A frequent comment on the results sheets when they are handed in is “Were these vetted” – sadly the questions this week were not. The General Knowledge were sent for vetting two weeks before the quiz but there was no response from the paired team. On the other hand the Specialist were received on the Friday before the quiz leaving no time to make thorough changes although the Lemmings did point out one inaccuracy that was corrected in the printout. But then it got 
worse!!! At 5.30 on Tuesday evening Mark discovered that only the Specialist questions had been printed and delivered which meant frantic printing and copying (fortunately with the key to the photocopier room) of the General Knowledge questions. Crisis was averted by the usual calm, orderliness of the Quiz League but it was a situation that should not have arisen.
Sunil asked the questions at the Plough (again with his brailler) which saw a very friendly game against third-placed Nags Head with a couple of queries that would have been avoided had there been any serious vetting: Earth being the fourth largest planet (is that starting from the smallest, or should it read terrestrial planet?) and as Churchill was Prime Minister twice the answer to his predecessor would have been ambiguous so a supplementary was used.
Bob covering the Harrington also had problems with the size of Earth in a very friendly game which saw the Royal Oak continue their winning ways against the Harrington B.
Tomo with assistance from Becky (who emerged as a very confident scorer and interpreter of vagueness) oversaw the Rams defeat the Harrington Academicals.
So with just one more game for each team to play there was no change at the top of the B League and it seems unlikely there will be any.
9 comments:
I wrote the GK questions this week. I spent a long time collating them, but no amount of repeatedly going over them is a substitute for someone with fresh eyeballs vetting them. That is the point of vetting. The vetting team spots things right in front of you that you've become blind to. There were a few questions I could immediately see should have been changed, but only when they were queried AFTER they were asked on the night. In a sense, the playing teams were vetting as we went!!!
There was a question about The Grand Tour in our original set, which was asked last week. I sent a substitute through. This was incorporated, so someone was clearly managing things at the other end, but despite that we got absolutely no direct vetting feedback at all.
Apart from the bizarre relocating of Luton to London and the obvious Earth/Neptune error we were quite happy with the questions. Don’t beat yourselves up!
Hi, I’m sending this comment from a secret location as the CRT Six are currently on the run from the Quiz police! Can I first of all apologise for a genuine mistake in not photocopying both sets of questions? One of our team was doing the printing for the league for the first time, and myself and Jim had not made it clear that both sets were required. Had Mark or Nick contacted us, we would happily have sorted out extra copies within the hour.
The assertion that there had been no vetting is simply not true. Jim had sent copies of the GK questions to all team members when received. They were looked by our team members, but the mistakes were not spotted. Presumably this was also the process with the WG setters, who also collectively failed to spot the errors. When vetting or being vetted, we have always worked in the assumption that “no news is good news”, hence the lack of an email to say we hadn’t found any errors.
I feel that the comments on this week’s blog are excessive, given the minor nature of any issues. Thanks to Alice for applying some more realistic perspective.
As far as Luton is concerned, I’ve filed a lawsuit against my Kings School regional geography teacher, and hope to pay our bail with the proceeds so that we can all be back quizzing by next Tuesday!
Sounds fair enough to me. In which case, I apologise for the harshness of my assertion, Having said that, we've never had no feedback at all, not even to say everything's fine. There's usually some comment or objection, and teams have on occasion been quite detailed in their criticism.
OK my comments were written in the heat of the moment and were perhaps a little intemperate; but I think it's worth a reminder that questions should be passed to the vetting team at least two weeks before the game to allow time for vetting and changes and printing.
You can leave your foxhole now Tony and you don't need a tin helmet any more.
Thanks for that, Jon and Nick. Point taken about replying. Will make sure we always send a reply after vetting in future!
Tony - I can happily confirm that the hunt is officially OFF as far as the CRT are concerned!!!
Thanks to Nick, all was sorted at the 11th hour and it will be all good experience for your team member doing it for the first time. I rang Nick first knowing he'd be going to the Waters anyway and I didn't need to mither further on the night when time was pressing!
I've done all the results and sent them to Haydn, so they'll be up on the website over the weekend no doubt.
I got the “Luton” question myself, which I did give as the answer because I thought it couldn’t be anything else after I'd heard the words "Kenilworth Road". It was only afterwards that I thought the definition of London had stretched a bit!
Can I also congratulate whoever wrote the John Cooper Clarke question in the GK? I love his work (even though he is a United fan) but it does mean I'll probably have to leave out a JCC question I was considering for the Cup Final!
For anyone unfamiliar with his work, this is my favourite poem of his, which so often reminds me of some people I've met over the years...
http://johncooperclarke.com/poems/twat
Clearly (having read the first line of the first comment again), I should be thanking Jon for the question above. Many thanks!
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