Confession

Almost forgot to reveal my shame to a wider public

Guess what I got a question wrong on last night? Think Mastermind specialist subjects. Think the Caribbean.

And it wasn't how many wickets did Vanburn Holder get in the 1976 series. It was ... struggling to get this out ... ugh ... urrghhh ... (these are not pervy sex grunts by the way, more pained groaning caused by a lingering and genuine psychological wound) just one more ... yeoowaarrgh ... it was ... in which Caribbean capital is the Queen's Park cricket ground? ... and I said ... BRIDGETOWN! ... ye gods ... BRIDGETOWN ... bridgetown ...

Of course, it was Port of Spain. Of course, of course. The nanosecond after the craptastic answer was expelled from my mouth, I said: "That's the Kensington Oval!" Like an absolute muffing slop-tongued tosshead.

I have to face up to the stark truth. I have been rendered incapable of answering questions on cricket of any standard in a competitive quiz environment. Mastermind has killed something deep inside, something cricket-related. The chair does things to you.

It hurts. It hurts so much.

(If you would like OTT melodrama in future posts please signal your approval by some means. I don't know. A red rescue flare?* Thank you for reading this gunk)









*If I'd known The Inbetweeners was being filmed 400 metres from MY HOUSE, I would have gone down to the river and done some serious rubbernecking. Rubbernecking, like you've never seen. You better believe it.

Nice

FA Cup Analogy Headline Failure

So we have made it to only our second ever All London Cup. For that we can partly thank other teams who overcame the sides with humungous handicap start scores in earlier rounds (and, er, us not winning the league and having that important two-point advantage. Slim mercies indeed). We have managed to play teams who have been within a manageable reach of 10-14 points or thereabouts.

Still, the handicap ensured that it got rather hairy at the end last night, what with it being 51-51 and my having to answer the last, crucial question on Annie Get Your Gun. Now, given that the song titles were the most obvious ('Anything You Can Do' etc), this was straightforward enough, no, really shockingly straightforward, and if I got it wrong, oh lordy, would I give myself a right old face-punching.

But having just finished a second season marathon of Deadwood only hours before and seen Robin Weigert do her stuff as the ultra-profane, dipsomaniac filthmonger Calamity Jane in such a brilliant fashion that the performance and colourful expletives had been embedded in my mind and was doing a highlight reel at regular intervals -"that burnt ma snatch!" the sewer-mouthed scuzzbucket says jumping out of the first bath she's probably had in 20 years - so it got me a bit confused. Because I could have sworn before this very moment (checking on IMDB) that Doris Day was in Annie Get Your Gun, twirling her Colts while flashing her candyfloss smile, when in fact that was Betty Hutton and Miss Kappelhoff played Martha Jane Cannary-Burke.

Thankfully, the Calamity Jane fusillade of f-bombs only lasted for about 1.23 seconds and I went with Annie, thus ensuring our defeat of Barb 54-51. There, I got there. Finally.

But let us take a minute and reminisce about the first ever cup final we got to and say the words of pain: "hansom cab". Hansom. Cab. As ye who are not aware of what transpired that night, just look at the honour roll and see that we lost. All those years ago (sweet Jesus! 2003-2004!! Has it been that long? And if it has been why can't I get league staples like wedding anniversaries right? Oh I know why. Because they're so boring I would rather try and shovel a Chupa Chup up both nostrils with outstanding violence than diligently sit down and learn them and yield to the listology). What it didn't say was that we lost in the most agonising way possible, with the three-point turnaround on the very last question (what is it with me and "last questions"? They flock to me and torture me so).

Jesse was saying that he was in the BHs at the time, which was weird because he wasn't. I am sure Stainer found him (or maybe, hunted him down, like a sort of trivia-driven bloodhound, as is his recruiting M.O.) in a pub AFTER our sickening disaster in that cup final (oh why oh why did I pass? Was it safe? No. Gutless). It's been five years, though. We should do slightly better. Maybe.

Mildly Insane Quiz Work
For some reason, like a fire in my gut that must be quenched with 100,000 word text files, I have been lifting questions off the Belgian quiz archives and have used Google Translate and my burgeoning Christopher Hampton skillz to knock them into readable shape. And I have to say, there is no end of brilliant, relevant stuff that can be weaponised for future battle. Also, I swear if you did it for 12 hours too, you'd think you picked up a rudimentary knowledge of Dutch vocabulary. Which is a bit worrying because surely the sponging up of words like 'naam' and 'hoofstad' results in less room for the precious GK.

I've also been cutting down the ACF Nationals 2008 questions into useful bitesize bits of quiz, rather than keep the mountain of crushing detail that has been sunk into every toss-up and bonus (except when it's a question on say, Armenia or Angola, and they've thrown a lot of interesting random stuff in there willy nilly). I have to say, yes, the academic focus is far narrower than what is required for the sort of international all-round quizzing that I engage in, but the questions are absolutely, positively, the hardest in the world.

They could make you weep like Niagara if you were of a fair and brittle disposition. I hadn't seriously read them for about 2 and a half years, and I naively thought that my deeper GK had been built up to make me at least feel substantially more at ease with, say, the literature and history. I was wrong. Even going over toss-ups on novels I've read, and the exultant electic pop that an answer makes in your head when you just know you know didn't come until I'd got to the last line but three with Ragtime and and the final line(!!) of Humphrey Clinker. Or maybe I wasn't paying much attention with the Smollett. I have to say there were some great jokes in there. Pity I could remember sod all about the plot, which is what matters quiz-wise.

Only thing is standards and question content always evolve. Which means that everything gets harder, 'tis inevitable (just compare UC to yesteryear and see) and the ACF stuff has still stayed well ahead of the superficial likes of me. Mind you, listening to podcasts of actual matches from ACF Nationals (BTW, the appalling sound quality may drive you a little nuts) has assured me that there are very few of our American cousins who are superhuman UC-format masters on the ACF material. Many questions are missed and many get to the FTP line before the buzzers go off. Thus, we can all wallow in our shared feelings of slight mediocrity and smile wistfully.

Apologies for the gratuitous use of exclamation marks. It's a disease of inexpressiveness. Wait, is inexpressiveness even a word? *resists urge to go question/exclamation mark crazy*

FE:XXXXI
1. Having originated in Kongo and Angola, the dance known as bomba was brought to the place it is most associated with during the colonial slave trade. A maraca accompanies low-pitched hand drums, which create a base rhythm, while a higher pitch drum accentuates the beat with improvised patterns and sticks known as palitos and cuas that are struck against any wooden surface. Rafael Cortijo is regarded as its most famous exponent, having had mainstream success in the 50s and 60s with his “Combo”. He came from which self-governing unincorporated territory, the home of the said musical style?
2. Inspired to take up his calling after seeing Robert Motherwell's painting Elegy to the Spanish Republic, he specialised in found art collages and gave his works such generic titles as Still Life #20. Which Cincinnati pop artist’s series Great American Nude (begun 1961) first brought him to the attention of the art world?
3. It came first out of 79 breeds in Canadian psychologist Stanley Coren's 1994 book The Intelligence of Dogs, just about beating the poodle to be deemed top of the very brightest dogs. Which highly energetic British dog is also often considered the world's best sheep herding dog?
4. Its initial development was motivated by problems of statistical physics. A central aspect of the theory is the behaviour of a dynamical system when it is allowed to run long, which is expressed through theorem such as those of Birkhoff and von Neumann. Which branch of mathematics studies dynamical systems with an invariant measure and related problems?
5. Now under Turkish control, it was established in 1945 in Nuremberg by its eponymous founder. After WW2, he recognised the need in Germany for radios and in 1947 produced a kit. In 1951, the first televisions were manufactured at the new facility at Fürth and by this time it had become the largest radio manufacturer in Europe. Later it produced the Satellit 2100 radio receiver. Name this German manufacturer of consumer electronics for home entertainment.
6. The Garma Festival of Traditional Culture is an annual celebration of the 40,000-year-old cultural inheritance of the Yolngu people. In which country is it held?
7. Named for its engineer-polymath designer (1853-1939), which broadcasting tower in Moscow is a 160m-high free-standing hyperboloid structure that was built in 1919-1922 during the Russian Civil War? Its street address “Shabolovka Street, 37” gives it its informal name, the Shabolovka tower.
8. According to Egyptian mythology, this ancient city of Upper Egypt was the holy city of Osiris, who was buried there himself, as were many pharaohs. Standing 11km/6mi west of the Nile, the Greeks named it after their city on the Hellespont, while the modern Arabic name is el-‘Araba el Madfuna. Which sacred city was the site of many temples, including a Umm el-Qa’ab (‘Mother of Pots’) a necropolis of the Early Dynastic kings and the memorial temple of Seti I, which contains an inscription from the 19th dynasty known to the modern world as the “_______ King List”?
9. Though Valletta is the capital, what is the largest and most populous town on Malta and consists of four autonomous parishes: St. Helen, St. Joseph, Our Lady of the Carmel and St. Mary?
10. It is a fusion of Semba (samba’s predecessor) with the Zouk music styles from the French Caribbean styles with influences from other Lusophone countries. Famous Angolan exponents include Neide Van-Dúnem, Don Kikas, Calo Pascoal and Irmãos Verdades, and Bonga. Which dance and music style was created in late 1989 and the early 90s in Angola, but is now often regarded as Portuguese due to it being sung in Portuguese and its popularity throughout Portugal?
11. The German Prussian educator and nationalist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) is commonly known as Turnvater Jahn, roughly meaning the “father” of which sport?
12. Invented by the French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1796, what addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement counters the effects of gravity by escaping the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage in order to negate the effect of gravity when the timepiece is rotated?
13. Located in the Indonesian province of Papua, it is home to Puncak Jaya (formerly Carstensz Pyramid), the tallest mountain between the Himalayas and the Andes at 4,884m. Named for the Dutch explorer Hendrikus Albertus, who passed through the area on his 1909-10 expedition, what is the largest national park in South-East Asia?
14. Which lager brand was a soft drink manufacturer when it was incorporated on July 31, 1918 by Eugene Peter Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes, with the first eponymous drink being brewed in the Surrey Brewery in 1928? An ale-style beverage too heavy for local tastes, the current formulation was first produced from a recipe developed by Paul H. Geddes (son of the founder) and Bill Martindale in 1938 and the modern brewery was opened at Hunt’s Bay in 1958.
15. Olympic champion in the individual sabre event at the 1968 Mexico City Games, which Polish fencer and double agent was declared the best fencer of all time by the IFF in 1967 and was arrested in 1975 and sentenced by a military court in Warsaw to 25 years’ imprisonment for committing espionage on behalf of an unnamed NATO country? It was later revealed that he had been a double agent for the CIA from 1964 and for Polish intelligence from 1950.

D
E
M

S
U
M

C
H
U
N
K
Y

Q
U
E
S
T
I
O
N
S

Answers to FE:XXXXI
1. Puerto Rico 2. Tom Wesselmann 3. Border Collie 4. Ergodic theory 5. Grundig (named after Max Grundig) 6. Australia (Arnhem Land) 7. Shukhov radio tower (from Vladimir Shukhov) 8. Abydos 9. Birkirkara 10. Kizomba 11. Gymnastics 12. Tourbillon (meaning 'whirlwind') 13. Lorentz National Park 14. Red Stripe (brewed under license in the UK by the Bedford firm, Charles Wells) 15. Jerzy Pawlowski (1932-2005; refusing to be included in one of the spy exchanges at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge ten years after he was jailed, he chose to remain in Poland and spent the rest of his life as a painter and faith healer)

Rejected Questions

These are swap-outs from the first Shadow paper, which I've just about done. And I say, it's bloody hard work, what with it being 12,000 words long.

BH157: Alternates
1. Founded in Magdeburg in 2001, their music has been called emo, teen pop and glam rock. Which German band released both their second German-language album Zimmer 483 and their debut English album Scream in 2007 and led to them winning their first MTV Europe Music Award for Best InterAct?
2. The well-known theme music for the long-running PBS series Masterpiece Theater is the ‘Rondeau’ from Symphonies and Fanfares for the King’s Supper. Also known for his opera-ballet Les fêtes de Thalie and Le Triomphe des sens, which French composer (1682-1738) and Paris Opera orchestra director composed this signature tune?
3. This musician, a member of the International Submarine Band, The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, died at the age of 26 in a hotel room in Joshua Tree, California. A pivotal influence on country rock and alt-country, his 1973 & 1974 albums GP and Grievous Angel are often bundled together on one CD. Name him.
4. Which English pop singer had her career breakthrough in 1981 with ‘Kids in America’, but is best known in the US for her chart-topping cover of The Supremes’ hit ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’?
5. Sometimes known as the “Arabian Elvis” and el-Andaleeb el-Asmar (‘The Dark Nightingale’), which singer (1929-1977) is widely considered to be one of the four greats of Egyptian and Arabic music thanks to such songs as Ahwak (‘I Love You’), Khosara (‘A pity’) and Qariat el-Fingan (‘The Fortune-Teller’)? He also starred in Egypt’s first colour motion picture Dalilah.
6. What number gave the title of a series, which debuted on Dutch television in 1991 and originated the reality TV concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the resultant drama?
7. At 9,242 feet (2,817m) Phou Bia is located in Xiangkhouang Province. It is the highest point of which landlocked country?
8. Which group of Christian Anabaptists are named after a religious leader (1496-1561), who was born in the modern day Dutch province, Friesland? His writings articulated and formalised the teachings of earlier Swiss founders and there are now about 1.5 million followers worldwide.
9. Moors, Kaffirs and the Malays are ethnic communities in which island country, known as Taprobane in ancient times?
10. Which Russian anarchist communist organisation, whose English name means ‘The Black Banner’ (as in the black flag used as a symbol of anarchism in Russia) emerged as a federation of cadres in 1903 and was the largest and most conspicuous collection of anarchist terrorists in Imperial Russia?
11. Designed by Santiago Calatrava from a 1993 commission, Oriente Station is a transport terminus that serves which European capital?
12. Used by an average of 3.64 million people per day, what is the world’s busiest train station in terms of passenger throughput? Its nearest rival is another Tokyo station, Ikebukuro, which is used by an average 2.71 million per day.
13. Currently numbering about 750, the Batek or Bateq – their name meaning ‘original people’ - are an indigenous group who live in the rainforest of which Asian country?
14. The principal sources of its basic vocabulary were the six (at the time) most widely spoken languages: Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. Which constructed, syntactically unambiguous human language based on predicated logic was created by the Logic Language Group in 1987, its predecessor being Loglan, the original logical language created by James Cooke Brown?
15. Opened in 2004, the Chanel Tower was designed by New York-based architect Peter Marino. The largest retail space for the eponymous French fashion house, it is found in which capital city?
16. Affecting blood flow to the extremities (the fingers, toes, nose and ear) when exposed to cold temperatures or in response to psychological stress, which vascular disorder is name for Maurice _______ (1834-1881), the French physician who first described it in 1862?
17. Popularised by Professor Vernor Vinge, what two-word term is given to the theoretical future point that takes place during a period of unprecedented technological progress sometime after the creation of a Superintelligence, its name coming from an analogy between the breakdown of modern physics near a certain type of location and the drastic change in society that may occur following an intelligence explosion?
18. A colourless, odourless, viscous liquid widely used in pharmaceutical formulations, which chemical compound – also known as trihydroxypropane – is produced on saponification and is a 10% by-product of biodiesel production via the transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats?
19. Classified as a pepo by botanists (a special type of berry with a thick outer wall or rind formed from hypanthium tissue fused to the exocarp), its name generally refers to four species of the genus Curcubita, which is native to Mexico and Central America. Also called marrows depending on variety or the nationality of the speaker, which plant is divided into summer and winter types, the latter including butternut, Hubbard, spaghetti and pumpkin?
20. Discovered in 1841 by botanist William D. Brackenridge, the carnivorous California Pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica) has what alternative name due to the resemblance of its tubular leaves to a rearing snake, complete with a yellow or purplish-green forked leaf, which resembles fangs or a serpent’s tongue?
21. Lasting from 1905 to 1907, the Maji Maji Rebellion was a violent uprising by indigenous Africans against colonial rule in which German colony of German East Africa?
22. Different methods are called “shuttle” and “needle”. The term for it in most European languages is derived from French frivolité, which refers to the purely decorative nature of textiles produced by this technique. What is the technique for handcrafting a particularly durable lace constructed by a series of knots and loops called?
23. One of the most influential modern Chinese-language novelists, he co-founded and became the first editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong daily paper Ming Pao in 1959. Born Louis Cha, he wrote 14 novels in the Wuxia genre, which have been translated into Korean, English, Japanese, French, Vietnamese, Burmese and Thai. What is the pen-name of the author of such novels as The Book and the Sword (1955), Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain (1959) and Sword of the Yue Maiden (1972)?
24. This man has played various English-language parts, appearing in Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, Elizabeth, Eastern Promises and Guest House Paradiso. In his native France, his breakthrough role was that of Vinz in Le Haine and he has since gone on to star in L’Appartement, Irreversible and Dobermann. Which actor won the 2009 Cesar for Best Actor for playing the bank-robbing title role in Mesrine?
25. It has been called the tallest sea cliff in Europe and the world’s second tallest in many books and brochures, although at least two European cliffs (Preikestolen in Norway and Slieve League in Ireland) are higher. Situated less than 2km from the town of Camara de Lobos, which lofty sea cliff rises from 560 to 589 above sea level on the southern coast of the island of Madeira?

Y
O
U

P
R
O
L
L
Y

G
O
T

K
I
M

W
I
L
D
E

Answers to BH157
1. Tokio Hotel 2. Jean-Joseph Mouret 3. Gram Parsons 4. Kim Wilde 5. Abdel Halim Hafez or Abdel Halim Ismail Shabana 6. 28 (it was titled Nummer 28) 7. Laos 8. Mennonites (from Menno Simons) 9. Sri Lanka 10. Chernoe Znamia 11. Lisbon 12. Shinjuku Station 13. Malaysia 14. Lojban 15. Tokyo 16. Raynaud’s disease 17. Technological singularity 18. Glycerol or glycerine 19. Squash 20. Cobra lily or Cobra plant 21. Tanganyika 22. Tatting 23. Jin Yong 24. Vincent Cassel 25. Cabo Girão

Random Question Dumping

Just to clarify, message me via my username, thereby plonking your request for info etc in my inbox on the Quizzing site. Or leave a message in the comments box and I'll try and find your email address from my computer banks. Ta very much. In the meantime...

FE:XXXX
1. What five-letter word, with other uses, was used by Immanuel Kant to describe a subjective principle or rule that the will of an individual uses in making a decision?
2. Which German Expressionist painter and Die Brucke founder produced the 11-work series “Berlin Street Scenes” between 1913 and 1915?
3. Which Caribbean island shares its name with the vessel that was the flagship of the five ships, the others being San Antonio, Concepción, Santiago and Victoria, that set out on an expedition in 1519? The Victoria was, of course, the only one to circumnavigate the globe.
4. Which country’s name is traditionally said to derive from the Spanish pronunciation of “Wallace”, the name of the pirate who set up the first settlement there in 1638, though another possibility relates the name to a Maya word meaning ‘muddy water’?
5. Sights include the Museum of Mining (Hornické muzeum) and the Beneš Wall, a line of garrison fortifications similar to the Maginot Line. Nicknamed the “steel heart of the republic”, it is home to the football team FC Vitkovice and a namesake ice hockey team and is served by Leos Janáček Airport. The administrative centre of the Moravian-Silesian Region, what is the third largest city of the Czech Republic?

L
O
N
G

T
I
M
E

S
I
N
C
E

I
'
V
E

D
O
N
E

O
N
E

O
F

T
H
E
S
E

Answers to FE:XXXX
1. Maxim 2. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 3. Trinidad 4. Belize 5. Ostrava

Oh

This might explain a few things

I've been having problems accessing thegiantquiz@gmail.com for about a month, so please try and get me via the Quizzing website messaging thingymejob if you have demanded something I owe you, like quizzes.

Nearing the Season's End

This Month's Blog

(Nah, they'll be more regular this month, me promise)

Howdy. Second seems to be the theme of the last two months: President's Cup, QLL and yesterday's Rochester GP (it's always nice to have them in the south-east, even if the vagaries of our nation's rail system means that it still took me three hours to get there), and I will elaborate on them further when I have the time, or, if I can get out of the strange habit of watching four films a day at the moment. This may have something to do with my renewing my LOVEFiLM subscription and deciding to watch all those DVDs I have neglected to watch, despite buying them and freeing them from their plasticky sheaths. Then, as a bit of an off-shoot from the current cinemania, there's my film blog idea - a movie a day in 100 sterling, sarky words and bewildering neologisms - which is gestating, like the parasite inside lovely (in a weird way) Lizzy Caplan's stomach in Cloverfield. Though I have started and abandoned a half-dozen blogs nobody knows about anyway over the past five years. They be lost in the cyber-seas.

And, of course, once I find the parcel of Norwegian Giant papers I have misplaced (don't fret: they're not lost and neither are their scores, I just need them for confirmation and reasons of mild paranoia when I finally publish), the results will be finally unleashed upon a slightly annoyed by now - and I wouldn't blame you - participants.

Papers for Sale
However, I have been working on two Shadow Papers. Replete with original, brand spanking new 240 questions each and - shock, horror - even photographic pictures, they'll be ready for anyone who wishes to dish out £5 per paper (so let's say May 6).

Yep, I'm out to make a fast buck, but 'tis my trade after all and I can assure you of their high quality (you know my form ... but I utterly deny writing The Wire q for the Brain of London qualifier, so don't be pigeonholing me with cries of "that's a [TQG] question!"), even though I haven't actually written them yet.

However, I won't be running them as a competition (ha ha, he says to himself in light of aforementioned stuff and many an apologetic post) and will be handing you the answers at the same time. I'm not so sure about sending them out electronically, due to the ease of forwarding emails and attached files, so might have to stick on a bit of postage and paper/ink costs to the above fee, if I don't see you in the run-up face-to-face.

Anyway, they're coming, so that's something to look forward to, aside from the consequences of the economic apocalypse that are still in the post, I suppose.