Quicksilver, of distant notoriety, Cross Country Quiz, Mastermind, University Challenge, Pointless, ok, we all love a ‘quiz’. The smug feeling of being able to answer that one obscure trivia question or the frustration of grasping for that either/or choice. On a cold Thursday evening, nine eager teams, suitably charged with their own choice of home refreshment met by the new modern miracle of Zoom for another quiz evening. This time loosely centred around a romantic theme for Valentine’s Day.
So, Zoom connections, access codes, all very efficiently sorted out by Rachel and Helen. Teams allocated, break out rooms arranged, cameras, mutes on or off. And to Round One: Eyes down, confer if you want, your starter for ten………!
An ingenious round of flower colours and their associations. After dealing with the first couple of easy ones, the rest were down to inspired and desperate guesswork. After frantic deliberations, the answers e-mailed back to the scorer, Helen.
And so onto Round Two: A round of topical trivia. Where else could you get Henry VIII and the Easter Bunny in the same round? Answers duly returned and we had the results of the ‘flowers’, I’m still hazy how our team did here.
Round 3: Romantic couples from past TV programs. Here, I wasn’t too bad up to the 1980’s and glorious black & white, and memory failed me, but fortunately my team mates were able to fill in the gaps.
Tea time, I missed the real tea break and a chance for a chat in the old Hall and, like a school exam, answer swopping, “what did you have for No 5?” but hopefully we will again soon.
Back to business, Round 4, Geography, places and landmarks. Quickly disposed of! “How do you spell the name of that unfinished Spanish cathedral? And what was that ‘skyscraper’?
Round 5: Eight romantic song lyrics with love in the title but made more difficult without the tune, and just who did have the original hit and when. Answers returned and marks awarded, and so into the final closely contested decider round, with all teams head to head! Round 6: Romantic Film Couples, all the way from Gregory Peck & Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Hugh Grant, Renee Zellweger and Lady GaGa!
Final results all in, votes counted, disputed, stewards enquiries and the final winning team, the Healy Raise were declared to have won by a narrow margin and were presented with a box of chocolates. As the great Robert Robinson on Brain of Britain used to say, ‘and this magnificent round of applause’! Everybody else scored lots of points and all did very well!
Realistically, the whole evening was the winner! It was a lot of fun and not treated too seriously. It was nice to be able to have such a social event in these restricted times when we can’t meet together. To see old friends and faces, all be it in the distance, but hopefully we will all be able to meet again soon. On a personal note, a sincere thanks to Rachel & Helen for putting the quiz together. I know from my own previous experience how difficult it is to organise and set the questions for any such quiz. There was an awful lot of inspired thought that went into setting the themed questions for this evening. And doing all the techie stuff. It all went very well! Again in the words of Robert Robinson, “a further and spontaneous round of applause!” Ronnie Hamilton