When your pub quiz round goes awry because people – allegedly intelligent, educated people – don’t know what an anagram is.
Honestly, I have no words.
And if I did, they would be all jumbled up.
.
If you’re going to struggle you’re supposed to struggle on getting the answers correct. Not not knowing what a fairly straightforward word in the question means.
How can you not know what an anagram is?
I’m always interested about the varying standards of local pub quizzes. There are two main things at play here: the average difficulty of the questions, and the ability of the competing teams. And there are well known examples of all four of the possible outcomes from these two variables at quizzes in Cape Town.
Last night’s quiz turned out to be the easiest from this point of view: without wanting to sound rude, the standard of the teams playing wasn’t great, and the level of questions was fairly basic. I’m comparing this with other quizzes we sometimes attend where at least one of the two variables is set to “difficult” mode.
Still, it was good fun, good company and nice to win some good prizes.
What last night’s quiz did offer – aside from the winnings and the enjoyment – was the most annoying woman in quiz history.
And I’ve been doing pub quizzes for 30 years.
We all know at least one of those people who always need to be the centre of attention, even when they’re actually already it, but for all the wrong reasons.
This lady was like that, but on steroids cocaine.
Loud, shrill, squeaky – ruining everyone’s evening.
God, she was irritating.
Even her teammates were embarrassed. One of them actually left early rather than continue to sit next to her.
There were numerous warnings from the host, but he tried valiantly to keep it good-natured until, during the second half of the evening, she decided to shout out the answer to a question, at which point he (quite reasonably) snapped, looking her directly in the eye and delivering the long-overdue and much-appreciated line:
Shut the f**k up!
Delicious.
I mean, sadly it had very little effect, but it got a decent cheer from the audience, and it was genuinely a nice thing to hear.
Thankfully, all of the other good things about the evening just about outweighed the mouthy bint. And thus, we will likely be back to defend our title next time around.
Double figures!
Well done, us!
Whoop!
Meh.
One thing I have managed to do while we’ve been on lockdown is a bit of quizzing. I’ve done some live quizzes on Quizando, I’ve played the old quiz that I used to play back in the UK (because he’s had to move online as all the pubs are shut), and I’ve been enjoying Jimmy Carr’s The Little Tiny Quiz of the Lockdown on Youtube.
10 questions every evening at 6pm UK time (that’s 7pm CAT), with the answers 2 hours later at 8pm UK time (that’s 9pm CAT) (although if I had to tell you that, you’re probably not going to do very well).
Less than 10 minutes per evening, all in, and there have been some cracking questions for pub quiz addicts. And amazingly family friendly as well.
Here are the Day 1 videos for you to try, first of all the Questions:
And the Answers:
I’ve just finished Day 6, and I’m doing pretty well. And this is just for fun: no prizes here, so no point googling or cheating or whatever – just enjoy it.
If you’ve got any decent quiz ideas while we’re all stuck indoors, please leave me (and with me, everyone else) a comment on the 6000.co.za Facebook page.
There is always space in my life for more pub quiz goodness.
Tonight’s experiment: doing a pub quiz on 4½ hours sleep.
Last month’s control experiment (normal amount of sleep) went really well, so it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any change this time around.
But last night was Round 5 of the FA Cup and we needed extra time to overcome a plucky Reading side. That extra half hour (plus a bit for changeovers and post-match comments etc) plus the 2 hour time difference are what’s done the damage. I’m struggling to stay awake now and it’s only lunchtime.
Tonight might be a bit of a mess. Oh dear.
(Just as long as that business doesn’t require a reliable electricity supply.)
Part 1.
The first pub quiz in ages last night. And we won. Some things never change. Our team name did – we went with “Chinese Cabbage” for obvious reasons. It stood us in good stead, with a comprehensive victory assured well ahead of the final round. Well played, team.
Part 2.
I managed to get back (no pun intended) to gym today for the first time in about a month. Time will tell whether this was a good decision, my back being at that difficult “probably ok, unless you manage to do something really innocuous to damage it again” stage.
Notes from my really gentle session:
– Gym is quiet, but can you imagine what it’ll be like in a month’s time?
– That wasn’t as easy as I remember. It’s amazing how quickly your fitness drops off when you have been injured.
– I’m (briefly, at least) re-motivated to get back to full fitness as soon as possible, but…
– Tomorrow may well bring a world of pain.
Part 3.
I’ve secured a bit more advertising stuff for the blog. You’ll likely see a post or two in the next week or so that simply doesn’t make sense in the context of this otherwise wonderfully-written site. They’ll probably be about casinos and sports betting. I’m not supposed to say that they are paid content, but they are paid content – clearly identifiable by the “Black Label Fund” category I have applied to them. However, this time around, it’s more likely that any monies earned will go towards a Christmas bone-us for the beagle than any beer. (See what I did there?)
Thank you for your understanding.