Quiz night in aid of the Niall Mellon Township Trust

Last evening I once again had the pleasure of being Quiz Master at in the Rochestown Lodge Hotel in a fund-raiser hosted by the Killiney Lions Club in aid of the Niall Mellon Township Trust. Over €700 was raised and hopefully good fun was had by all. The standard was very high with two teams finishing with 84 points (out of 100). I prepared all the questions and fortunately there was no controversy with any of the questions (or their answers). As usual the format was ten rounds of ten questions. Here are the questions for Round 4 - see how you get on:

Round 4	Question
1	What international airport is represented by the three-letter code NOC?
2	What American state capital can be obtained by adding a vowel to the end of a month?
3	How many dots are there on a pair of dice?
4	Which team did Leinster defeat in the Heineken Cup semi-final on their way to winning last year's European title?
5	How many legs does a flea have?
6	What does the word "vodka" mean?
7	In which European city would you find the Bridge of Sighs?
8	What do the letters "A", "T", and "M" stand for in a bank cash machine?
9	If you were infected with the rhinovirus, what would you be suffering from?
10	What is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea?

Quizmaster

This evening I was quiz-master for Killiney Lions Club who were raising funds for a local school - in total the quiz raised just over €1,000. There were 15 tables, with the winning team scoring a brilliant 92/100 - a group of teachers who clearly found the quiz very easy. The lowest score was 42/100. I thought the quiz might have been a bit hard, but I think it hit the right mix of sport, gossip, history, geography, politics, and news.

Most people found round 2 to be the most difficult - here are the ten questions, see how you get on:

1	By what name is Great Britain Street in Dublin now known as?
2	In January 2005 a landmark was reached when a song called "One Night" became the 1,000th song to reach number one in the UK singles chart. Who was the singer?
3	Which two GAA clubs, one in Kerry and one in Dublin, are named after the same Archbishop?
4	In which song by The Beatles would you find the following lines? In a couple of years they have built a home sweet home, With a couple of kids running in the yard, Of Desmond and Molly Jones
5	Name any one of actress Elizabeth Taylor's husbands OTHER THAN Richard Burton.
6	What part did Irish actor Devon Murray play in the "Harry Potter" series of movies?
7	How many pieces are there in total on a chequers (draughts) board?
8	What city is the capital of Peru?
9	Taraxacum is a large genus of flowering plants - by what common name do we know this better as?
10	In the human body, where would you find your Pituitary Gland?

Clever Clogs (again)!

This evening Roma and I went to a Table Quiz in aid of Tightrope Productions - a drama production company based in Dún Laoghaire. Our daughter Vicki is a member of the company. The quiz was held in the Baker's Corner pub and was attended by mostly young people.

Image link to 1stForToys.co.uk.

We found the quiz quite hard - there were just the two of us in our team - I felt like Johnnie No-Mates! In the end between us we scored 57 out of 100 points, but it was enough to WIN! We were in the lead for most of the quiz, closely followed by another team (of six adults). We were ahead by 1 point going into the final round, but won by 3 points in the end. First prize was €40, which we did not accept - preferring that it be added to the fund-raising for the evening. We had a very enjoyable evening - I even won the raffle in which first prize was a €30 voucher for Diffney's Menswear!

57/100 is actually a very low score to win a quiz. Three weeks ago at the Killiney Lions Club quiz night (in which I prepared the questions and was also quizmaster) - a score of 86/100 was the winning score. So I won't get carried away with this victory. Nevertheless, it is exciting to be leading a quiz and winning in the end. In February of 2010 I was also part of a winning team in another Killiney Lions Club quiz night with a score of 82/100 - so we are on a roll!

Quizmaster

Last evening I had the pleasure of being the Quiz master for the Killiney Lions Club Quiz Night in the Rochestown Lodge Hotel - the Lions were raising money for the local National Rehabilitation Hospital. We had 13 tables at the quiz - a little down on last year, but nevertheless a good evening was had by all with over €1,000 raised.

The Quiz Master.
Image link to
Freequizzes.co.uk.

The best part for me was that I actually prepared the questions for the quiz - 10 rounds of 10 questions each, 100 in total. It was much harder than I thought, I had to balance hard with easier questions to give everybody a chance. The winning team scored 86 points (out of 100), with second on 82 points. The winners are a team that go to a lot of quizzes, and they told me that the found the quiz very balanced and also a challenging one (they usually score higher). Some teams found the going tough, and I saw one older participant throwing his hands in the air when I asked about the name of the Michael Jackson series of concerts in London that were to be held when he died (Answer: "This is it!").

Writing questions is fun, but also a delicate exercise. The tables ranged from my daughter Vicki's table of 16/17 year old's to tables with retired participants - so I mixed in questions from the Simpsons with Shakespeare. I also discarded questions that upon reflection I felt were too hard and unlikely to be answered except by a small minority. So I changed "In the Beatles song Mean Mr Mustard, what did Mr Mustard keep up his nose?" (Answer: A Ten Bob Note) to "In what film featuring music by The Beatles would you find characters called The Blue Meanies?" (Answer: Yellow Submarine).

Here's the first round of questions - see how you get on (two tables got 10/10 in this round):

1. Who scored the first point for Dublin in this year's All-Ireland Senior Football Final against Kerry?    
2. Mary Byrne, of X-Factor fame, worked for which supermarket chain at the time of her success on the show?
3. Who was the U.S. President’s wife who opened an addiction Clinic in California?    
4. What do the letters in the acronym WYSIWYG mean?    
5. What is the name of the pet greyhound in The Simpsons TV cartoon show?    
6. In what county in Ireland would you find a town called Carnew?    
7. What company's logo features on the front of Premiership side Chelsea's shirt?    
8. How many counties are there in Leinster?    
9. Siam is the former name for which country?    
10. Who is the current President of Killiney Lion's Club?