Let's Get Quizzical

On Tuesday, we went to the usual quiz night at the Backbencher pub – joined this week by Nick and Alannah from Nicola’s work. The questions were difficult (some rounds most teams were scoring 1-5 correct answers) and competition was tight, and came down to a tie-break for second place between us and our arch-rivals in the corner; the tie-break question, set by the landlord's daughter (aged 8) was “in what month was my dog born?” – not the sort of information that’s readily available, or work-out-able from first principles. So I guessed October, and it was right! Second place to us for the second week running. So far, so good.

On Thursday, my employer organised a fundraising quiz for the Christchurch earthquake relief fund being organised by the Red Cross (you can donate here) at one of Wellington’s big sports bars, Four Kings. This was a much more organised affair, involving telly screens, pictures, music and video clips, and two rounds to play our jokers on. There was also a “ponderous poser” where increasingly easy clues (one per quiz round) are given to identify the answer – the sooner you get the answer, the more points you get.

There were also spot prizes being given throughout, and when the MC came round to our section and asked the question (Who do the All Blacks play in the first match of the Rugby World Cup?) Andy sprang to his feet and gave the answer first – thus earning himself a t-shirt and a water bottle. There was a raffle too, so we all bought tickets, and crossed our fingers. Halfway through the quiz they announced the raffle winners…and I am the lucky recipient of a crate of wine! How lucky I am has yet to be determined, as it hasn’t arrived yet, so I don’t know how good the wine is. Also throughout the quiz there were auctions for various prizes (a football signed by the All Whites, that kind of thing) which raised significant amounts of cash.

We’d played our jokers on the final two rounds – Science & Nature (“green, green, we never get them wrong”) and Geography. We’d also got the ponderous poser for maximum points, and, when the final score was counted, we’d snuck up the leader board from nowhere to claim – you guessed it – second prize! We were somewhat gobsmacked ourselves – as John shows in this picture!

What a team!

The prize was a bottle of wine each and a $50 bar tab which we immediately spent on a round of drinks.

Afterwards, some of the tables were cleared and a casino set up – again proceeds go to charity – and we hung around a while, playing roulette and blackjack. There was also a crooner singing Frank Sinatra songs and the like.

So the proverbial good time was had by all, and a lot of money raised for the Christchurch appeal.

On Friday, we went to the Treasury quiz night. This was a much more informal affair, and was being run for fun only – no hard cash was at stake. Although at one point we’d reached the dizzy heights of second place, we failed at the final hurdle and ended up in mid-table, failing to make a three-from-three end to the week. Ah well.

Afterwards we went to dinner at Arbitrageur, a wine bar/restaurant in the CBD that had been recommended to me by John. After the somewhat disappointing experience at the White House a couple of weeks ago, I was somewhat trepidatious, but my fears turned out to be unfounded as they served us with very good food and wine, and didn’t hang about all night! One of their selling points is their food and wine matching, with over 60 wines available by the glass and a waiter who clearly knew his stuff. I was happy to defer to his knowledge and let him select wines to go with my menu choices. I think we’ll be going back to this place. They also do tapas (with wine selections) so we don’t need to go the whole hog from the a la carte menu. We also ran into a couple that we know from our dancing classes there.

Next week, we’re back to just one quiz night…it’s about time we took the top prize again at the Backbencher, so thinking hats on!