The Quiz

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

       After two lovely days in Shropshire this week after the Convention, I 
have returned to the maelstrom of final exam week, and won't have a prayer of 
expanding my notes for a post before the weekend.  As the day wore on Sunday, 
I found that the notes I was taking on a couple of sheets of paper in my 
pocket were becoming something like an Official Minutes for the love-hounds I 
was seated among, and I want to do them justice before very long.

       Meantime, even if out of order, I feel duty bound to comment on points 
arising in the newsgroup.

Graham Dombkins (GRAHAM.G.R.DOMBKINS@msm.bhp.com.au) picks up on Scott 
Telford:

> Scott Telford sez...
>>Despite at least four different Love-Hounds quiz teams, including a
>>A-team of IED, Doug, Chris and Uli, the quiz was won by The Norfolk
>>Alchemists team again.
>
>    WOW! Does anybody have a list of the questions?? We send in the gaffa 
>"brains-trust" and still didn't make it?? If you could, send just the 
>questions in first and let us see how well we do ourselves with them before 
>you post the answers.

I know *I* don't have a list of the questions!  I was on the lh `B' team 
(Meredith Tarr, woj, Geoff Parks, me), and it was all we could do to come up 
with preliminary answers as Peter Fitzgerald-Morris read the 20 questions in 
a stately but nevertheless relentless way.  Homeground will publish them, but 
probably with the answers, and Graham has a point in wishing to work on the 
questions themselves.  Here's a few that I remember (they have to be asked 
quite precisely--though none of them were `trick' questions).  General 
proviso:  answers should be as  complete as possible !

Q.     Who directed the 1940 film that influenced the song "The Red Shoes" 
       and the film "The Line, the Curve, & the Cross."?

Q.     Name every Kate Bush song that has the English word `love' in its 
       title.

Q.     Which Kate Bush song includes the words, "You know that I'll be 
       waiting"?

Q.     Who is the historical figure Kate has mentioned as contributing to the 
       theme of the song, "Heads We're Dancing"?

Q.     What Kate Bush song was inspired by a film by Ken Russell?

Those are just the ones that come to mind right away--but they give you a 
flavor for the event.  Limit yourself to ten minutes, and with no opportunity 
to consult anything except your memory, and see how you do!

       As to our being skunked again by The Norfolk Alchemists, Geoff Parks 
(gtp10@cus.cam.ac.uk) points out:

> Well, I argued in favour of either one mega Love-Hounds team or the
> sharing of knowledge between teams, which would have increased our
> chances of winning. We might have had the problem of distributing the
> prizes among 16 or so, but at least we'd have had the prizes. I can
> console myself with the thought that the Love-Hounds B Team (Alanna,
> Meredith, Mark and myself) did better than the A Team on the last
> question (name all KaTe's songs with "love" in the title) - we got
> 5 compared to the A Team's 3.

I have to take the fall on this one.  There were some 12 or 15 of us grouped 
together just to the left in front of the stage.  About half an hour before 
the Quiz itself, answer sheets were distributed with the instructions that 
players should organize themselves into groups of 4, with each group taking a 
name that they would enter at the top of the sheet.  We got ahold of a 
handful, and it is an index to the confusion of our discussion as to how we 
should arrange ourselves that Geoff's and my recollections of who were on the 
`Love-Hounds B' team differ.

Geoff strongly urged that we form a Committee of the Whole, so to speak, but 
I was troubled by the fact that the instructions from the stage stipulated 
that there should be teams of four.  If we won, suppose (and it was 
emphasized that the winning team would receive precisely four of the special 
shoebox editions of TRS), and 12-15 of us trekked up on stage together, I had 
a real concern that it would look like No Fair! and the love-hounds name 
would be disgraced.  We really milled around for quite a while on this, with 
no real progress, until finally Chris Williams turned to me and asked for an 
ethical consultation.  At that point--and with time becoming rather urgent--I 
proposed that we form ourselves into teams of four, with our `A team' being 
|>oug, IED, Chris Williams, and Uli.  My view prevailed.

       In retrospect, I still think I was right--though I was certainly 
undercut by the fact that the winning Norfolk Alchemists were six.  That is 
still not 12 or 15, however, and anyway, I think the bitter truth is that 
even if the whole batch of us had been one group, we wouldn't have done any 
better.  Yes, the B team got 5 song titles with `love' in them, over the A 
team's 3:  but the correct answer is 7!  NONE of us got the name of the 
second director of "The Red Shoes" after Michael Powell, though Andy 
immediately realized that there was a second credit and that his name was the 
key to the question.

       I don't know what the Norfolk Alchemist's secret is--they are six 
young people, mostly female, and they got 17 out of the 20 questions right-- 
but they have beat us love-hounds twice in a row now.  Next time, I say take 
no prisoners!  Field a team of 4, 5, 6, but let's set up to draw from *our* 
strengths.  Delegate someone to write down the questions (the fact that we 
were not organized to do that was a major planning flaw).  And have two or 
three of us bring *fast* laptops with things like The Garden indexed for 
instant access.  Maybe (if another 4 years go by before a new Konvention) the 
machine could support a satellite connection from the floor to a network gate 
and the whole newsgroup could get online in support!

       Anyway, to come back to the sad truth:  we fielded our best this time, 
and they were in fine form too.  Several of the questions were devious, but 
not in any way unfair.  In fact, I have to say Peter F-M's quiz was very, 
very skillful.

............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
       "Life is sad..."                        pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu
                                                    72020.366@compuserve.com