A Moral Victory, A Real Terms Defeat

It was a controversial Bar Wars this time around. A couple of mishaps led to our team being docked a colossal 13 points, placing our hopes of a win firmly in ruins. To make matters worse, had it not been for this, it would have been one of our largest runaway wins of all time. But that's how these things can pan out unfortunately. How did we lose 13 points, you ask? Why not read on and find out...

24/08/2014                                                                
Venue: First Bowl Hereford Arena                     Team: Me + 5 others
Place: Joint 5th - 57/82 (1st - 65 points!)            Money Round - Joint 1st - 9/15 (contested)

Yes, it was a pretty sorry night for the team. I think it's just one of those nights you have to chalk down to experience. The missing 13 points were for not handing in our Picture Round on time. Quite how this happened, I'm not sure, but it seems that one of our team was sitting on it (literally) for some time. So let that be a lesson to all you competitive quizzers out there. Anyway, let's get on with this. I'm not going to go over the all the pictures, just the 2 we got wrong. A * denotes the Wipeout round as always...

Questions

1&2) Identify these two familiar faces taking the Ice Bucket Challenge (one point for each).

3) In the nursery rhyme, what did Tom the Piper's son steal?

4) What does WOMAD stand for?

5) Which sports star blames a hacker for posting an indecent image on his Twitter account this week?

6) 'Dorado' is Spanish for which colour?*

7) Who starred as Jack Regan in the 2012 film version of The Sweeney?*

8) What is the second most traded commodity in the world?* (Clue: It isn't gold.)

9) How many hangovers does the average Briton have in a lifetime - 485 or 726?*

10) Cliff Richard refuses to use a mobile phone - true or false?

11) Identify this song and the artist for one point each - (You're allowed about 20 seconds, and close your eyes while listening or it doesn't count...)

Answers

1) Susanna Reid
2) Ben Shephard
3) A pig
4) World of Music, Arts and Dance
5) Ian Botham
6) Gold
7) Ray Winstone
8) Coffee
9) 726
10) False
11) Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby

The Excuses

1&2) In our defence, our photo was in black and white and I think a little more water was obscuring Ms Reid's face. Having no idea, our (redundant) answer was Ant and Dec...
In the Know: The Ice Bucket Challenge has been taking place recently to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease. In the US, where the challenge began, ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, after the celebrated baseball player who contracted it in 1939. Reid and Shephard took the challenge on Good Morning Britain, the ITV show that they present alongside Charlotte Hawkins and Sean Fletcher.

3) Despite singing the rhyme over and over in my head, the best I could remember was 'Stole a __ and away did run'. I don't think I could have remembered 'pig' anyway, it was never a household favourite.
In the Know: Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son was first published in 1795 and has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19621. After stealing the pig, the rhyme continues 'The pig was eat, And Tom was beat, And Tom went crying, Down the street.' Different times back then...

4) We were only one word out on this. We went for World of Music and Dance.
In the Know: WOMAD was founded in 1980 by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Brooman, among others, with the first festival taking place in Shepton Mallet, Somerset in 1982. Former Genesis frontman Gabriel was one of the original performers. Now an international festival, WOMAD in the UK has taken place at Charlton Park in Wiltshire since 2007.

5) We were thinking along the wrong lines (I thought it might have been Oscar Pistorius), but unusually, this was our only news round black hole. I'm not going to put a picture up of the offending image, but Botham has apparently experienced a sharp spike in the number of his followers, so perhaps there wasn't too much harm done.
In the Know: Born in Heswall (then in Cheshire) in 1955, Botham is regarded as one of the best all round players in English team history. In the County Championship, Botham played for Somerset (1974-86), Worcestershire (1987-91) and Durham (1992-93), as well as briefly playing for Queensland in Australia. Botham won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1981 and Pipe Smoker of the Year in 1988.


6) So began our Wipeout round. We would have been right, but extra caution was urged by one of the team, still bruised by our wipeout last week.
In the Know: The Legend of El Dorado or 'The Gold One' was originally held to be a South American tribal chief, but over time 'El Dorado' began to be attributed to a fabled city of gold, with some thinking of it as an empire. Many South American towns are consequently named after this mythical place.

7) Again, too much caution prompted us to cross out the correct answer.
In the Know: The film is based on the TV series which ran from 1975 - 1978, originally starring John Thaw as Regan and Dennis Waterman as George Carter. The name 'The Sweeney' is cockney rhyming slang for the 'Flying Squad' (Sweeney Todd).

8) We weren't going to get this one, but it doesn't surprise me in the least.
In the Know: Coffee appears to have first been cultivated in Yemen in the 15th century and originally had religious connotations. The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad IV actually banned it for a while. Venice became the home of the first coffee houses in Western Europe.

9) As usual, not worth a punt. This is worth a quick look. The Daily Mail somehow manages to equate this into 4 years worth of hangovers, by counting non alcohol related headaches...

10) At least there is no evidence to support this statement. I think I might leave this one here...



11) Goodness gracious me. If we were happy to get one wrong it was this one.
In the Know: Mr Blobby first appeared on Noel's House Party and got the 1993 Christmas UK No 1 single with this song. It has been voted the most annoying Christmas No 1 of all time. Even more amusingly, Jeremy Clarkson appears in the music video.


I hope you're up for this next batch of humdingers. It is my contention that we got 10 of these rather than 9, but chances are, we wouldn't have won the end game required to get our paws on the cash. If you don't get the required 13 then you have to do a variety of end games for the cash, and currently you have to shoot rubber bands at empty fizzy drinks cans in order to dislodge paperclips from the tops. We aren't crack shots, but even the crack shots find it pretty tough at the best of times, as the paperclips are pretty hard to dislodge. Could you have helped us over the winning line?

Final Fling Questions

1) Mageirocophobia is the fear of which household activity?

2) Bosworth cheese comes from which English county?

3) Elite, Score and Select are all types of which agency?

4) Used by pilots, what does ADF stand for?

5) Who held the 100m world record before Usain Bolt?

Tiebreak) What percentage of married women say that they wish that their husband would hold their hand more often?

Answers

1) Cooking
2) Staffordshire
3) Modelling Agencies
4) Automatic Direction Finder
5) Asafa Powell
TB) 75%

The Excuses

1) There's nothing like a tough phobia question to make me remember that I still haven't completed my phobia list yet. We went with cleaning, something which would probably be more applicable to me.
In the Know: Humans are first believed to have started cooking around 250,000 years ago after the discovery of fire. Fortunately for modern mageirocophobes, the microwave was first made available in 1946. Or I suppose, you could just eat chocolate forever more.  

2) I've just confirmed this with our old friend cheese.com. I fell into the obvious trap, and went for Leicestershire. One to log for the future I think.
In the Know: Bosworth cheese, also known as Bosworth Leaf or Bosworth Ash Log is made from goat's milk and is suitable for vegetarians.

3) Well, it was either one or the other, and we went the wrong way. Dating agencies seemed so obviously right at the time...
In the Know: Elite Model Management was founded in Paris in 1972,  and Select Model Management in London in 1977. I can't find much on Score Models, but I think they might be female only.

4) We didn't really have a chance on this. We got 'automatic' and didn't get any further.

5) We were broadly thinking along the right lines. We went with Tyson Gay.
In the Know: Powell was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1982 and held the world record for 100m from 2005 to 2008. Originally 9.77 seconds, he cut his own record down to 9.74, but it was broken by Bolt in 2008 with 9.69 seconds. Bolt still holds the world record, now a phenomenal 9.58 seconds, since 2009.

TB) As always, it was a wild stab in the dark, but the usual method of going low failed us this time. We would have had to have been bang on the money anyway, because the winning team went with 74%

So there we go again. Hope you enjoyed it, and if you could have helped us with that lot then we might need to enter discussions about recruiting you for the future. With any luck, we should have another update again tomorrow. When did such luck ever come your way before? Until next time then...