Topic: Quiz questions

[nicanary]

Last night in the UK there was another televised episode of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". One contestant was very good indeed, not knowing all the answers but using his lifelines very intelligently. He successfully reached £500,000 and was faced with the following question for £1m.

Which of these motor sporting events took place in the earliest year?

a) Le Mans 24-hour race
b) Monaco Grand Prix
c) Indy 500
d) Isle of Man TT

Antyone spot the anomaly? I admit I'm the most boring pedant in the world when it comes to these things, but this man was facing a potential £500,000 and he was given a poorly-researched poser. As it happens, the answer's the same but IMO that's not the point.

Maybe I'm just disappointed it wasn't me in the chair. Could've done with the dosh.

PS On another website, I've been shown up as too pedantic for my own good. Still - anyone know to which I refer?

[Allan L]

Yes I happened to see it too and without looking it up I couldn't remember when the Motorcycle TT started. I knew the car TT started in '05 but didn't know for sure if the bikes had started pre-war.
I would never get far in those quizzes as I know next to nothing about pop music and football - but I did know that Beethoven originally dedicated his "Eroica" symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte which was a high-paying question last night.

[nicanary]

Yes I happened to see it too and without looking it up I couldn't remember when the Motorcycle TT started. I knew the car TT started in '05 but didn't know for sure if the bikes had started pre-war.
I would never get far in those quizzes as I know next to nothing about pop music and football - but I did know that Beethoven originally dedicated his "Eroica" symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte which was a high-paying question last night.

Well spotted Allan. I know it's just pedantry from me, but it irritated me enough to stop me from falling asleep. Absurd, really. I just felt that, with so much money at stake, they should have made it clearer. It's since been pointed out to me that the car race was officially the RAC TT, whereas the bike race has always been referred to as the Isle of Man TT (although it started out as the International Auto-cycle TT) and I know in my heart that I'm just being a bit OTT. I hate it when quiz questions are poorly worded or researched. One quiz show contained the question "in which decade was the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix first held?" Of course the answer they wanted was the 1920s, but my pedantry insists that it was 1948, because F1 as a category didn't exist till then. That's me for you!

From my own perspective, I stumbled on a few (ricin, the 12 Apostles) but I would have solved them using lifelines, just like the contestant.  The Eroica would have been a "phone a friend", in this case my brother who has been a classical musician for 60 years and no doubt would have known the answer.  So I reckon I would have walked off with £1m.

Hey ho.......

[Carnut]

Slightly off topic for this board but on topic for this particular thread was my experience in a pub quiz quite recently.
Of course in the pub quiz I always hope for a car-related question because that should be a sure-fire point for my team as such questions are rarely more than quite elementary.

So the one which came up was: Which of the following cars were first to be made, Fiat, Renault or Mercedes-Benz?

Of course I knew that both Fiat and Renault were founded in 1899 and that the first Mercedes-Benz only appeared in 1926 after the amalgamation of Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (makers of Mercedes cars) with Benz & Co., so I thought it might be a trick question as most people seem to know that Karl Benz made his first car in 1885 so would inevitably answer 'Mercedes-Benz'!

So the discussion was, should we answer 'Mercedes-Benz' as the first car of the three, which is clearly incorrect but was probably the answer which would earn the point as they were probably not clever enough to set a trick question, or should it be one of the (correct) others, although I had no idea which was the first of the 1899 cars!  We went for Fiat.

Needless to say when the answers were given the answer to that question was Mercedes-Benz.  I immediately objected, saying that the first Mercedes-Benz, made by Daimler-Benz AG, only appeared in 1926, but of course nobody believed me!  The quiz master even looked it up on his computer and Wikipedia seemed to give him the answer that the first Mercedes-Benz was made in 1885!  So whoever answered 'Mercedes-Benz' got the point and we got nothing.

It was only a pub quiz so it really didn't matter, but such a question could well appear in a more important quiz and since so very few people really know anything about cars (like politics, everyone thinks they're an expert but none know anything much..) the incorrect answer would be deemed the correct one!

We've since switched to a different pub quiz!

[Oguerrerob]

(both cases, Nicanary & Carnut) Seems that it happens more offen that it should be!

[nicanary]

Hard luck Norman. Now that would REALLY have cheesed me off. Your logic was exactly the same as mine would have been - what can you do at the end of the day? To us it matters, to others we're just being petty.

You'll have noted that my AP strapline is sarcasm aimed at Wikipedia.

[Allan L]

At pub quiz level it's what you expect - they probably also think that four interlocked rings is the Audi badge and it seems fashionable in all walks of life to use modern names in historical contexts.

[JMLB]

Hello just joined this forum today and I can see from this post that there are like-minded pedants like me out there!! My favourite case of a badly researched question:

How many men have visited the moon?

Question from audience - do you mean walked on the moon?

Quizmaster - yes

Answer to that is 12 of course from 6 Apollo missions.

Answer given was 28 - which is the number of men that have either walked on the moon or flown around the moon, starting at Apollo 8.

Of course Wikipedia says 28 men have visited the moon but the quizmaster had no clue about the difference between visited the moon or walked on the moon!

Nobody else in the room seemed to understand what the problem was!!

Forgive me for straying from the subject of cars but this just seemed the right thread for a rant!! I shall go and hide in my anorak again!

[Allan L]

Welcome to this thread JMLB!
I hope you will get a bit of fun from the main part of Autopuzzles too, although it's getting difficult to find anything to pose that isn't totally obscure

[Carnut]

As long as they don't ask for the names of all the 12 men who walked on the moon I should be OK then!

[nicanary]

As long as they don't ask for the names of all the 12 men who walked on the moon I should be OK then!

Wasn't it all "filmed" in a hangar in New Mexico?  I must be right - it's everywhere on soshulmeedya.

[Carnut]

That's right, the Russians just weren't paying attention so they couldn't blow the whistle..!
And the Covid-19 virus was manufactured by Bill Gates as a means of controlling us all!

[nicanary]

That's right, the Russians just weren't paying attention so they couldn't blow the whistle..!
And the Covid-19 virus was manufactured by Bill Gates as a means of controlling us all!