quiz.

Since I now know it exists, I have a fiendish plan to gather together as many readers of this blog as I can and pack them into a Ballyhaunis pub on the relevant night next year. How can we lose?

Well, we’ll possibly have to score 100/100, but other than that…

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Chasing perfection … or a joke?

At around 6pm last evening I received a text inviting me to a quiz in The Corner Bar, Ballyhaunis, at 9.30pm.  Assuming this was a standard table quiz, I happily agreed to take part.

However, I had presumed incorrectly.  When I arrived, it became apparent that I’d actually accepted an invite to be on the Corner Bar team for the “sixth annual” Ballyhaunis Inter-Pub Quiz.

Eleven pubs took part in last night’s quiz, in which the questions were called out over the radio (via the local Community Access frequency).  At the end of each round, the competing pubs had to send a representative up the street to the solicitor’s office where the correctors were based. Thankfully it wasn’t raining!

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