More Quizzing Mayhem

I was asked to stand in for Peter again this week as quizmaster, and the choice of "black-eyed Pete's" [a riff off Black Eyed Peas] as a team name was a not too subtle allusion as to why. I was short of inspiration for that week's quiz so it took a fairly long time to set. In the end, I set rounds on Remembering '89 (in honour of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall); A Test of Character (teams had to name the film after I listed out some characters from it); and The Natural World (Animals, Plants, Physical Geography).

It was a full house - nine teams in total - and it made for a fairly good night. There was a bunch of first timers that definitely caught the eye no less because one of the members was a television personality who was a presenter on ESPN Sport Center. Attractive young ladies are a rarity at Old Brown Shoe quiz nights, so it was refreshing to see two of them that night, teammates of said television personality.

It turned out to be a fantastic quiz, perfectly pitched. By the end of the night, as many as 5 or 6 teams had a shot at winning it, and the top 5 were separated by a mere four points. The team with the attractive young ladies won, but sadly they had to forfeit their winnings for violating the long standing rule that each team could only have a maximum of six members. I still gave them a bottle of wine though, along with the third placed team. To give some idea of the balanced scoring, none of the nine teams scored a perfect 10 in any of the rounds; almost all teams scored at least a five in every round except for a team, self-styled as the "wooden spoons", which predictably struggled.

All in all, it was a very fascinating night, made even lovelier when I ended up speaking to Colette afterwards and was introduced to one of the girls - Emilie - who proved to be slightly tipsy. She proceeded to show her immense flexibility by placing both feet at either ends of the table top, and her considerable singing prowess by belting out some tunes from Annie. No doubt the alcohol had something to do with it, but I suspect she is generally random and slightly crazy, which is quite wonderful. A great pity then that I didn't get her number, one can only hopes she comes down to quiz again.