Thursday, April 20, 2006

Oh Go On Then ... Have Another BH quiz #61

I am feeling haggard and drained after a night of setting more BH quizzes.

And yet, the body of general knowledge remains far from conquered or even assimilated in significant proportions after ten years. Yes, I have just peeped into the abyss. Not quite 4.48 Psychosis time, but it sure feels like it sometimes.

The Lean Season
It is as you may have noticed the close-season for regular quizzing, so the accounts of competition derring-do and defeated despair will be scarce until September time.

Indeed, if you were a league quizzer you could adopt the Green Day song that refers to the aforementioned month as your anthem and scream and sigh it until you be hoarse.

But the individual competitions never cease in quizland. People have Brain of Britain recordings coming up (see Stainer and Bayley): good luck to them and may they not return from T in the Park the day before a Brain of Britain semi-final and wander into a recording dazed and confused and an hour late, and then discover that their brains have lost 50 per cent of its ready access knowledge.

Future tourneys
Next month sees Quizzing.co.uk's Normanton GP as well as the second Masoquizm (we do unexpurgated American NAQT toss-up and bonus sets and find out we don't know enough about the works of Theodore Dreiser) in Oxford on (fingers crossed) May 28. You heard a speculative date my fellow British quizzers. And you know there's nothing like a buzzerquiz to get the blood flowing (and boiling).

Thus, all hail of us must hail the welcome return of Buzzerquiz and Rob Linham (hi Rob) and his bright and shiny new site. (I do think I've been using the adjectives "bright and shiny" too much lately, and in a far too flippant manner). He and his supreme editing, organisational and setting skills have been sorely missed.

Then, of course, there is the World Quizzing Championship in June. The big kahuna. I won it once you know. I don't think I will win it for some time and even when I reach my peak (I'm guessing 35-40), I'm sure some amazing and awe-inspiring talent possibly from India, hey, maybe even China will burst through and make us feel all old and stupid.

However, I hadn't noticed how bloody close they were until someone mentioned it the other day. They have been brought forward (well, I knew this last year) and I will soon ignore my stacks of brain-stimulating fictional literature for an entire month and dive deep into reference book and question file land.

I am both exhilirated and weary already just thinking about it. At times like these, you forget to do social things and indulge in a productive and joyous organic lifestyle. You stare at the books and bits of paper you have collected and go a little bit crazy. Almost Norman Bates crazy.

Yet I can assure you if my mother does pop her clogs in the next few months I will not seat her in the cellar and start dressing up in skirts and greying wigs.

If I do I blame it all on quiz. That will be my legal defence at least. Quiz will be the end of me, mark my nutty little words.

I feel like laughing now. Imagine me laughing right now, in fact. Listen to the music of despair.

(I have been thinking that my internet persona is properly deranged, and it is a tad. But in real life I'm just tapping away at the computer keyboard keeping it all in my mind and using this blog as the cathartic outlets. God bless blogs.)

1 From which castle did captured French general Henri Giraud escape from Nazi captivity in April 1942?
2 Japan and The Qing Empire signed what "unequal treaty" in April 1895 that ended the First Sino-Japanese War?
3 Waywash and Wanp'una are the two main dialect groups of which language?
4 Which historian wrote the work Germania in around 98AD?
5 Which elected officials or magistrates of the Roman Republic supervised the treasury and financial affairs of the state, its arms and officers?
6 In Greek mythology, who was the Titan goddess of the dawn who rose from her home at the edge of Oceanos to herald her brother Helios, the sun?
7 Which Italian composer wrote his first symphony at the age of ten and is known for his operas La Gioconda (1876) and I Lituani (1874), and the ballet Le due gemelle (1873)?
8 Entrepreneur Somen "Steve" Banerjee, who hung himself in a prison cell in 1994, and choreographer Nick DeNoia, whom he may have had shot in 1987, were responsible for developing which troupe of performers?
9 Often called the "Emerald Isle of the Caribbean" due to its resemblance to coastal Ireland and its early Irish settlers, which UK overseas territory is divided into three parishes: St Anthony, St Georges and St Peter?
10 Named after the Colonel who established it, what name was given to the German air defence system that was operational from July 1940?
11 What term describes the fertlisation of two or more ova from the same cycle by sperm from separate acts of sexual intercourse?
12 Which Prussian general, writer and Prussian army reformer (1755-1813) gave his name to the battlecruiser that was launched on October 3, 1936 and sunk in the Battle of North Cape on Boxing Day 1943?
13 What ancient language, developed in the Ethiopian Highlands of the Horn of Africa, became the language of the Ethiopian Highlands of the Horn of Africa and uses a writing system called Fidel in Ethiopia and remains in use as a liturgical language?
14 What is the mineral form of sodium chloride commonly known as rock salt?
15 Who gave the series of lectures called The Chemical History of a Candle that was the origin of the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures for young people?
16 Who painted 1868's Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress)?
17 Which founder of the Sassanid dynasty in 221AD built his now ruined palace south of Shiraz in Iran?
18 The James Gillespie High School for Girls teacher Christina McKay was the model for which fictional character?
19 Known for such lithographs as 1932's Two Girls with Flowers, which Czech painter and member of the surrealist movement was born Marie Cerminova in 1902?
20 Which surrealist artist used the alter ego Loplop in his paintings that took the form of a bird he suggested was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans, and was seen in the title of such works as his collage Loplop presents Andre Breton?

Answers to BH #60
1 John, Duke of Bedford 2 Eldfell 3 Chad 4 Tunisia 5 Santa Sabina or Santa Sabina all'Aventino 6 a) Chief Superintendent b) Chief Inspector c) Assistant Chief Constable 7 Empire 8 Schiltron 9 Dubai 10 Richard Serra 11 Sears Tower 12 Victor Laloux 13 Mita 14 Fever of unknown origin 15 Lord Chief Justice 16 Rikishi 17 Thomas Lubanga 18 Tequila, vodka 19 Boxster 20 Aurangzeb 21 Earl of Ulster 22 Cley windmill 23 Brabham BT46B 24 British Racing Motors (BRM) 25 Taghairm 26 Indonesia 27 Net Book Agreement 28 Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory 29 Redwall 30 Isabelle Adjani 31 Lemonade 32 Bulgaria 33 Alkenes 34 Brainstorming 35 Frankfurt(-am-Main)

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