Quizzical Notes

I did a quiz night with friends on Saturday (which we won, he says smugly) and there was one moment of humour that's worth repeating.

Questionmaster: "What is the largest species of lizard?"

Instant voice from the back: "Trump!"

The table across from us was particularly raucous - they turned up with takeaways and a bottle of gin - and only got louder as the night went on and the level of gin went down. That prompted one of my friends who knew them to note that mass would be interesting in the morning - apparently the two being noisiest were the cathedral's Director of Music and the organist.

There were a couple of answers I was dubious enough about to check up when I got home, and it turns out I was wrong to say John Wayne played the lead in Genghis Khan, it was Omar Sharif. But I wasn't wrong by much, he played Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. And I guessed right that they'd go with Copernicus as the first person to propose the heliocentric hypothesis, but I was right to think it was Aristarchus of Samos, who only beat him by 18 centuries (admittedly I couldn't remember the 'of Samos'). One of my friends was particularly upset that she couldn't remember the name of the Welsh Assembly's First Minister, because 'I'll get teased about it at work' - it wouldn't be an issue for most of us, but she works in the Constitutional Affairs team at the Cabinet Office. Whoops....

It's about a year since I last did a quiz, we used to do them much more regularly. The only drawback to this one was that there were really too many people in too small a space, which made conversation difficult to impossible, but still an enjoyable night.