The above was one of the questions, perhaps with some prescience, 
Even the question-master was affected, as he turned up some 20 minutes late. It was obviously his first experience of asking and he was certainly put through a baptism of fire competing with the noise from the ladies’ darts game
The questions had been set by the Lemmings’ sister team the Rams but the scores on both teams were quite low compared to past games and the Specialist rounds finished with the visitors ahead by six points with 43 to the Lemmings’ 37. The General Knowledge rounds 
However the main topic of conversation was the Nine Banded Armadillo trophy which last season failed to attract a winner but has already collected some nominations, GK20 and GK74 from last week and Nick has already been asked to enter from this week Sport Q3 and two requests for GK Q51 that possibly outdoes the original 9-banded armadillo!! And as for the name of the dog in Coronation St!!! No doubt more nominations will follow.
Individual scores were Bob 9/18, Wendy 6/3, Nick 6/6, Tomo 3/15 conferred points 7/17 and pass-overs 6/7. The Robin Hood picked up 9/11 pass-overs. Final score a victory by 30 points to the Robin Hood with 133 to 103, and no we weren’t robbed.
The evening ended with Brian’s excellent selection of sandwiches – thank you Brian, best wishes to the question master for future QM duties and well done the Robin Hood. In fact it was a night best forgotten.
2 comments:
We were encouraged to pass comment on Tuesday’s questions by our opponents, who may or may not have connection with this blog and given that, as the two top scorers in the league on the opening day of the season, we mustered a collective total of about 235 last night, the temptation to whinge about difficulty was strong.
However, coming off my first experience as a question vetter and quizmaster last week, the passage of time has inspired some cool reflection.
So, in defence of the Rams: 1) I was initially appreciative of the ability to note that music did not finish in about 1973 (“real music” is another matter), but on second thoughts – as a quiz league baby (eg: U-40 age bracket), having to be bailed out on Lauryn Hill/Wyclef Jean by another member left me pining for more The Small Faces type questions that I have every excuse for not knowing. 2) The specialist rounds – both teams seemed to be drawing blanks repeatedly (one might even suggest that it was “Cucumber Time” for the scoresheet), but looking back through the questions we should take some blame for impetuousness and doziness. 3) The quiz did seem balanced (eg: no-one could answer the specialists), although some of us seemed to go on long “hot and cold streaks” in the GK. On this I have every sympathy, having tried to balance the quiz last week by averaging out difficulty scores (provided by a panel of more than myself), topic exposure and then randomly sorting questions for each participant, I was squirming as one team picked up a glut of “easies” in rounds 3-7, which was then almost reversed in 8-12.
So, to the armadillo question. The Lemmings certainly had some ideas of their own, but I would like to exonerate two questions – both fauna related. My gut feel is that a real “armadillo” should be both obscure to all but a specialists and uninteresting, so pets in Corrie fail on the “no-one knows” aspect and the goldfish-abuse in Richard III was too funny and intriguing to merit nomination. Indeed, I was sufficiently inspired to go away and find out that goldfish appeared to have been ground up in gravel and smeared against the side of a tank during the execution by immersion of Clarence – clearly the director couldn’t be bothered with purchasing Malmsey wine so improvised… and apparently no real harm was caused, to the fish, just the score of he who fielded the question.
This does, however, leave a couple of solid candidates behind. Passing over the boundary between homophones and homonyms (and thanks to the sensible quizmaster and fair-minded opponents for letting me take a rare 3 points from that), the Norman Brookes trophy did pass us all by – we could ream off a good few Aussie tennis players before coming to him…and Bob Langstaff had no recollection of watching him live. However, I would like to settle on a special mention for a whole pack of NBAs (sadly research into the collective noun for said animal is inconclusive, bringing up “arrangement”, “fez”, “hoover” and “roadkill” as possibilities – the latter a clear modern witticism) relating to motorways, major roads and the waters that pass underneath their bridges. As picture rounds go, this was the shift from the sublime (the very gentle sitcom round of two weeks ago) to the sheer bloody difficult (I admired the view behind Loch Alsh, but it could have been almost anything) and at least two subsequent questions on Motorways inspired some collective groaning.
So, on reflection, a tough but fair set of questions – I can’t imagine the general scores will be high but there was some self-inflicted damage from both sides at the WGT and any pain was eased by the gently numbing effects of hoppy blonde ale and good-spirited opponents. Prime Ministers and Scotland were no source of complaint, but one suspects that even trainspotters may consider bridges and the Delamere services less than thrilling.
The Goldfish question was answered correctly by Rob of the Academicals - and the comment from the Knot was that that the goldfish had forgotten all about it
Cheers
Dave P
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