Bar Wars: The Saga Continues

This outing was one of incredible peaks and troughs. Some rounds were near perfect and others abysmal. I didn't help matters by turning up late and my friend didn't help either by refusing to remove his Google Glasses during the money round. Which may mean that Bar Wars has become the first quiz in the country to release this poster...


NO GOOGLE GLASS

 Anyway, it has to be said that all in all, this quiz was not our finest hour, though we did end up managing to walk away with the cash (Huzzah!). I hereby disclose our vital statistics...

27/07/2014
First Bowl Hereford Arena
Team: Me + 5 others
Position (main quiz): 6th = (53 points)   Money round: Win

Don't ask me how we managed equal 6th in the main quiz. We definitely didn't deserve that high a ranking. I think it was probably due to our perfect cartoon character picture round and a nearly perfect songs round. Here are the all too many bruisers that cost us the marks:

I am not including the ones I knew but was too late arriving to answer.
1) Juliette Norton is married to which celebrity chef?
2) Liebschen the cat appears in which movie based on a Roald Dahl book?
3) Which party won the Leominster South council by-election this week?
4) What percentage of new broadband users have opted out of the government's anti-pornography filter?
5) Who recently won Rear of the Year for the 2nd time?
6) The cycling team of which Commonwealth country were found riding on the M74 this week?
7) Henry Perky invented which breakfast cereal, the first breakfast cereal in the world?*
8) The M54 connects which 'city' to the M6?*
9) Pewter is an alloy of tin and what other element?* 
10) Which 3 seas border the Korean Peninsula?
11) Scotland only has 5 outdoor public swimming pools - True or False?

* Signals Wipeout round
The music round this week was to identify Disney films from their notable songs. Who cares, right? Well we did, and we ended up getting a slightly embarrassing 14/15. We couldn't identify the song from the Little Mermaid.

The Answers:
1) Jamie Oliver
2) The Witches
3) The Green Party
4) 96%
5) Carol Vorderman
6) Sri Lanka
7) Shredded Wheat
8) Telford
9) Lead
10) Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, East China Sea
11) False - it only has 3

The Excuses:
1) A likely guess, but given that celebrity chefs is one of my weakest areas of quizzing knowledge, celebrity chef's spouses are even shakier ground.
Quiz info: 'Jools' designs the Little Bird range of clothing for Mothercare. The couples' children are called Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo, Petal Blossom and Buddy Bear.
2) I have read quite a lot of Roald Dahl's books, but sadly this once escaped me. This is one of those questions where when somebody suggests the correct answer, you get that 'Eureka' moment. Or at least, I think so, because I didn't turn up until after this question...)
Quiz info: The Witches film (1990) is the last film that Jim Henson (of Muppets fame) personally worked on.
3) Yet another recent politics question that completely escaped me. Herefordshire by-elections are generally incredibly badly reported, but this one is significant because it means that the Conservatives have lost their majority on the council. I suggested It's Our County, against better informed advice and lost the point for us.
Quiz info: Do you really want a local government fact? Oh alright. Despite often being referred to as a 'County Council', Herefordshire Council is actually a unitary authority. Fancy that!
4) We knew it was huge, but not this huge... (not a double entendre)
5) Something to add to the CV there. Carol previously won only in 2011. Her fellow winner was Olly Murs.
Quiz info: The first winner of the prestigious award was Barbara Windsor in 1976.
6) A news story that I read then immediately forgot about. It happened with Kenyan cyclists at the 2002 Manchester Games as well, but not on the M74.
7) Not one to guess on a Wipeout. I suggested Quaker Oats with no real conviction.
8) I was cross about this one as it gave us a WIPEOUT! Telford is a town, not a city, and I believe that our answer of Wolverhampton (which is) therefore stands, but I didn't argue it.
Quiz info: My father worked on the building of this road. That's more interesting than most trivia about motorways.
9) Guessed it, but didn't put it down. Wikipedia is a bit less forthright about what actually makes up pewter.
10) Feeling like a hero after this one because I guessed 2 out of 3 correctly and just went for South China Sea instead of East China Sea. The least bad wrong answer that I'll get for a while, I suspect.
Quiz info: Can't really think of anything, but Lt. Col Henry Blake from U.S. sitcom/drama M*A*S*H was killed while flying over the Sea of Japan in his final episode.
11) Who would have thought it? My brief Google searches have only found evidence of two - Gourock (Renfrewshire) and Tarlair (Aberdeenshire), raising the question about whether the third is actually Loch Ness... (Would appreciate it if anybody would let me know!)

And onto the final fling.
I was convinced that we hadn't done it to the point of surprise when our team name was called out at the end. I have decided that as the whole point of this blog is to help me improve (and people have told me that they like being able to answer questions that I can't), I shall list all 7 of the ones that I didn't know.

1) Marina Bay is the name of the Grand Prix circuit in which country?
2) Which British footballer was the first to receive 100 Champions League caps?
3) David Evans is the real name of which Irish musician?
4) Challis, loden and cheviot are all types of which fabric?
5) Journal for Plague Lovers was a 2009 album by which band?
6) In the human body, what is toxemia?
7) Abasiophilia is the sexual attraction to what?

The answers:

1) Singapore
2) David Beckham
3) The Edge
4) Wool
5) The Manic Street Preachers
6) Blood poisoning
7) Wheelchairs

The (personal) excuses:
1) It's sport, ergo I had no idea. F1 Grand Prix tracks would make an excellent quiz guide though.
Quiz info: Singapore is where you'll also find the famous Raffles Hotel.
2) Ditto. Well done team.
Quiz info: Beckham is the first English player to win the national league in 4 countries - England, Spain, the U.S. and France.
3) My team went for Bon Scott. That's how badly we didn't know it, apparently.
Quiz info: The Edge was born in Barking (then in Essex) in 1961.
4) If I had thought about this just a little more, I might have summoned something up, as Cheviot is a type of sheep from the border between Scotland and England.
5) Not my bag. (I've been fobbing a lot of these off recently)
Quiz info: The Manic Street Preachers had the first new No 1. single of the 21st Century, displacing Westlife with 'The Masses Against the Classes'.
6) Our resident medical student should have known this, but it might be a case of it being too general a term. Actually if I had made some effort with Greek and Latin, this should have been blatantly obvious - 'Toxi' - poison and 'aemia' referring to a blood condition e.g Leukaemia
7) Kudos to any of you who got this. Apparently it is an umbrella term for fetishes including casts, leg braces and other such aids to the disabled (temporary or otherwise). I can only assume my team knew this from an especially bad taste episode of South Park or something of the kind.

So there you have it. This has taken much too long to do and I haven't been able to check everything today, so as usual if you think some information is suspect, let me know.

Cheers, and stay tuned for my next quiz outing in a couple of days.