Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Not particularly surprised to discover today's quiz had a strong Halloween theme, but I was surprised to discover quite how much I knew about horror films and novels. After a mixed bag warm-up round, we were dropped into a series of questions about zombies — which, thanks to Mira Grant's Newsflesh novels, was a walk in the park.

Towards the end of the second round A, exhausted by lack of sleep and frustrated at the questions, asked Yorkshire Nick whether the entire quiz was about zombies. There was a pause while he consulted the questions before answering, "Yes, there's a round on vampires and one about Harry Potter..." A's groan could be heard clear across the pub!

The round on vampires was pretty straight-forward, and the round on Harry Potter involved identifying famous British actors who'd starred in the films based on other facts about their lives. Partway through the round, Yorkshire — clearly a serious HP buff — came up with a cunning plan to try to hold us back and bring the other teams on: he made us name the role each of the actors had played in the films.

At the end of the round, we swapped score sheets as usual and marked each other. We swapped back with one of the other regulars — a couple who are there most weeks — and Yorkshire went round asking people for their scores. He worked his way around towards us, going to the team we'd swapped with first. They told him they'd got 14. He told them they'd done well and he was very impressed. They said, "It's not enough... We know what's coming!" Sure enough, when he asked us for our score, we told him we'd got twenty out of twenty. His response? "Bugger! And I can say that this week, because it's my last week as quizmaster..."

An extremely successful quiz night despite lacking two members of our time — they were on a mini-break in southern Italy. Fortunately, another occasional member had returned from a recent trip to Florence in time to bolster numbers and we won after dropping a mere nine points across the rounds. Unfortunately, we dropped one where I thought the answer was Prince Philip — and it was! — but the others managed to talk me round.

On the plus side, when a question came up about the Russian revolution, I insisted on adding that it was carried out by the Bolsheviks rather than simply going with the general asnwer of the communists — I remembered that two factions had split prior to the revolution and that they didn't formally become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until much later — and sure enough, there must've been a CP history on the setting team because they didn't want communists as an answer.

(There was also a certain amount of confusion about the exact relationship between the The Communist Manifesto and it's the Russian Revolution — I think one of the others had conflated it with What Is To Be Done?, probably thanks to title of Marx' work and the standard political use of the term manifesto. Fortunately, having a father who is something of expert on the works of Marx, it was pretty easy to straighten things out!)

Waking up and not hearing the tell-tale sounds of rain from outside, I thought we might have managed to beat the forecast. But when I looked out of and saw the teeming water, I realised my mistake: I'd pulled my bedroom window all the way closed the day before because someone was working outside with their radio on fortissimo and I wanted to shut out the noise.

Slightly disappointed, I pulled on my waterproof and headed out to meet up with the others for the usual Sunday dog walking. We'd planned to meet at nine, but delayed things by a few minutes to allow C to drop J off at the station in time for the London train. Leaving Tiny Flo at home to recover from her upset tummy — she had to content herself with twanging a spring-loaded doorstop! — we headed out with the rest of the canine contingent in search of muddy puddles and fields, which, thanks to the rain were enough for them and they weren't tempted to go swimming in the canal.

After a couple of hours, we ended up where we'd started and split up to go our separate ways: the newlyweds to go to the Double Locks to pick up the things they'd put in storage after their reception on Saturday; C to do some shopping; A to visit a friend; and me to go home, have a shower, and to put all my damp clothes in the laundry basket.

I spent the rest of the day pottering around inside and doing a post of post-production work on some recent photos. I thought about going climbing, but admitted to myself that I couldn't face the idea of going out again — it wasn't so much the rain as the thought of having to put my soggy shoes back on for the walk home from the climbing centre that really discouraged me.

By evening, the rain had stopped and walked down to the Puerto for the quiz. Much to my delight, I discovered that (a) Yorkshire Nick was back as quizmaster; (b) Dasher had come along to make up the numbers; and (c), even more unexpectedly, J was there too — it transpired that her trip to London had gone wrong after her rail replacement bus got caught up in a road accident — providing us with a vast, additional pool of knowledge.

Sadly, we only managed second place this week — some of the rounds were quite tricky — but that's fine: the others well deserved their win and, if nothing else, we were the only ones with a adorable springer on their team...

After going our separate ways for afternoon, we regrouped at the pub for our usual Sunday quiz. With A busy on a work call-out, we temporarily renamed our team, only reverting to our usual moniker when she rejoined us. The questions were a bit trick — we didn't do particularly well on the sport round — but we pulled it back at the very end, acing the final double-points round and getting all but one of the pictures correct, finishing a point or two clear of our nearest rivals!

For the second week in a row, we have managed to win the Sunday night quiz at the Puerto Lounge. We performed well through out, greatly helped by the presence of two team members who knew a lot about tennis.

But what really clinched it was the final round, which featured two sets of four questions which link together to give answers to the fifth and tenth questions which count for six points each. Yesterday, we managed to get both sets of links, dropping only question in the second set. In general, I enjoy these sorts of connected rounds — last week there was a one where each question formed a chain, with the tail of the answer to the previous question starting the next — because they're very like crosswords, where you can work out the answers even if you're not sure what they mean.

I'm not sure we're going to compete next week — some of the other team members are doing a triathlon — but I'm sure we'll be back in the not too distant future...