[October 2018 update: the following piece, recording my first impressions of ITV quiz show “Tenable”, was published over a year ago. The show has had plenty of mentions on this Blog since then. You can find links to other posts, including summaries of episodes from the latest series (September/October 2018), at the end of this post.]

During the summer holidays my son and I caught a few episodes of an ITV daytime quiz called “Tenable”. It was presented by Warwick Davis and the format involved teams of five people naming up to ten items in a series of lists. Its IMDB page, here, has very little information about it, other than the dates the shows were transmitted. From the look of it we were watching re-runs from late last year. We added it to our “series record” list for the last few episodes but it’s currently off-air and due back on 30 October 2017.

Earlier this year I wrote in this piece (“Peri-Peri Chicken in a sandwich? Really?”) that the BBC1 show “Who Dares Wins” has made me think of things in groups of 15. “Tenable” has got me thinking about groups of 10 related items. Many of the questions we saw last month were about Top 10s, such as the 10 highest paid footballers in the world or the Top 10 grossing Steven Spielberg movies. Other questions have been based on position (“Name any of the last 10 properties on a Monopoly Board”) or chronology (“Name the last 10 UK Prime Ministers”). Some of these are right up my street. I can answer the latter without delay: Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Douglas-Home is the trickiest answer in that list and a team lost out in a jackpot round because they couldn’t remember him. Similarly, although the team on the show struggled to name the 10 highest-scoring letters in Scrabble, I could name them without too much thought: Z Q X J K F H W V Y. I hadn’t realized that there were exactly 10 that are worth 4 or more points, but that’s how it is.

By contrast, the kind of questions where I (and the teams on the show) really struggled included: “Name the first 10 UK hits by Britney Spears” and “Name the 10 highest grossing films starring Colin Firth”. The latter question was in a jackpot round, so the team needed to get all 10 answers to win the cash. Even after seeing the answers I couldn’t name them and believe that Colin Firth himself would have difficulty naming the 10 highest grossing films that he has appeared in.

On the way home from a day-trip to Brighton and Worthing last month I used the format to test my memory of various lists. Can I name the last 10 different teams to win the FA Cup, or the League Cup, or the last 10 host cities for the Summer Olympics? Maybe these questions have already been asked on the show but they weren’t in any of the episodes that we watched. For the record I could just about get there. Host cities were the easiest, followed by FA Cup winners and finally League Cup winners. The difficulty with those last two is the number of times that certain teams have won the trophy (Arsenal and Chelsea have won 7 of the last 11 FA Cup Finals between them). I have also been looking out for lists that contain exactly 10 items.

The Challenge

I have created the following questions from scratch, based on the idea of 10 items in a list. If I find that any of them have also appeared in an episode of “Tenable” I’ll acknowledge it in the question. The answers are available from the link at the bottom of the page.

Name the last 10 different teams to win the English FA Cup. [This had already been asked as a question in Series 1 Episode 9 (S1Ep9), originally broadcast on 24 November 2016 and repeated on Thursday 28 May 2020, as shown in this piece.]

Name the last 10 different teams to win the English League Cup.

Name the last 10 cities to host the Summer Olympics. [This had already been asked as a question in Series 1 Episode 5 (S1Ep5), originally broadcast on 18 November 2016 and repeated on Friday 22 May 2020, as shown in this piece.]

Name the 10 elements in the Periodic Table that have fewer than 6 letters in their name. [This was a question in Series 2 Episode 15 (S2Ep15), broadcast on 17 November 2017, as shown in this piece.]

Name the 10 letters in a standard Scrabble set that each have a value of 1 point. [This was a question in Series 2 Episode 23 (S2Ep23), broadcast on 14 February 2018, as shown in this piece.]

Name Shakespeare’s 10 History Plays. (Note: these are the 10 plays written about kings of England, all of whom were on the throne at some point between the 12th and 16th centuries; Cymbeline and King Lear are incorrect answers. Some of these plays have “Part 1”, or another number, as part of their name.)

Name the 10 US States that have two words in their name. [This had already been asked as a question in Series 1 Episode 19 (S1Ep19), originally broadcast on 8 December 2016 and repeated on 24 August 2021, as shown in this piece.]

For the answers, please click here.

October 2018 update: Here are links to other posts about “Tenable”. I will continue to add to this list, so it should include links for series broadcast in future years.

“Tenable”, and people who could have made money using this Blog, from November 2017.

Summaries of episodes from September/October 2018, week by week:

• Week 1 questions (3-7 September)
• Week 2 questions (10-14 September)
• Week 3 questions (17-21 September)
• Week 4 questions (24-28 September)
• Week 5 questions (1-5 October)
• Week 6 questions (8-12 October)

Summaries of episodes from February/March 2019, week by week:

• Week 1 (Series 3, Eps 31-35), 28 Jan to 1 Feb 2019
• Week 2 (Series 3, Eps 36-40), 4 Feb to 8 Feb 2019
• Week 3 (Series 3, Eps 40-45), 11 Feb to 15 Feb 2019
• Week 4 (Series 3, Eps 46-50), 18 Feb to 22 Feb 2019
• Week 5 (Series 3, Eps 51-55), 25 Feb to 1 Mar 2019
• Week 6 (Series 3, Eps 56-60), 4 Mar to 8 Mar 2019

Raw “Tenable” data, February-March 2018 (20 episodes broadcast between 12 February and 9 March 2018, not tidied up in the same way as the weekly pieces above).

Raw “Tenable” data, April-May 2018 (19 episodes broadcast between 16 April and 10 May 2018, not tidied up in the same way as the weekly pieces above).

“Tenable” Series 2, repeated July 2019 (episodes from autumn 2017 which are being repeated from 9 July 2019 onwards).

“Tenable” questions, series 1 (episodes from the show’s first week of broadcast, beginning Monday 14 November 2016, repeated in September 2019 and week beginning Monday 18 May 2020.).