School Quiz Night

Some weeks back when it was announced we would be having a fund-raising quiz night, we were immediately snaffled by our friend The Fewst to be on her team. She even paid for us, as a gesture to say thanks to Elf for shuttling her son from school to her work once a week. We suspect she also thought we would shore up the team in some vital knowledge areas.

Mum and Dad were roped in to look after Marcus, Michael, Miah and Karri, as Imp and Ed were also quiz-bound, although in a different team. The kids were fed, pyjama'd and toothbrushed before we left. As Elf, Imp and Ed went out the door Michael said "Where are they going?" I said "We're going to the quiz night". Michael said "Great!" and scooted out the door. I put him straight quick smart, pointing out that he was wearing pyjamas for a reason.

We arrived at the school gym, and split off into our teams. I was expecting to be cold but there were about 170 people crammed in, and we were soon peeling off layers. We had to name our team, which task fell to me. Fewst's Flamingos. Harmless enough. By the time The Fewst heard the name it was in the hands of the scorers. "Oh NO, how embarrassing!!!" she wailed.

Off we went. We had a variety of people in the team, no-one that we knew very well. Everyone was very pleasant and mostly played nice. But we had to do that swap-answers-for-marking thing, and The Fewst seemed determined to mark hard. We had to keep chivvying her to be fair. Not only that, the very first tough question saw her fish out her iPhone. "Fewst, you can't do that!!!" "Why not?"

An early question was "How would you cut a circular cake into 8 equal pieces with 3 straight cuts?" I have heard this before, so I explained you cut down the middle, then right angles to that (4 pieces) then horizontally through the whole cake parallel to the table (8 pieces). Our captain tried to draw this, and didn't quite get it. Her 2nd attempt was going down the same track, so I offered to draw it. No big deal, took a few seconds, and the other less artistically inclined team members all said "ooh, look at that, lovely". The Fewst sulked for quite some time about me "criticising her drawing". When the time came to swap answers with the next table, she proposed marking theirs wrong when they had drawn something exactly the same as hers. Sheesh.

Anyway. The whole thing was terrifically well organised. Parents from the school had donated an amazing array of things, including this beautiful framed print by Maddy Goodwolf, worth over $1000. There was a silent auction for a wide range of stuff, and a proper auctioneer (hup 400 400 400 400 hup 450 450 do I have 5, do I have 5 thankyousir 500 hup etc) taking live bids (and even phone bids) for the big ticket items like the print (shown below). The whole thing appeared to be a roaring success in terms of raising funds for the school.

We were in front in the scoring about threequarters of the way through. We were getting good answers from all quarters, The Fewst coming through very nicely with the correct term for the white bumpy bits on southern right whales (callosities).

We were asked: what was the name of the actual dog who first played Lassie? I happened to have looked it up 3 days ago, and stunned the team by getting it right (Pal). All going well.

Then came the Trash and Treasure round. A list of things had to be found and presented to the scorers, including a bra, a tampon, a condom, a high-heeled shoe, a band-aid, lip balm, etc etc. We did very badly here, and we all agreed that it lowered the tone somewhat. Then again, we had already been given a list of place-names and had to find the one that was fake. The list included Middelfart, Fucking*, Anus, Bollocksberg, Crapstone, Wetwang and Penistone. So, yeah, the tone was low already. *It's real, and can be found in Austria.

In the end we came second, and won a motley swag of musk sticks, tiny Easter eggs, and bizarrely a large jar of satay sauce. As I was stressing about how late up we were keeping Mum and Dad, Imp approached with a large man she wanted me to meet. Turns out he is a more-or-less professional quizzer, who wants to add me to his roster of reliable team members. He even carries around a spreadsheet with his recent results to show prospective draftees.

I said he could give me a call - but I am starting to go off the idea a bit. The idea of a grim team of hand-picked specialists going around cleaning up at the expense of teams of actual fun-loving friends - it's not really cricket is it?