BH122: This is getting regular like
The Benefits of Obsession
I have been doing a lot of setting at the moment, which is good because it keeps me off the streets and falling into violent ASBO delinquency. Maybe.
Actually, it is more because I have just finished the second completed draft of my next big e-mail (502-question) quiz (and yes, I hear the cries of quizzers in confederacy from across the land - WHERE ARE MY BEHEMOTH ANSWERS? And I say, they're coming. Please be patient and take into account my organisational ineptitude and inability to get to the post office in time).
(For those who may be put off by the sheer, soul-crushing size of the thing I have made a conscious effort to cut down on the big block questions. Therefore, the current word counts for The Quiz With No Name As Of Today is 12845 compared to a final tally of 13591 for The Behemoth. I will be cutting the former further, of course, since I haven't been able to do my 29th proofing of the thing yet, which is nothing compared to my running over The B'moth at least 78 times)
As ever, when inhabiting the land of quiz construction I over-do it somewhat by going off on one and finding stuff I feel compelled to turn into trivia teasers, whilst also writing tangential questions that I know won't make it into the quiz, but which are either interesting or may appear before me in some guise somewhere someday.
And I must confess, I bloody love it. To be lost in the maze of pedantry and inspiration and fact-overload, whilst always searching for and finding the kind of questions that swell the heart with a feeling of beautiful satisfaction, is a wondrous thing; albeit one in which you will probably accuse yourself of total distraction and isolation from the harshness of the real world. And I say, hey, there are many worse things I could do whilst cooped up in my bedroom. But let's not go there ... I mean, both my room and the realm of strange and disturbing possibility.
What this all means is that there is a mighty load of overspill: some I will save for the next 'big un, while others will end up in the BH quizzes, a series which I feel needs to be pepped up just a tad, especially when I am reminded of the glorious couple of months last year when I vowed to post a quiz every single day and most certainly did. I must have been insane.
But just to show that it was the kind of madness I like, I am stripping a BH quizzes across the next seven days, a la the style of the first series of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (do you remember when we were young ... yes, I have that KIllers song in my head, pounding away now on my mental jukebox. I may just boot up iTunes and listen to it right now. Sometimes I can't get enough of their glitzy overblown crapola). This is due to my having seven BH quizzes already written and ready to go.
Admittedly, you might find them a mite too idiosyncratic, but then this is my manor. Whatever I set or write goes. GOT IT? Sorry, I was channelling Ray Winstone there. You slags.
So the first is below (there must be a few annoying errors you will notice, so I apologise in advance). Happy headscratching ...
A Question, Then Another and Twenty-Eight More
1 What team sport was invented by Amsterdam teacher Nico Broekhuysen in 1901?
2 Which studio complex near Iver in Buckinghamshire, dates from 1934 when a wealthy builder named Charles Boot bought Heatherden Hall and named what he hoped would become the most advanced film studio in the world after the tall trees in the grounds?
3 From the French words for "field" and "raised", what term describes enamelling by the process of inlaying vitreous powders into channels cut in the metal base?
4 Which 1943 suspense novel by Nigel Balchin, centring on the troubled life of a disabled bomb disposal expert in WW2, was turned into a 1949 Powell & Pressburger film?
5 3HO is a form of which religion mainly practised in the US?
6 Which reclusive artist co-created Spiderman with Stan Lee?
7 Based on the Madonna film, the new musical Desperately Seeking Susan has been embellished with which band's songs?
8 The name Alvin Ailey is associated with which branch of the arts?
9 Whose play Driving Miss Daisy was adapted into the Oscar-winning film of the same name?
10 What in Australia is a "lubra"?
11 Who said of his nanny, Mrs Everest: "My nurse was my confidante. It was to her I poured out my many troubles"?
12 Which basketball player once famously referred to himself as "The Big Aristotle" on account of his philosophical post-match interviews and may have to pay a huge divorce settlement to his wife, Miami socialite Shaunie, due to his being named in a tell-all memoir by groupie and porn star Karrine Steffans?
13 Toppled by Pervez Musharraf in a non-violent coup and exiled to Saudi Arabia eight years ago, which former Pakistani prime minister and party leader of the Pakistan Muslim League has attempted to re-enter his home nation?
14 Twenty-one nations make up Apec. What is this organisation's full name?
15 Who is the unpopular Crown Prince of Nepal?
16 What Japanese term, meaning uncle, has come to stand for middle-aged men in general?
17 What does the Japanese company Shiseido manufacture?
18 Which "Ecumenical Patriarch" is the leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians?
19 Which fast-moving glacier, located off Greenland, has been cited as the probable source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic?
20 Which London's famed Harlequin suite costs upwards of £5,300 per night to hire?
21 The Bab Touma is the Christian quarter of which Middle East capital, whose Roman main street is called Via Recta?
22 The Aztec people perhaps derived their name from their legendary place of origin. By what name is it known?
23 Which explorer (c.1475-1519) gave his name to the currency of Panama?
24 In which 1971 Sidney Lumet film did Sean Connery attempt to shake off his James Bond image as a charming master thief whose plans to rob a luxury apartment block are hindered due to their being recorded on hidden police bugs and cameras?
25 Dudley Moore's big Hollywood breakthrough when he replaced which US actor as the star of 10?
26 Referring to the betrayal of standards by politically-influenced intellectuals, the French phrase "trahison des clercs" (treason of the clerks) originated in the 1927 work La Trahison des Clercs. Who wrote it?
27 In a 1963 comic novella, which "microcephalic community" is located "several and a half metric miles North East of Sligo, split by a cascading stream, her body on earth, her feet in water"?
28 To which order do bats, or any mammals with membranes connecting their fingers and used as wings, belong?
29 Which axis deer takes its name from the Sanskrit for "spotted"?
30 What type of headwear, a symbol of liberty at the time of the Revolution, is usually depicted as being worn by Marianne, the female symbol of the French republic?
I
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Answers to BH122
1 Korfball 2 Pinewood Studios 3 Champleve 4 The Small Back Room 5 Sikhism 6 Steve Ditko 7 Blondie 8 Dance (as in the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre) 9 Alfred Uhry 10 An Aboriginal woman 11 Winston Churchill 12 Shaquille O'Neal 13 Nawaz Sharif 14 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation 15 Paras 16 Oyaji 17 Cosmetics 18 Bartholomew 19 Sermeq Kujalleq glacier 20 The Dorchester 21 Damascus 22 Aztlan 23 Vasco Nunez de Balboa 24 The Anderson Tapes 25 George Segal 26 Julien Benda 27 Puckoon (by Spike Milligan) 28 Chiroptera 29 Chital 30 Phrygian cap
I have been doing a lot of setting at the moment, which is good because it keeps me off the streets and falling into violent ASBO delinquency. Maybe.
Actually, it is more because I have just finished the second completed draft of my next big e-mail (502-question) quiz (and yes, I hear the cries of quizzers in confederacy from across the land - WHERE ARE MY BEHEMOTH ANSWERS? And I say, they're coming. Please be patient and take into account my organisational ineptitude and inability to get to the post office in time).
(For those who may be put off by the sheer, soul-crushing size of the thing I have made a conscious effort to cut down on the big block questions. Therefore, the current word counts for The Quiz With No Name As Of Today is 12845 compared to a final tally of 13591 for The Behemoth. I will be cutting the former further, of course, since I haven't been able to do my 29th proofing of the thing yet, which is nothing compared to my running over The B'moth at least 78 times)
As ever, when inhabiting the land of quiz construction I over-do it somewhat by going off on one and finding stuff I feel compelled to turn into trivia teasers, whilst also writing tangential questions that I know won't make it into the quiz, but which are either interesting or may appear before me in some guise somewhere someday.
And I must confess, I bloody love it. To be lost in the maze of pedantry and inspiration and fact-overload, whilst always searching for and finding the kind of questions that swell the heart with a feeling of beautiful satisfaction, is a wondrous thing; albeit one in which you will probably accuse yourself of total distraction and isolation from the harshness of the real world. And I say, hey, there are many worse things I could do whilst cooped up in my bedroom. But let's not go there ... I mean, both my room and the realm of strange and disturbing possibility.
What this all means is that there is a mighty load of overspill: some I will save for the next 'big un, while others will end up in the BH quizzes, a series which I feel needs to be pepped up just a tad, especially when I am reminded of the glorious couple of months last year when I vowed to post a quiz every single day and most certainly did. I must have been insane.
But just to show that it was the kind of madness I like, I am stripping a BH quizzes across the next seven days, a la the style of the first series of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (do you remember when we were young ... yes, I have that KIllers song in my head, pounding away now on my mental jukebox. I may just boot up iTunes and listen to it right now. Sometimes I can't get enough of their glitzy overblown crapola). This is due to my having seven BH quizzes already written and ready to go.
Admittedly, you might find them a mite too idiosyncratic, but then this is my manor. Whatever I set or write goes. GOT IT? Sorry, I was channelling Ray Winstone there. You slags.
So the first is below (there must be a few annoying errors you will notice, so I apologise in advance). Happy headscratching ...
A Question, Then Another and Twenty-Eight More
1 What team sport was invented by Amsterdam teacher Nico Broekhuysen in 1901?
2 Which studio complex near Iver in Buckinghamshire, dates from 1934 when a wealthy builder named Charles Boot bought Heatherden Hall and named what he hoped would become the most advanced film studio in the world after the tall trees in the grounds?
3 From the French words for "field" and "raised", what term describes enamelling by the process of inlaying vitreous powders into channels cut in the metal base?
4 Which 1943 suspense novel by Nigel Balchin, centring on the troubled life of a disabled bomb disposal expert in WW2, was turned into a 1949 Powell & Pressburger film?
5 3HO is a form of which religion mainly practised in the US?
6 Which reclusive artist co-created Spiderman with Stan Lee?
7 Based on the Madonna film, the new musical Desperately Seeking Susan has been embellished with which band's songs?
8 The name Alvin Ailey is associated with which branch of the arts?
9 Whose play Driving Miss Daisy was adapted into the Oscar-winning film of the same name?
10 What in Australia is a "lubra"?
11 Who said of his nanny, Mrs Everest: "My nurse was my confidante. It was to her I poured out my many troubles"?
12 Which basketball player once famously referred to himself as "The Big Aristotle" on account of his philosophical post-match interviews and may have to pay a huge divorce settlement to his wife, Miami socialite Shaunie, due to his being named in a tell-all memoir by groupie and porn star Karrine Steffans?
13 Toppled by Pervez Musharraf in a non-violent coup and exiled to Saudi Arabia eight years ago, which former Pakistani prime minister and party leader of the Pakistan Muslim League has attempted to re-enter his home nation?
14 Twenty-one nations make up Apec. What is this organisation's full name?
15 Who is the unpopular Crown Prince of Nepal?
16 What Japanese term, meaning uncle, has come to stand for middle-aged men in general?
17 What does the Japanese company Shiseido manufacture?
18 Which "Ecumenical Patriarch" is the leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians?
19 Which fast-moving glacier, located off Greenland, has been cited as the probable source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic?
20 Which London's famed Harlequin suite costs upwards of £5,300 per night to hire?
21 The Bab Touma is the Christian quarter of which Middle East capital, whose Roman main street is called Via Recta?
22 The Aztec people perhaps derived their name from their legendary place of origin. By what name is it known?
23 Which explorer (c.1475-1519) gave his name to the currency of Panama?
24 In which 1971 Sidney Lumet film did Sean Connery attempt to shake off his James Bond image as a charming master thief whose plans to rob a luxury apartment block are hindered due to their being recorded on hidden police bugs and cameras?
25 Dudley Moore's big Hollywood breakthrough when he replaced which US actor as the star of 10?
26 Referring to the betrayal of standards by politically-influenced intellectuals, the French phrase "trahison des clercs" (treason of the clerks) originated in the 1927 work La Trahison des Clercs. Who wrote it?
27 In a 1963 comic novella, which "microcephalic community" is located "several and a half metric miles North East of Sligo, split by a cascading stream, her body on earth, her feet in water"?
28 To which order do bats, or any mammals with membranes connecting their fingers and used as wings, belong?
29 Which axis deer takes its name from the Sanskrit for "spotted"?
30 What type of headwear, a symbol of liberty at the time of the Revolution, is usually depicted as being worn by Marianne, the female symbol of the French republic?
I
A
M
A
T
H
A
Y
W
A
R
D
S
H
E
A
T
H
Answers to BH122
1 Korfball 2 Pinewood Studios 3 Champleve 4 The Small Back Room 5 Sikhism 6 Steve Ditko 7 Blondie 8 Dance (as in the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre) 9 Alfred Uhry 10 An Aboriginal woman 11 Winston Churchill 12 Shaquille O'Neal 13 Nawaz Sharif 14 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation 15 Paras 16 Oyaji 17 Cosmetics 18 Bartholomew 19 Sermeq Kujalleq glacier 20 The Dorchester 21 Damascus 22 Aztlan 23 Vasco Nunez de Balboa 24 The Anderson Tapes 25 George Segal 26 Julien Benda 27 Puckoon (by Spike Milligan) 28 Chiroptera 29 Chital 30 Phrygian cap
posted by That Quiz Guy at 6:06 PM
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