MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Got to provide a round of 10 questions on Sunday.
Thought I'd ask on here rather than actually doing some thinking!
I always liked 'Where is the Sea of Tranquility'
Got loads, including some really difficult (but I think interesting ones). How about:
The Arabic phrase “Shah Maat”, literally “The King is dead” has evolved into which modern day term?
Not sure how to post a hidden answer, but I could message you direct.
Answers would-be good as I'm sure none of the quizzers are on here!
There is only one football league team in the UK with a specific letter in it's name, that letter doesn't appear in any other league team's name. Which team is it, and what is the letter?
A - St Johnstone, the letter is J
Henrick Larson scored his first and last competitive goals at Celtic Park against the same team, which team was it?
A - Celtic, his first was an own goal and his last was when playing for Barca
I enjoyed a music round where they gave the first names of the band members and you name the band.
Can start easy but get progressively harder / use real names instead of stage names etc. Farrokh, anyone?
Works for old and young too by mixing them up. Do you know the first names of Little Mix?
@zippykona I was letting other STW-ers have a guess. The answer to mine is "Checkmate". My complete set of questions, from the first quiz I did are:
1. The region once known as Mesopotamia is mostly composed of which 2 modern day countries?
2. Who wrote the George Sherston trilogy consisting of “Memoirs of a fox hunting man”, “Memoirs of an Infantry Officer” and “Sherston’s progress”?
3. What is the state capital of California?
4. What metal has the chemical symbol W derived from the name of its ore “Wolframite”?
5. When decrypting cypher text what is a Crib?
6. Who wears the Maglia Rosa (Pink jersey)?
7. The Arabic phrase “Shah Maat”, literally “The King is dead” has evolved into which modern day term?
8. In sailing terms what is the name for the opposite of tacking. i.e. turning downwind.
9. Tim Berners-Lee, or to give him his full title, Professor Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS is famous for inventing what?
10. What number on the Beaufort scale is defined at sea as “The air is filled with foam and spray; sea is completely white with driving spray; visibility very seriously affected” and on land as “Devastation”?
11. Who wrote the music for the stage version of Billy Elliot?
12. What is usually diagnosed by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) from a nasopharyngeal swab?
answers in a bit.
Fill yer boots - I'll post up answers later, or DM me if you want them sooner
---General Knowledge
Which General commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war? He shares his name with a brand of Irish Whiskey advertised by David Beckham.
Who was the Argentine leader at the outbreak of the Falklands War?
Which general lead his army across the Alps together with elephants?
Who led the Desert Rats during both Battles of El Alamein in July and October / November of 1942?
General Custer is famous for Custer's Last Stand - at which battle did this take place?
General Alfred Jodl signed the official surrender on behalf of the Germans in which French city?
---Odd one out
John, Paul, George, Ringo
Trapezium, Rhombus, Rectangle, Pentagon
Exeter, Southampton, Truro, Taunton
Lake District, Wye Valley, Norfolk Broads, Peak District
Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars
Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, George Clooney
---VE Day
Although we celebrate VE Day on May 8th, on what date was the official surrender signed?
Which London church held ten consecutive services on VE Day in 1945 attended by thousands of people?
How many appearances did the Royal Family make on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day?
Which two members of the Royal Family were allowed to mingle with the crowds on VE Day incognito?
What were published and broadcast once again after VE Day having been classified as "Top Secret" during the war?
Although VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe, the UK still had rationing in force. In what year did food rationing finally end?
---Music
Which brother and sister are the only ones to have achieved separate number one singles?
What piece of machinery did Nizlopi sing about in 2005?
Three all-girl groups had Three number 1 records in 1998. Spice Girls and All Saints were two, who was the third?
From which musical does the song "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair" come?
Which school had a number one with "There's no one quite like Grandma"?
Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield are better known as which famous "Brothers"?
---General Knowledge
Which is the only European mainland country that shares a time zone with the United Kingdom and Ireland?
Who sculpted the famous statue commonly known as "The Kiss"?
In the children's song, which bell says "You owe me five farthings"?
Who in 1963 became the first woman in space?
Where on a horse would you find it's frog?
By law, what is banned in Japanese restaurants?
---Books & Literature
What was the pen name of author Eric Blair?
Which Agatha Christie novel is the first to feature Miss Marple?
In which fictional village did Rupert Bear and his friends live?
Who had a companion named Sancho Panza?
What is the name of Hook's ship in "Peter Pan"?
What was the name of the school boy who featured in the novels by Richmal Crompton?
---Quiz Link
Who made her film debut in A Room With A View and has been married to Kenneth Branagh?
What's the common name for the Australian outback?
Having been rescued from adminstration in 2012, which UK card shop again went into administration in 2019 before being rescued in December?
What is the name of the airport which serves Wahsington DC?
Which car manufacturer produced the Prefect?
What is the link between the previous five questions?
---True or False
All horses competing in Olympic equestrian events must be the same nationality as their rider.
For 238 years between 1311 and 1549, the tallest building in the world was Lincoln Cathedral ?
Orville Wright, the first man to fly, was still alive when Charles Yeager piloted the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound?
The British decimal twenty pence coin was introduced into circulation before the British pound coin?
The logo of SPAR stores is the fir tree because the word 'spar' in dutch means 'fir'?
Australian actress Nicole Kidman was actually born in the USA?
The answers to my questions
1. Iraq and Syria.
2. Siegfried Sassoon.
3. Sacramento
4. Tungsten.
5. A portion of text, word, or phrase believed likely to occur in an encoded text.
6. The overall leader of the Giro d’Italia.
7. Checkmate.
8. Gybing.
9. The World Wide Web.
10. 12 (Hurricane)
11. Elton John.
12. Covid-19.
Q. The five Thunderbirds (Scott, Virgil, Gordon, John and Alan) were named after five of the seven Mercury Astronauts. If there had been two more Tracy brothers what would they have been called?
A. Deke and Wally
Q. Which is the only English Football League team whose name has no letters that you can fill in with a biro?
A. Hull City
What the lowest score in darts you can't score with a single dart?
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the longest place name in the UK, but what is the shortest.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the longest place name in the UK, but what is the shortest.
Eh? 😉
Which 4 angels are named in the Bible?
Which 4 angels are named in the Bible?
Kelly, Sabrina, Jill and Kris
That's not the answer I have written down, shall we say 🙂
Depending on your audience, the lockdown Zoom quiz rounds that got the most positve feedback were those of a "saucy nature".
For example, there's a well know website for those who enjoy some one handed browsing that releases a breakdown of the browsing activity in an annual report. I have 10 question on that report I can DM you.
In a similar vain, the "sex lives of animals" round also worked well, again, DM for the deets.
Q- Where would you most commonly find a Dovetail?
All the clever clogs will say on a drawer/piece of furniture.
A- On a dove's bum.
🕊
Everyone knows that the first aircraft to drop a nuclear weapon in a combat capacity was called "Enola Gay".
What was the name of the second?
Having said that, quizzes where the questions hinge on you either knowing a fact or not knowing a fact are not good quizzes. Good quizzes allow you a shot at working out the answer if you don't know it. Good examples being:
"Estadio Hernando Siles, situated in La Paz, Bolivia..." (important that you say that bit) "...is notable for what reason?"
"The 'Original Six' were the first 6 North American cities to participate in the National Hockey League. Name two of those cities."
This is my zoom quiz one. Some minor apologies for the final picture round - could be NSFW.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wFoifkHsUYyT3czFzuWfXPElnwUrskJOPy8r1O8wVts/edit?usp=sharing
I always start my list with
1 What was the official time of sunrise today?
and finish with
10 What was/is the official time of sunset today?
That gets two questions of of the way and causes a lot of arguments so you end up having to qualify the questions with to within plus and minus half an hour.
What was the name of the second?
Dimples 77
I also like "add up the snooker point values for the leaders' jerseys of the three cycling grand tours"
Dimples 77
Good lord, I think I would need that explaining to me if I were running the thing! I only knew it as "Bockscar"
I watched a documentary about it and it's always struck me as odd that the call signs were so twee , Enola Gay was Dimples 82, when they were incinerating children and they stuck in my memory.
You can kind of understand naming the planes but assigning them these call signs for such a mission seemed horrific to me.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the longest place name in the UK, but what is the shortest.
Eh? 😉
The answer is sort of mountain bike related:
Ae
Ae
Eh?
Ae
Eh?
I
O
U
Which city is furthest west? Cardiff, Edinburgh or Liverpool?
Q: Who played in goal v Germany in a football match and was also the Heavyweight champion of the world in Boxing?
What does HTML stand for?
As a sort of tie-breaker question:
What is the highest value of UK coins (excl £2 coins) that you can have in your pocket, but not be able to make exactly £1.
Hypertext markup language
£1.43 (50p, four 20p's, 5p, four 2p's)
Q: How many Lakes are there in the Lake District?
A: One (Bassenthwaite Lake). All the others are Waters, Meres and Tarns.
I like making up oblique questions for our local quiz. Music questions like
Qu. How many roads must a man walk down?
Qu. She came form Miami FLA and hitch hiked across the USA. Who was she?
And local knowledge ones like, if you drive from the x to Y via z, how many sets of traffic lights do you cross?
And then some tough ones that everyone thinks they know the answer to, but very few actually do, eg,.
Qu. How would you write (grammatically correct) in Latin "Romans go home!"
I have 80 similar questions someone in the depths of my PC if you are interested 🙂
How long was the 100 Years War? A: 116
And a tip. Avoid ambiguity like that Lake question there. It might seem clever, but it WILL lead to arguments and bad feeling. Make sure your questions have one 1 answer and 1 interpretation. Don't be afraid to add extra bits to a question to make it 100% clear what the answer should be.
Q- Where would you most commonly find a Dovetail?
All the clever clogs will say on a drawer/piece of furniture.
A- On a dove’s bum.
Objection. A dovetail is a carpentry joint. What you would find on a dove's bum is not a dovetail, it is a dove tail (or dove's tail).
The question might work spoken out loud, but as written it's wrong.
As others have said,
Obscure random facts that no-one has a scooby of getting serve only to make the question-setter feel smug, they aren't fun. Try to empower players to be able to put something down as a wild guess that they might just fluke. Got a great question that's just a little too obscure? Make it multiple choice.
Part of this is knowing your audience. That St Johnstone question back there for instance, outside of dedicated football fans that's the sort of factoid that is only likely to exist in people's minds in order to be good at pub quizzes, I wouldn't class that as 'general' knowledge. If you'd phrased it as "what sport does St Johnstone's play?" I wouldn't have known the answer even, though I'd at least be able to have a guess. On the other hand, if you're putting together a quiz for your fellow season ticket holders it's likely to be a great question.
Following on from that: dedicated subject rounds, again, know your audience. I'm in the process of putting together a quiz for a group of geeks, one of the rounds is likely to be a "name these spaceships" picture round. I also do a family quiz sometimes, that round would be wholly inappropriate there. On the family one, if I do a [subject] round then I'll do five questions rather than 10 so if I'm misjudged it then it doesn't screw people over, and I'll try to go off piste a little to even the odds. Eg, a Sports round is less likely to have a football question and more likely to have something about Tiddlywinks.
Picture rounds, logos, dingbats, always a winner. I like to open quizzes with a True or False round, things that are just mad enough that they could be true. You can get some really obscure knowledge out of those or just be silly. "True or false: William Shatner has a US clothing range named Shatner Pants." I don't want to put too many examples here because I recycle them through other quizzes and the more they're online the more they're googleable.
Heh. We should totally have an STW quiz night.
Cougar wrote:
Heh. We should totally have an STW quiz night.
I'm in.
and now we're heading for page 2, I'll post the answers to mine on the next page
one of the rounds is likely to be a “name these spaceships” picture round
I would totally play that.
—Odd one out
John, Paul, George, Ringo
Ringo. It's not his real name / he's not an original Beatle.
Trapezium, Rhombus, Rectangle, Pentagon
Pentagon, the others all have four sides.
Exeter, Southampton, Truro, Taunton
Geography isn't my bag. Are the all in the same county bar Taunton?
Lake District, Wye Valley, Norfolk Broads, Peak District
Presumably one of the middle two isn't a national park. Dunno which.
Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars
Venus, it has no moons.
Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, George Clooney
Bradd Pitt hasn't played Batman.
Who is older - Gary Oldman, or Gary Numan?
How many lakes are there in the Lake District.
---General Knowledge
Which General commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war? He shares his name with a brand of Irish Whiskey advertised by David Beckham.
General HAIG
Who was the Argentine leader at the outbreak of the Falklands War?
General GALTIERI.
Which general lead his army across the Alps together with elephants?
HANNIBAL.
Who led the Desert Rats during both Battles of El Alamein in July and October / November of 1942?
General MONTGOMERY (later Field Marshall, will accept this)
General Custer is famous for Custer's Last Stand - at which battle did this take place?
BATTLE OF LITTLE BIGHORN
General Alfred Jodl signed the official surrender on behalf of the Germans in which French city?
REIMS
---Odd one out
John, Paul, George, Ringo
Ringo, not christened by that name
Trapezium, Rhombus, Rectangle, Pentagon
Pentagon as it has 5 sides
Exeter, Southampton, Truro, Taunton
Southampton is NOT a county town
Lake District, Wye Valley, Norfolk Broads, Peak District
Wye Valley, not a national park
Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars
Venus has no moons
Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, George Clooney
PITT - The other three have all played Batman.
---VE Day
Although we celebrate VE Day on May 8th, on what date was the official surrender signed?
May 7th 1945.
Which London church held ten consecutive services on VE Day in 1945 attended by thousands of people?
St Paul's Cathedral.
How many appearances did the Royal Family make on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day?
Eight.
Which two members of the Royal Family were allowed to mingle with the crowds on VE Day incognito?
Princesses Elizabeth & Margaret.
What were published and broadcast once again after VE Day having been classified as "Top Secret" during the war?
Weather Forecasts.
Although VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe, the UK still had rationing in force. In what year did food rationing finally end?
1954
---Music
Which brother and sister are the only ones to have achieved separate number one singles?
Daniel & Natasha Bedingfield.
What piece of machinery did Nizlopi sing about in 2005?
A JCB [The JCB Song].
Three all-girl groups had Three number 1 records in 1998. Spice Girls and All Saints were two, who was the third?
B*Witched
From which musical does the song "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair" come?
South Pacific.
Which school had a number one with "There's no one quite like Grandma"?
St. Winifreds.
Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield are better known as which famous "Brothers"?
The Righteous Brothers
---General Knowledge
Which is the only European mainland country that shares a time zone with the United Kingdom and Ireland?
PORTUGAL.
Who sculpted the famous statue commonly known as "The Kiss"?
RODIN.
In the children's song, which bell says "You owe me five farthings"?
ST MARTINS.
Who in 1963 became the first woman in space?
VALENTINA TERESHKOVA.
Where on a horse would you find it's frog?
ON IT'S HOOF.
By law, what is banned in Japanese restaurants?
TIPPING
---Books & Literature
What was the pen name of author Eric Blair?
George Orwell.
Which Agatha Christie novel is the first to feature Miss Marple?
The Murder at the Vicarage.
In which fictional village did Rupert Bear and his friends live?
Nutwood.
Who had a companion named Sancho Panza?
Don Quixote.
What is the name of Hook's ship in "Peter Pan"?
The Jolly Roger.
What was the name of the school boy who featured in the novels by Richmal Crompton?
[Just] William.
---Quiz Link
Who made her film debut in A Room With A View and has been married to Kenneth Branagh?
Helena Bonham CARTER
What's the common name for the Australian outback?
BUSH
Having been rescued from adminstration in 2012, which UK card shop again went into administration in 2019 before being rescued in December?
CLINTON's Cards
What is the name of the airport which serves Washington DC?
Ronald REAGAN airport
Which car manufacturer produced the Prefect?
FORD
What is the link between the previous five questions?
ALL AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
---True or False
All horses competing in Olympic equestrian events must be the same nationality as their rider.
TRUE.
For 238 years between 1311 and 1549, the tallest building in the world was Lincoln Cathedral ?
TRUE.
Orville Wright, the first man to fly, was still alive when Charles Yeager piloted the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound?
TRUE.(Orville Wright (1871-1948) and Yeager broke the speed of sound in 1947)
The British decimal twenty pence coin was introduced into circulation before the British pound coin?
TRUE.(20p coin - 9 June 1982, pound coin - 21 April 1983)
The logo of SPAR stores is the fir tree because the word 'spar' in dutch means 'fir'?
TRUE.
Australian actress Nicole Kidman was actually born in the USA?
TRUE.(in Hawaii)
@Cougar - good effort!
... presumably with your Odd One Out rounds, you'd allow as correct any justifiable answer? Like, Paul is the odd one out because he's the only Beatle to play left-handed.
Fun sinister fact here incidentally: Paul plays lefty but is actually right-handed; Ringo is the other way around, he's left-handed and plays on a kit configured for a right-hander.
Who is older – Gary Oldman, or Gary Numan?
I believe I know this thanks to it cropping up on an Internet meme. Numan is older.
"Funnel or Tunnel" 🤣🤣🤣
I can't breathe!
Haig whisky is Scotch
Is "Scotch" an autocorrect fail from "shit"?
(You're right though, nice catch)
Is “Scotch” an autocorrect fail from “shit”?
Racist
For our last movie round, I just picked three characters from 10 movies, and folks had to guess the movie.
1 Andy Dufreyne,Ellis Boyd Redding,Warden Norton
2 Andy,Woody,Sid
3 Bruce Wayne,Joker,Harvey Dent
4 Pumpkin,Honey Bunny,Jules Winnfield
5 Jenny Curran,Bubba Blue,Lieutenant Dan Taylor
6 Neo ,Morpheus,Trinity
7 Clarice Starling,Jack Crawford,Barney
8 Zazu,Nala,Scar
9 George Bailley,Mary Hatch,Clarence
10 R.P McMurphy,Nurse Ratched,Chief Bromden
For a good quiz, 80% of folk will get 80%, 15% / 90%, and 5% / 100%
I think I know all of those bar #5 and #9.
... and having googled them, I should've known #5. Cool idea, I like that.
Think I know all bar #10 and I can guess that I think? - quick google shows yes I guessed right. NIce idea
good catch on the whisky
and as for right answer / wrong reason etc - you need the answer written down by the quizmaster. If you're arsey about having another answer that is also correct, you get nowt, if you're nice about it then quizmaster may allow it at their discretion
Nothing worse than a quizmaster who refuses to admit they're wrong. 😝
Which company manufactures the most tyres?
Lego.
What gets wetter as it dries?
A towel
What is the unit of measurement for your shoes? Ie. Size 9 is 9 whats?
Barleycorn (which is also a third of an inch)
Which company manufactures the most tyres?
That I knew. The number of minifigs exceeded the population of the Earth a year or two back also, IIRC.
What is the unit of measurement for your shoes? Ie. Size 9 is 9 whats?
That I did not and it's rather cool.
You're saying my shoes are 10 barleycorns long, so 10* 1/3 of an inch?
I dispute that
How did it go?
The which is furthest west was the one that caught everyone out.
Edinburgh,Cardiff or Liverpool.
Put in a couple of my own..name the false band
Hatfield and the north
Tontos expanding hat band
Gaye bakers on acid
Lesbian dopeheads on mopeds * (I know they were gboa but I bet they aren’t know by more than a handful of people)
Half man half biscuit
What event happened on the 19th of September 1999 that won’t occur again until 1st of january 3111?
Did a weekly quiz in lockdown and took turns in preparing rounds. Here’s one of mine based on the shipping forecast.
1. Which radio station is the Shipping Forecast broadcast on? R4
2. What is the name of the renowned light orchestral piece of music played just before last broadcast on Radio at 0048? Sailing By.
3. Cromarty, Forth, Tyne and Shannon are forecast areas named after what? Rivers
4. Which forecast area shares a name with a small island in the Bristol Channel? Lundy
5. And which forecast area shares a name with person who undertakes a somewhat dubious pastime in car parks at night? Dogger.
6. The forecast provides wind speed using the Beaufort scale. What number does this scale go up to? And for a bonus point, what is it described as? Force 12 Hurricane.
7. Two of the areas are named after famous port towns on the south coast. A point for either. Dover and Plymouth.
8. Britpop band Blur famously included the lyrics “On the Tyne, Forth and Cromarty. There's a low in the high Forties” in their song “This is a Low”, but on which 1994 album did it feature? Parklife
9. Faeroes is the second most northerly shipping forecast area (but you all knew that). But which football team did the Faroe Islands beat in 2014 and again in 2015 who were the previous European Champions from 2004? Greece
10. A recording of part of the forecast is played over the opening and closing credits of which famous chef’s TV programme? Rick Stein.
which is furthest west was the one that caught everyone out.
Edinburgh,Cardiff or Liverpool.
That's nasty, cos there's bog all between all three of them.
You’re saying my shoes are 10 barleycorns long, so 10* 1/3 of an inch?
I dispute that
its the increment between sizes - so a size 9 is one barleycorn longer than a a size 8, not 9 barleycorns long. And don’t forget you go through all the kids shoe sizes before the scale starts again for adult shoes.
which is furthest west was the one that caught everyone out.
Edinburgh,Cardiff or Liverpool.
which is furthest west - Inverness or Swansea?
How many lakes are there in the Lake District
One. Bassenthwaite Lake.
Also one in Scotland (Lake of Mentieth)
Which company is the biggest toy retailer in the world?
Fair point Scotroutes, you have to qualify the Scotland one with "excluding man-made reservoirs..."
Which company is the biggest toy retailer in the world?
Maccy Ds