Author: Gordon

Halfway through the season, it was quiz night at The Willoughby Arms, with a team of new players ‘Up The Trotters’ who came along to join us and told me later that they will be back!

The evening went swimmingly with seven teams taking part, although during the break, it was mentioned that I was rattling through the questions quite quickly; so the pace was slowed during the second half.  This is a difficult one to judge, I’m always mindful of the fact that the majority of our quizzers have work the next day. Next month I’ll go more slowly and you never know the questions may be a little easier.

With questions from science and history to food & drink and TV & Film there was something for everyone. Not forgetting Chris’s famous music round the theme for this month was ‘good luck’ with each song title having one of those words in it. Of course we couldn’t do this without The Beach Boys – Good Vibrations, Good Luck Charm by Elvis and Lucky Stars by Dean Friedman with a bonus point for any team that could name the female artist on that track.

One of our teams ‘Just Started Drinking’ had a 10 point penalty on their final score, they had seven players and our rules only allow for six.

At the end of the evening in fourth place were last month’s winners United Staits with an impressive 126 points, third place went to 5 Alive with 127 points but this month we had a tie for 1st place with Up the Trotters and Dream Team both scoring a fantastic 132 points, with the winners being decided by cutting the cards this month’s prize went to Up the Trotters with commiserations to Dream Team who played exceedingly well with only two players.

Our thanks to everyone, who and took part, to Kip for the welcoming log fire and Bub for keeping the drinks flowing.

Next month’s quiz will be on Tuesday 5th February.

A dank, foggy and very cold evening, more like bonfire night than nearly Christmas but it was time for the last quiz of 2012 at the Willoughby – the event of the year, the Christmas Quiz!

With players in Santa hats, turkey slippers, fairy wings, one who came dressed as a Christmas present (well done Emily) and John and Hillary who brought their own reindeer. Extra points were added to the scoreboard for all teams with some sort of Christmas attire.
Ten teams took part including some newcomers facing questions including Christmas films and toys; the music round was themed St Nick with music from Crispian St Peters to Razorlight and Nick Kamen.

In honour of the Jubilee the picture round was Elizabeths, and as it was also the year of the Olympics we had a couple of awards of our own to present. The United Staits received an award for being the longest serving quiz team and Margaret Hayes received an award for her mathematical and accounting skills (keeping score every month).

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a few parlour games and the quiz was no different, we had a balloon challenge and have you any idea how hard it is to draw a Christmas tree when you’re holding the paper on top of your head? The teams were asked for a volunteer to take part in a challenge. Their challenge if they chose to accept it was to do their ‘party piece’ with ten points being added to their team score if they chose to take part. All teams rose to the challenge with lots of jokes being told, but Buffer Stops did something a little different with Margaret taking centre stage and juggling fruit.
A Christmas present raffle was held with the proceeds going to The Salvation Army Christmas Appeal to help with the work they do, especially at this time of year.

The evening came to a close with a couple of rounds of Irish bingo.

The lowest score of the evening was 76 points, in third place was 18 tomorrow with 108 points, second place was Dumb and Dumber with 110 points but the winners this month were the United Staits with 114 points. Well done and thank you to everyone who took part, the next quiz will be on Tuesday 8th January 2013.

Thanks to Kip for the mince pies and Quality Street (other sweets are available) and to Bub (Elisabeth Moore) who kept the drink flowing, measured the balloons and was featured in the picture round.