A Game of Two Halves

Have you missed me? Never fear, I have returned bearing gifts. An awful lot of gifts as it happens, because in the main round of the quiz we attended on Friday, we were absolutely terrible, but a final round blinder secured a much appreciated cash prize, so swings and roundabouts. This quiz was to celebrate the third birthday of Hereford Roller Girls and was hosted at the bowling alley, so the format should be familiar to regular readers. On we go...

22/08/2014
Venue: TGS Events Room                      Team: Me + 1 other
Score: 46/80 (10th)                                 Prize Round: Win! (£50)

Despite managing to post a record low ranking, we had a pretty good go of it. Unfortunately, we were substantially out of our depth. I have no doubt that your assistance would have been of great value, and I have a bumper array of questions for you to salivate over. I am keeping the additional quizzing fact files to a minimum this time, in the interest of space. As usual a * signifies the Wipeout round. Let's get cracking...

Questions

1 & 2) Identify these familiar faces...

3) In feet, how high is a basketball hoop from the ground?

4) What is the name of the supermarket in Coronation Street?

5) What are the westernmost and easternmost capital cities in the European Union? One point for each.

6) In which book of the Bible is Moses born?*

7) In 2008, what was Adele's debut single?*

8) In 1994, what was Oasis' debut single?*

9) In an interview on Women's Hour in 2005, when asked, what type of underwear did then Leader of the Opposition David Cameron say he wore - briefs or boxer shorts?*

You now have to identify these films from the quote.

10) 'The cold never bothered me anyway.'

11) 'When we die, our bodies become the grass and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected...'

12) 'Waiting for me to... commence a conversation, one can wait rather a long wait.'

13) 'I'm gonna give you to the count of 10, to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister off my property before I pump your guts full of lead!'

14) 'It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting - ideas - and - thinking...'

Answers

1) Zoe Salmon
2) Zoe Saldana
3) 10 feet
4) Freshco
5) Lisbon (Portugal) and Nicosia (Cyprus)
6) Exodus
7) Chasing Pavements (CONTROVERSIAL - see below)
8) Supersonic
9) Boxer shorts
10) Frozen (sung by Elsa)
11) The Lion King (Mufasa)
12) The King's Speech (Albert, Duke of York (future King George VI))
13) Home Alone (Gangster Johnny)
14) Beauty and the Beast (Gaston)

Post-Match Analysis

Not Zoe Salmon...

1) We actually managed a pretty creditable picture round, with these two exceptions. I'm sure that poor Zoe wouldn't be too happy about being mistaken for Amanda Bynes. (It was the pressure Zoe, honest!)
Quiz Snippet: Salmon was a presenter of long running children's TV show Blue Peter from 2004 to 2008. Hailing from Bangor, County Down, she had previously won Miss Northern Ireland in 1999.

2) I have recently seen Guardians of the Galaxy, but in my defence, she was painted green in that film. I think this Zoe might be a bit more accepting about being mistaken for Thandie Newton...
Quiz Snippet: Saldana was born in Passiac, New Jersey in 1978 and also co-starred in Avatar and the Pirates of the Caribbean and recent Star Trek series.

3) It's been a long time since I played basketball, but I used to love it. We ended up going for 8 feet.
Quiz Snippet: Basketball was invented in 1891 by Canadian Dr James Naismith at Springfield College, Massachusetts.

4) It looks like soaps are the new football for me. Kryptonite. Fresh Co happens to be a real life Canadian supermarket chain.
Quiz snippet: Dreamt up by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast in 1960. The eponymous street was supposedly named for the coronation of Edward VII.

5) I was irritated at getting both of these wrong. I would have drawn a map, but I didn't have enough space on my paper. But then again, my maps have been known to be more of a hindrance than a help.
Quiz Snippet: Lisbon is apparently the oldest current capital city in Western Europe, though it has never been officially confirmed as the capital of Portugal. It lies on the Tagus river and is served by Portela Airport. Nicosia is on the diving line between Cyprus and the largely unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It is on the river Pedieos.

6) Not being experts on the Bible, we decided not to put Exodus down, just in case his birth was snuck in at the end of Genesis.
Quiz Snippet: Judaism generally ascribes Moses lifespan from 1391 - 1271 BCE, making him about 120 when he died. Which, by the standard of some Biblical lives, practically makes Moses a member of the 27 Club .

7) Again, we didn't want to risk it just in case. I was 90% sure, but we needed to be 100% certain of as many points as possible at this stage in the contest. As it happens, both my instinct and the answer given to this question are incorrect, as Adele first charted with 'Hometown Glory' in 2007.
Quiz Snippet: Both singles are from the album 19, which was nominated for the Mercury Prize.


8) I could only think of the album name, Definitely Maybe, so didn't put anything.
Quiz Snippet: Supersonic reached #31 on the UK chart. Noel Gallagher claims that it is his favourite Oasis song.

9) I remembered this being on the news or something, all those years ago. It's probably for the best that I didn't remember the actual answer.
Quiz Snippet: When he became Prime Minister in 2010, at 43, Cameron was the youngest person to hold the office since Lord Liverpool in 1812. As far as I'm aware, nobody has done any research as to whether his wearing of boxer shorts denied the Conservatives an overall majority at the 2010 General Election...

10) Not seen it, though I had half a mind to put it down. We went for Titanic.
Quiz Snippet: The line is from the Oscar winning song 'Let It Go', performed in the film by Idina Menzel. Frozen also won the Oscar for Best Animated feature in 2013. It is loosely based on 'The Snow Queen' by Hans Christian Andersen.

11) I've only seen the Lion King once, which was probably about 10 times less than most other people in the room. The full quote is 'Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.' I'd like to think we would have got it from that, at least! We thought it might have been a Henry Fonda quote from On Golden Pond.
Quiz Snippet: The Lion King was released in 1994 and is the highest grossing hand drawn film ever. It stars Matthew Broderick as the adult Simba, James Earl Jones as Mufasa and Jeremy Irons as Scar. It won Oscars for Best Original Score (Hans Zimmer) and Best Original Song for Can You Feel the Love Tonight? by Elton John and Tim Rice. It was also nominated for 'Hakuna Matata' and 'Circle of Life'.

12) Amongst the Disney avalanche in this round, this is the only one that I'm a bit embarrassed about getting wrong. I should have known this instantly, my only excuse is that I haven't seen it for ages. I could even visualise Colin Firth saying it when the right answer was revealed. We might even have left this one blank.
Quiz Snippet: If you want some trivia on this film, I actually did a guide to it less than a month ago. (I'm so embarrassed.)

13) Yet another that I've never seen. I have a lot of catching up to do it seems. We went for Back To the Future Part II, thinking it might be the scene where Marty McFly is caught by Mr Strickland reading his newspaper in the alternate 1985.
Quiz Snippet: Home Alone was released in 1990 and stars Macaulay Culkin as 8 year old Kevin McCallister and Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern as Harry and Marv, the burglars. The film is set near Chicago. It has also spawned 4 sequels.

14) We were surprised that we couldn't really think of anything for this one. You would have thought that there were plenty of misogynistic characters in the history of film, but pinning it down proved too difficult for our Disney deprived brains.
Quiz Snippet: Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991 and is based on a fairy tale by Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. Disney had attempted to adapt the tale twice before, and decided to try again on the back of the success of The Little Mermaid (1989). The film became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and the first Disney film to be adapted into a musical.

How did you find those? If you're hungry for more, then get ready for our majestic prize round performance that saw us going home wealthier than we'd come in. Here are the furious 4 that slowed us down, plus the tiebreak for the absolute diehards among you.

Prize Round - Questions

1) In July 2000, which book became the fastest selling book of all time?

2) In Judaism, boys receive their Bar Mitzvah at 13, but at what ages do girls receive their Bat Mitzvah?

3) What was the name of Robbie William's first top 10 single?

4) Which country hosted the opening race of the 2014 Formula 1 season?

Tiebreak) In a survey of American men, what percentage said that they did not know how to turn on a dishwasher?

Answers

1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2) 12
3) Freedom
4) Australia
TB) 23%

Excuses

1) Maybe one that we should have got. I pressed for the Da Vinci Code, but was 3 years out. I had Harry Potter in mind as well, but if pushed I would have gone for the Prisoner of Azkaban on the dates, as I seemed to remember waiting a long time for the Goblet of Fire to hit the shops. Perhaps it just seemed like ages back in the good old days. The sequel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix took another 3 whole years to be released. I don't know how I coped...
Quiz Snippet: The fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire went on to sell over 66 million copies and counting. The first Potter film was yet to be released at this point, but the Goblet of Fire film was out in cinemas by 2005. The story centres on Harry's progress in the Triwizard Tournament, in which he is mysteriously entered as the fourth competitor.

2) We had very little idea on this. I had only heard of it because at one point in the sitcom Friends, Monica mentions that she has had one. Having nothing to go on, I think we put 15. 
Quiz Snippet (ouch): B'nai and B'not Mitzvahs are coming of age ceremonies for practising Jews. They are usually scheduled for the first Saturday (or Shabbat - the Jewish Holy day) after the child's appropriate birthday and traditionally the father gives thanks that he is no longer responsible for the child's sins. I'm assuming that most kids don't get up to too much sinning before their Mitzvahs, but I suppose you never know.

3) Knowing it was from 1997, we went for Angels. We weren't going to get this, so we diverted our attention elsewhere.
Quiz Snippet: Released shortly after his departure from Take That, Freedom is a cover of George Michael's Freedom '90. Reaching #2 on the UK chart, it fared quite a bit better that Michael's original peak (#28).

4) Sport. I'm not much cop. We had a stab in the dark at Bahrain.
Quiz Snippet: The race took place on 16th March and was won by German driver Nico Rosberg, after Australia's Daniel Ricciardo was excluded due to 'fuel irregularity'. It takes place in Melbourne and has been part of the Formula 1 World Championship since 1985.

TB) Luck of the draw clinched it for us and we couldn't be more chuffed. We averaged our answers of 37% and 39%, pipping the opposing guess of 43%. We went low(ish), because let's be honest, a quarter of American men not knowing this is still pretty high.


So there we go. Don't hesitate to comment and let me know if you could have saved us our half time blues, or delivered us an unambiguous money round win. As usual, I've spent much longer on writing this entry than intended. Until next time, which hopefully will be tomorrow...