March 4, 2014, by Ollie

You’re a quizzard, Ollie

Let me set the scene for you. Newark Hall Bar nearly a year ago, give or take a few months. A team of young, intelligent students and free Dominoes to eat at the halfway point. On that night we walked away as winners collecting a sweet money prize. Can I claim I’m a superstar, not really. I contributed very little to the quiz but I can claim I made a good call in the choosing of teammates.

So lets zoom back to the present day it’s Sunday and the BioSoc Pub Quiz is about to start, the first and most important point on the agenda, choosing a team. I eyed the candidates in the room like a vulture, who would boss the music round, who was a movie buff, who would lead us to victory. The crack team that I assembled didn’t qualify in any of these categories but myself, Hannah, Alastair, Jackson, Matt and the hidden gem Ben we’re about to make history.

Second was choosing a team name, that team name might not be blog appropriate but I can say that it involved cucumbers…

So now it was the quiz, the questions were not great for our team, apart from the Science and sports rounds, I was worried. The music round, movie round, history and general knowledge went by and I wasn’t too sure what to think. 1st, 6th, god forbid last position? I didn’t know. A few standout answers from the crew unknowingly put us in a good position but there were plenty of wrong answers, Steve Jobs and Brasil were not the answers in the many cases where we had no answer to the question, despite my insistence they were. If it wasn’t either of them. I thought it was El Salvador but again my team didn’t trust my opinion but I did get Eldrick as Tiger Woods first name. Booyah!

However, along came the flag section. What country and what is the countries’ capital. I did Geography A Level, but believe it or not learning what flags belong to which country and then what their capitals are isn’t actually what Geography A Level is about. However, along came Ben ‘Brainy’ Hatfield. delivering near every country and its capital on a plate, apart from Bolivia, I totally got Bolivia. Apart from not putting D.C after Washington so getting that wrong and confusing Cape Town and Johannesburg as the capital of South Africa we (Ben) got everything right. The incredible score thrust us up onto 100 points. Would it be enough for the win? Even against the team of lecturers that came down for the night?

Katie and Sam, the quiz masters for the night collected the scores and started announcing the positions. ‘Yolo Swaggins’ and ‘Is It Poland’ tied for 3rd with 93 points but a graceful retirement from the standings by the team of lecturers, on 97 points , who for some reason weren’t too bothered about no longer receiving Forum tickets as a prize, meant that after a tie-breaker Yolo Swaggins came 3rd and Is It Poland 2nd… meaning the team with the name about the cucumber and stuff took the victory!

The night was a great success with a raffle and the entry fee resulting in £160 being raised for the South Sinai Foundation. The charity supported by the School of Life Sciences and whose Trustee Francis Gilbert, is a lecturer in the department.

So on that note I can add The Den to the Newark Hall Bar as another UoN location that I’ve tasted victory on using my quizzical skills. I must be a quizzard.

I’d like to mention the second Wacky Scientist Bar Crawl of the year. If you haven’t read my other blogs where I talk oodles about Bio Soc and previous Wacky Scientist Bar Crawls then I encourage you to do so to bring you up to speed but here is a quick run through.

In the challenges at the bars, apart from the loss in the Tug of War we were victorious in them all, particularly impressive was 3-0 demolition in the Sumo Wrestling against Physics Soc. These results on top of a great turnout of people were tipping the cup into our hands but perhaps the victory was sealed by the impressive chants we sang throughout the night, particularly pleasing was, ‘Bio, Bio, it’s off to drink we go’ to the tune of Hi-Ho. So if I hadn’t give it away already (I did) we won the trophy! Claiming it back from Physics! A successful week all round!

P.P.S A blog on pancake day. Surely that means a picture of a pancake or mention of them? Well just a mention, because I didn’t have pancakes!

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