Regular readers will know Anne and I were regulars at our "local" pub quiz in Sydney when we were living there (Feb to May). We won most weeks, though the turnout wasn't always strong, so sometimes we won almost by default. It helped that there were lots of movie questions and few sports ones. We've found no trivia nights on our travels. This is disappointing, since we were hoping to supplement our budget with prizes.
Imagine our joy then when on Tuesday evening, after a day exploring Melbourne, calming down, and remembering why we hate driving in cities, we found there was a quiz night near our hostel that night. A guy from the pub came to the hostel to publicise the quiz by handing out free beer vouchers. Yay!
I was a bit concerned that it was going to be a big "backpackers'" night - our quiz in Sydney was mainly with locals, and that made it more interesting. It was a backpackers' night, mainly, but Anne and I were sat near locals and got chatting to them. We got a few tips on things to do and see in Melbourne.
The place was packed, so Anne and I didn't fancy our chances. At the end of round one though we were joint fifth (with about four other teams) so at least we were placed. There were lots of sports questions (mainly Aussie Rules) so we were a bit useless.
During the interval the quiz-master asked for some volunteers to win some beer. I pushed Anne up, assuming it would be trivia-related. It wasn't. It was a horrible, "hilarious" game where the girls have a bike-pump between their legs and the men have to use their knees to pump up a balloon. The "hilarious" thing is that it looks a bit like they're "humping", even though they're fully clothed. Sigh. As soon as I realised I felt very sorry for Anne. She took it all in her stride and laughed in the right places, but it really isn't her. (After all, she's not 15.)
Each team had to supply a two line joke with each round. I never remember jokes, so it was up to Anne. In the first round she put down a joke she thinks is great:
Q: What's the difference between a weasel and a stoat?
A: One's weasel-ly recognisable, the other's stoat-aly different.
When the jokes were read out ours was booed and groaned at and the quiz guy threatened to take a point off. I suggested we target the next joke at the level of the audience, so she tried:
Q: Why are men like toilets?
A: They're either vacant, engaged or full of s**t.
Obviously that one brought down the house. Oh dear, what a shame.
Anyway, we came second in the quiz and won some beers and a bottle of wine! Yay! The weird thing is, despite not knowing anything about Aussie-rules we largely won because I guessed what the collective noun for unicorns is! We got 5 points for that. Brilliant.
I also knew what year David Copperfield was born in, having read it in the paper that day (the magician, not the Dickens character), and Anne knew that about 10% of Japanese boys lock themselves in their rooms the whole time to play computer games.
(I'm not going to tell you what the collective noun for unicorns is. You'll have to find that out for yourselves.)