Quiz Kings!

Last week we didn’t do as well in the quiz, missing out on the prizes with a fourth place. Another tricky connections round was our downfall.

This week we fared somewhat better. Having elected to play our joker on the first round (anagrams), we were dismayed when the quizmaster announced that the format of the round was, in fact, only one anagram, formed of the nine first letters of the first nine clues! We thought we’d been sold a pup, but soldiered on regardless…and, with seven of the nine letters, we got the anagram (we’d been given a clue that it was a place name), and were therefore able to reverse engineer our answers to the final two questions for a perfect 10 points on the round.

Having established a commanding lead from the beginning, we expected it to be whittled away over the following rounds as the seasoned quizzers of The Backbencher reeled us in. Which they did, but not convincingly enough, and at the start of the final connections round we were neck-and-neck with another team; several other teams were a point or so behind our lead. Both us and our rivals got the connection at the same time, so it came down to a final tally of correct answers in the round…and we’d both scored eight, to tie for first place. The tie-break question was, literally, a no-brainer (“How big is Homer Simpson’s brain? Is it a) small, b) medium, c) large?") I raced to the front with “small” written on a scrap of paper and, by virtue of getting there first, we won first place! Woohoo! (_8^(|) An $80 bar tab for next week!

So, the gauntlet has definitely been thrown down. Let’s see how we fare from now on in.

On the way home, walking past Nicola’s office, we met one of her colleagues coming out, and told her of our moment of glory. We also mentioned that we were still looking for a Kiwi to provide us with local knowledge (we’d fared badly on the “In The News” round again), and she volunteered to join us next week. Hopefully we’ll manage a bit better on the news next time!