The meanest quiz question?

SWP · Post by **SWP** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:17 pm

Had this today:

"Cornville is a place in which US state?"

Got it wrong - was disappointed as I know all the US state capitals (standard quiz fare) and lots of other town/states (due to US TV/Film exposure I guess).

Looked Cornville up tonight - not suprised I didn't get it as Cornville (Arizona) has a population of less than 4,000 - not the biggest of places and I don't think anything notable has ever happened there!

Have you got a bigger stinker?

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:55 pm

Yesterday I got 'Who was the female number 6 seed at the 2006 French Open?'
But the worst for me at the moment is to guess someone's middle name. The choices are:

1. Alfred
2. Alfred
3. Duncan

the answer is Alfred and I've got it right once and wrong twice!

SWP · Post by **SWP** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 2:42 pm

PMSL @ French Open. Wouldn't know 1st/2nd (should though right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Frenc ... 7s_Singles )

Was the middle name one for someone who is known with an initial (e.g. A.A. Milne)?

Drpepper · Post by **Drpepper** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 3:42 pm

Got asked last night On every loser wins a question that i'm sure had 3 correct answers.

Wanted places in france, and unless one was misspelled slightly they were all definitely places.

Quite an entertaining change though

.

SWP · Post by **SWP** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:41 pm

Wanted places in france, and unless one was misspelled slightly they were all definitely places.

Yes but were they all places in France?

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 1:24 pm

Not an SWP tale, but in a recent pub quiz I was asked a jackpot question which I later discovered had one Google reference to the correct answer. FFS, even random members of the public have more than that nowadays! I complained to the pub the next week but to no avail.

The question was "who in 1985 became the first woman to umpire a men's game of cricket at Lords?" Honestly.

ZAX · Post by **ZAX** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:45 am

grecian wrote:Not an SWP tale, but in a recent pub quiz I was asked a jackpot question which I later discovered had one Google reference to the correct answer. FFS, even random members of the public have more than that nowadays! I complained to the pub the next week but to no avail.

The question was "who in 1985 became the first woman to umpire a men's game of cricket at Lords?" Honestly.

Yeah I had one at the pub the other night- 'To the nearest million, according to the guinness book of records, how many books were loaned from all the libraries in England in 1991-1992.'

Actually got the closest guess, and won a mighty fiver. I was only 230 million out

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:54 am

Not a machine question, but one which shows that even people who have to compile 60 questions instead of 6000 are just as useless at checking facts. In a pub quiz the other night, was asked:

Who set the World Mile, 1500m and 800m record in 1970?

Without a definitive answer we reasonably calculated that if anyone had done this, then John Walker was about the right time period.

Unfortunately, when the answers were revealed, the question master wanted Seb Coe as the answer.

When I (and several other team captains) pointed out, that he would have performed this feat aged 14, the reply was 'Gotta take what's on the sheet mate, personally I've never heard of him'

And these are the landlords running the nation's pub quizzes.........

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:55 am

At least they have the closest person a prize - I would have needed to get mine spot on to win anything. I'd estimate less than 20 people in the UK would know the answer to the cricket question without researching it, the majority of those being relations of the woman concerned.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:51 pm

It wasn't Rachel Heyhoe-Flint then?

Drpepper · Post by **Drpepper** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:13 pm

They were all legitimate French places, i just think one was spelt wrongly which made it the correct name of a real non-french place.

SWP · Post by **SWP** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:53 pm

They were all legitimate French places, i just think one was spelt wrongly which made it the correct name of a real non-french place.

That's pretty mean then

Has anyone seen this question on Pub Quiz?

When was this Metallica (The Black Album) album released...

1990
1991
1992

What's the pro approach to year answers where they are 1 year apart?

Matt Vinyl · Post by **Matt Vinyl** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 9:06 pm

Well, certainly not the pro-approach (as it's coming from me!) but I always go for the middle.

I remember reading somewhere that 'generally' if a person is 'making up' numbers (years in this case) they tend to create the numbers 'around' another number - in this case the correct answer. Not sure if it has any application to SWPs, but hey, it seems to work reasonably well for me...

WaterGate · Post by **WaterGate** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:53 am

verbatim leanring of facts. It's the only answer.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:48 am

"Middle value theory" (i.e. on any question with numerical answers, going for the middle one if you don't know the answer) used to work well in the old era of JPM and Maygay stand-alones. I'd say it's less good nowadays and doesn't yield any more success than a random guess would do. I'm not sure there is a "pro approach" any more to this kind of question. My approach is to go with my gut instinct. My quiz knowledge is getting to the stage where I'm maybe right 50 per cent of the time on questions such as this, compared to a 33 per cent random guess approach. On Metallica, I might very well have gone for 1991 as I seem to recall them releasing a slew of singles that year (I was sad enough to write down the top forty every week back in 1991). 1992 did tempt as well though so can't say for definite.