Notes On Quizzes

 I have often thought about how quiz experts - if we can call them that - hone their skills. Why am I even thinking about this? The reason for this odd little toe dipping into the rarefied world of what makes a quiz champion has its roots in this new anti-hobby I have been drawn into. The pub quiz.

It was never my idea nor one of my unfulfilled ambitions to be a member of a pub quiz team - though unlike say; sky diving or snowboarding I have never felt particularly hostile at the thought of its participation.  I have dabbled in the past - been an add on in various pubs and clubs eons apart - and even had a regular drinking haunt once that held quizzes every Thursday night - and ignored the proceedings, choosing instead to sit quietly - or perhaps chattily because we'd only really just met - lady friend now wife, in a nook and allow the whole thing (apart from my occasional sage sotto voce comments to her ladyship if i new an answer), to wash over me. 

All that was a little while ago. I'm now in a team - practically by default. To say I hardly know the other team members is something of an understatement, but I think we're getting there. The most awkward time is the hour or so after arriving at the pub before the quiz has begun. Then its small talk time: what you've been up to during that day (in my case very little since I'm currently not working - which add another layer of difficulty when everyone else involved is in full time work) or comments about what's in the news or more specifically what's happening in the football as there is always a game on during these early sessions - and I'm not really that much of a fan. And since we're all neighbours (and men)  - tittle tattle about fence protective treatments, driveway seals, and the pluses and minuses of regular local trades persons (window cleaners, lawn weeding specialists, tree loppers). 

Then the quiz starts and it simply doesn't matter how well or how comfortable you are in their company - your absolute focus is on the questions. This is where I would like to say  - everything is forgiven.  My clumsy efforts at the triumphs and disasters of this or that premier league team/manager/draw.  Anything to do with transfer windows or footballers salaries.  How well this team is doing under such and such or whu such and such is playing brilliantly or crap. Now we have questions that are outside of everyone's zone of the  quietly confident. And this is where I pull everything around. Or used to. But it seems not any more. 

I have a few theories as to why i'm not astounding all around me with the my protean knowledge. Or my vast reservoir of trivia, my incredible memory for detail or my all round scholastic frame of mind. Why for once my half a lifetime of reading/watching films/listening to music /and indulging in the huge variety of odd interests and hobbies I have embarked on at different times in my life. And that is - I'm getting older and more forgetful and the questions are more - speculative and playful rather than dealing with hard factual information. So often one might hear something like 'name the four states that enjoy a shore line with lake Michigan'.  This is great - I love the States, obsessed with them actually and factually I know that Wisconsin/Illinois/Indiana and Michigan itself constitutes the answer. Or name the book that Dickens was writing and died before he was able to finish it taps in to an old obsession with English Lit and I know - and hardly anyone else on whichever team I have been at whatever period of my life that its the Mystery of Edwin Drood. or that Frans Hals painted the Laughing Cavalier (art phase) ' treen' describes objects made of wood (antiques phase)   a wren is on the reverse side of a British farthing (numismatics phase) or Cleveland Williams fought Muhammad Ali with wrecked kidneys and predictable ran out of energy before the end of the third round. (boxing obsession phase).  There are loads of these. But a lot of the questions aren't based on factually recall. A lot of them are estimates and nearest tos and the like - but not all. So I really need to make it count when my subjects come up. 

All this has made me wonder about how you train your brain to be better at quizzes. Memory is one thing. But the information has to be there as well. This is what I think could be done: 

I've been watching The Chase quite a lot lately - which can only help because the same or similar questions do come up in that quiz as have been asked in others. So positive reinforcement: watch as many quizzes as you can  and try to answer as many questions as possible. Have the sub-titles on so that you get a bit longer than them to think the answer through - but here's the thing, when they either say the answer correctly or if they get it wrong - it's there on your screen allowing two sense to take it in: sight and sound, together with the meorable effort of them and you - a winning mix. Then once its over re-wind it keeping the sub titles on and try your hardest to beat them - which to an extent you should be able to because you have already heard (and seen) the answer. 

Thtas one thing - but the next is a bit more technical. A bit more trick of the trade.  Staying with the Chase and why not it's the one TV quiz show that's hitting all the high points at the moment (not eggheads which is sen as somewhat pedestrian in comparison and Millionaire is now off air) it's noticeable that the chasers (and they're all about the same in terms of held knowledge and performance) and I remember this with the eggheads as well - certain questions are absolute bankers for them. The questions are in a way predicted by the quizzers who have studiously ensured that they know all the rivers in the UK, they know all the highest mountains, they know all the capital cities, the atomic numbers, the currencies of every country and so on. These are things that can be learnt specifically to be useful at quizzes. I'm guessing that they all do enough quizzes (and that's another strengthening technique - quiz participation volume, one tends to remember all the questions you or your team get wrong  - for ever) for these bankers to never ever feel wasted. 

The next issue though - once that has been decided is what exactly are the bankers. I believe i have touched on a few already - rivers/volcanoes/mountains/seas/oceans/capital cities and currencies from geography. Then there's royal households/rulers/periods/wars from history. This list goes on and it will always be subjective which is borne out by different quizzers having specialist strengths in different areas - but there is definitely a hard core that I believe reveals itself the more quizzes you do. 

There exists books of lists.  they can be read and memorised. I wouldn't mind betting that a lot of quizzers have a side hobby to do with memory.  Utilizing the kinds of techniques that memory masters employ when attempting to recall several packs of cards. What they do is commit the information - in the case of the card packs fairly meaningless information except for the purposes of memory power tests - to memory.  How they do this is immaterial. Often they turn mundane information into colorful images - or convert strings of information into meaningful scenarios or stories. It doesn't really matter - what matters is that the quizzer can do similar when utilizing  technique of rote reading. A list of gems or Greek gods or explorers from New Zealand. They just have to find ways to use hooks and get them into their brains for when the information is needed. So that's the next thing I should think about doing. Boning up on lists of data effectively. But pasting the information into my mind and connecting it with other stimulation so that the relevant strands can be tugged at when required. 

I short this is what I think I should do: watch quizzes and take part in plenty - even if I'm trying to be interactive on the TV. 

Work on my memory training techniques (fortunately that was a phase I've already been through (Busan/ deBono etc) and practice them with ...data.  Data is the things that ALL quizzers should know.

Elicit those lists through books that have been written for that purpose: Schotts Miscellany (including sequels) crossword solving dictionaries, bluffers guides (there's loads of them: literature/music/philosophy/historical periods) and remember those old easy learn handbooks - I remember I had one on (of all things) The Holocaust. Basically cartoonishly printed and illustarted with speech balloons and thought bubbles but actually chock full of insightful information and serious commentaries. And make lists and memorise the information. 

Master as many of these as possible. Do crosswords - especially the general knowledge ones. And snatch at every quiz in every newspaper you find. And read non fiction and fiction for pleasure and never turn your nose up at a decent documentary. 

Quislings

I seem to be clamped in the teeth of a new obsession. It's called the pub quiz a form of knowledge check that is devised to astound people into realizing how little they know. I don't suppose it should come as such a great surprise why I've fallen for this activity as a lot of people like a brain challenge of some sort whether they admit to it or not, and for years I have been one of those people. This desire seems to be part of the human DNA.Whether it's a crossword, a game of chess, Sudoku, word games like anagrams or teasers in the daily paper. Or for the presumably less bright, word searches on the puzzle pages of those trashy looking magazines you see open to people scribbling all over on when sat half bored to death at airports. Years ago the would have been Titbits or Weekends though sadly both those estimable improving articles of literature have been put to death. It hardly matters as I'm not interested in any of that. I have however become very interested in the acquisition of general knowledge.

The reason for this can be tracked back to last year when I against my better judgement I allowed myself to be drafted into a pub quiz team .I'd managed for years to avoid this kind of plight.  I don't like going out all that much.  I've always preferred - or since hitting middle age about 15 years ago- staying in and watching TV. Or going out with my partner, or doing something on my own. The thought of sitting around with a bunch of dubious cohorts and being noisy and competitive whilst trying to remember who scored the first goal for England in the 1966 world cup final has always sounded anathema to me. Or trying to remember the sequential names of all the actors who played Dr Who or James Bond, whilst feeling squiffy and bilious from drinking too much beer on an empty and under prepared stomach and knowing that I am going to feel awful as a consequence later that night and the following day.  Not only that  I always thought that pub quizzes were a bit beneath me if I'm honest.  Even though I always quietly assumed that I had this ripe and diverse repository of information in my head that would prove a killer to any alcohol sodden wretch across the sodden tables. And it was probably that little bit of ego that reside in the quite interstices of my brain - that made me believe that I might actually be quite good at this.

And of course now that I don't work, having effectively early retired two years ago, I had nothing else better to do, Or so every one assured me. Had I been able to find something else to do with my time I would have been all right. All my working life I'd been saying to people that I would love to do this do that. Attend this or hat, but since I'm working that evening or night or week-end I was never available. Work was always a cast iron certainty that I could avoid anything that didn't really appeal to me. So these days I'm very light on excuses and exist within a world where there appears to be an enormous improbability of finding some face saving work to fill in the gap,The result of this is that I have now found myself drawn into the murky world of the pub quiz, and despite initial misgivings, am really starting to enjoy it.

But here's the thing, I always thought I'd be a natural. I played a lot of trivial pursuit in the 80s and and different times been addicted to crosswords and word games throughout adult life. I've always enjoyed knowledge and have always been quite good at hanging on to it. I've read quite a bit and have had quite a few interests - enough to make a mildly interesting obituary: this includes film buff, theatre, music fan,social history, the natural world, literary fiction, archaeology art, antiques, languages, etymology and war history. You might say that my whole life has been heading towards this point where I go to the local pub on a Tuesday night and I know the answer to every question that comes up. I mean it's a pub right, hardly a hotbed of learning. I doubted that there were any doctors of philology in regular attendance. Or historians, or writers or map makers or professional medical staff or film makers. Just a bunch of local hobos being asked a list of questions culled form old quiz books the likes of which I would have heard a million times before. Bones in the body 212, ribs 30, How many plays did Shakespeare write: 34 capital of Denmark, Copenhagen which was also the Duke of Wellington's horse. The same duke who brought us the Wellington Boot. Like cardigan and balaclava. A cooper? makes barrels! who knew? Well I did I would smugly inform myself, because I've heard them all before, countless times. And I like pub quizzes because now I get to show everyone just how clever and knowledgeable I am. Except I'm not.

The thing is, quizzes these days are much much harder. There're much harder on the TV. I can remember the days of Sale of The Century when Nicholas Parsons asked things like: what is the capital of France? or where in you body would you find your larynx? The whole family could answer them. The questions seemed to be pitched at the level where most people might know the answers - emphatically most people as opposed to knowledge fanatics. And that's where the differences seems to be today. The questions that appear on most TV quizzes today appear much harder than they used to. This might prompt someone to wonder why that is.

One theory might be that we are living in an information rich age. Every piece of information, every fact that exists or has ever existed is quite literally one one click away. Years ago if an obscure question about some minor character in one of the battles during the Napoleon wars came up - only someone well versed in the period would stand a chance of answering it. Nowadays people carry mobile phones wherever they go that provide instant access to the internet from which anything can accessed. Although a process of research still needs to occur which begins with a question, the answer or answers are found easily without recourse to the sort of effort that research  interrogation used to require. This might involve finding the right book, thinking about how the information might be categorized then reading through paragraphs or pages or whole chapters to get the answer to the question. Nowadays there are electronic sifters called search engines that take the strain and the sweat of finding things for you and provide an instant delivery of information without barely the slightest effort on the part of the person.

So the pocket has replaced the brain.  And since most people these days seem to be hard wired into their phones and therefore the internet anyway the whole panoply of knowledge in existence is available and stored permanently within every person in the western world.

More About The Pub Quiz

Since this blog is supposed to be about my efforts at turning myself into a brilliant quizzer I really should try and update it every so often. I could try for example chronicling my experiences at the local pub quiz. Questions that came up that I didn't know the answer to, or did but couldn't remember, or did and could remember and then cite the most interesting examples. Or I could ramble on about my developing training techniques - waxing enthusiastically when a particular method is new and refreshing and apparently successful, or how once what appeared to work well now has fallen behind whichever most recent fad. Or I could list all the modes of learning and rate them in terms of how effective I think they are. Or I could just write about all the wonderfully interesting things I am learning as I throw myself into the infinitive pool of information out there in the vain hope that some of it will stick. Or I could try and write in such a way that all of the above is covered by practicing my rusty writing skills around whatever subject I choose that is definitely germane to a quizzing blog.

So much for the opening. I had to get that out of the way. Perhaps we should begin at the beginning. General knowledge for the purpose of quizzing might be defined as a vast repository of information that is general only insofar as differing individuals of differing ages and genders and experience and are the bearers of any of a multitude of information that is held within their own personal repertoire of individual knowledge. That is to say, all the information exists, but its spread among an infinite number of individual human brains. People do different things, read different books, listen to different radio shows and watch different films.  They studied different things at school, college and university and they studied differently. They do different jobs have specified interests and obsessions from the run of the mill to the arcane. People travel about differently, think and talk and read and listen and smell and dream differently about different things. Some can remember everything they see and hear, others struggle to recall anything. But still the latter group can surprise with their knowledge whilst the former group cab struggle when tested. It is almost impossible to categorise and make sense of. But there it is, sitting at the head of the quizzing table, This nebulous thing called general knowledge formulated in a questioning format that may or may not trigger something inside your brain where for some reason possibly unknown to you, you either know something about it or nothing about it. So who in their rigt mind is going say with any sense of conviction and a complete lack of understanding of hubris, that they are good at general knowledge. Not me that's for sure.

So, where do we go from here? The answer as far as I am concerned is to consider my own person experience.  I used to think I was quite good at general knowledge. I always did quite well during the 80's obsession with trivial pursuit and I remember being a pretty dab hand at Sale of the Century and the Sun quick crossword. I had a couple of advantages over some people as well. I was infatuated with words and vocabulary and burned my way through the canon of English lit with the untrammeled zeal of the converted. I read dictionary's for fun, and tried to remember quotations and aphorisms sufficient to amaze  everyone I knew with the breadth of my learning. All of which was fine since all the other questions were both easy and repetitive.

Pub Quizzes

A pub quiz can be an interesting experience. Putting aside ambitious thoughts of winning - much good can come from just attendance. The memory is a tricky thing to get to grips with. Reading information is seldom sufficient to stock the brain with easily accessible data. There has to be multiple stimuli - some reading some effort at recall, a mixed diversification on how that stimulus is obtained - if not reading then hearing. If not hearing then seeing. Or being bludgeoned with. Or frightened into. Or being dragged into consciousness by the agonies of a flawed memory.

So attending as many pub quizzes as possible is a good learning strategy to add to other methods of information reception. Typically a question is asked and you have either forgotten the answer or you never knew it in the first place. Once the answer has been given all that effort and frustration opens the memory valves and allows that relevant piece of information to slide in and take a permanent place in your brain. Without this theory I wouldn't know that: there exists a pink fairy armadillo, that Odin's 9 hand maidens are called Valkyries, a blue lagoon is made up of vodka and blue curaceu, Haydock is the other racecourse in Liverpool and that Everton football club have Prince Rupert's Tower etched into their club's insignia.  

I wouldn't know any of these facts had I read them from a book. The reason I know them today is because of the tense and heated atmosphere form which they sprung - with me not knowing and then becoming enlightened. So, it's against this background that I'm writing this blog as a kind of condemnatory for the rubbish quiz that was presented to us last night at the Old Bell and Bush. If a question is difficult it might be inconvenient at the time but it might also be used as part of the new you for the future - bluntly if the question comes up again you will know it. If a question is easy (at least to you) come you are going to score some much needed, ego massaging points as a win in the short term does wonders for ones confidence.   But if the question is boring - there is no merit to it whatsoever. 

Recently I read an article about pub quizzes and within that article, written by a pub quiz regular, that questions really need to be interesting for the quiz to be a success.  Not too easy (boring) or too difficult (moral sapping) but enough to make you wring out your memory for something you think you know, or attempt to break it down into parts and apply logic to what the answer might conceivably be based on what you already do know. The article gives by way of illustration a boring question example: ' By how much in percentage terms did British Gas put up their call out bills last month?' Who cares? Who wants to know? Why do  you want to know? The answer is then guessed at with no real sense of pride or achievement and if it turns out to be right will elicit mild pleasure in gaining a point.  If it guessed wrong nothing is learnt from what is after all a transient fact that means nothing to anyone even there and then let alone in a month or 6 months or a years time. During which there will still be 7 new wonders of the world to remember that a make you feel knowledgeable, b  make you want to travel more, c, get more from the travel experiences that you have, d will expand your knowledge base by an untold amount given the natural propensity to look deeper in to the components of the answer. Interesting questions make for an illuminating experience. Boring questions make you wonder whu yoy bothered turning up in the first place. 

Pub Quiz

I thought I would take the opportunity to attend a different pub quiz whilst I was in Somerset. The quiz-master of my usual pub The Boar which could easily be a pun on him, deservedly gets routinely heckled by the assembled competitors because of the seemingly purposeful abstruseness of his questions. And I will certainly write more about this in later blogs. But this entry concerns the Vivary Arms in Taunton. The pub's website describes the pub as follows:

'In the Parish of Wilton, once a village on the outskirts of the town, stands the oldest recorded inn in Taunton. Today, the pub is located behind the park and only five minutes' walk from the main shopping centre, still maintains the characteristics of a Somerset rural pub, with its low- beamed ceilings and relaxing atmosphere.'

It is indeed a very old pub with a charming snug area from where you can view the dark solid beams criss-crossing the room, and the exposed wattle and daub wall section which is cleverly framed and protected by a perspex casement window. The games room however, where the quiz takes place, is a grim adjunct. True you can still see some of the beams and features of the rest of the pub's interior, but this room is all about its dusty dartboard, its shelves of dog-eared playing cards and its huge covered pool table that the vast majority of the local quiz players sit around like expectant poker players when waiting the for the quiz to start.  A couple of inglenook areas for temporary visitants with wobbly circular tables and wooden stools, and a grimy window seat complete the fixtures and furnishings.

The quiz itself was due to start at half past eight - satisfyingly early I thought as pub quizzes that start an hour later often run the risk of players being too inebriated to think straight. I know this to my cost. As the quiz sheets were delivered  the real differences between my local and this place became apparent. In the place numbered though otherwise blank sheet, was an odd arrangement of coloured linked and numbered balloons. The idea, we were told was to fill in these balloons with the answers and get a blockbusters style linkage between the left and right of the page or from top to bottom. All the papers were differently patterned in the manner of a bingo card, and instead of their being a winner there would be winners based on successfully answered links being made.

At the start of the quiz I looked forward, as an original son of the south west soil, to being able to understand every word uttered by the quiz-master rather than having to cope with straining to make sense what always sounds to me as cod scouse north Walian mangling. But I was to be disappointed. This man (why is it always a man?) not only had trouble with his articulation, making for example 'f' sounds too much like 's' sounds, he had also chosen to go without a PA system. This meant every question had to be shouted out rendering any clarity that might have been achieved easily muffled by the background hum of the snug area and the garrulity of the quiz participants. The regulars seemed to believe that the way these things are played include at least one person to shouting out something feasible in response to a question before the question master has finished asking it, before someone else then shouts out something ludicrous, completing what might be an intentional spoiler for the visitors.

And then of course there were the questions. To be fair some of them were reasonable: What is a bridewell? (a prison) the most populated country in Africa (Nigeria). I like these sorts of questions - even if you and your team don't know the answers at least you leave the pub at the end just a little bit wiser through the alcoholic fug that's dominating your head.  But then he asked a question about square routes which would not have been out of place coming from the mouth of Robert Robinson in the diabolically difficult 1970's Ask The Family. So boring.  So pointless (well not literally but you know what I mean.) And then (perhaps as a sweetener) a question about a girl pop group Little Mix about whom I know absolutely nothing - nor do I want to. As it progressed there was something about Dr Christian Jessen, (his surname, who knew? we didn't!), and then a real devious question about Harry S Trueman.

 I was so cross with myself about the question about Harry S as I have spent hours learning about initials. AA Milne (Alan Alexander) E M Forster (Earnest Morgan)  HG Wells (Herbert George), there's so many, and plenty of them are sufficiently interesting Cecil B DeMille (Blount) e e Cummings (Edward Estlin) TS Eliot (Thomas Sterns) PG Wodehouse (Pelham Grenville). There are so many, and I have learnt quite a few. But I hadn't learnt this one and was amazed that I'd missed it. The answer however was simple. The 'S' stands for nothing. It was a sop to his two grandfathers both of whom had names beginning with S - so instead of choosing one of them (I don't know why his parents couldn't have taken both) they chose the letter 'S' instead.  So the 'S' stands for nothing but the letter 'S'.

We didn't win anything in this quiz, but it was fun. And no experience isn't worth having.  Unless you count torture, or illness, or pain,