EDitorial ± 2-May-2012

Iceberg

Another Saturday night -- cue Sam Cooke -- and another quiz. This one's raising money for FIND, a local Families In Need charity, and the Bolton Lane church hall is packaroo-ed with thirtysomething teams. Right at the back is table 29: four seats only, enough for the gleesome foursome. We've dropped those eldest kiddies from the line-up to become leaner, though heaven help us if there's a question about electrical charges.

Whole affair is very well organised with a pro questionmaster and a posse of independent markers and scorers, plus there's a half-decent chilli at halftime. No heads and tails tonight (played at Wivenhoe: guess result of coin toss, guess wrong and you're out until one person left) but a series of spot prizes instead. QM asks a question and whoever's first to raise hand and shout out the correct answer nabs a prize. My big moment came when QM asked: "Who wrote the words to Jerusalem?" I didn't think but yelled out William Blake! One big bar of Dairy Milk for us, thanks very much.

Selected questions we did well on:

  • how many cm in 10 hands?
  • who recorded an album called Slow Hand?
  • name the six Cluedo murder weapons
  • who won mens' 1500m in 1984 LA Olympics?
  • which was the first country to have an indoor ice rink?
  • the London 2012 Olympic games are which Olympiad number?

Selected questions we did less well on:

  • how many players in a handball team?
  • who played Dorian in Birds Of A Feather?
  • what's the only sport where you have to play right-handed?

Also this: "What fraction of an iceberg is above the surface?" It's 1/9, I said to the team, before the QM gave a multiple choice of (a) 1/3, (b) 1/7 or (c) 1/11. Well, it's (b) or (c), I said. No, said other members, it's definitely (a). I don't think it is. It's 1/3, they said. And that was another point lost. Here's what Wikipedia says. Thanks to that and numerous other poor answers, we finished about 2/3 of the way down.