This is More Blackpool
European Quiz Championships Part II
Individuals: 7th by system/5th by total correct answers
I can't believe some of the answers I missed - oh yeah, you better believe it, here I go again. Same time, same place. The "Calvin" name question. I can't believe I thought 144 was the 3rd perfect number. The deluge of unforced errors made me shriek inside. But then I couldn't believe that Tom Trogh and I beat Kevin in round two and momentarily halted his journey to the top table. Kevin stayed. We left him behind. A temporary, high-falutin hooray from this nearly 29-year-old. Hubris? I would get my deserved share. Don't fret for a second about natural justice.
Having lost out (the taste was acrid and demoralising ... like milk you realise has long gone sour and is making good on it salmonella promises) in the first round I got some momentum going and finally got to the end of the room, the elevated place where the temporarily beknighted trivia dons could cock a snook at those who lay before them - if they so wished - only to be demoted after some heinous misses on OJ Simpson's Ford Bronco (I watched that chase. I watched it like a hypnotised idiot. But then it was so long ago. Well, in relative terms for me it was) and Theseus's first wife (I clarified "Did they say his first wife?" with the rest of the people in my vicinity including Jeopardy Ken and Erik Derycke. They said yes so I crossed out Phaedra and put Ariadne. What a freaking idiot. What a powertool of the highest order). That was, however, a temporary aberration, and by the time the final round arrived I was in place ready to royally screw up all my previously slightly mixed but still proficient work. Thus, I scored five out of the final 20. I had dished up the trivia equivalent of piffle pizza.
To be honest I had no real complaints about the questions - because I am quite simply LIKE THAT and have transcended question difficulty debates unless they're too frigging easy and insult me - ME! - with their duh-ness - though I did point out that perhaps your final round is a little bit too hard when the reigning world champion scored 7/20 on the last round and the three-time winner got only 6. Something was definitely askew. Frankly, I only had myself to blame for my poor, lonesome quintet of answers. There are some things I cannot change. Call it pre-deterministic Calvinistic craven thinking. I am destined to always confuse the Zeeman with the Seebeck effect. Actually, all effects in physics confuse the hell out of me despite my trying again and again to get some sort of concrete hold on their key terms at the very least.
Figueras was another annoying blunder. No, I thought they won't ask for Dali; it's a mite too hard. Nobody's actually heard of Figueras, but loads of lager-sodden ape-proles have larged it in Malaga. Yes: Picasso and Malaga. Twas foolish thinking indeed. The giant eggs in the picture should have been a giveaway apparently. And this was the final round: the one that would decide the champion of all Europeland. Course the questions were going to be amazingly tricky to tackle. Like playing football with cumbersome, obsidian boulders. What did I expect? A gentle featherbed of trivial morsels I had seen a thousands times before? Talk about deluded.
(Although, I looked up this band called Saybia. They sound too much like those imperial dickheads Kasabian, in nomenclature terms: and we all know quizzing is really about the art of getting to grips with nomenclature don't we? They're Danish for chrissakes. Danish rock bands never get record contracts in this country. It's illegal or something. Swedes and the occasional Norwegians, but bands from Denmark? It's too close to Germany that's why. And we all know what sort of music they like: BURN THE HOFF! BURN THE HOFF! Another wonderful Reading '97 memory).
Then again, what am I complaining about? I scored 60. I made it to 7th by system and 5th by aggregate score. I easily retained my European ranking of fourth. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's these absurdly high standards I set myself you see: they are like giant leaden lumps constantly crushing my back and shoulders. If only I could release myself from such silly mental strictures then I could see the forest for the trees and congratulate myself on a job well done. Only it doesn't work like that, and a palpable sense of promise unfulfilled and mildly deflating defeat pervade my immediate emotions. Only now, more than a month after Blackpool has passed can I rest easy ... AND THEN work myself up into an insane, disappointed tizzy about the next all-important championships where I will, yet again, ferociously self-flagellate myself until my mind and psyche combine to form a red raw network of pained, agonised rivulets which I will repeatedly nudge and stab at because it feel so darn good/bad. God, I don't know why I bother. I might as shove my head in a filthy council dustbin and leave it there - resting in the fetid darkness - for the next year for all the good this quizzing lark does me.
And relax... (Forgive me, I was doing a Charlie Brooker - my wisdom-filled bastard hero there and unhinging myself from reality there. It's not how I really feel. Honest. Ha ha he just said when Gillian McKeith smiles it looks like she's trying to shit a pine cone. It's funny because it is sooooo true).
But on a more serious note with regard to the singles component of the EQC weekend: please make the tables bigger. It was too much of a sardines and tin can situation for many of us. Lesigny's roundtables were parfait. Also, introduce name badges. People recognise names, but how many will recognise foreign faces and vice versa. Most of the time we just looked up at each other hoping to see a familiar visage and exchange some jocular "God, this is harder than trying to climb K2 with both hands tied behind my back whilst stark bollock naked, isn't it?" banter, but instead seeing a complete stranger and retreating into a far from amicable shell.
Sci-fi quiz: 2nd
This was cool. Though we stumbled wearily once more into the Derby room, whilst most of the contestant contingent was stuffing themselves heartily with good British grub (i.e. Bangladeshi-cooked curry) Bayley and I partnered up and I found to my delight that it was more of a pop culture quiz with sci-fi and fantasy elements making subtle appearances. Steven did a sterling job by actually making it interesting and not too geeky and some guesses - both wild and highly logical - came off. Yeah, let's put down the only Robert Henlein novel I can think of. Brilliant. That tokenistic question really came up trumps for us. Bayley, however, protested loudly as to the absence of Doctor Who. Steven replied along the lines of nobody knows sod all about him on the continent you British weirdoes, which was fair enough. But Steven did say it in a much more polite way.
(Part III tomorrow ... or maybe the day after ... or after the weekend ... I DUNNO?!!)
Individuals: 7th by system/5th by total correct answers
I can't believe some of the answers I missed - oh yeah, you better believe it, here I go again. Same time, same place. The "Calvin" name question. I can't believe I thought 144 was the 3rd perfect number. The deluge of unforced errors made me shriek inside. But then I couldn't believe that Tom Trogh and I beat Kevin in round two and momentarily halted his journey to the top table. Kevin stayed. We left him behind. A temporary, high-falutin hooray from this nearly 29-year-old. Hubris? I would get my deserved share. Don't fret for a second about natural justice.
Having lost out (the taste was acrid and demoralising ... like milk you realise has long gone sour and is making good on it salmonella promises) in the first round I got some momentum going and finally got to the end of the room, the elevated place where the temporarily beknighted trivia dons could cock a snook at those who lay before them - if they so wished - only to be demoted after some heinous misses on OJ Simpson's Ford Bronco (I watched that chase. I watched it like a hypnotised idiot. But then it was so long ago. Well, in relative terms for me it was) and Theseus's first wife (I clarified "Did they say his first wife?" with the rest of the people in my vicinity including Jeopardy Ken and Erik Derycke. They said yes so I crossed out Phaedra and put Ariadne. What a freaking idiot. What a powertool of the highest order). That was, however, a temporary aberration, and by the time the final round arrived I was in place ready to royally screw up all my previously slightly mixed but still proficient work. Thus, I scored five out of the final 20. I had dished up the trivia equivalent of piffle pizza.
To be honest I had no real complaints about the questions - because I am quite simply LIKE THAT and have transcended question difficulty debates unless they're too frigging easy and insult me - ME! - with their duh-ness - though I did point out that perhaps your final round is a little bit too hard when the reigning world champion scored 7/20 on the last round and the three-time winner got only 6. Something was definitely askew. Frankly, I only had myself to blame for my poor, lonesome quintet of answers. There are some things I cannot change. Call it pre-deterministic Calvinistic craven thinking. I am destined to always confuse the Zeeman with the Seebeck effect. Actually, all effects in physics confuse the hell out of me despite my trying again and again to get some sort of concrete hold on their key terms at the very least.
Figueras was another annoying blunder. No, I thought they won't ask for Dali; it's a mite too hard. Nobody's actually heard of Figueras, but loads of lager-sodden ape-proles have larged it in Malaga. Yes: Picasso and Malaga. Twas foolish thinking indeed. The giant eggs in the picture should have been a giveaway apparently. And this was the final round: the one that would decide the champion of all Europeland. Course the questions were going to be amazingly tricky to tackle. Like playing football with cumbersome, obsidian boulders. What did I expect? A gentle featherbed of trivial morsels I had seen a thousands times before? Talk about deluded.
(Although, I looked up this band called Saybia. They sound too much like those imperial dickheads Kasabian, in nomenclature terms: and we all know quizzing is really about the art of getting to grips with nomenclature don't we? They're Danish for chrissakes. Danish rock bands never get record contracts in this country. It's illegal or something. Swedes and the occasional Norwegians, but bands from Denmark? It's too close to Germany that's why. And we all know what sort of music they like: BURN THE HOFF! BURN THE HOFF! Another wonderful Reading '97 memory).
Then again, what am I complaining about? I scored 60. I made it to 7th by system and 5th by aggregate score. I easily retained my European ranking of fourth. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's these absurdly high standards I set myself you see: they are like giant leaden lumps constantly crushing my back and shoulders. If only I could release myself from such silly mental strictures then I could see the forest for the trees and congratulate myself on a job well done. Only it doesn't work like that, and a palpable sense of promise unfulfilled and mildly deflating defeat pervade my immediate emotions. Only now, more than a month after Blackpool has passed can I rest easy ... AND THEN work myself up into an insane, disappointed tizzy about the next all-important championships where I will, yet again, ferociously self-flagellate myself until my mind and psyche combine to form a red raw network of pained, agonised rivulets which I will repeatedly nudge and stab at because it feel so darn good/bad. God, I don't know why I bother. I might as shove my head in a filthy council dustbin and leave it there - resting in the fetid darkness - for the next year for all the good this quizzing lark does me.
And relax... (Forgive me, I was doing a Charlie Brooker - my wisdom-filled bastard hero there and unhinging myself from reality there. It's not how I really feel. Honest. Ha ha he just said when Gillian McKeith smiles it looks like she's trying to shit a pine cone. It's funny because it is sooooo true).
But on a more serious note with regard to the singles component of the EQC weekend: please make the tables bigger. It was too much of a sardines and tin can situation for many of us. Lesigny's roundtables were parfait. Also, introduce name badges. People recognise names, but how many will recognise foreign faces and vice versa. Most of the time we just looked up at each other hoping to see a familiar visage and exchange some jocular "God, this is harder than trying to climb K2 with both hands tied behind my back whilst stark bollock naked, isn't it?" banter, but instead seeing a complete stranger and retreating into a far from amicable shell.
Sci-fi quiz: 2nd
This was cool. Though we stumbled wearily once more into the Derby room, whilst most of the contestant contingent was stuffing themselves heartily with good British grub (i.e. Bangladeshi-cooked curry) Bayley and I partnered up and I found to my delight that it was more of a pop culture quiz with sci-fi and fantasy elements making subtle appearances. Steven did a sterling job by actually making it interesting and not too geeky and some guesses - both wild and highly logical - came off. Yeah, let's put down the only Robert Henlein novel I can think of. Brilliant. That tokenistic question really came up trumps for us. Bayley, however, protested loudly as to the absence of Doctor Who. Steven replied along the lines of nobody knows sod all about him on the continent you British weirdoes, which was fair enough. But Steven did say it in a much more polite way.
(Part III tomorrow ... or maybe the day after ... or after the weekend ... I DUNNO?!!)
posted by That Quiz Guy at 8:57 AM
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