Saturday Morning and Saturday Night: Silliness in Two Parts
A NIGHT TIME JOURNAL, NO WAIT IT IS MORNING
It's quite late. About 4am. I have the urge to type so let's see where this takes us ... I only wrote the six rounds for the last President's Cup match six days ago - time constraints of a silly Sunday rush - so I read out two rounds from the set I am submitting to MQL. Oh yes. I will have my revenge. It's in the post. I said I would. Hee hee. Ho ho. Let me giggle one off maniacally for a few seconds. ... Okay. Deep breath. Retain poise. Forget about the pleasing buzz of inflicting mild mental anguish on people far away (you live outside London? Then you live far far far away). In the end I was trying to be fair and have returned aircraft, beer and birds questions in kind. I could have been a lot more obtuse, obscure and difficult, but something - some semblance of a conscience??? Empathy for other people!?? - held me back from submitting a pile of youth-riddled incomprehensibility and silliness designed to rile people up. Then I thought of the blank looks and the "Huhs?" of frustration that turn into a simmering resentment when you get quizzes set by alien civilisations. We've all been there. I mean, there are one or two setters who, once I know that I am going to get their difficult gnarly questions both barrels IN MY FACE, I practically give up there and then and hope that it will be over swift like. A good, clean, quick death - because once you get a setter whose interests seem to be the exact opposite of yours (you're digital and they're sticking to analogue) you know you will be in a hellish place of desolation and chilly silence for at least 20 minutes. Come Chris and Snoop. Do your thing. Sorry, I seem to be calling up fictional nailgun-wielding drug enforcers ... from ... you guessed it ... THE FREAKING WIRE. Obsessed I am. But still. I have to redress some of the quiz-setting balance. Even if I went back and dumped a whole load of clues and softeners in there to assuage the coming guilt at knowing I would spread rank puzzlement across the land of my northern brethren. I even decided against inserting my highly taxing pair on lesbian graphic novelists. Balance of the force and all that. Sith lords. Order 66. Man. I have been up for far too long. Peace out. Word ten. Sleepybyes....
Hold up.
We actually won the match against Cambridge - 39-33. Kudos to my fellow team-mates, even if Nic has decided to celebrate his mum instead of doing a quiz in a pub tomorrow (I can live with it), and many apologies to our opponents who were forced to play through the mewling falsetto of Prince or some such fashionable singing weirdo. I always forget the match and game important bits. Like, I'm so self-indulgent. Me me me. Zee zzzzzzz.
SOME TIME LATER...
-------------------------------------
(Just doing one of those time lapse, jump cut Nouvelle Vague things. But in a textual fashion.)
Woah. I can't let Sal Paradise get hold of my writing mien. You know what happened last time (curse you Big Sur for leading me astray). Everyone needs sentence structure and cogent streams of sturdy thought that actually mean and explain something clearly and concisely about this dirty lovely world. Without discipline, freedom means diddly squat. Reading back the above "Journal" 14 hours later suggests that it is none too wise to write in the twilight hours after you have filtered thousands and thousands of questions so you can end up with 5500 refined Q's that you believe might be vaguely useful, but probably won't be. Because things never work out like that.
Instead you notice, as I have this very instant, that your left index finger has swelled in red anger and hums with pain and squeezing it repeatedly is a really bad idea but you can't help yourself so you keep on doing it, and then your attention is drawn to the equivalent digit on the right hand because it no longer has skin attached to its tip. Yowch. I have typed too much. Ooo. It hurt typing that. Must touch type, not type belligerently and thumpingly, as if I was doing that five-point palm death thing from Kill Bill: Volume 2.
Truth be told (I love that phrase ... I will surely overuse it), the thought of the glittering prize excites a kind of riotous Protestant work ethic in me. Actually, excite isn't quite the right word. Incite is much better. Because when I work hard I REALLY DO WORK HARD. Work Harder with a Vengeance 4.0.
Thus and therefore, I popped back to the southcoast for a hardcore two-day chain-smoke and swot session on Thursday (I know I am spilling my secrets to spying rivals from the show, but this is all part of my masterplan ... psycho-warfare you see ... must bruise and eviscerate other people's confidence before the fateful recordings). Isolation in my big bedroom with its lovely double bed on which I spread like a liberated butterfly and the total lack of London austerity, with only the occasional sound of my 14-year-old badsister and her degenerate underage drinky mates stamping up and down the stairs to spray the toilet with their viscid-vodka-vom (how can they miss the bog? At that range!). But, I must admit, I cannot disapprove. Me, my bro and K did it too. Tearaways all of us, treating our stomach lining as if it had Wolverine-speed healing properties. I can only smile at the impetuousness of youth blooming (or vooming) into adulthood. It's a beautiful thing.
So once I had shouted at me sis "Shut the hell up or I will get some pliers and a blowtorch and do you like Scorpio! On a football field! Yeah!" and stamped on a few floorboards and banged a few doors in a totally pointless huff-a-puff way, I patted myself down and sat in my chair and got stuck in. In and out the old files (the old Southport & Formby stocks are a gift that keeps on giving ... little did I know that when I was copying and pasting hundreds of pages of them into Word files five whole years ago whilst ensconced in ... now I remember ... doing work experience in the newsroom of The Independent, but actually waiting for the day to hurry past the 6pm mark into freedom ... that I would look at those questions all those years later with older yet fresher eyes and think "Oh goddamnit! That frickin' wine grape question came up in the last London game ... if only!" *gnash* *headbutt* ... but soon it will be time to harvest the annual crop; I'm looking forward to it. Yes, I am a sad bastardo), carrying out the tiresome filtration, portioning out magic sets of five and calculating word tallies, setting a friendly for the last President's Cup match tomorrow, going through the Lulu book question file (I have written 1750 originals and have now begun sorting the "Music" quiz pages. If you have heard of any of the musicians in these questions then I will surely have failed in my quest). And writing a couple mo' rounds for down yonder and below.
I have also started on a new e-mail-out quiz. For, admittedly, whorish reasons; I need the pocket change. It's tentatively titled The 505 - probably because I like the lame radio DJ ring it has - however it will no doubt end up with some kind of evocative, brash, hyperbolic name like The Skullcrusher or The Hurricane of Trivia Pain. Yes, I'm sure it will. It would be far less fun without it and it also helps everyone remember. But then I always toyed with the idea of giving any future male offspring such awesome names as Goliath and Satan.
It would be a real head start in life ("There's a new kid in class. They call him Faceripper."). They instill ... presence.
Pulling myself back from that paternal-tinged tangent, there will be 505 questions (so you'll be shelling out for those extra four "even more special than Leo in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" questions ... but which four? Who knows? It's all part of the magic). On the other hand you may treat such entreaties as Bill Shankly would have the Everton football team if the latter were having a kickabout in his back garden. It is free country after all (vendetta! vendetta!).
I have written 45 so far. I might get it done before the month is out.
That's a whole load of quizzy stuff then. As a result. Right now. I feel both electrified and shattered. Like exploding light fittings in pieces everywhere, but still spitting out nasty electric currents and snapping light streams. I am dead in certain places on my body. Numb forever. I need to rest up, but then again I also want to get up.
There's something about the momentum of work. Momentum is the addictive bit. After a while you realise that you don't mind it and you do some more and you feel this smooth, steady feeling of satisfaction with your progress that you want to maintain. And so it goes. Having spent literally dozens of hours on this trivia-inspired toil I want to march on further into the hinterland. Inactivity seems insane. You fear that the world will leave you behind.
Or I might meet Jamie and throw his Sonic Youth ticket at him. For a laugh. Whilst conjuring up fraternal amicability disguised as rat-at-at insults so scatalogical and unbelievable they actually seem florid and life-affirming in the hearing and absorption. Or I might sit here on my bed and watch more clips of The Wire on youtube. The same ones again and again. Yo. It sho is all in da game. Word ten. Again.
(But if the Baltimore drug wars are not yo thang, try this something like this from The Paper. If you don't think it's going anywhere wait until 1.49 ... Michael Keaton goes ballistic. In high-larious fashion. He almost makes me wanna be a journalist so I can swear down phones at people with impunity. Almost. You jive talking sucka ... Okay I'll stop now ... I was born in Eastbourne and not the ghetto ... I may also ration the ... ellipses ... maybe ...)
President's Cup Six Round Friendly from 11/3 and Two rounds of whatever I fancy
Round 1
1a Which Englishman is second in the all-time top scorers in the Premier League after Alan Shearer with 188 goals?
ANDY COLE
1b The rich retired businessman and Civil War veteran Christopher Newman is the title character of which Henry James novel?*
THE AMERICAN
2a Which English duo of the early 1980s had Marc Almond on vocals and David Ball on synthesizers?
SOFT CELL
2b Which large fish is known by the scientific name Carcharodon carcharias?
GREAT WHITE SHARK
3a Which large shark has the scientific name Galeocerdo cuvier?*
TIGER SHARK
3b Who is the second foreigner or non-Briton to appear in the all-time top scorers in the Premier League after Thierry Henry with 127 goals?
JIMMY FLOYD HASSELBAINK
4a Which Henry James novel follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of his widowed fiancee's supposedly wayward son?
THE AMBASSADORS
4b Which English pop duo of the early 1980s had Alison Moyet on vocals and Vince Clarke on synthesizers?
YAZOO
Round 2
1a Which member of The Mighty Handful composed the children's opera Puss in Boots, the one-act comic opera The Mandarin's Son and the three-act Prisoner of the Caucasus?*
CESAR CUI
1b Which member of The Mighty Handful composed the piano piece Islamey: an Oriental Fantasy, and the symphonic poems Russia and Tamara?
MILY BALAKIREV
2a In which US state did the First Battle of Bull Run or the First Battle of Manassas take place on July 21, 1861?*
VIRGINIA
2b Nikola Tesla Airport serves which European capital city?*
BELGRADE
3a How many players are there each on a volleyball team?
SIX
3b In which US state did the Battle of Antietam take place on September 17, 1862?*
MARYLAND
4a Henri Coanda International Airport serves which European capital city?*
BUCHAREST
4b How many players are there on a water polo team?
SEVEN
Round 3
1a By what title was the two-time British Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles better known?
1st DUKE OF NEWCASTLE-upon-Tyne
1b Regulus is the brightest star of which constellation?
LEO
2a Which member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painted The Blind Girl in 1856?
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS
2b Which member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painted Ecce Ancilla Domini in 1850?
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
3a Which internet services company was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994?
YAHOO
3b By what title was the two-time British Prime Minister William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Bentinck better known?
3rd DUKE OF PORTLAND
4a Spica is the brightest star in which constellation?
VIRGO
4b Which internet company was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar in September 1995?*
EBAY
Round 4
1a What was the subject of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1791?*
SELF INCRIMINATION
1b Sir Reg Empey is the leader of which political party?
ULSTER UNIONISTS
2a Which 1970s British sitcom centred around the Abbott family and their life in Birch Avenue, Putney?
BLESS THIS HOUSE
2b Given a name meaning "inactive", what inert gas was discovered by Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay in 1894?
ARGON
3a Which noble gas was discovered by William Ramsay and Morris Travers on July 12, 1898, shortly after their discovery of krypton and neon?
XENON
3b What was the subject of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865?
SLAVERY
4a Mark Durkan is the leader of which political party?*
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC AND LABOUR PARTY or SDLP
4b Which 1970s sitcom centred around a couple who moved to 46 Peacock Crescent in Hampton Wick after receiving a compulsory purchase order from the Council?
GEORGE AND MILDRED
Round 5
1a In 96AD, which elderly and childless Roman emperor chose to adopt Trajan as his heir from outside his own family due to his lack of issue?*
NERVA
1b Which Frenchman is coach of the Italian rugby union national side?
PIERRE BERBIZIER
2a What is the currency of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan?*
MANAT
2b Which Roman emperor and son of Vespasian was assassinated in a plot organised by his enemies in the Senate, his wife and members of the Praetorian Guard in 96AD?
DOMITIAN
3a Which book of the Old Testament is called bamidbar in Hebrew, meaning "in the desert"?*
NUMBERS
3b What is the currency of Romania and Moldova?
LEU
4a Italy's recently won back-to-back matches in the Six Nations for the first time. Which two teams did they beat?
SCOTLAND, WALES
4b Which book of the Old Testament is sometimes called by its title in the Vulgate, Canticum Canticorum or Canticle of Canticles?
SONG OF SOLOMON or SONG OF SONGS
Round 6
1a Which British film director's works include Life is Sweet, High Hopes and Naked?
MIKE LEIGH
1b Which supermarket chain was founded in 1899 initially as an egg and butter merchant in Rawson Market, Bradford?*
MORRISONS
2a Christopher Jones, who died in 1622, captained which ship?
MAYFLOWER
2b Which British film director's works include Carla's Song, My Name is Joe and Land and Freedom?
KEN LOACH
3a Which company makes the Wii video games console?
NINTENDO
3b Benjamin Briggs, who is assumed to have died in 1872, captained which ship?
MARY CELESTE
4a Which supermarket chain was founded by Laura Beth Murray in 1949?*
ASDA
4b Which company makes the Xbox?
MICROSOFT
R E A L M A T C H E N D E D H E R E
Round 7 of no pairing just me filling the space with whatever questions I have foraged for
1a Which Russian composer's works include the ballets The Bolt and Bright Stream?
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
1b Which species of falcon reaches a speed of 298 km/h when diving for its prey and could therefore be described as the fastest creature on Earth?
PEREGRINE
2a Which English actor has played such historical, literary and mythical figures as J Edgar Hoover, Nikita Khruschev, Pope John XXIII Odin, Sancho Panza, Mr Micawber and Geri Halliwell's disguise?
BOB HOSKINS
2b Taking place near Berlin, what plan was formulated at the Wannsee Conference in early 1942?
THE FINAL SOLUTION
3a Rising in the highlands bordering Sierra Leone and Guinea, what is the third longest river in Africa at 2,600 miles?
NIGER
3b Founded in 1800, which American library has 29 million books making it the largest in the world?
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
4a The wife and children of which playwright and novelist adopted the surname Holland after his disgrace?
OSCAR WILDE
4b Soon to be made a film starring Natalie Portman as Anne and Scarlet Johansson as her sister Mary, the novel The Other Boleyn Girl was written by whom?
PHILIPPA GREGORY
Just like that there Round 7 though this be 8
1a The American Eddie Eagan is the only person to have won gold medals in the Winter and Summer Olympics. In which events did he do so?
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING (1920) and FOUR-MAN BOBSLEIGH (1932)
1b Largely open to a limited number of accredited investors only, which private investment funds charge a performance fee and have a name which dates back to a fund founded by Alfred Winslow Jones in 1949?
HEDGE FUND
2a What title is shared by Marlon Brando's 1995 autobiography (written with Robert Lindsey), a song by Antonin Dvorak which forms part of his 1880 Gypsy Songs cycle, an 1895 song that the composer Charles Ives set to a poem by Adolf Heyduk and the title of a 2001 recital album by Joan Sutherland that was released in the year of "La Stupenda's" 75th birthday?
SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME
2b At the initiative of Mexican coffee farmers, the Stichting Max Havelaar was the first kind of what labelling initiative and was launced on November 15, 1988 by Nico Roozen, Frans van der Hoff and Dutch ecumenical development agency Solidaridad?
FAIRTRADE
3a Which singer-songwriter, model and actress was born Christa Paffgen in Cologne on October 16, 1938?
NICO
3b Which conqueror's tomb is housed in the Gur-e Amir mausoleum in Samarkand, the name being Persian for "Tomb of the King"?
TAMERLANE
4a Which foreign leader published In The Line of Fire: A Memoir in 2006?
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
4b Launched on March 17 in 1958, what was the first solar-powered satellite and is the oldest human-launched object still in Earth orbit today?
VANGUARD 1
Spares
1 Covered by Bananarama, Venus was originally recorded by which band in 1969?
SHOCKING BLUE
2 Rajiv Gandhi Airport is due to replace Begumpet Airport in serving which Indian city?
HYDERABAD
It's quite late. About 4am. I have the urge to type so let's see where this takes us ... I only wrote the six rounds for the last President's Cup match six days ago - time constraints of a silly Sunday rush - so I read out two rounds from the set I am submitting to MQL. Oh yes. I will have my revenge. It's in the post. I said I would. Hee hee. Ho ho. Let me giggle one off maniacally for a few seconds. ... Okay. Deep breath. Retain poise. Forget about the pleasing buzz of inflicting mild mental anguish on people far away (you live outside London? Then you live far far far away). In the end I was trying to be fair and have returned aircraft, beer and birds questions in kind. I could have been a lot more obtuse, obscure and difficult, but something - some semblance of a conscience??? Empathy for other people!?? - held me back from submitting a pile of youth-riddled incomprehensibility and silliness designed to rile people up. Then I thought of the blank looks and the "Huhs?" of frustration that turn into a simmering resentment when you get quizzes set by alien civilisations. We've all been there. I mean, there are one or two setters who, once I know that I am going to get their difficult gnarly questions both barrels IN MY FACE, I practically give up there and then and hope that it will be over swift like. A good, clean, quick death - because once you get a setter whose interests seem to be the exact opposite of yours (you're digital and they're sticking to analogue) you know you will be in a hellish place of desolation and chilly silence for at least 20 minutes. Come Chris and Snoop. Do your thing. Sorry, I seem to be calling up fictional nailgun-wielding drug enforcers ... from ... you guessed it ... THE FREAKING WIRE. Obsessed I am. But still. I have to redress some of the quiz-setting balance. Even if I went back and dumped a whole load of clues and softeners in there to assuage the coming guilt at knowing I would spread rank puzzlement across the land of my northern brethren. I even decided against inserting my highly taxing pair on lesbian graphic novelists. Balance of the force and all that. Sith lords. Order 66. Man. I have been up for far too long. Peace out. Word ten. Sleepybyes....
Hold up.
We actually won the match against Cambridge - 39-33. Kudos to my fellow team-mates, even if Nic has decided to celebrate his mum instead of doing a quiz in a pub tomorrow (I can live with it), and many apologies to our opponents who were forced to play through the mewling falsetto of Prince or some such fashionable singing weirdo. I always forget the match and game important bits. Like, I'm so self-indulgent. Me me me. Zee zzzzzzz.
SOME TIME LATER...
-------------------------------------
(Just doing one of those time lapse, jump cut Nouvelle Vague things. But in a textual fashion.)
Woah. I can't let Sal Paradise get hold of my writing mien. You know what happened last time (curse you Big Sur for leading me astray). Everyone needs sentence structure and cogent streams of sturdy thought that actually mean and explain something clearly and concisely about this dirty lovely world. Without discipline, freedom means diddly squat. Reading back the above "Journal" 14 hours later suggests that it is none too wise to write in the twilight hours after you have filtered thousands and thousands of questions so you can end up with 5500 refined Q's that you believe might be vaguely useful, but probably won't be. Because things never work out like that.
Instead you notice, as I have this very instant, that your left index finger has swelled in red anger and hums with pain and squeezing it repeatedly is a really bad idea but you can't help yourself so you keep on doing it, and then your attention is drawn to the equivalent digit on the right hand because it no longer has skin attached to its tip. Yowch. I have typed too much. Ooo. It hurt typing that. Must touch type, not type belligerently and thumpingly, as if I was doing that five-point palm death thing from Kill Bill: Volume 2.
Truth be told (I love that phrase ... I will surely overuse it), the thought of the glittering prize excites a kind of riotous Protestant work ethic in me. Actually, excite isn't quite the right word. Incite is much better. Because when I work hard I REALLY DO WORK HARD. Work Harder with a Vengeance 4.0.
Thus and therefore, I popped back to the southcoast for a hardcore two-day chain-smoke and swot session on Thursday (I know I am spilling my secrets to spying rivals from the show, but this is all part of my masterplan ... psycho-warfare you see ... must bruise and eviscerate other people's confidence before the fateful recordings). Isolation in my big bedroom with its lovely double bed on which I spread like a liberated butterfly and the total lack of London austerity, with only the occasional sound of my 14-year-old badsister and her degenerate underage drinky mates stamping up and down the stairs to spray the toilet with their viscid-vodka-vom (how can they miss the bog? At that range!). But, I must admit, I cannot disapprove. Me, my bro and K did it too. Tearaways all of us, treating our stomach lining as if it had Wolverine-speed healing properties. I can only smile at the impetuousness of youth blooming (or vooming) into adulthood. It's a beautiful thing.
So once I had shouted at me sis "Shut the hell up or I will get some pliers and a blowtorch and do you like Scorpio! On a football field! Yeah!" and stamped on a few floorboards and banged a few doors in a totally pointless huff-a-puff way, I patted myself down and sat in my chair and got stuck in. In and out the old files (the old Southport & Formby stocks are a gift that keeps on giving ... little did I know that when I was copying and pasting hundreds of pages of them into Word files five whole years ago whilst ensconced in ... now I remember ... doing work experience in the newsroom of The Independent, but actually waiting for the day to hurry past the 6pm mark into freedom ... that I would look at those questions all those years later with older yet fresher eyes and think "Oh goddamnit! That frickin' wine grape question came up in the last London game ... if only!" *gnash* *headbutt* ... but soon it will be time to harvest the annual crop; I'm looking forward to it. Yes, I am a sad bastardo), carrying out the tiresome filtration, portioning out magic sets of five and calculating word tallies, setting a friendly for the last President's Cup match tomorrow, going through the Lulu book question file (I have written 1750 originals and have now begun sorting the "Music" quiz pages. If you have heard of any of the musicians in these questions then I will surely have failed in my quest). And writing a couple mo' rounds for down yonder and below.
I have also started on a new e-mail-out quiz. For, admittedly, whorish reasons; I need the pocket change. It's tentatively titled The 505 - probably because I like the lame radio DJ ring it has - however it will no doubt end up with some kind of evocative, brash, hyperbolic name like The Skullcrusher or The Hurricane of Trivia Pain. Yes, I'm sure it will. It would be far less fun without it and it also helps everyone remember. But then I always toyed with the idea of giving any future male offspring such awesome names as Goliath and Satan.
It would be a real head start in life ("There's a new kid in class. They call him Faceripper."). They instill ... presence.
Pulling myself back from that paternal-tinged tangent, there will be 505 questions (so you'll be shelling out for those extra four "even more special than Leo in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" questions ... but which four? Who knows? It's all part of the magic). On the other hand you may treat such entreaties as Bill Shankly would have the Everton football team if the latter were having a kickabout in his back garden. It is free country after all (vendetta! vendetta!).
I have written 45 so far. I might get it done before the month is out.
That's a whole load of quizzy stuff then. As a result. Right now. I feel both electrified and shattered. Like exploding light fittings in pieces everywhere, but still spitting out nasty electric currents and snapping light streams. I am dead in certain places on my body. Numb forever. I need to rest up, but then again I also want to get up.
There's something about the momentum of work. Momentum is the addictive bit. After a while you realise that you don't mind it and you do some more and you feel this smooth, steady feeling of satisfaction with your progress that you want to maintain. And so it goes. Having spent literally dozens of hours on this trivia-inspired toil I want to march on further into the hinterland. Inactivity seems insane. You fear that the world will leave you behind.
Or I might meet Jamie and throw his Sonic Youth ticket at him. For a laugh. Whilst conjuring up fraternal amicability disguised as rat-at-at insults so scatalogical and unbelievable they actually seem florid and life-affirming in the hearing and absorption. Or I might sit here on my bed and watch more clips of The Wire on youtube. The same ones again and again. Yo. It sho is all in da game. Word ten. Again.
(But if the Baltimore drug wars are not yo thang, try this something like this from The Paper. If you don't think it's going anywhere wait until 1.49 ... Michael Keaton goes ballistic. In high-larious fashion. He almost makes me wanna be a journalist so I can swear down phones at people with impunity. Almost. You jive talking sucka ... Okay I'll stop now ... I was born in Eastbourne and not the ghetto ... I may also ration the ... ellipses ... maybe ...)
President's Cup Six Round Friendly from 11/3 and Two rounds of whatever I fancy
Round 1
1a Which Englishman is second in the all-time top scorers in the Premier League after Alan Shearer with 188 goals?
ANDY COLE
1b The rich retired businessman and Civil War veteran Christopher Newman is the title character of which Henry James novel?*
THE AMERICAN
2a Which English duo of the early 1980s had Marc Almond on vocals and David Ball on synthesizers?
SOFT CELL
2b Which large fish is known by the scientific name Carcharodon carcharias?
GREAT WHITE SHARK
3a Which large shark has the scientific name Galeocerdo cuvier?*
TIGER SHARK
3b Who is the second foreigner or non-Briton to appear in the all-time top scorers in the Premier League after Thierry Henry with 127 goals?
JIMMY FLOYD HASSELBAINK
4a Which Henry James novel follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of his widowed fiancee's supposedly wayward son?
THE AMBASSADORS
4b Which English pop duo of the early 1980s had Alison Moyet on vocals and Vince Clarke on synthesizers?
YAZOO
Round 2
1a Which member of The Mighty Handful composed the children's opera Puss in Boots, the one-act comic opera The Mandarin's Son and the three-act Prisoner of the Caucasus?*
CESAR CUI
1b Which member of The Mighty Handful composed the piano piece Islamey: an Oriental Fantasy, and the symphonic poems Russia and Tamara?
MILY BALAKIREV
2a In which US state did the First Battle of Bull Run or the First Battle of Manassas take place on July 21, 1861?*
VIRGINIA
2b Nikola Tesla Airport serves which European capital city?*
BELGRADE
3a How many players are there each on a volleyball team?
SIX
3b In which US state did the Battle of Antietam take place on September 17, 1862?*
MARYLAND
4a Henri Coanda International Airport serves which European capital city?*
BUCHAREST
4b How many players are there on a water polo team?
SEVEN
Round 3
1a By what title was the two-time British Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles better known?
1st DUKE OF NEWCASTLE-upon-Tyne
1b Regulus is the brightest star of which constellation?
LEO
2a Which member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painted The Blind Girl in 1856?
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS
2b Which member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painted Ecce Ancilla Domini in 1850?
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
3a Which internet services company was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994?
YAHOO
3b By what title was the two-time British Prime Minister William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Bentinck better known?
3rd DUKE OF PORTLAND
4a Spica is the brightest star in which constellation?
VIRGO
4b Which internet company was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar in September 1995?*
EBAY
Round 4
1a What was the subject of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1791?*
SELF INCRIMINATION
1b Sir Reg Empey is the leader of which political party?
ULSTER UNIONISTS
2a Which 1970s British sitcom centred around the Abbott family and their life in Birch Avenue, Putney?
BLESS THIS HOUSE
2b Given a name meaning "inactive", what inert gas was discovered by Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay in 1894?
ARGON
3a Which noble gas was discovered by William Ramsay and Morris Travers on July 12, 1898, shortly after their discovery of krypton and neon?
XENON
3b What was the subject of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865?
SLAVERY
4a Mark Durkan is the leader of which political party?*
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC AND LABOUR PARTY or SDLP
4b Which 1970s sitcom centred around a couple who moved to 46 Peacock Crescent in Hampton Wick after receiving a compulsory purchase order from the Council?
GEORGE AND MILDRED
Round 5
1a In 96AD, which elderly and childless Roman emperor chose to adopt Trajan as his heir from outside his own family due to his lack of issue?*
NERVA
1b Which Frenchman is coach of the Italian rugby union national side?
PIERRE BERBIZIER
2a What is the currency of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan?*
MANAT
2b Which Roman emperor and son of Vespasian was assassinated in a plot organised by his enemies in the Senate, his wife and members of the Praetorian Guard in 96AD?
DOMITIAN
3a Which book of the Old Testament is called bamidbar in Hebrew, meaning "in the desert"?*
NUMBERS
3b What is the currency of Romania and Moldova?
LEU
4a Italy's recently won back-to-back matches in the Six Nations for the first time. Which two teams did they beat?
SCOTLAND, WALES
4b Which book of the Old Testament is sometimes called by its title in the Vulgate, Canticum Canticorum or Canticle of Canticles?
SONG OF SOLOMON or SONG OF SONGS
Round 6
1a Which British film director's works include Life is Sweet, High Hopes and Naked?
MIKE LEIGH
1b Which supermarket chain was founded in 1899 initially as an egg and butter merchant in Rawson Market, Bradford?*
MORRISONS
2a Christopher Jones, who died in 1622, captained which ship?
MAYFLOWER
2b Which British film director's works include Carla's Song, My Name is Joe and Land and Freedom?
KEN LOACH
3a Which company makes the Wii video games console?
NINTENDO
3b Benjamin Briggs, who is assumed to have died in 1872, captained which ship?
MARY CELESTE
4a Which supermarket chain was founded by Laura Beth Murray in 1949?*
ASDA
4b Which company makes the Xbox?
MICROSOFT
R E A L M A T C H E N D E D H E R E
Round 7 of no pairing just me filling the space with whatever questions I have foraged for
1a Which Russian composer's works include the ballets The Bolt and Bright Stream?
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
1b Which species of falcon reaches a speed of 298 km/h when diving for its prey and could therefore be described as the fastest creature on Earth?
PEREGRINE
2a Which English actor has played such historical, literary and mythical figures as J Edgar Hoover, Nikita Khruschev, Pope John XXIII Odin, Sancho Panza, Mr Micawber and Geri Halliwell's disguise?
BOB HOSKINS
2b Taking place near Berlin, what plan was formulated at the Wannsee Conference in early 1942?
THE FINAL SOLUTION
3a Rising in the highlands bordering Sierra Leone and Guinea, what is the third longest river in Africa at 2,600 miles?
NIGER
3b Founded in 1800, which American library has 29 million books making it the largest in the world?
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
4a The wife and children of which playwright and novelist adopted the surname Holland after his disgrace?
OSCAR WILDE
4b Soon to be made a film starring Natalie Portman as Anne and Scarlet Johansson as her sister Mary, the novel The Other Boleyn Girl was written by whom?
PHILIPPA GREGORY
Just like that there Round 7 though this be 8
1a The American Eddie Eagan is the only person to have won gold medals in the Winter and Summer Olympics. In which events did he do so?
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING (1920) and FOUR-MAN BOBSLEIGH (1932)
1b Largely open to a limited number of accredited investors only, which private investment funds charge a performance fee and have a name which dates back to a fund founded by Alfred Winslow Jones in 1949?
HEDGE FUND
2a What title is shared by Marlon Brando's 1995 autobiography (written with Robert Lindsey), a song by Antonin Dvorak which forms part of his 1880 Gypsy Songs cycle, an 1895 song that the composer Charles Ives set to a poem by Adolf Heyduk and the title of a 2001 recital album by Joan Sutherland that was released in the year of "La Stupenda's" 75th birthday?
SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME
2b At the initiative of Mexican coffee farmers, the Stichting Max Havelaar was the first kind of what labelling initiative and was launced on November 15, 1988 by Nico Roozen, Frans van der Hoff and Dutch ecumenical development agency Solidaridad?
FAIRTRADE
3a Which singer-songwriter, model and actress was born Christa Paffgen in Cologne on October 16, 1938?
NICO
3b Which conqueror's tomb is housed in the Gur-e Amir mausoleum in Samarkand, the name being Persian for "Tomb of the King"?
TAMERLANE
4a Which foreign leader published In The Line of Fire: A Memoir in 2006?
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
4b Launched on March 17 in 1958, what was the first solar-powered satellite and is the oldest human-launched object still in Earth orbit today?
VANGUARD 1
Spares
1 Covered by Bananarama, Venus was originally recorded by which band in 1969?
SHOCKING BLUE
2 Rajiv Gandhi Airport is due to replace Begumpet Airport in serving which Indian city?
HYDERABAD
posted by That Quiz Guy at 1:21 PM
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