Reflections Two Weeks After the Northampton GP
I finished 4th at the Northampton GP (so brilliantly set by Nic Paul – eh, nudge nudge, you know what they say about who sets them) out of 60-odd competitors. Now normally, I would be ecstatic with a top five finish, but instead I went into extreme self-flagellation mode. Why?
Because I got three obvious questions hopelessly wrong. I put Merry Wives of Windsor instead of Falstaff, Niobe instead of Niobium and put Alan Bean as well as Eugene Cernan in a question I thought asked for two astronauts (so I remembered that Hefner single, Alan Bean, and foolishly put him down).
These three answers would have put me into second, albeit still flailing in Kevin’s godly slipstream. How I now regret all that chain-smoking while the time ran down. I COULD HAVE BEEN READING THROUGH THE QUESTIONS. But the funny thing is that I never do. I’m always losing vital points through sheer incompetence. I should always check the questions, instead of just scanning the nouns and one of the clauses (to get a feel for the answer). It’s natural conditioning produced by years of speeding through millions of words for the most important information. Only words with capital letters stick out. Everything else appears to be chaff.
So my laziness cost me dear. I’m generally getting too lazy with my reading anyway. I immediately put xenon in a space where I would have put radon had I actually thought about it hard enough. But once a space is filled I often think that the work is done. It no longer needs to be attended to. Yet this disagrees with the other hemisphere of my brain which knows that it is a working answer and is open to debate. It appears that I have mixed feelings on the finality of things.
But having said that, recalling everything in tranquillity and looking back over my answers, it is plain to see that despite these incompetent errors, I am making some progress and that I really should be content with my scores. I did rather well. I also forget that everyone else makes major boo-boos and that a world without error is an impossibility. Many others could have made the same stupid, elementary mistakes and got themselves into second (let’s face it, Kevin is almost unbeatable at the moment over 150/180 questions).
Let's look further on the bright side. And yes, I did win the Lifestyle genre on a tie-break (making that three separate genre wins in three different GPs) over Kevin. I now have a wonderful DVD about neo-Nazis directed by a guy who likes dressing up as Osama Bin Laden adorning my collection (in the corner of my room by the piles of old newspapers I may one day go through with quiz-eyes). You heard what I said: PUT YOUR MOUTH ON THE KERB.
The only performance I was satisfied with on the day was in the buzzer quiz: scoring 60 or 70 in the National Quiz Super League for the South East against the North West (who we await in a state of terror since as someone put it so beautifully, they are a "remorseless machine"). Ivan the Terrible, Aqua Regia, Matrix, Paul Robeson, Lord Kitchener and Charlize Theron; got ‘em all and even apologised before giving some of the answers. I have a terrible confidence problem in buzzer quizzes. If I ‘neg’ or give a wrong answer early in the game, I shut up and immediately clamp myself limpet-like to the wall, even if I know the answer (think of it like Alex’s conditioning in Clockwork Orange). Unfortunately this has happened on two prominent occasions: the team buzzer quiz final at the Swindon GP last year (in which we got our sorry asses whipped by a team containing Barbara Thompson and Chris Jones) and the Oxford quiz final in April 2004 when the dual axis of Mills and Pearson did for us with an exemplary display of buzzmanship (I negged early and even when Weber came up, I clammed up). I have this odd notion, of which you will find I have many, all teeming in the places where my neuroses thrive, that losing points for your team is the same cutting chunks off them. Nasty, painful ones. Moby even said to me recently "you seem to go missing during buzzer quizzes" – so that’s my explanation. However, if my first buzz is correct, then my confidence soars and you can expect a good game from me (as in the last two NQSL matches). Hopefully, it bodes well for the future.
Finally, never mind that the Milhous All-Stars had a whole extra body (and with Mark and CJ on their team, what a body that was) to the Broken Hearts’ quartet when they beat us by one point in the team competition. I acted the part of a wronged diva on the day and used the phrase "severely narked" for my personal post-defeat koan, yet on reflection we lost fair and square. Us young ‘uns should have ponied up both Ms Dynamite and Badly Drawn Boy when doing the Mercury Music Prize sequence– only our fickle minds obsessed with fashion when fluttering away to the land of the fairies (man, I own all those albums; how inept, how completely jejune). All that bitterness has vaporised leaving a calm residue; a patina of benevolence on the face of newly formed history. What could I have been so annoyed about? Silly me.
Time does heal the psychic wounds. Or, I think on the other hand, we will have our revenge. Oh yes. REVENGE. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (repeat maniacal laughter to fade).
Afterword
I came back to my flat on the Saturday night and explained to my flatmate, who is an ITN producer, why I looked so ill and tired and that I had been doing a quiz in the once-proud shoe capital of England. Once I explained that you can’t spectate with the sort of quizzes we do, she said: "You do written exams. Are you mad?"
"Yes, we do. We travel to places all over the country and answer hundreds questions and we are brave, knowledgeable fellows and we love it!" is what I could have said in reply. "Come to think of it, and I often do in moments of clarity, that we pay to do the kind of exams that the vast majority of people would have run away from throughout their lives. We are all a little bit crazy, but then we wouldn’t do it if we were normal people and if it wasn't a lot of fun," is what I could have also said. Instead I said: "Gah. Yep, mad. Mad as a lorry. Mweargghh. So tired. Beddy-byes."
Because I got three obvious questions hopelessly wrong. I put Merry Wives of Windsor instead of Falstaff, Niobe instead of Niobium and put Alan Bean as well as Eugene Cernan in a question I thought asked for two astronauts (so I remembered that Hefner single, Alan Bean, and foolishly put him down).
These three answers would have put me into second, albeit still flailing in Kevin’s godly slipstream. How I now regret all that chain-smoking while the time ran down. I COULD HAVE BEEN READING THROUGH THE QUESTIONS. But the funny thing is that I never do. I’m always losing vital points through sheer incompetence. I should always check the questions, instead of just scanning the nouns and one of the clauses (to get a feel for the answer). It’s natural conditioning produced by years of speeding through millions of words for the most important information. Only words with capital letters stick out. Everything else appears to be chaff.
So my laziness cost me dear. I’m generally getting too lazy with my reading anyway. I immediately put xenon in a space where I would have put radon had I actually thought about it hard enough. But once a space is filled I often think that the work is done. It no longer needs to be attended to. Yet this disagrees with the other hemisphere of my brain which knows that it is a working answer and is open to debate. It appears that I have mixed feelings on the finality of things.
But having said that, recalling everything in tranquillity and looking back over my answers, it is plain to see that despite these incompetent errors, I am making some progress and that I really should be content with my scores. I did rather well. I also forget that everyone else makes major boo-boos and that a world without error is an impossibility. Many others could have made the same stupid, elementary mistakes and got themselves into second (let’s face it, Kevin is almost unbeatable at the moment over 150/180 questions).
Let's look further on the bright side. And yes, I did win the Lifestyle genre on a tie-break (making that three separate genre wins in three different GPs) over Kevin. I now have a wonderful DVD about neo-Nazis directed by a guy who likes dressing up as Osama Bin Laden adorning my collection (in the corner of my room by the piles of old newspapers I may one day go through with quiz-eyes). You heard what I said: PUT YOUR MOUTH ON THE KERB.
The only performance I was satisfied with on the day was in the buzzer quiz: scoring 60 or 70 in the National Quiz Super League for the South East against the North West (who we await in a state of terror since as someone put it so beautifully, they are a "remorseless machine"). Ivan the Terrible, Aqua Regia, Matrix, Paul Robeson, Lord Kitchener and Charlize Theron; got ‘em all and even apologised before giving some of the answers. I have a terrible confidence problem in buzzer quizzes. If I ‘neg’ or give a wrong answer early in the game, I shut up and immediately clamp myself limpet-like to the wall, even if I know the answer (think of it like Alex’s conditioning in Clockwork Orange). Unfortunately this has happened on two prominent occasions: the team buzzer quiz final at the Swindon GP last year (in which we got our sorry asses whipped by a team containing Barbara Thompson and Chris Jones) and the Oxford quiz final in April 2004 when the dual axis of Mills and Pearson did for us with an exemplary display of buzzmanship (I negged early and even when Weber came up, I clammed up). I have this odd notion, of which you will find I have many, all teeming in the places where my neuroses thrive, that losing points for your team is the same cutting chunks off them. Nasty, painful ones. Moby even said to me recently "you seem to go missing during buzzer quizzes" – so that’s my explanation. However, if my first buzz is correct, then my confidence soars and you can expect a good game from me (as in the last two NQSL matches). Hopefully, it bodes well for the future.
Finally, never mind that the Milhous All-Stars had a whole extra body (and with Mark and CJ on their team, what a body that was) to the Broken Hearts’ quartet when they beat us by one point in the team competition. I acted the part of a wronged diva on the day and used the phrase "severely narked" for my personal post-defeat koan, yet on reflection we lost fair and square. Us young ‘uns should have ponied up both Ms Dynamite and Badly Drawn Boy when doing the Mercury Music Prize sequence– only our fickle minds obsessed with fashion when fluttering away to the land of the fairies (man, I own all those albums; how inept, how completely jejune). All that bitterness has vaporised leaving a calm residue; a patina of benevolence on the face of newly formed history. What could I have been so annoyed about? Silly me.
Time does heal the psychic wounds. Or, I think on the other hand, we will have our revenge. Oh yes. REVENGE. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (repeat maniacal laughter to fade).
Afterword
I came back to my flat on the Saturday night and explained to my flatmate, who is an ITN producer, why I looked so ill and tired and that I had been doing a quiz in the once-proud shoe capital of England. Once I explained that you can’t spectate with the sort of quizzes we do, she said: "You do written exams. Are you mad?"
"Yes, we do. We travel to places all over the country and answer hundreds questions and we are brave, knowledgeable fellows and we love it!" is what I could have said in reply. "Come to think of it, and I often do in moments of clarity, that we pay to do the kind of exams that the vast majority of people would have run away from throughout their lives. We are all a little bit crazy, but then we wouldn’t do it if we were normal people and if it wasn't a lot of fun," is what I could have also said. Instead I said: "Gah. Yep, mad. Mad as a lorry. Mweargghh. So tired. Beddy-byes."
posted by That Quiz Guy at 2:10 AM
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