9/04/2005 06:15:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||

Saturday night was an interesting change from the usual "spend the evening on the computer, doing nothing really productive"- I went to a quiz night for employees of my place of work. It was held at quite an unusual place, so you'll have to use your imagination. It was in a big tent, which was in the garden of a so-called "pub". Apparently there's a small minority of people who rather than spend their evenings clicking "Stumble" on the Stumbledupon toolbar, go to these places and drink and "socialise".

Only later it turned out that I wasn't being paid overtime for being there!

Anyway, it was a bit like the quiz episode of The Office. We'd all been previously put into teams- I was with Matt, John and his girlfriend- all three were last seen together at Matt's birthday party, last April. There was four or five other teams, predominantly made up of the full time staff, but our main rivals. There were a handful of other teams made up of the other members of staff there, but our main rivals were "Team Tills", which, as you might have guessed from the name, was the rest of the till people who arn't me. By "main rivals", I mean that I'd been boasting for a few weeks previously about how we were going to own them like noobs. I don't think they were taking the quiz as seriously as I was.

This is where my plan fell apart slightly - I was anticipating questions like the general knowledge round on Mastermind. That is to say: politics, history, flags, greek gods, artists, Shakespeare, "what is the capital of x?" type questions. Unfortunately, these subjects only made up one or two of the sixty questions.

The first round was ten "riddles", with the clue being Chocolate- for example, "The red planet", would be referring to Mars. They were slightly more cryptic than that. It was here I first thought a Slashdot round was becoming slightly less likely. Following this was the music round - ten tracks were played and we had to name the artist and song. The only one we recognised was the Crazy Frog. Where was the Canadian hardcore punk? Team Tills, as they called themselves, or Team Rubbish, as I called them were probably going to do quite well here, which worried me a bit.

After this though, it was the "general" knowledge round! Excellent! This is what I was here for. First question: "who is the presenter of The X-Factor?".

...

Hmm. Oh well, it's the taking part that counts- dignity isn't everything. I mean, yes, I was being beaten at a general knowledge quiz by a team of now-tipsy women, and yes, I'd just paid £2.20 to watch a former school "mate" pour Coke from a standard bottle into a glass, but it's the taking part that counts!

Question 39 is where things got good for us anyway- "Who was sacked twice by Tony Blair and is now EU trade commissioner?". Team Rubbish said "William Hague". I'm not even going to go into the reasons why THAT is incorrect, but I knew the correct answer immediately, which is the main thing. It was obviously "Prince of Darkness", Peter Mandelson.

In the end, we got 42/60, and more importantly, our rivals got a pathetic 40/60. Yes, we were one from last. In our defence, all of the members from the other teams have been alive for longer than us, and might actually remember Nixon's death in 1994, or be the sort of person who can endure The X-Factor, without their brain melting and creating a sticky mess on the bottom of the interior of their skull.

All in all, we didn't win, but at least no one can say to me "you got beaten by a girl!".

|||112585503819168548|||Wilko Quiz