Tag Archives: University Challenge

Quiz Night and I Do Quite Well

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Horse ploughing at Flintham

Second day under new rules and I’ve already deviated. This is the first writing of the day because I’m waiting for a gardener to arrive and I can’t concentrate when I know that I’m going to be disturbed. If I was going to be disturbed all day I would work round it, but just waiting for one knock on the door, for some reason, seems more disruptive. It’s the same with unexpected interruptions – I just deal with them and get on.  It’s the annual tidy.  I’m not able to cope with the steps and the slope and Julia has plenty to do without adding garden maintenance to the list. She deals with roses, fruit and vegetables and that’s enough. Hopefully a new garden on one level will reinvigorate our interest in gardening. It will be good exercise, and it’s about time I started moving more.

Horse ploughing at Flintham

There’s not much else to report. It was quiz night last night on TV. I did moderately well compared to the contestants in the general knowledge round of Mastermind (though it’s a lot easier sitting at home compared to the studio). In recent years I have started to drop back in comparison to them – I feel I may have peaked intellectually.

Only Connect set a new record for 1st  and 2nd round aggregate scores. They weren’t particularly good teams, they just had easy questions. I also set a record, answering four out of 12, two of them before the teams did. I then had a really good “missing vowels” round, which is unusual because that and anagrams are usually very bad for me. As I say, easy questions.

Horse ploughing at Flintham

Then on to University Challenge, where I also answered a few questions, including a couple the teams didn’t know.  Frustratingly I always forget the details so you’ll just have to take my word for it. However, in general I was, as usual, bogged down in questions I didn’t understand (maths, medicine and chemistry are all bad for me) being answered by people who are 45 years younger than me and know much more than I have accumulated in all my years.

Little Grey Fergie – men in Sheds

However, despite tonight’s success I realise I would be a lot less successful if I were in a studio and under stress. That keeps my ambition within bounds.  What I did notice, again, was that some questions seem to have come up a number of times in the last week. This has happened before and it always makes me wonder if the same people write the questions for all the quizzes on TV. I really should start to look at the credits. What I suspect is happening is that I watch so many quizzes that subjects simply come together by coincidence. Even if the same people were responsible for all the questions, and were guilty of recycling them, all the programmes work to different schedules so the questions would be scattered. makes you think though, the idea of one super-brained question setter sitting in the middle of a web with various strands marked “FA Cup Winners”, “Periodic Table” and “Pop Music 1980s” as they construct a massive web of questions.

And another tractor shot

Photos are more from past Septembers. It’s Flintham Show again . . .

Flower competition – Flintham Show

 

Pennies, Parsnips and Prime Ministers

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Julia has just returned home bearing parsnips. She managed to find some in Marks & Spencer, which means tonight’s meal can have a proper balance of root vegetables. I cannot believe we are actually short of something I have taken for granted over the last 64 years. It’s very unsettling, next someone will be telling me that the Conservative party is no longer the home of fiscal responsibility and safe hands for the economy . . .

Talking of which, Liz Truss has to last another 78 days to avoid becoming the shortest serving British Prime Minister in history. George Canning currently holds that distinction, but to be fair, he was hindered in his premiership by dying. I’m not sure which way I would bet if called upon to make a wager on her chances of survival, but you have to wonder if it’s worth her ordering her official Christmas cards just yet.

Discussion in the shop today included whether the questions on University Challenge are getting easier. We think they are, because we are generally finding them easier to answer. As none of us are getting younger or brighter this tends to suggest that the question quality is declining.

At the moment, people seem to be wanting to sell things. We bought a great accumulation this morning. It had belonged to the father of the two brothers who brought it in, and had lain dormant for about twenty years. It wasn’t a collection as such, he had just kept all the coins and other similar junk he had come across aver the years. We were surprised to find a half sovereign amongst the clutter of old copper coins. Not very surprised because it’s happened before, but it’s always nice when it happens. However, we were more surprised to find another half dozen spread through the layers of junk. It ended up well into four figures.

Then we had a collection of modern sets, which was reasonable money, though not as interesting, and while that was in progress a lady came in and sold us a few other bits. It was a more modest selection in an old biscuit time, but she still walked out with an extra £50 in her purse.

Just to balance things up we had a couple of good coin sales to replace some of the cash.

 

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Soup, Seeds and a Kitchen Mishap

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I just wiped out 200 words of text. I could retrieve it, but I was debating whether to keep it anyway. There are always more words . . .

University Challenge is back on, so winter cannot be far off. After a good match tonight, including me answering a good selection of questions, we watched a documentary on the first 60 years of the show. This contained quite a lot of interesting material including the preparation some teams go through and what some of the contestants did afterwards. However, I did feel it could have been a lot more interesting. What I am noticing more and more is that TV programmes take fifteen minutes of material and spread it out over 45 minutes. I’m not sure if it’s a new fashion in TV or a sign that my intelligence is growing and needs more input. Frankly, it’s unlikely that I am becoming smarter, so am forced, once more, into believing the cynical option.

They also showed a couple of question setters. One of them referred to something being “very unique”. I hate it when they do that. Things can’t be grades of unique. It’s the same as being dead or pregnant. You are, or you aren’t. What sort of questions will they set if they don’t have a basic grasp of language?  And will they have answers that are graded as “correct” and “very correct”?

This afternoon I roasted some butternut squash to make soup. I also cleaned the seeds and roasted them. I’m not clear whether it’s ecologically sound  or not, roasting a few seeds just to avoid waste, but it ended in disaster anyway, when I overcooked them. They still tasted good in parts, but the overwhelming taste of carbon was a bit off-putting. Next time I will pay more attention to temperature and timing.

Tomorrow we will be having roasted squash soup, but it won’t be sprinkled with seeds.