This week's setters
were Fifth Finger.
They warned us of some hidden themes without revealing which rounds
contained them, or, indeed, what the themes were. As it turned out
there were 3 themed rounds - Round 3 (names of musicals), Round 6
(colours of the rainbow) and Round 7 (football team names). The
football team and musical themes seemed fine, but to me the rainbow one
was flawed. It was executed through the first letter of each of
answers 2 to 8 starting with the first letter of a colour of the rainbow
(R-O-Y-G-B-I-V), whilst the answer to question 1 was the word 'rainbow'
itself. However one of the answers actually had the name of one of
the colours in it (Violet Carson) whilst another had the Greek word for
rainbow in it (Iridium). All in all this left much confusion.
On the whole a few themed rounds seem a welcome addition to an evening's
paper but they do have to be woven into the quiz carefully with
appropriate instructions clearly given. On reflection, I think the
minimum requirement is a warning at the start of a round in which there
is a theme contained in the answers. Whether the theme is revealed
in the warning or not, is up to the judgement of the setters - but the
aim should be to enhance the quality of the round by giving extra hints
to the teams rather than giving the setters a bit of fun. Care
also needs to be taken over the first question in a themed round where
the person asked the question does not have the extra advantage of
having the theme (possibly) revealed, unlike his paired opponent and the
other members of both teams.
Having said all this
I did find this week's questions up to the Finger's usual high standard
with some excellent pictures to boot. The picture of the bittern
seemed to illustrate admirably the reason for its apparent rarity -
nobody can see the bloody thing!! Also a special word of praise
for Kieran's humility in setting a question to which the answer was
Ricky Villa, scorer of the winning goal of the 1981 Cup Final for Spurs
against some local team or other.
Finally a real
personal gripe. Round 1 Q7 asked which English city was known as
Ratae during Roman times. It came to me and after much
deliberation I said Leicester (which subsequent research tells me was
indeed the correct answer). The answer given on the paper was
Lincoln (although I have changed this to Leicester on the website
question page). We only lost narrowly and had I got my just reward
of 2 points for this answer we would have tied, or possibly won, rather
than losing. A bit harsh. Antony - beware the Ides of May!!
There is an Opsimath behind every column!!
Since first
publishing the above comments on the paper, Kieran has written this
amusing and interesting response:
"My
sincere apologies for the Leicester/Lincoln fiasco. As a City
fan I know
just how
much a dodgy decision can hurt or cost over the course of a
season!
I have
severely reprimanded Antony and prescribed extra Virgil and
Homer as a penance (come to think of it he'll love that, better
make it pop music and American politics instead). In our
defence I would say that factual lash ups in answers are about
as rare from us as are goals from Trevor Sinclair, I can say no
more.
With
regard to the paper, I tend to agree about the rainbow round,
but I don't think we do the themes for our own amusement. The
intention is to give an extra chance of getting the correct
answer if you can deduce what else is going on. You're quite
right about the first question in such a round and I think we've
always tried to make that one reasonably easy, or at least
gettable without knowing the theme.
The ideal
is that the questions themselves get harder as the round
progresses but the deduction of the theme gives the people
answering later in the round more of a chance. Witness the
impossible quotes in the round of se7en, the answer Cabaret
in last night's musical round or, indeed, Internationale in the
football clubs (you know you've all sung it sometime).
As I said
we won't continue with hidden themes forever, much less make an
entire quiz out of them, there may indeed be none in our next
paper. I'll give serious thought to what you say about
identifying such rounds if we set another one but I don't think
we ever would disclose the theme because as I've said before
it then just becomes a matter of picking from a list of, say, US
presidents.
Whatever
we do I think it most unlikely we'd go back to a straight 32
pairs with no bells and whistles, if only because the first
question would undoubtedly be "What is the capital of Albania?"
Take
comfort in the fact that we won't be setting again until next
season."
The average
aggregate score this week was 74.2. Actual aggregates
around the games varied from 67 (Opsimaths/Brains) to 83 (Pigs/Ethel).
