Pierre is the State Capital of South Dakota. Here in the UK that cannot be considered Universal Knowledge. It’s something I learnt over 25 years ago, when I memorized all 50 States and their Capitals. Apart from dedicated quizzers, how many people would be able to name all 100 places? Very few, I suspect. Back… Continue reading Word of the week: Pierre
The late Steve Wright used to have a feature on his BBC Radio 2 Show called Serious Jockin’, or Jockin. It wasn’t clear whether there was an apostrophe in Jockin’. This page on the BBC website, from the final episode of his afternoon show, spells it both ways. Regardless of the apostrophe, there was definitely… Continue reading Livin’, Laughin’, Singin’, and Movin’: #1s with no Gs
Here are the questions and answers for an episode of the ITV quiz show “Tenable” broadcast today, Friday 30 August 2024. The format used here is the same as that used elsewhere on this Blog (such as here, for the episode broadcast on Monday 11 September 2023): the questions, how the team fared and the… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, Friday 30 August 2024 [Series 7]
Between January and April I posted over a dozen “Oven-ready quiz rounds”, for reasons explained in this introductory piece. I return to the theme now, with two short rounds (5 questions in each) about The Beatles and Games. The Beatles Here are 5 questions about the Beatles (John Paul George and Ringo). The answers to… Continue reading Oven-ready quiz rounds: 5 about The Beatles, 5 about Games
At the end of 2022, in this piece, I wrote about playing football again with people my own age. I had just completed a years’ worth of games, usually playing 5-a-side (or similar) once or twice a week. I continue to play regularly, though not as frequently as before. Last week’s Wednesday night game meant… Continue reading 33 months of 5-a-side
The following question appeared earlier this month in the weekend edition of The Guardian, in the quiz compiled by Thomas Eaton: “What tool is made from potassium, nickel and iron?” It’s more cryptic than most of the questions in this weekly quiz. The answer is “Knife”, made up of the chemical symbols for potassium, nickel… Continue reading Knife (K-Ni-Fe) and other words that be made using chemical symbols
Monday night is quiz night, as explained in this piece from March 2020. For five successive years, starting in summer 2019, we have had a trio of serious quiz programmes scheduled between 7.30pm and 9pm on BBC2 on a Monday night: “Mastermind”, “Only Connect”, “University Challenge”, in that order. There is no money at stake… Continue reading Not ready for the new quiz season
Sad news from the musical backwaters where I have been known to dip my toes. Musician and producer Pat Collier died last month aged 72. Currently there is only one obituary that I can find, on the Louder Than War website. There are mentions on Facebook but not much else for now. As the article… Continue reading Pat Collier RIP
In this piece from June 2022 I mentioned a JetPunk quiz which gives you 15 minutes to list 196 countries: the 193 sovereign states recognized by the UN and three others which are not officially recognized as countries (Vatican City, Kosovo and Taiwan). My daughter had spent much of the most recent half-term holiday taking… Continue reading JetPunk 392/392
Here’s a list of the songs that I performed in public for the first time during July 2024. Each month I aim to play at least one new song from each of the following repertoires: Songs that reached #1 in the UK. Songs that reached #1 somewhere else. Songs that have not reached #1 anywhere.… Continue reading Repertoire: Songs debuted in July 2024
The Compartments 