We’ll always have Bruges: answers

Mmm, tasty.

Are you ready for some answers? In a moment, I will give you the solutions to those (pretty hard) questions from the Pairs event at the European Quiz Championship that I posted yesterday.

First though, I’d like to point out that, with all the excitement over the weekend, I’ve only just gotten around to putting up the podcast of last week’s After the Fact radio show.  The theme of the show is fire and you can listen to it at this address: www.mixcloud.com/claremorrisfm/after-the-fact-fire/

Anyway, back to those questions.  Click continue reading to see the answers.

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We’ll always have Bruges

Norway and Finland face-off in the Nations Cup final

Our weekend of quizzing is over and I have returned home from the land of expensive tea*. Tired I may be, but I’m also slightly wiser and delighted to have made a slew of new friends.

Sunday morning offered no respite for those with fragile heads as the Pairs event kicked off at 10am. David and myself entered this ‘Duo quiz’ with one aim in mind – try and break the 40 point barrier that had bedevilled our two previous team performances. Big news: we did it! In fact, we scored 52. 🙂

This quiz was more akin to the Individual qualifier than the team quizzes. At the start of each round, we received a sheet with 12 questions.  One of these was usually linked to an audio clip which would be played on the PA. The sheets also included small, black-and-white versions of pictures related to (on average) three or four of the questions. Whilst, these pictures were also displayed on the big screen, I did find it surprising throughout the weekend that, at such a well-organised event, no-one was able to find a colour photocopier for the question sheets.

As I’m now back at home, I will return to traditional form and include some of the questions from this quiz at the end of the post. You better get your game face on though!

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In the midst of Quiz

Yesterday afternoon I borrowed Mikey’s iPad with the intention of writing another blog post on how we’d done in that morning’s Individual Quiz. However, I noticed that several people were heading in the direction of the competition hall. So I wandered that way and inquired of the nearest quizzer as to what kind of event was about to start.

As I said yesterday, quizzing is almost constant at this event. Anyone who wants to can bring along a laptop, some answer sheets and take over the main stage. Yesterday afternoon’s event was called the ‘Totally Subjective Quiz’ and it followed the Belgian model. Before each round you were handed an answer sheet that was specific to that round. For example, round 1 featured a list of eleven European monarchs. The quiz master then proceeded to call out facts about 10 monarchs and we simply had to match E with 1, J with 2 etc.

I ended up forming an impromptu alliance with the man I asked about the quiz, Stijn, and I’m opening up this post talking about it as we went on to win the quiz! So there, I’ve won a quiz at the European Quiz Championship. 🙂

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World Quizzing Championships 2011

The 2011 World Quizzing Championships took place on Saturday last, June 4.  The event was held in 79 venues, spread across 32 countries.  Alas, there wasn’t a heat in Ireland – the nearest was in the UK.  As luck would have it, myself and my long-term quiz buddy Mike were in England at the weekend for the wedding of our old friend Patrick to his fiancé Ruth.

Sure, it took almost two hours to drive from Leeds, where the wedding was on, to Lichfield, where the quiz took place.  But, again luckily, the wedding wasn’t until 4pm so we managed to fit everything into a very packed day.  We set off at 9am and arrived in Lichfield just before 11.  The quiz itself takes the form of an exam.  Paper 1 started at 11:30am and took one hour.  As we were running to a tighter schedule than everybody else, we were allowed to start Paper 2 pretty promptly and ended up finishing up around 1:50 pm.

However, even then, we couldn’t get on the road straight away as I got nabbed for an interview with Adam, a journalist from The Sunday Telegraph.  Never the shyest, I couldn’t resist this albeit I did bring the interview to a close at about 2.05pm.  After that it was into a garage for some crisps and a Mars bar before getting back onto the motorway. We made it to Leeds just before 4pm and were in our seats a good 10 minutes before the bride arrived! 😉

So, what was it like?  Well, you’re talking quizzing royalty here.  For instance, I bumped into Kevin Ashman as I walked down the corridor in the direction of the toilets! I was hoping to have a word with Pat Gibson, probably Ireland’s greatest ever quizzer and the reigning champion, but unfortunately our paths didn’t cross.  In fact, due to our hurried circumstances, we didn’t really get a chance to talk to anyone, except those who were beside and opposite us at our exam table.  These were Roderick Cromar, a Scottish gent in his 50s, and Jesse Honey, an English guy (with an unforgettable name!) who was around our age, that is to say early 30s.  These guys were very welcoming and friendly.  They were also a little surprised that this was our first event on the quizzing ‘circuit’.  That we had decided to dive right in at the deep end was the summation of their reaction.

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