My Apologies

Hi everyone, I just want to offer my apologies for having not updated this blog too often over the past few weeks. I actually have a very good story to tell on the quizzing front of late, but I have just not had enough time to update the blog without frazzling my brains. A host of deadlines have meant that I've not been able to focus on the average of 15 or so questions that I get wrong each week. Hopefully this will be melting away soon, so watch this space. Until then, happy quizzing!
 

Back At the Top

Welcome back everyone. I may get around to uploading some more recent past quizzes. I should, in theory, have had enough time to do it. But it seems a good idea to me to get this one from the Queen's Arms out in the open first, as our Duck & Scholar matches are almost always the same (i.e. some strong rounds, usually scuppered by Disney). I am gently falling back into my quizzing routine and may even devise an original quiz at some point as an apology for my two weeks of relative negligence. This week's Queen's quiz should be up in the next few days with any luck. We only won this one by a point, but we barely put a foot wrong so we're pretty happy. On we go...

Venue: The Queen's Arms                                                   Team: Me + the Teacher
Score: 65/80 (1st)                                                                 Prize: £20

Best Team Name

In your infinite wisdom, you decided that last week's Best Team Name Winner was 'We're Rubbish' which just squeaked it, but not by much. You can see the shortlist here, but it was hardly the best ever you could have chosen from. I think that this weeks one is a definite improvement. The candidates are as follows:

- Two Doctors and their Fab Fruits

- Michael Barrymore's Swimming Team

- We Know Stuff

- Why are there no aspirin in the jungle? Because the parrots ate 'em all

- Emma's Drunk On the Train

 

And now, on with the quiz... 

Questions

First, identify these well known faces...

1)                                                                        2)

3)

4) Which band had hits in the 1980s with 'Secret Lovers' and 'Always'?

Identify the artists from their songs. Click on the links and avert your eyes. As always, watch out for adverts. (Maybe you might want to squint.)

5) Song 1                 6) Song 2                   7) Song 3                 8) Song 4                9) Song 5         

10) What is the name of the reindeer in Frozen?

11) Which children's TV character has friends called Rebecca Rabbit, Suzy Sheep, Kylie Kangaroo and Pedro Pony?

Get both answers on these next two questions and you earn two points. Get just 1 or 0 and you lose 2 points. Don't commit to an answer and you get away unscathed.

12) What are the names of Oasis' first two UK No. 1 albums?

13) Leicester was one of the teams to be promoted to the Premier League at the end of the last football season. Which were the other two?

Tiebreak) In miles, what is the length of the M69, which connects Leicester and Coventry (answer to one decimal place)?

Answers

1) Sir John Mills
2) Paul Collingwood
3) Sophie, Countess of Wessex
4) Atlantic Starr
5) Gene Pitney (24 Hours Form Tulsa)
6) The Ramones (Baby, I Love You)
7) Del Amitri (Always the Last To Know)
8) Paloma Faith (Trouble With My Baby)
9) Eliza Doolittle (Let It Rain)
10) Sven
11) Peppa Pig
12) Definitely Maybe and What's the Story (Morning Glory)?
13) Burnley and Queens Park Rangers
TB) 15.7 miles

Post Match Analysis

1) No chance here. Whether we should have known about the great man is another question, but neither of us are massive film buffs. It's also relatively uncommon to see someone who has deceased in a picture round nowadays. 'That guy who's in that film' was too long to fit into the box and I can't remember what our guess was.
Fact File: Lewis Ernest Watts Mills was born in North Elmham, Norfolk in 1908. His promising career in acting was largely deferred for the beginning of the Second World War, in which he became a Second Lieutenant until being discharged in 1942. Mills went on to appear in over 120 films over his career, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Michael in the 1970 film Ryan's Daughter. He was knighted in 1976 and died in Denham, Buckinghamshire in 2005. He is the brother of Muffin the Mule's companion Annette Mills and father of the actresses Juliet and Hayley Mills.

2) If you thought we should be better with films, we are positively cricket-lite. I just haven't got the time to get into it, and so we're pretty much consigned to umming and aahing whenever a cricket question rears its head. Cricket questions are actually relatively few compared to many subjects, possibly being football dominates sport so much in general. I think we went with Graeme Swann.
Fact File: Paul David Collingwood was born in Shotley Bridge, County Durham in 1976 and made his first class debut in 1996. He is regarded as an all rounder and currently captains Durham County Cricket Club. He also captained England to their first ever ICC trophy in 2010. He has played for IPL sides Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals and the Australian Perth Scorchers. He retired from the England team in 2011.

3) I was happy to have correctly identified a member of the Royal family, but I really should have known that it was Prince Edward's wife. The Teacher, a noted republican, wasn't going to be of much help on this one. Our answer was Zara Phillips.
Fact File: Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones was born in Oxford in 1965. Embarking on a career in public relations, she went on to open her own firm (RJH Public Relations) with Murray Harkin in 1996. She met Prince Edward at a charity fundraiser and they married at Windsor Castle in 1999. Their children, James, Viscount Severn and Lady Louise Windsor are currently 9th and 10th in the line of succession to the throne, but will be relegated further after the birth of Prince William's second child.

4) This was a connections round (the connection was oceans), so we were 90% sure that the answer here would feature the word 'Atlantic'. However, rack our brains as we might, we couldn't conjure up the name of this band.
Fact File: Atlantic Starr were formed in White Plains, New York in 1976. Hosting a large and constantly changing line up, their 1985 song 'Secret Lovers' and their 1987 song 'Always' were their only Top 40 hits in the UK, reaching #10 and #3 respectively, with Always topping the Billboard Hot 100 back in the US.   

5) I should have got this. 24 Hours From Tulsa is probably Pitney's best known song and it is from a musical era that I know fairly well. He also has a fairly distinctive voice, so there's not much in the way of excuses here.
Fact File: Gene Francis Alan Pitney was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1946. He is best remembered for his singing career, though he is the author of several notable hits for other artists. Winning a Golden Globe Award for the song 'Town Without Pity' in 1961, Pitney achieved his UK breakthrough with 24 Hours from Tulsa in 1963, reaching No. 5. He remained popular for much of the 1960s, and he was brought back to attention in 1989 when he duetted on his 1967 hit 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart' with Marc Almond, topping the chart. He died of a heart attack in Cardiff in 2006, whilst embarking on a UK tour.

6) Again we should have got this one. The Teacher recognised the song but nothing was coming.
Fact File: The Ramones were formed in 1974 in Queens, New York City. They were extremely influential in the development of punk rock and their best known songs are arguably 'Blitzkrieg Bop' and 'Sheena Is a Punk Rocker'. None of the 8 members of the band was called Ramone, though they all adopted the surname for their time in the band. The best known Ramones are the original lineup, Dee Dee, Johnny, Joey and Tommy. Only Johnny and Joey remained with the band until it disbanded in 1996. 'Baby, I Love You' is a cover of the 1963 single by the Ronettes, and it is the Ramones' highest charting single in the UK, reaching No. 8 in 1980.

7) On a slightly happier note for us, we didn't have a hope in hell of remembering Del Amitri.
Fact File: Del Amitri were formed in Glasgow in 1983. The only consistent members since formation have been vocalist and bassist Justin Currie and lead guitarist Iain Harvie. 'Always the Last To Know' reached No. 13 on the UK chart in 1992. The group disbanded in 2002, but reformed in 2013.

8) If we'd have had our brains in a higher gear we'd have put her down. I think Paloma is destined to become a staple of quizzing life. Hadn't heard this song though, it looks like a very recent release.
Fact File: Paloma Faith Blomfield was born in Hackney in 1981. Notable for her somewhat 'ditsy' personality, Faith has been prominent since the release of her debut album 'Do You Want the Truth Or Something Beautiful?' in 2009. Her recent hit 'Only Love Can Hurt Like This' is her highest charting single to date (No. 6), but her appearances in the 'God Only Knows' advert for the BBC music website and on the new Band Aid 30 single suggest that she will probably top the chart at some point in the near future. Faith has also recorded INXS' 'Never Tear Us Apart' for the 2012 John Lewis Christmas advert and appeared onscreen, including in Heath Ledger's last film 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' in 2009.   

9) A more modern artist here, but she is reasonably distinctive so we should have thought of her. Our desperation was such by this point that I think we just put down any old artist and hoped for the best.
Fact File: Eliza Sophie Caird was born in Westminster in 1988 and is the daughter of Frances Ruffelle, who represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994. Doolittle took the name from the character from My Fair Lady, who she had been nicknamed after. She is probably best known for the 2010 song 'Pack Up' which reached No. 5. 'Let It Rain' reached No. 55 in 2013 and Doolittle has since appeared on England's Official Football World Cup song, a cover of Take That's 'Greatest Day'.

10) The Teacher had a moment of realisation when the answer was read out, not because he had seen the film but because one of his students had written a story about Sven a few months ago. As you might expect, I was pretty useless with this question, but I have heard rave reviews of Frozen and it might become one of those quizzer's must sees...
Fact File: Sven is the companion of the 'iceman' Kristoff, who helps Princess Anna of Arendelle to find her missing sister, Queen Elsa. Sven's movements were based on a real reindeer, Sage, in an attempt to add greater realism to the film. Frozen became the highest grossing film of 2013 worldwide, is the highest grossing animated film ever and won Oscars for Best Original Song and Best Animated Feature. 

11) Again, modern children's media didn't play to our strengths (it might be worrying if it did) and having only a vague idea we went for Dora the Explorer.
Fact File: Peppa Pig was brought to our screens by Astley Baker Davies and E1Kids. With four series and an audience in over 180 countries and territories, the programme has been shown since 2004. Peppa has a brother called George, cousins Chloe and Baby Alexander, and many other friends including Candy Cat, Danny Dog, Zoe Zebra, Freddy Fox and Gabriella Goat.

12) It was a good job that we didn't go for this one as although we mentioned the two correct answers, we may have substituted 'What's the Story?' with a made up album.
Fact File: All 7 of Oasis' studio albums have reached No 1 in the UK with their last, Dig Out Your Soul, doing so in 2008. Definitely Maybe was released in 1994 and became the fastest selling album in the UK at the time. (What's the Story) Morning Glory? achieved the same feat and is currently the 5th best selling album in the UK and has sold over 22 million copies worldwide, and it propelled Oasis to the height of their fame. With the recent demise of Liam Gallagher's band Beady Eye, it has been speculated that Oasis may reform.

13) The teacher was right on this, but after last week we erred on the side of caution. We probably need to get these football facts etched into our brains somehow as they are pretty frequently recurring.
Fact File: Leicester won the Championship outright in 2014. Burnley, managed by Sean Dyche, was also promoted after finishing second. QPR, led by Harry Redknapp, finished 4th in the table and won the consequent play off against Derby County, Wigan Athletic and Brighton and Hove Albion to secure their place in the Premier League.


TB) Lucky we didn't need this. We changed from our original answer of 16 to 18.5, which might have been fatal, so every question was critical in this quiz. To win outright was a massive relief as well as a great moment in its own right.
Fact File: The M69 first opened in 1977 between Leicester and Coventry. Football matches between Leicester City and Coventry City are known as 'the M69 Derby'. It equates to 25.3 kilometres.

There we go, this one took too long to do, hopefully the next write up won't have to take place in the same avalanche of general business. Until next time, and let me know how you did with those!

Pipped at the Post

Hi everyone, I'm back from my agonisingly long hiatus and raring to go. It's looking pretty unlikely that I will type up any of the quizzes that I attended over the past week, though I have had to go to fewer than usual. But hopefully we can pick things up again relatively seamlessly with the Teacher's and my outing on Thursday at the Queen's Arms. I have to say that I take full responsibility for our incredibly narrow loss. In the final round of this quiz, you can lose points if you get the answer wrong. The teacher was unsure of the final question, and I insisted that we ought to take the risk. The law of fate dictated that this was a terrible decision and I took us down from an outright win to a tiebreak, which we lost by a hair's breadth. That's the way they fall I suppose...

Venue: The Queen's Arms                                                Team: Me + The Teacher
Score: 62/80 - Joint 1st (loss on tiebreak)                        Won: £10

Obviously we were in deep despair, but we met the winners afterwards and they seemed pretty decent, so we're looking forward to the re-match. Let's get on with it then.

Best Team Name

'Overly Specific Knowledge' is the winner of the last Best Team Name Competition. If you're bothered about this sort of thing, you can see the shortlist here. Dreadful verdict? The good news is you can make all the difference by sending me your votes for this week's competition. Here are the candidates:

- Gurge

- You Stay Classy

- We're Rubbish

- Anything

- Thrown By a Brazillian

You can cast your vote by commenting at the bottom of the page or tweeting me at @MPRTaylor, so get on it. I don't wish to beat about the bush any further, so here are this weeks much anticipated missed opportunities. Let me know how well you did with these...

Questions

Identify these well known faces -

1)                                                                                                       2)
                                                                     

  












3) Who topped the Forbes List of highest earning TV celebrities this week?

4) Lee Clark recently became the manager of which Championship football club?

5) Which 1960s U.S. soap opera notably launched the careers of Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow?

Identify these artists from these clips of their songs. Click on the links below to be taken to a YouTube video and close your eyes, but as always, watch out for adverts muscling their way in.

6) Song 1               7) Song 2               8) Song 3             9) Song 4           10) Song 5

11) Which Scottish football team play at Palmerston Park?

12) Which is the 'only' street in Monopoly to cost £180? (CONTROVERSIAL)

You can only get the points for the next two questions if you get BOTH answers correct. Get them wrong and you lose two points (which we did on Q14).

13) What are the two core ingredients of a Rusty Nail?

14) Before Brendan Rogers, who were the last two managers of Liverpool F.C.?

Tiebreak) Former Birmingham City manager Lee Clark managed to win how many games during his career at the club?

Answers
 

1) Piers Linney
2) Aaron Lennon
3) Simon Cowell
4) Blackpool F.C.
5) Peyton Place
6) The Trammps (Hold Back the Night)
7) Electric Light Orchestra (All Over the World)
8) Nik Kershaw (I Won't Let the Sun Go Down On Me)
9) Tom Odell (Another Love)
10) Take That (These Days)
11) Queen of the South
12) Marlborough Street (see below)
13) Drambuie and Scotch Whisky
14) Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish
TB) 33

Post Match Analysis

1) We weren't going to get Piers unfortunately as neither of us watches Dragon's Den any more than sporadically. We actually had a significant number of guesses go our way on the picture round this time, so there was no reason to beat ourselves up over this one. Our guess was Jermaine Jackson. Sorry Piers...
Fact File: Jonathan Piers Daniel Linney was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1971. He is the co-CEO (with Simon Newton) of Outsourcery, a communications company that specialises in providing services for the 'Cloud'. He has found his greatest fame as one of the Dragons on BBC2's Dragon's Den, which he joined in 2013 along with Kelly Hoppen. He also made an appearance on Channel 4's the Secret Millionaire in 2011. In 2013, The Power List recognised him as one of Britain's most influential black people.

2) Arguably both I and the Teacher should have got this one as the Teacher is big into football and I nominally support Spurs as a way to try and get into sport. That clearly worked out well in this case...
Fact File: Aaron Justin Lennon was born in 1987 in Leeds. He left home club Leeds United in 2005 to play for Tottenham Hotspur where he usually plays on the right wing. Highly regarded as a player, Lennon has played for the England team 21 times as of early November 2014.

3) This was probably guessable but I had seen a list of highest earning female musicians earlier in the week which Beyoncé Knowles topped, and not knowing, she ended up as our answer. Cowell earned a reported $95 million this year, though US radio 'shock-jock' Howard Stern should also have been accepted as an answer.
Fact File: Simon Phillip Cowell was born in Lambeth in 1959. He is best known for his roles as the 'nasty' judge on Pop Idol, the X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and their American equivalents. He also owns the TV and music production company Syco, which is responsible for the career of the group Il Divo as well as many of the X Factor winners. Cowell's autobiography is called 'I Don't Mean to be Rude, but...' after his infamous catchphrase. His partner Lauren Silverman gave birth to his only child, Eric Cowell earlier this year.

4) Another football slip up. Given that our team name was 'The Seasiders' this is clearly one of life's little ironic digs at us. It's all the worse as we only lost by one point after all.
Fact File: Blackpool F.C. was founded in 1887 and currently plays in the Football League Championship. As well as the 'Seasiders', Blackpool's other nicknames include 'the Pool' and 'the Tangerines' after the colour of their home kit. The club play at Bloomfield Road and contest the 'West Lancashire Derby' against Preston North End. The club's most famous player is Sir Stanley Matthews, who played from 1947 - 1961.

5) When you cross into the territory of American soaps you're not really giving us a chance. Knowing that the answer would probably contain the word 'place', we cast our minds around and ended up with Melrose Place.
Fact File: Peyton Place was an ABC show which ran from 1964 - 1969. It was based on a 1956 novel by Grace Metalious and was turned into a soap opera in order to recreate the success of Coronation Street in the UK. The show began to lose viewers after most of the original cast had left, especially Mia Farrow's character Allison MacKenzie. The book was set during World War II, but the soap was reimagined in a contemporary setting.

6) I knew this song and I like it, but I wouldn't have remembered it was performed by the Trammps. It sounded very much to me like it was recorded by the Drifters.
Fact File: The Trammps were formed in Philadelphia in 1972. They first had a hit with 'Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart' and reached #5 with Hold Back the Night in 1975. They are probably best known for their iconic smash 'Disco Inferno' which reached #16 in 1977.

7) Another one that I feel I ought to have recognised, but for the life of me I couldn't place it.
Fact File: The Electric Light Orchestra was born out of the ashes of 1960s band 'The Move', the brainchild of Roy Wood and bandmate Jeff Lynne, and The ELO were originally active from 1970 to 1983. Wood left the band for his solo career before their second album was recorded, and the band became chiefly managed by Lynne, who would go onto have greater success than Wood after the mid 1970s. They achieved a No 1 single with 'Xanadu' in 1980, which guest starred Olivia Newton-John. 'All Over the World' was the follow up hit, which was also featured in the film 'Xanadu' and reached #11 the same year.

8) I was never going to get this, but I'm happy as I've wanted to know who did this song for a long time. Whenever I searched for it previously, I had only been able to find the song of a similar name by Elton John or his duet with George Michael. So something good came out of this anyway.
Fact File: Nicholas David Kershaw was born in Bristol in 1958 and grew up in Ipswich. Most prominent in the mid 1980s, he has also had a prolific career in writing songs for others, including 'The One and Only' made famous by Chesney Hawkes. Elton John has credited Kershaw as being 'one of the best songwriters of a generation'. 'I Won't Let the Sun Go Down On Me' was Kershaw's first single in 1983. It didn't chart in the UK initially but reached #2 on rerelease after it found success across Europe.

Tom Odell

Me

9) I doubt either me or the Teacher would have got this one but Odell is quite trendy at the moment so we should have been on top of this. I have been told that I look like Tom Odell, so if I can find a picture then I'll let you be the judge of that.
Fact File: Thomas Peter Odell was born in Chichester in 1990. After having been discovered by Lily Allen, Odell was shortlisted for the BBC Sound of 2013 Poll, though he lost to Haim. He currently sings a cover of John Lennon's 'Real Love' on the 2014 John Lewis Christmas advert, so he almost undoubtedly has a huge hit on his hands. 'Another Love' was Odell's first hit in 2012 and it reached No 10 in the UK.

10) We should have guessed this. I even thought of Take That but didn't mention them to the Teacher. I get the sneaking suspicion that I might have to start listening to Take That's Greatest Hits...
Fact File: Take That were formed in Manchester in 1990, and were designed to be the UK's answer to US boyband New Kids On the Block. The original line up featured Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Howard Donald. Managing 8 UK No1 singles from 1993 - 1996, the group split up shortly after William's departure. However, a hugely successful comeback in 2006 re-established the band as a tour de force with another 2 No. 1 singles, though as of 2014 Williams and Orange are no longer members of the group. 'These Days' is due to be released later this month.

11) This is the Teacher's ground, I could barely even suggest an answer. Scottish football is something that I may have to look into as well (oh joy).
Fact File: Queen of the South F.C. was founded in 1919 in Dumfries. They currently play in the Scottish Championship and are managed by .Their nickname is the Doonhammers and some fans claim that the club is mentioned in the Bible due to this quote - 'The Queen of the South shall rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them' (Luke 11:31)

12) This is something that is contestable, but we wouldn't necessarily have benefitted from a challenge. To be fair, this is a rare slip up for the Queen's Arms quiz, and at least we were dealing with someone who enjoys setting quizzes, rather than some I have attended where the quizmaster seemed to have no idea who Napoleon Bonaparte was. We went with Vine Street.
Fact File: On a standard UK Monopoly board the Orange Squares are Bow Street, Marlborough Street and Vine Street. Bow Street and Marlborough Street are worth £180, with Vine Street costing £200. Therefore, Marlborough Street is not the 'only' street to cost £180 as the question states. However, Vine Street doesn't cost £180 so realistically we could have only contested with 'Bow Street'.

13) I was debating whether to go for this, but it was just as well that I didn't as I had confused it with a 'screwdriver' which consists of vodka and orange juice.
Fact File: The standard method of making the cocktail is with 9 parts Scotch Whisky and 5 parts Drambuie, served on the rocks in an old fashioned glass, often with a lemon twist. The drink was a favourite of the Rat Pack, and was first given its official name in 1963, though it had been in existence for decades.

14) Here we go. We knew at the halfway stage that it was very close between us and another team, so I urged the Teacher that we should risk this question for the glory. The rest of course, is history, so I hold my hands up, but we still won a tenner so that'll pay for our pizzas next week at least. We missed out Roy Hodgson in favour of Rafael Benitez.
Fact File: Roy Hodgson (born in Croydon in 1947) succeeded Benitez as Liverpool Manager in July 2010, but was sacked six months later and replaced with Kenny Mathieson Dalglish (born in Glasgow in 1951). After a disappointing Premier League performance that year (8th), Dalglish was replaced with current manager Brendan Rogers. Hodgson moved on to West Bromwich Albion and now manages the English national side (a good career move to get sacked maybe?) and Dalglish no longer manages but still serves Liverpool as a non-executive director. He had previously managed the club from 1985 - 1991 winning the First Division 3 times, much of this stint whilst still a player.

TB) Stone me but there were a lot of football questions this week. Having put our chances of winning into jeopardy we managed to lose the tiebreak by a miniscule two games. We said 25 and they said 39. Once I'd finished hanging my head in shame, we congratulated the winners and we're looking forward to the rematch this week.
Fact File: Lee Robert Clark was born in 1972 in Wallsend and played as a midfielder for Newcastle United, Sunderland and Fulham between 1990 and 2006. Unfortunately for Clark, who became manager of Birmingham City in 2012, his win ratio of 33 games out of 116 or approximately 28.5% left the club with fears of relegation from the Championship to League 1. He was replaced by Gary Rowett.

That's it for this week folks, hope you've enjoyed it. I've been revising for the music round next week by listening to some of Madonna's greatest hits, so will let you know if I had a premonition or just wasted over an hour of my life. Let me know how you did with these by either commenting or tweeting me at @MPRTaylor and get in touch if you could have helped us win. Until next time...