With John away again, it’s Mike filling in here with another guest blog.
People like to win. Leaving aside the “doing it for the craic” losers – yeah, right – we all love to win something, sometimes. Table quiz, office sweepstake, race to the elevator, whatever. If there’s a sense of superiority on the table, all the better. Call me an old romantic, but the nature of winning is almost equally important to me. As a Liverpool fan, I see both sides of the win/loss chasm on a regular basis, from lucky wins to games thrown away or lost to some cynical cheating. Now, a part of me just wants to win, no matter what, but I try to keep my baser instincts under wraps.
Which is why I’m so cheered at the thought of serious competition in this quizzing series. Sure, a nice easy run-in to the grand prize of €500 would be nice and all, but having to earn it, as it were, is doubly rewarding. Tonight was a case in point. Firstly, we started a point behind overall – you may remember that particular tale – so we’d a point to prove. We’d borrowed Michael Lang as an able sub since John was doing his husbandly duties and came up against no shortage of surprises. Firstly, the questions were good. Not just “good by the Front Door’s standards” but genuinely varied and challenging. They’d the usual hallmarks of being composed mere hours – maybe even minutes – beforehand but were a vast improvement on previous quizzes.