Tuesday, October 03, 2006

What a difference a couple weeks makes!

Kevin and I were left to hold proud the honor of The Refugees last night at the pub quiz. It soon became apparent that we need the support of Angie and Terry to round-out our knowledge. But I am getting ahead of myself. We had an excellent night and agreed up-front that we were in it for the fun and not for the spectacular prize baskets.

Our first round, General Knowledge, we got a few right. The third round, The Sporting Decathlon was, if not a particularly good round, was at least fun. Since I could answer only a few of the questions, I entertained myself (and the scorekeepers I am told) by making-up answers to the questions. Apparently, the world-record holder in the 100 meter dash is "Some really fast guy," while the British High Jump record holder is "Some really springy guy," the top-rated American hurdler is "Some American guy" and so on.

Ironically, but for the strange all-or-nothing scoring on the final round, it would have been our best. We had six of the nine answers we tried correct. (...even the one that was misleading...) Kevin, being about as into watching television as I am, missed the first question which was about some local soap opera. Later, the one sports question I actually got right all night long, I changed because I had doubt as to whether I was correctly remembering the rules to a game I have not played since I was in Junior High School gym class some (mumble mumble mumble) years ago.

Note to self: For future reference, Don, you did remember correctly. A tennis match goes into a tie-breaker round at a score of "Six All."

The misleading question (which, in talking to the moderator after the game, he said he would have accepted my answer because he had asked the question incorrectly) was on Board Games. The penultimate question of the game? Q: How many properties are there on the Monopoly board?

"Can you please define your meaning of 'properties'?" I asked. "Are you including the railroads and utilities as 'properties' in your definition? By properties, do you mean 'things you can own'?"

"How many things can you buy?" The moderator responded.

Being something of a Monopoly player (I can name all the spaces on the board - American Board, they differ over here - from Go to Boardwalk by memory) I wrote down my answer: 28. Double checking 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 and the 2 utilities and the 4 railroads 22 improvable properties and 6 that you cannot build improvements on makes 28.

Then the last question came-up and it was on medicine. We quit. Neither of us knew the proper medical term for "Double Vision" anyway so we were glad we had. As it turned out, only the one team that quit after two questions scored in that round. All the other teams had blown it. The question that The Refugees were the only team to get right was the breaker for all: "What is the nickname for the state of New York?" We were the only team to put down "The Empire State."

Final score: even though we made an impressive 23 of 24 in the opening table game, we scored only 17 in all the remaining rounds giving us a total of 41 - Dead last! But the point of an English Pub Quiz night is to have fun and I think we did. (The consolation prize of a bottle of wine doesn't hurt either!)

I hope wherever you are today you will have fun too!

Don Bergquist - 03 October 2006 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK

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