Willoughby Pub Quiz (17 December 2023)

While I have continued to be the quizmaster every couple of months or so at the regular Willoughby Arms Sunday Night Pub Quiz I have not had the time, not the inclination, to post every one here and I have not had the time (or printer) to do a picture round either. This time I am breaking both conventions! 

The picture round was something of a cheat as I found it while tidying up some papers in my living room. As was often the case, I had used recent issues of British stamps for the pictures and a quick DuckDuckGo search revealed that these are from 2016!

 

Gardens by Capability Brown

Blenheim Palace, Longleat, Compton Verney, Highclere Castle, Alnwick Castle, Berrington Hall, Stowe, Croome Park

Beatrix Potter books/characters

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, The Tale of Tom Kitten, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

Pink Floyd Albums

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Atom Heart Mother, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Endless River

Mr Men

Mr. Happy, Little Miss Naughty, Mr. Bump, Little Miss Sunshine, Mr. Tickle, Mr. Grumpy, Little Miss Princess, Mr. Strong, Little Miss Christmas, Mr. Messy

UK's prehistoric treasures

Battersea Shield, Skara Brea Village Orkney Islands, Star Carr Headdress, Maiden Castle Hill Fort, Dorset, Avebury Stone Circles, Drumbest Horns, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, Grime’s Graves Flint Mines, Norfolk, Mold Cape, Flintshire, Wales

Agatha Christie novels

Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Body in the Library

Willoughby Pub Quiz (23 February 2020)

My turn as quiz master at the weekly Willoughby Arms Pub Quiz seems to come around very quickly and so it is vital that I have a process for producing the quiz.

That does change slightly and in recent months I have been using a theme for the whole quiz on the grounds that should make choosing the subjects of individual rounds easier. I am not wholly convinced that it does but I will stick with the approach until it breaks or I think of something better.

This week it was Cats and Dogs.

I changed the order of the rounds slightly (I should have done that ages ago) so that the potentially easier rounds on popular culture where alternated with the harder rounds. The rounds were music, facts about cats and dogs, films, famous cats and dogs (mostly dogs!), people associated with cats or dogs, and this week's news.

I think it worked OK though it was something of a struggle to find ten people associated with cats or dogs which I think made that the hardest round.

Unexpected win in the Pub Quiz

What started as a quiet evening stroll turned into a surprising win in a pub quiz.

The pub bit was not a surprise, I wanted a destination for the walk and I also fancied a pint so I headed for Ham Brewery Tap in Ham Street which is, not surprisingly, in the heart of Ham. When I bought the drinks I was told that a pub quiz was about to start and while I was reluctant at first I was swayed by it being free to enter and scheduled to last only 45 minutes or so.

The format was new to me and I liked it. There were 25 questions on general knowledge and a 5 x 5 grid to put the answers in. The clever bit was we each had to decide which answer to put where so if you were certain of an answer you put it in a box that is on multiple lines and if less sure then it went on a less useful square.

In this case we were sure of the first answer so wrote the question number 1 in a box in the centre (3 down and 3 across) because we were certain that Hercule Poirot was the detective in Murder in the Orient Express. We had no idea what the answer to 22 was so we put that in the square above it.

Once the 25 questions were completed we handed a carbon copy of our answer sheet to the quiz master for checking while we each marked our own sheets.

The second clever part of the quiz was that the answers were given in a different order, i.e. not 1, 2, 3, ... The aim then was to shout "Bingo!" once you had completed a line of five with the correct answers. We had about 10 right, and 2 wrong, before somebody shouted "Bingo!" but there was a second prize so we carried on.

We and another team both shouted "Bingo!" a few questions later and it came down to a tie-break question and the winner was the team closest to saying when Dr Who was first broadcast. We knew it was 1963 but the other team did not so we won the second prize of four drinks vouchers.

We will be going back to Ham Brewery Tap soon to claim our prize drinks and we will be doing the quiz again too.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (January 2020)

I have continued to set the questions for the Willoughby Pub Quiz every six or seven weeks as a group of us take it in turns to set the questions in return for free beer on the night we are quizmaster.

Over the years that I have been doing the quiz the way that I do it has established some sort of pattern with the twin aims of making the quiz interesting, i.e. diverse rounds, and easy for me to compile. Sometimes that works.

Recently I have had a theme for the whole quiz (apart from the final round) again with the aims of making things more fun and also easier.

This week it was trains.

Round one was questions on, er, trains, and you can see those here. Round two was music about trains, e.g. Last train to Clarksville; round three was people related to trains, e.g. IK Brunel, round four was films about trains, e.g. Unstoppable, and round five was places associated with trains, e.g. London Waterloo.

Round six was, as always, on this week's news and sport with several points available on each question.

Every time there is one round that is bit of a struggle and this time it was people connected with trains, while there are many engineers and architects associated with railways not many of them are famous and so there was no point putting them in a quiz. My get-around was to have five engineers and five people in the arts world, e.g. the authors of Railways Children and Night Train.

I used to do a picture round, and I still carry one, but as the main quiz finished around 12:30am I left it out, again. One day we'll manage to start the quiz before 11pm and then I'll have time for pictures.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (November 2015)

I have continued to set the questions for the Willoughby Pub Quiz every seven or eight weeks, a group of us take it in turns to set the questions in return for free beer, but I have not always done a picture round and even when I have done one I have not always got around to posting it on here.

If I do a picture round it is in addition to the standard six round os ten questions. I like doing a picture round as it is a different format, I always do a music round for the same reason despite the vagaries of the audio technology in the pub.

This time I went back to one of my favourite picture sources, UK stamps, and picked the most recent sets. This meant that there was a wide range of subjects and also of difficulties - everybody got all of the comedians but the scores for the other sections were somewhat lower.

The answers are given below the pictures.

• 2nd Gordon Highlanders; Light Infantry, King’s German Legion; Prussian Infantryman, French Imperial Guard Grenadier
• Spike Milligan, The Two Ronnies, Billy Connolly, Morcambe and Wise, Norman Wisdom, Lenny Henry, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Monty Python, French and Saunders, Victoria Wood
• Scabious Bee, Great Yellow Bumblebee, Northern Colletes Bee, Bilberry Bumblebee, Large Mason Bee, Potter Flower Bee
• Lion, Unicorn, Yale, Dragon, Falcon, Griffin

• Magna Carta, 1215, Simon De Montfort's Parliament, 1265, Bill of Rights, 1689, American Bill of Rights, 1791 ,Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Charter of the Commonwealth, 2013
• Tarr Steps, which crosses the River Barle in Exmoor National Park. Row Bridge, a packhorse bridge over Mosedale Beck at Wasdale Head in Cumbria. Pulteney Bridge, in Bath. Craigellachie Bridge, over the River Spey in Moray, Scotland. Pont Y Grog Y Borth Menai Suspension Bridge, linking the island of Anglesey to the Welsh mainland. 
• High Level Bridge, linking Newcastle-upon-Tyne with Gateshead. Royal Border Bridge, crossing the River Tweed between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Tweedmouth. Tees Transporter Bridge, in Middlesbrough. Humber Bridge, crossing the Humber estuary. Peace Bridge, spanning the River Foyle in Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (October 2014)

Having run out of time to do a picture round the last time that I did the Sunday evening Pub Quiz at the Willoughby Arms, this time I went somewhat over the top and did six!

The usual format of the quiz is six rounds of ten questions with a big picture round, usually worth around 30 points, run alongside these, i.e. it is issued at the beginning and collected at the end. I varied this and had six smaller picture rounds that were issued and marked with each of the normal rounds.

All six picture rounds were film posters where I blanked-out the names of the stars and the contestants had to fill them in again. It did not matter if the name was in the wrong box, it just had to be one of the right names for that film.

I started off easy with the original version of Ocean's 11 which just had five hidden names including Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. They got harder and I ended with The Expendables III with sixteen hidden names (Robert Davi's name is on the poster but he is not in the picture).

I did three old films and then three related newer films, there were two versions of Ocean's 11, two Carry On films (Sergeant and Abroad) and two action films (Red 2 and Expendables 3).

It was a fun round to do I especially liked the poster from the first Carry On film where some of the familiar Carry On regulars were billed as supporting players at the bottom of the poster while the stars pictured included the likes of Bob Monkhouse and Dora Bryan.

There was another bonus in the poster of Carry On Abroad. The woman in the bikini is not named but I know who she is as I have met her many times, she has even been to my house!

It may have been fun but it was also a lot of work and so I think that next time I'll go back to doing stamps.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (May 2014)

I have still not got a formula for doing my pub quizzes and this time a couple of potential rounds fell away when I failed to find ten questions on the subject that I could reasonably expect somebody to know the answers to. Everybody knows four or five things about Lenny Henry, but ten?

The picture round was easy though and I used something that I picked up a few weeks ago. It was Londonist that alerted me to this map of London's waterways and all I had to do was to blank out the names and to remember to keep an original copy so that I had the answers. These are included in the small picture which you can expand to full-size by clicking on it.

I like doing rounds like this one where I learn something in setting the questions rather than just asking about things that I know already.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (December 2013)

After November's experimental quiz (two answers to every question) I reverted to the usual format of six simple rounds of ten questions each (plus the picture round) with single answer questions except for a few in the first and last rounds.

I went for the structure of a hard round on news/words/politics followed by an easier one on popular culture, i.e. music/Benedict Cumberbatch/fictional espionage organisations. There were the usual beer/wee/fag breaks after the second and fourth rounds.

I write the questions by cutting and pasting the relevant text containing both the question and answer  from a website, mostly wikipedia and the BBC, and highlighting the answer in bold. That's is my clue not to read that bit out when asking the question.

The questions

Here are the questions with the answers replaced by "X"s. The answers are given below.

1. In the News Today
1. The XX, XX and XX governments have vowed to work together to reveal "the full facts" of the Lockerbie bombing 25 years ago.
2. Russian former oil tycoon XX has been reunited with his son after being freed from jail. He spent his first night of freedom in a decade, at a hotel in XX.
3. Four women battled it out for the Strictly Come Dancing glitterball trophy in the show's 11th series . XX, XX, XX and XX
4. A Crowd-funded XX-powered car built of XX, that can reach a top speed of around XXkm/h (XXmph) has hit the roads of Melbourne.
5. Two students wearing T-shirts to promote the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society Students win XX apology over T-shirt ban. Depicting XX and the XX
6. It is "crazy" for XX to personally call hospital bosses who miss A&E targets, XX, has said.
7. Seventy-six people were injured when ornate plasterwork at the XX fell during a production of XX.
8. The annual Halifax quality of life survey said which three places were the most desirable place to live in the UK? XX for the third year in a row. XX was in second place followed by XX which jumped 27 places to third.
9. Former BBC sports broadcaster David Coleman first appeared on air for the BBC in 1954, covering XX Olympic Games and XX football World Cups.
10. Nigella Lawson has said she is "disappointed but unsurprised" that two sisters who worked as her personal assistants have been cleared of fraud. Who were they? XX & XX XX

2. Two music
These were songs with the word "Winter" in the title. I crated a wish-list in iTunes and played the free minute or so that you get for each song. The teams had to name the artists.

3. New Words
1. XX Word of the Year
2. XX: (in the UK) a reduction in the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than is necessary for the number of the people in the household.
3. XX: to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming.
4. XX: a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank.
5. XX: a small furry mammal found in mountain forests in Colombia and Ecuador, the smallest member of the raccoon family.
6. XX: a form of meat produced synthetically from biological tissue.
7. XX: a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website
8. XX: the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price.
9. XX: dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.
10. XX: a picture which is taken, usually by a smartphone or a similar device, of a bookshelf or bookshelves

4. Benedict Cumberbatch
1. Benedict Cumberbatch starred as Christopher Tietjens in XX, a five-part BBC 2 series, which premiered in August 2012. It is an adaptation of the of novels of the same name by Ford Madox Ford and was written by Tom Stoppard..
2. A stage adaptation of a novel of the same name had its world premiere at the Royal National Theatre in February 2011, directed by Danny Boyle. Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, alternating the roles of XX and the XX.
3. He played XX, George Smiley's right-hand man, in the 2011 film adaptation of the John le Carré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
4. He provided the voice and motion-capture for both XX and the XX in The Hobbit (2012).
5. "Love is a Many-Splintered Thing" is an episode of The Simpsons. It is the twelfth episode of the 24th season and the 520th episode overall. It aired on February 10, 2013, as a Valentine's Day themed episode. Benedict Cumberbatch as XX and XX
6. Cumberbatch played XX in the J. J. Abrams-directed Star Trek Into Darkness (2013).
7. XX is a 2013 American thriller film about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks starring Benedict Cumberbatch as its founder Julian Assange.
8. Cumberbatch plays Captain Martin Crieff in XX a radio situation comedy series written by John Finnemore. Its first series was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2008. The show follows the exploits of the oddball crew of the single aeroplane owned by "MJN Air" as they are chartered to take all manner of items, people or animals across the world.
9. What was the name of the last broadcast episode of Sherlock? XX
10. He played The Angel Islington in the 2013 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Neil Gaiman's XX.

5. Female presidents and prime ministers
1. XX India Prime Minister 24 January 1966 24 April 1977, 11 years, 90 days
2. XX Israel Prime Minister 17 March 1969 3 June 1974, 5 years, 78 days
3. XX Philippines President 25 February 1986 30 June 1992, 6 years, 126 days
4. XX Pakistan Prime Minister 2 December 1988 6 July 1990, 1 year, 216 days
5. XX Ukraine Prime Minister 24 January 2005 6September 2005, 0 years, 225 days
6. Sheikh Hasina XX Prime Minister 6 January 2009, Incumbent 4 years, 349 days
7. Yingluck Shinawatra XX Prime Minister 5 August 2011, Incumbent 2 years, 138 days
8. Helle Thorning-Schmidt XX Prime Minister 3 October 2011, Incumbent 2 years, 79 days
9. Alenka Bratušek XX Prime Minister 20 March 2013 Incumbent, 0 years, 276 days
10. Erna Solberg XX Prime Minister 16 October 2013 Incumbent, 0 years, 66 days

6. Fictional espionage organisations
1. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was broadcast from 1964, to 1968. It followed the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international espionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. What does U.N.C.L.E. stand for? XX
2. The Champions was a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969. The Champions belonged to which fictional department of which real organisation? XX XX
3. In the recent films RED and RED2, what does RED stand for? XX
4. Stingray was created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and its 39 half-hour episodes were originally screened in 1964/65. Which orgnisation did Stingray belong to? XX
5. The Professionals is a crime-action television drama series that aired on the ITV network from 1977 to 1983 in 57 episodes. Who did The Professionals work for? XX
6. Department S is a spy-fi adventure series. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970 starring Peter Wyngarde. Department S was a fictional section of which real organisation? XX
7. Which organisation was UNCLE fighting against and what did their name stand for: XX XX
8. S.H.I.E.L.D. is an espionage and law-enforcement agency in the Marvel Comics Universe. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Strange Tales #135 (Aug. 1965). What S.H.I.E.L.D. Stand for (3 answers)x?: XX XX XX
9. In Doctor Who, what did U.N.I.T. Stand for (2 answers)? XX XX
10. Danger Man was broadcast between 1960 and 1962. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Which real organisation did Danger Man work for? XX

Picture round

The answers

These are the questions again this time with the "x"s replaced by the answers.

1. In the News Today
1. The UK, US and Libyan governments have vowed to work together to reveal
"the full facts" of the Lockerbie bombing 25 years ago.
2. Russian former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been reunited with his
son after being freed from jail. He spent his first night of freedom in a decade, at
a hotel in the German capital Berlin.
3. Four women battled it out for the Strictly Come Dancing glitterball trophy in the
show's 11th series . Abbey Clancy, Natalie Gumede, Susanna Reid and
Sophie Ellis-Bextor
4. A Crowd-funded air-powered car built of Lego, that can reach a top speed of
around 20km/h (12mph) has hit the roads of Melbourne.
5. Two students wearing T-shirts to promote the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist
Society Students win LSE apology over T-shirt ban. Depicting Jesus and the
Prophet Muhammad
6. It is "crazy" for Health Secretary (Jeremy Hunt) to personally call hospital
bosses who miss A&E targets, the health regulator for England, (David
Prior, chairman) Care Quality Commission, has said.
7. Seventy-six people were injured when ornate plasterwork at the Apollo fell
during a production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.
8. The annual Halifax quality of life survey said which three places were the most
desirable place to live in the UK? Hart in Hampshire for the third year in a row.
Uttlesford in Essex was in second place followed by South
Northamptonshire which jumped 27 places to third.
9. Former BBC sports broadcaster David Coleman first appeared on air for the BBC
in 1954, covering eleven Olympic Games and six football World Cups.
10. Nigella Lawson has said she is "disappointed but unsurprised" that two sisters
who worked as her personal assistants have been cleared of fraud. Who were
they? Elisabetta & Francesca Grillo

3. New Words
1. Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year
2. bedroom tax: (in the UK) a reduction in the amount of housing benefit paid to a
claimant if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than
is necessary for the number of the people in the household.
3. Binge-watch: to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid
succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming.
4. Bitcoin: a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the
need for a central bank.
5. Olinguito: a small furry mammal found in mountain forests in Colombia and
Ecuador, the smallest member of the raccoon family.
6. Schmeat: a form of meat produced synthetically from biological tissue.
7. Selfie: a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a
smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website
8. showrooming: the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a
product before buying it online at a lower price.
9. Twerk: dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving
thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.
10. Shelfie: a picture which is taken, usually by a smartphone or a similar device, of
a bookshelf or bookshelves

4. Benedict Cumberbatch
1. Benedict Cumberbatch starred as Christopher Tietjens in Parade's End is a
five-part BBC 2 series, which premiered in August 2012. It is an adaptation of
the of novels of the same name by Ford Madox Ford and was written by Tom
Stoppard..
2. A stage adaptation of a novel of the same name had its world premiere at the
Royal National Theatre in February 2011, directed by Danny Boyle. Benedict
Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein
and the Creature.
3. He played Peter Guillam, George Smiley's right-hand man, in the 2011 film
adaptation of the John le Carré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
4. He provided the voice and motion-capture for both Smaug the Dragon and the
Necromancer in The Hobbit (2012).
5. "Love is a Many-Splintered Thing" is an episode of The Simpsons. It is the twelfth
episode of the 24th season and the 520th episode overall. It aired on February
10, 2013, as a Valentine's Day themed episode. Benedict Cumberbatch as
Prime Minister and Severus Snape
6. Cumberbatch also played Khan Noonien Singh in the J. J. Abrams-directed Star
Trek Into Darkness (2013).
7. The Fifth Estate is a 2013 American thriller film about the news-leaking website
WikiLeaks starring Benedict Cumberbatch as its founder Julian Assange.
8. Cumberbatch plays Captain Martin Crieff in Cabin Pressure is a radio situation
comedy series written by John Finnemore. Its first series was broadcast on BBC
Radio 4 in 2008. The show follows the exploits of the oddball crew of the single
aeroplane owned by "MJN Air" as they are chartered to take all manner of items,
people or animals across the world.
9. What was the name of the last broadcast episode of Sherlock? The
Reichenbach Fall
10. He played The Angel Islington in the 2013 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Neil
Gaiman's Neverwhere.

5. Female presidents and prime ministers
1. Indira Gandhi India Prime Minister 24 January 1966 24 April 1977
11 years, 90 days
2. Golda Meir Israel Prime Minister 17 March 1969 3 June 1974 5
years, 78 days
3. Corazon Aquino Philippines President 25 February 1986 30 June 1992
6 years, 126 days
4. Benazir Bhutto Pakistan Prime Minister 2 December 1988 6 July
1990 1 year, 216 days
5. Yulia Tymoshenko Ukraine Prime Minister 24 January 2005 6
September 2005 0 years, 225 days
6. Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh Prime Minister 6 January 2009
Incumbent 4 years, 349 days
7. Yingluck Shinawatra Thailand Prime Minister 5 August 2011
Incumbent 2 years, 138 days
8. Helle Thorning-Schmidt Denmark Prime Minister 3 October 2011
Incumbent 2 years, 79 days
9. Alenka Bratušek Slovenia Prime Minister 20 March 2013 Incumbent 0
years, 276 days
10. Erna Solberg Norway Prime Minister 16 October 2013 Incumbent
0 years, 66 days

6. Fictional espionage organisations
1. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was broadcast from 1964, to 1968. It followed the
exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who
work for a fictitious secret international espionage and law-enforcement agency
called U.N.C.L.E. What does U.N.C.L.E. stand for? United Network Command
for Law and Enforcement
2. The Champions was a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction
adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV
during 1968–1969. The Champions belonged to which fictional department of
which real organisation? United Nations law enforcement organization
called "Nemesis"
3. In the recent films RED and RED2, what does RED stand for? Retired,
Extremely Dangerous
4. Stingray was created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and its 39 half-hour episodes
were originally screened in 1964/65. Which orgnisation did Stingray belong to?
W.A.S.P. (World Aquanaut Security Patrol)
5. The Professionals is a crime-action television drama series that aired on the ITV
network from 1977 to 1983 in 57 episodes. Who did The Professionals work for?:
"CI5" Criminal Intelligence 5
6. Department S is a spy-fi adventure series. The series consists of 28 episodes
which originally aired in 1969–1970 starring Peter Wyngarde. Department S was
a fictional section of which real organisation? Interpol
7. Which organisation was UNCLE fighting against and what did their name stand
for: THRUSH - Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables
and the Subjugation of Humanity
8. S.H.I.E.L.D. is an espionage and law-enforcement agency in the Marvel Comics
Universe. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Strange Tales #135 (Aug.
1965). What S.H.I.E.L.D. Stand for?: Supreme Headquarters, International
Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division. Strategic Hazard Intervention
Espionage Logistics Directorate, Strategic Homeland Intervention,
Enforcement and Logistics Division
9. In Doctor Who, what did U.N.I.T. Stand for? United Nations Intelligence
Taskforce, UNified Intelligence Taskforce
10. Danger Man was broadcast between 1960 and 1962. The series featured Patrick
McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Which real organisation did Danger Man
work for? NATO

Pictures
London Landmarks
Buckingham Palace, The Albert Memorial, Royal Opera House, Hampton Court,
Kensington Palace
UK A-Z
Manchester Town Hall, Narrow Water Castle, Old Bailey, Portmeirion, The Queens
College Oxford, Roman Baths, Stirling Castle, Tyne Bridge, Urquhart Castle, Victoria
and Albert Museum, White Cliffs of Dover, Station X Bletchley Park, York Minster, ZSL
London Zoo
British Film Year
Peter Sellers (from photo by Bill Brandt), David Niven (from photo by Cornell Lucas),
Charlie Chaplin (from photo by Lord Snowdon), Vivien Leigh (from photo by Angus
McBean), Alfred Hitchcock (from photo by Howard Coster)
Birth Centenary of Enid Blyton
Famous Five, Secret Seven

Big Ideas for a Christmas Social 2013

The worst thing about working away from home as much as I have over the last couple of years is missing so many evening events in London.

One of the main casualties of this has been Big Ideas, the philosophy discussion group that meets in a pub on the last Tuesday of each month. However I planned my time away it was hard to be in London on Tuesdays. Luckily those days have passed (t least for the moment) and I was in London for the last Tuesday in November.

This was the date for this year's Big Ideas Christmas Social with its famously difficult quiz.

But first the social.

To keep things simple the Christmas Social followed the format of the monthly meetings, except without a speaker. So that meant meeting in the upstairs room of The Wheatsheaf in Fitzrovia with each of us sorting out our own food and drinks, though these were supplemented by a significant number of mince-pies courtesy of the pub landlord.

Big Ideas had stretched it wings a little to include a philosophical reading group and a maths group. The organisation and membership of the three groups overlapped significantly so it made sense for them all to share the same Christmas Social.

Despite my recent absences I recognised enough of the people there to walk in to some interesting conversations.

Then the quiz game.

This page shows just how hard it was. None of the brain-boxes in the room knew that Madama Sousatzka, Batman and My Left Foot were the first three films given the new 12 rating.

I did know, or at least guessed, that the symphonies in question 9 are all No. 8. But that was the only one that I got. Others did better.

My one big success was in the maths section where I was the only person to get the right answer to one of the question, including the question-setter! The question was, how many distinctly different ways are there to make a cube with faces coloured either black or white. The official answer was 6 but clearly there are at least 7 as there can be 0, 1, 2, ... or 6 black faces. The question then becomes how many ways are there to arrange 2, 3, ... black faces on a white cube. I know.

Despite by (old) degree in Mathematics that was the only maths question that I got completely right and I got two of the four completely wrong. I did not win the quiz but I was not too embarrassingly off the pace. Not that anybody was taking it too seriously.

The quiz was a challenging diversion but the main point of the evening was simply to have intelligent conversations with intelligent people. I certainly managed that and I hope that the people that I spoke to managed it too.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (November 2013)

I was little ambitious in this quiz and as a result it took me much longer to compile.

I usually do a music round (built using iTunes sound clips from titles that I add to my wish list) and these naturally have two answers, title and artist, and I mark these as 1/2 point each to stop the quiz being skewed in favour of people who know music. My solution this time was to do six rounds where each question had two (or more) answers.

The rounds on twins, anatomy, sporting partners and TV sequels took longer than they would if I only needed one answer. For example, I thought that there were two sequels to the original Likely Lads but I could find no mention of the show that I though there was that featured just Bob and Thelma so with only one sequel that question had to be dropped.

The news quiz was also harder for the same reason and that was reflected in the unusually low scores.

I had not done a picture round the last time around (I ran out of time) but it was back to business as usual this time with the pictures all taken from GB stamps.

They came from British Auto Legends 2013 (Jaguar E-Type, Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, Aston Martin DB5, Morgan Plus 8, Lotus Esprit, MG MGB, Land Rover Defender, Ford Anglia, Austin FX4, Morris Minor Van), Classic ITV Programmes (Inspector Morse, Emmerdale, Rising Damp, The Avengers, The South Bank Show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire), World Heritage Sites in the UK (Hadrian's Wall, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, Heart of Neolithic Orkney) and Endangered Birds (White Tailed Eagle, Bearded Tit, Red Kite, Cirl Bunting, Marsh Harrier, Avocet, Bittern, Dartford Warbler).

Willoughby Pub Quiz (July 2013)

I am still doing fairly regular stints as Question Master of the Willoughby Pub Quiz on a Sunday night even though it usually finishes sometime after midnight and I have to get up at 6am the next day to travel to Cardiff.

I try to include a picture round in my quizzes, despite the significant extra work that this makes, though I can only do this when I have ready access to a printer at work (printers, like fax machines, belong in distant history).

Stamps are a regular source for my picture rounds, thanks to CollectGBStamps, and this month that gave me an opportunity to return to the butterflies of the infamously low-scoring round from a few years ago.

The answers to these pictures are:

• 78p, 88p, £1.88
• European Eel, Crucian Carp, Cadis-fly Larva, Arctic Char,
• Fairy Shrimp, Lesser Silver Water Beetle, Three-spined Stickleback, Smooth Newt,
• Emperor Dragonfly, Common Toad, Glutinous Snail, Perch,
• Comma, Orange Tip, Marbled White, Red Admiral, Marsh Fritillary, Brimstone, Swallowtail, Small Copper, Chalkhill Blue, Purple Emperor,

I am a generous Quiz Master and gave a 1/2 mark for anything close, e.g. "beetle" instead of "water beetle".

This was not a very high scoring round either!

Willoughby Pub Quiz (January 2013)

The first Sunday in January was my turn again to do the Willoughby Pub Quiz and I went for a simple structure after playing with some alternatives.

I also went for the easy option where I could with rounds lifted straight from Wikipedia and a return to stamps for the picture round.

The six main rounds were:

1. Today's news - taken directly from the BBC News website
2. Actors who have starred in and directed their own films - taken from a Wikipedia article
3. Leeds (my home town) - started with the main Wikipedia and followed some of the leads, e.g. TV shows made there
4. Songs about January - an iTunes playlist created by searching for songs with "January" in the title (this proved to be the hardest round)
5. It happened on 6 January - taken directly from the Wikipedia article
6. Acclaimed current TV shows - I easily thought of the shows, e.g. Dexter and Borgen, and I lifted the descriptions from Wikipedia and edited them down to the key clues.

I like using stamps for the picture round is that they are easy to find on the web, all the pictures in a set are the same size, they are British and it is easy to pick some easy ones and some hard ones.

Here the Dr Who actors were easy, everybody got them all, and the designers were the hardest, I do not think that anybody got any of them though they all knew the names when I gave the answers.

People regularly hit this blog looking for pub quiz questions so I'll try to remember to post the answers to the pictures round in a comment. The other questions and answers you can work out for yourselves.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (March 2012)

I found myself volunteering to do the Willoughby Pub Quiz again as I did not have a decent excuse not to and I quite like doing them anyway, despite the disproportionate effort I put in to doing the questions.

The research is part of the fun and each round is unique to me. Thinking of the rounds is hard enough in itself especially when you try to get a balance of subjects. I usually do something that involves world politics (part of the aim here is to educate) and something on London or Kingston. After that it's anything that takes my fancy.

This time we had rounds on things I learnt recently from podcasts, London music venues, musical marches (it was the month of March), long serving world leaders, UK political scandals and characters from UK police/crime drama series.

It is traditional, but not compulsory, to follow the standard six rounds of ten questions with a picture round. For reasons that escape me, I've got in to the habit of doing two!

Stamps are a wonderful source of themed pictures because we have so many commemorative sets issued in the UK each year. I've used stamps many times now and that is one barrel that I may have scrapped dry.

I could use the old PG Tips picture cards but the one time that I used them before, British Butterflies, got memorably low scores and is still spoken of in unflattering terms.

For the last few quizzes I have done cartoon animals. Having done cats and dogs it was time for the mice.

Except there are not as many cartoon mice as I thought and I had to include rats and even then I had to include three Beatrix Potter characters.

I think that it worked though.

In case you are interested, here are the questions:

1. Odds and Sods (stuff I head on my iPod this week) - multiple choice:
1) Which Archer had a heart attack this week? Brian, David, Tony
2) Which TV show did Davy Jones NOT appear in? Corrie, Dr Finlay, Z-Cars
3) In September, which region won Red Bordeaux Varietal Over £10 International
Trophy? California, Chile, China
4) When was the writing first on the wall? Belshazzar's Feast, Feast of King Solomon, Last Supper,
5) New railway line from South Sudan to the sea in which county? Kenya, Somalia, Sudan
6) When was the mass trespass of Kinder Scout? 1922, 1932, 1942
7) The co-founders of PayPal are knows as what? PayPal Four, PayPal Kids, PayPal Mafia
8) What is the colloquial name for a Basking Shark in Ireland? Silver Fish, Summer
Fish, Sun Fish
9) Schmallenberg virus attacks which animal: Chicken, Pigs, Sheep
10) Which iof the three previous Chelsea managers was not sacked? Luiz Felipe Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti

2. London Music Venues
1) Home of the English National Opera
2) Live album by Motörhead. In1981 celebrated which venue
3) Home of The Proms
4) Used to be called the Millennium Dome
5) Floral Hall a thrilling public arena, with bars and eating spaces in spectacular surroundings
6) Legendary rock venuw was at 90 Wardour street
7) Built in 1901 by the German piano firm Bechstein next to its showrooms on Wigmore Street
8) Rock venue near TCR demolished because of Crossrail
9) Largest of the 3 SBC concert halls
10) Located at 100 Oxford Street

3. Musical Marches
1) Wedding March
2) The Ides of March (1981)
3) Marche funèbre for piano
4) March, march march across Red Square
5) Known as "The March King" or the "American March King"
6) March of the Pigs (EP) 1984
7) Radetzky March, Op. 228
8) Prospekt's March
9) "Pomp and Circumstance Marches"
10) March Of The Meanies

4. Current ongest serving leaders
1. Ruler of Cameroon since June 1975
2. Sahrawi Republic August 1976
3. Equatorial Guinea August 1979
4. Angola September 1979
5. Zimbabwe April 1980
6. Iran October 1981
7. Cambodia January 1985
8. Uganda January 1986
9. Burkina Faso October 1987
10. Kazakhstan June 1989
Alphabetical Answers: Angola, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Kazakhstan, Sahrawi Republic, Uganda, Zimbabwe

5. UK political scandals
1) Horsegate's horse's name, who was it given to and who eventually admitted that he rode it:
2) British politician faked suicide in 1974
3) In October 2011 who "mistakenly allowed the distinction between [his] personal interest and [his] government activities to become blurred".
4) Faces prosecution over claims his ex-wife took his speeding points on
her licence in 2003
5) Affair with secretary Sara Keays resulting in a child (1983)
6) Resigned from the Coalition Cabinet after revelations that he claimed £40,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay rent to his boyfriend.
7) Resigned as Welsh Secretary after "a moment of madness".on Clapham Common
8) Sacked for his involvement in a Nazi-themed stag party in France.
9) Claimed expenses for a duck house.
10) Secretary of State for War, had an affair with Christine Keeler.

6. UK TV cops and robbers, which show?
1) PC/DC/DS/DI Andy Crawford
2) Frank Haskins is superior officer
3) DS Don Beech and Sergeant Matt Boyden
4) DCIs John Barnaby and Tom Barnaby
5) Gerry Standing, Brian Lane, Jack Halford
6) DI Joseph Chandler, DS Ray Miles
7) Inspector Jean Darblay, Inspector Kate Longton
8) Chief Inspector Barney Crozier, Charlie Hungerford,
9) Ray Carling and Chris Skelton
10) DS Tommy Murphy

Willoughby Pub Quiz (February 2012)

Having been lured back in to the Willoughby Arms Pub Quiz in December I was soon called in to action again. I suspect that this had more to do with my willingness to set another quiz rather than any great enthusiasm for the way that I set them.

This time I did rounds on: Parks, Gardens and Recreation Grounds in Kingston upon Thames; TV Spin-offs, e.g. Holby City comes from Casualty; Top Scorers, e.g. Monty Panesar took 69 wickets for Sussex; EU Leaders; No. 1 singles on 27 January starting with 1957 and Frankie Vaughan's "The Garden of Eden"; and Advertising Slogans, e.g. "Finger lickin' good" was used by KFC.

As usual some of the rounds proved to be harder than others. I expect people to do better on the round on Kingston than they did but I knew that the round on EU leaders would be low-scoring. The TV and Advertising Slogan rounds proved to be the easiest and I think we even got some 10/10s.

I followed up my picture round from the last time on cartoon cats with an equally easy one on cartoon dogs.

This is the one round where I did not have to write the answers down as all of these dogs are very familiar to me.

How many can you name?

Willoughby Pub Quiz (December 2011)

I had been avoiding the Willoughby Pub Quiz because they finish late on Sunday night and I'm often up at 6am the next day to catch a train to Cardiff, but a Monday working at home meant that I could afford to be a little late for once.

Even so I was not that keen on the quiz and decided not to go out until after ten in the hope that it would be well under-way by the time that I got there. It wasn't.

I got roped in to play with Rick, the landlord. The questions were kind to us and we won quite comfortably, despite getting 2/10 in the last round and 4/10 in another one.

It is always nice to win something, even if the prize is some freebie from a brewery (which is much better than the usual something-from-the-pound-shop), but after the win comes the pressure to run a quiz yourself. I weakened and agreed to do one the following week.

The proposed round on opera failed to work but eventually I managed to craft something challenging from cities relative position north and south of London, shipwrecks, museums and galleries in London, film sequels, elections in 2011 and sitcom couples.

I even did two picture rounds instead of the customary one. The first was on recent UK stamps (very easy) and then this one on cats in cartoons and comics.

This proved to be a fairly high-scoring round, as expected, but there are a few hard ones in there and none of the teams got full marks.

I had a lot of fun compiling and running the quiz and may be tempted to do another one. If asked.

Big Ideas for a Christmas Social 2012

The Big Ideas Christmas social was a blast despite, or because of, its simplicity.

The venue was the same as for the monthly meetings, the upstairs function room at The Wheatsheaf in Fitzrovia with its fake but cute Tudor windows, the people were the same and the eagerness to talk was the same.

The only difference was that we did not have a theme for the evening or somebody to guide us but we did have a good finger buffet that I visited more often than I probably should have.

Seasoned conversationalists need no encouragement to mix and that's what we did but this time I did not take any notes.

Without a set theme the talk veered in several disparate directions, most of which I've forgotten.

The ones that I do recall were the crisis of capitalism (always a good choice at Big Ideas), our relentless animalistic pursuit for sex (always difficult discussing that one with women) and the architecture in Minsk.

In the middle of all this we had time for a quiz on philosophy and mathematics. We formed ourselves in to small teams and attacked the questions with vigour.

Round One was on logic and that meant using lots of algebra to work out the agree of five brothers and their cats. This should have been my strong point but the forceful Alicia insisted in taking control. Luckily she is good at this stuff.

Round Two was anagrams of philosophers names with helpful pictures of them all as clues, if you had any idea of what they looked like. Somebody on our table, Sam maybe, did and we got most of them. Examples included bent gift idolizer, exam brew, impale glacial, magicians or not, much facile lout, and, sweet indulging twit.

Round Three was DitLoIDs, a combination of letters and symbols that represented a philosophical saying. For example, G = D meant God is dead. Simples. Other clues included H = OP, M = by N a PA, M = the M of all T, and, B that S which 1Tl. I was pretty useless on these due to a weakness in all areas philosophical but as a team we were OK.

Round Four required us to draw lies that did not cross on a torus (ring-doughnut). This should have been a cinch for somebody who studied Topology at university, like I did, but I failed miserably. Luckily none of the other teams could do it either.

And so we won. The prize was a large tin of Celebrations chocolates which we promptly shared with everybody. It seemed appropriate.

The quiz over we returned to our conversations and drinks until the pub quietly told us that we had to go home as they were closing.

I love Big Ideas for its thought-provoking discussions and the Christmas social was just a bolder brasher and slightly less structured evening of what they do well. A great event.

Late night fun at the V&A

I love the V&A dearly for so many reasons and so I was not going to miss the opportunity to explore it as part of a game.

"Playgrounds" was the enticing and intriguing title of March's Friday Late where special events are staged at the V&A until 10pm on the last Friday of each month.

The museum is open as usual on these evenings so you can explore and enjoy the exhibits as well as taking part in the events.

We got there promptly, correctly anticipating that the evening would be very popular, and slurped a quick cup of tea and demolished a slice of carrot cake while choosing which events to try and do.

We opted to go for Silent Relay, which was billed as "Be guided by a controller's calm voice in your earpiece to become an agent taking part in a carefully orchestrated operation through the depths of the Museum."

It sounded like fun and it was, though perhaps not quite as intended!

We joined the queue where we learnt that we had to be in teams of four. A friend was on his way so that made it three and we adopted a single lady in the queue and then we had a team, of sorts.

The friend was a little late, mostly because he got lost in the V&A (if you've been there you will not be at all surprised by that) and the lady turned out to be foreign and had problems following the instructions, but surely we could get over that little problem?

We were given an iPod touch each, told our identities for the quest, and started playing our instructions track at the same time. Actually I may have been a second or two early which could have been costly!

We were sent off in different directions and given very precise instructions on which corners to turn and which doors to go through. The pace was relentless, a little like Tank to Neo at the end of The Matrix, and it was immediately clear that this was going to be harder than we thought.

Soon I was travelling down a back staircase that I had not seen before. And that's where the problems started.

One floor down I was meant to pick up an envelope from another agent of which there was no sign. The instructions came thick and fast so I could not linger and I carried on sans envelope. I did meet the next agent on the next floor down but she looked confused as she was expecting to receive an envelope from me. I shrugged and carried on.

I made the next connection too where I met another agent and picked up the video camera that he was carrying. This is where it all went wrong.

I was about two seconds behind plan at this stage and once I had the camera the next instructions had already been delivered and partially forgotten. I took a wrong turning somewhere and spent most of the rest of the mission trying to get to where I was meant to be.

There was no point in doubling back because the fast pace of the mission would not allow me to catch up so I tried to be clever and take short cuts towards where I thought we were headed. The main problems with this were a) I did not know where I was meant to be going, b) I would not know how to get there even if I did and c) because the main part of the V&A is built round a quadrangle there are no short-cuts.

Thanks to luck, not judgement, I did find myself by the Grand Entrance not too long after I was meant to be there and with some quick walking I got back to the base just a few seconds after I was meant to.

That was a very minor victory as I has completely failed to pass on the camera, collect other envelopes, pick-up code words and take the photos of other agents in specified locations that the calm voice in my ear kept instructing me to do. But it was a victory of sorts none the less!

Eventually the three of us (I never saw the other lady again) all made it back to base and we then relaxed by watching rather than participating in some of the other events and exploring some of the exhibitions.

It was a bit shambolic but a lot of fun. April's Friday Late at the V&A is all about quilts and I'm guessing that will be a little more sedate. I'll let you know!

Looking for our corporate values

As part of our recent rebranding, we were all sent this word search as the wallpaper for our PCs. It contains our new corporate values, can you find them?



You should have found "committed", "innovative" and "open", but did you also find "revenge"?

Obviously nobody involved in the production of the puzzle did (apart from the embittered employee in the agency who was, I presume, responsible for the prank) and this was rolled out to staff before it was spotted and quickly, and embarrassingly, replaced.

It just goes to show that even with something as simple as a little quiz it pays to do some checking.

A quiz too far

My latest go at entertaining the usual Sunday night crowd at The Willoughby with a cultured quiz was somewhat less than successful.

The TV round was reasonable enough, so was the music round, but I made the mistake of assuming that somebody might know something about books, news, or geography. Or stamps.

I included a few butterflies in response to the feedback that I got last time and still nobody knew any of them :-)

It takes a lot of effort to pull together a quiz of six round of ten questions plus the picture round, unless you simply use a quiz book like some others do, and I'm not sure that the effort is always worth the reward. So I think I'll be leaving the quiz alone for a while and will enjoy some early nights instead!

British Butterfies

Setting the questions for a recent pub quiz at The Willoughby allowed me the indulgence to revisit my childhood when, for a few years, I was an enthusiastic collector of picture cards given away with packets of Brooke Bond PG Tips tea.

I vividly recall the excitement of opening a new packet of tea to see what the card was and of taking swaps down to the local supermarket to exchange for gaps.

I collected a few books but the most complete collection, and the one that I remember the best, is British Butterflies.

It seemed to be the idea book to use this for the picture round.

There are 50 butterflies in this collection from 1963 and at that time I also collected live butterflies (I'm not very proud of that now) so the pictures were very real to me.

I selected this eighteen for the quiz.

It was, I thought, a clever combination of the dead easy, e.g. Red Admiral, and the rather difficult, e.g. which Fritillary is that?

In the actual quiz the teams that seemed to know a lot about everything  revealed that they know absolutely nothing about British butterflies.

I think that the top score was 4/18, and that was thanks to the new Polish barmaid recognising the Peacock.

As luck would have it, another regular came in half way through the quiz, too late to take part, and not only made it obvious that he knew all the butterflies but he started describing their caterpillars too!

As a round in a pub quiz it proved to be something of a failure but as a reminder of part of my childhood it was a great success.

I am now looking at Brooke Bond tea cards on eBay!