Stowing the Egghead Challenger form away is probably a wise idea after our performance last night…
By Katie Garner
Het and Jess reunited for some serious quizzing
At Wychelm we like to offer a wide variety of events and locations for our members to explore and test their metal against, probably taking our social calendar with the same level of seriousness and energy as we do our match fixtures. Next up on our hectic event schedule was a quiz night, being organised by club secretary and part of the furniture Frank, who is also a swimming coach. It was his swimming club’s annual quiz event and Frank wanted to get a troop of Wychelmers involved in a battle of sporting brains.
We ended up having a team of seven people in total. We were relying on Het to answer anything sports related, and looking to Jess for all of the science and nature answers. Frank, Mike S, Dave and Jean were expected to answer everything else with a knowledgeable gusto while I pretended to shuffle papers and practice my neat block capitals for professional answer writing – maybe not the best move as my spelling is a touch terrible.
l-r: Mike and Frank gearing up with brain food of sausage rolls and crisps
We were due to combat against nine other teams in a total of ten rounds, as well as a picture round. The rounds included sports, music, film, arts and literature, science and nature, who’s line is it anyway, general knowledge, history, geography and TV, and we opted to play our joker in the general knowledge round, thinking that it may be our safest bet. The picture round was also annoyingly difficult as it showed stills from films, but with the faces and bodies of the actors removed, so it just looked like a scene featuring invisible men. We had to guess the films which proved a lot harder than you may think!
Mike proved to be a surprisingly secretive stash of stowed away random information, providing us with the capital of Saudi Arabia amongst other far flung questions across countries and time. Dave and Jean knew their people, matching up names to questions with the merest of conversation. Us (ahem) slightly younger members of the team took on the more up to date questions, with my defining moment being able to name all of the Fantastic Four members, while Het was a fountain of 50 Cent knowledge as Jess picked out Tarzan successfully from the picture round. Frank filled in all the gaps with a solid general knowledge base. As a team, we tagged all the bases for success with a variety of ages and skill sets, but to be honest, the questions were very random, and we spent more time looking puzzled at each other (or spelling things out to me) rather than answering questions successfully.
l-r: Dave and Jean provided the After Eights to boost morale mid quiz
Despite this, I feel we did extremely well, coming in a respectable 5th place so dead on in the middle, with a satisfying 66 points. The winners had 87 points so a slight gap to bridge for next year, but a mid-table finish is good enough for us! We were just all so relieved to not come last that we were celebrating anyway, amidst a stack of marshmallows, chocolate raisins and empty Pimms cans – yes, I got carried away with the snacks.
Thanks to Frank for inviting us along to his swimming club’s event, and thanks to the team of quiz masterminds who turned up to further represent Wychelm out and about in Romford. The next event coming up at this point isn’t until June, with the league’s dinner and dance on Saturday 29th June. If you would like information on this, please check our Facebook page events or talk to me on Monday. I need to know if you can come by the end of May.
l-r: Jess and Katie, armed with Pimms and ready to roll
Thanks team! If anyone knows of any local regular pub quizzes, it would be great to check out a few more. Let me know any suggestions and I’ll get it organised!
