R1: 16/20 (The Observer, Leith, Keats, Ross - yeah, i am non-british ;-))
R2: 4/20 (i am really bad at Science)
R3: 0/20 (Non-British, yeah. Was thinking of Minogue, but guessed the wrong song)
R4: 9/20
R5: 1/20 (Nan Madol)
I think your masterclass is great! However, I would also like to make a brief comment. I realise that the masterclass is presented by a British quizzer and that most of the subscribers are from the UK and its quiz scene. Accordingly, it's fine for British topics to be included from time to time. However, over the last 2–3 weeks, I have felt that it has become very British. Not only with regard to soaps, British military history and London, but also with regard to topics such as pop music from the 2000s, which could certainly be covered more broadly in my opinion.
I think there are also many quizzers outside the UK who are interested in your programme, and I imagine it would attract even more international subscribers if the topics were a little bit more diverse from time to time. Just my two cents as a non-Brit. Keep up the good work!
Hi Hendrik! Thanks so much for your positive engagement and feedback; I really appreciate it. I can't promise to avoid this sort of local content entirely in the future, and my distribution is probably going to remain closer to that of e.g. the UK Online Quiz League, compared to e.g. the World Championships. However, I completely take your point with regard to entire rounds of hyper-UK-specific content, which have (semi-accidentally) been more common in the last few weeks than is entirely fair to international subscribers. In this respect, I'll definitely make a point of redressing the balance in the next few weeks.
Phenomenal scores Mark! Very well done indeed. I think this is the first week that I've seen/heard every answer in R5 being claimed by someone, which is particularly gratifying - and you've done quite a lot of the heavy lifting there, for which many thanks!
R2: 8 (I've improved at science but there is a lot still to be done! This was useful because some of my hard learning paid off (telomeres, Cori) but it exposed my lack of the basics (carburettor, cervical)
R3: 15 (only watch Corrie really but overall a strong area)
R4: 12 (big fan of the Iglesias-Vargas Llosa connection)
R5: 2 (a bookender with Guillemet and Ronson; used to know Pinkie as well)
Great scores Andrew! With R2, I always try to include a good amount of what you might call "L3/4 classics" - or L4s that get asked about regularly enough that they're on the verge of becoming L3s. I think that was particularly true this week, so while I'm not surprised that it's been playing quite difficult across the board, it's also hopefully a useful resource. I've got the vertebral sections mixed up numerous times, but learning the fun fact about sloths and manatees has really helped me remember which ones the cervicals are.
I also hadn't realised until reading your comment that I asked questions about Cori and Corrie in consecutive rounds!
Lovely quiz. As someone struggling together one (1) quiz for six months' time I am in awe of you writing a hundred such elegant questions every week
R1 - 20
R2 - 8 (better than my usual science score tbf)
R3 - 11
R4 - 14
R5 - 5 (Squarespace / Salcedo / A Perfect Spy / Iko Iko / I Saw the TV Glow
Worst misses: Saturn V (space missions, like the seven wonders of the world, are something I just can't get); Take the High Road; Amanda Burton (I said Gabrielle Glaister, Brookside's other posh woman but very much not in Silent Witness or - probably - Northern Irish)
Lovely scores Nick. Glad to have found a fellow Le Carré fan among the commenters!
I'm historically useless at space exploration stuff as well - although there's an excellent and pretty short documentary called 'Apollo 11' (2019) that I watched quite recently and would really recommend.
And I'm always delighted when someone shares a wrong guess that points me towards another useful quiz fact that I didn't previously know. Gabrielle Glaister's Brookside role will be a great new addition to my memory bank, as will shell-sort (thanks to Ben Spicer).
R3 - 10 (which was a great score; we would have been happy with 5)
R4 - 11 (the first 11 in fact, and then we collapsed in the back 9)
R5 - 2 (Pinky and Savon)
Total - 56
Twice during this quiz I was infuriated by bad misses. One was the Maillard Reaction, which I must have heard 20 times but which never seems to stick. The other was Bubble Sort, which I always seem to mix up with Shell Sort.
Any advice on how to remember something that won’t stick, or discern between two things you always seem to mix up?
Nice work! I watch a lot of 'Binging with Babish' cooking videos on YouTube, and he's always on about the Maillard reaction. It's been really interesting seeing how much soap opera knowledge a lot of people have absorbed without paying any conscious attention to them - that was my mum's best round this week, and she hasn't watched five minutes of a soap since before I was born!
On those perennially frustrating questions, I've personally found that trying to remember the details of a specific occasion when you made a particular mistake can be helpful in avoiding making the same mistake again. I.e. if you just internalise the thought "I always get this wrong", then you can just get stuck in a loop; but if you can remember a story of "this was what I said in that game, this was why I got confused, and this is what I should have said", then that can often be the path to a breakthrough. It doesn't always work, and admittedly I've found it more effective with mistakes that I've made in live games (like a league match or mimir), because the competitive stakes and drama of the moment make the memory more vivid.
4 is an excellent result in the brutal round - Pryderi especially I thought was one of the harder questions in the whole quiz. Science was tough this week as well, and is playing so across the board, so no need to reproach yourself on that front - more than with any other subject, my definition of a "notable" fact in science is primarily shaped by what I've seen come up in quiz, rather than what proper scientists actually care about!
Remarkable consistency! Consistency is one of the great cardinal virtues of quiz I always think, and being able to stay solid in the c.50% zone from week to week is honestly something to be really proud of, especially given the high difficulty level and the extremely broad range of topics I'm asking about.
A second faultless R1 - you're on a roll haha! I knew that R3 would divide opinion this week, and I can promise it'll be the last soaps round I ever write in this or any other context - although, saying that, I did kind of enjoy researching a completely unfamiliar zone. Aside from that though, excellent work across the board!
Great scores Tom! I'd never actually heard that film asked about in a quiz before (or if I had I'd forgotten) and thought I was getting ahead of the curve in introducing it to the curriculum, although evidently I couldn't have been more wrong haha!
It’s come up in either Squizzed or Hot 100 in past month, and at least one other too. Plus clips of it keep coming up on my Instagram, think the universe is making me watch it now…
R2: 13/20 - feel like I should be scoring higher on science round than a lifestyle one, although last week it felt like all my guesses and barely-remwmbered answers came off, whereas this week there were at least a couple I would hope to get on a different day, so such is quiz.
R3: 2/20 - Anita Dobson and The Dog in the Pond, despite never having watched a minute of Hollyoaks
R4: 13/20 - a couple of frustrating misses, said Cruel Instincts instead of Cruel Intentions and despite Jenna leaving her bottle of micellar water out on the shelf behind the sink, I couldn't remember the word (she could). But I have finally learned what the Maillard reaction is so will take that win.
R5: 2/20 - Squarespace and I Saw the TV Glow. Jenna also knew Playboi Carti, once again proving that she is better than me, at least on the R5 qs
Lovely stuff! 13 is as good a result on science as I've heard this week - I might have made it a touch too hard tbh, although it's hopefully all stuff worth remembering. Micelles are something I carded as a pure science fact and then very soon afterwards starting hearing about all the time on Channel 4 adverts, so felt tailor-made for that round! I've also definitely had that experience with lifestyle questions of getting a question wrong only to see the answer-line staring me in the face in my own home - Crosta and Mollica was a memorable example from an OQL match a few months ago!
I've also been told by a friend who actually pays attention to contemporary rap that Playboi Carti is properly massive, although I had no idea who he was before last week!
It's felt like I've definitely lost more knowledge than gained it this week. I wish I could say it's just the heat that makes me score so badly - although it definitely has.
Science is definitely easier with a bit of understanding - and also, popular science books for background reading: I would recommend you one that's been a help recently but will have to wait until a particular quiz has expired. As for electrons, I think most scientists would say they don't really understand them either.
Soaps on the other hand... eesh.
R1: 19 (I could not pick prue leith out of a police lineup, and would not have remembered the friends one in OQL time either)
R2: 13 (actually the most disappointing round)
R3: 2 (I freely admit to assuming the questions would just keep getting less accessible and throwing the towel in without thinking about a couple)
R4: 8 (stop thinking one single plausible guess is good enough, Tom, and go and find a better one.)
4 is excellent work for R5, and 13 is on the high side for what looks like a notably tough R2. So lots to be proud of there! And as always in quiz, every question you miss represents an opportunity to get the same question right in a future match; e.g. Prue Leith who you'll definitely hear asked about again. On R3, for future reference, I always try to randomise the difficulty level over the course of the round, rather than getting consistently harder as the questions go on - so if you hit a rough patch early, it will often still be worth pressing on.
R2: 5 (a couple of bad misses, but was glad to get tellomere and cooper pair)
R3: 1 (Charlie Fairhead; I care not for soaps!)
R4: 10 (This was a really fun round! A couple of wrong 50/50s including the Nietzsche and annoyed I couldn't remember Richard Hamilton having looked him up just the other day!)
R5: 5 (Stella Dallas; Squarespace; Brad Dourif; I Saw the TV Glow; Kharijites)
This is becoming something to look forward to each week even as it regularly shows me up, keep up the good work!
Some stellar bits of knowledge across the board there. Telomeres and Cooper pairs were both pitched (I thought) on the harder end of that round so both very strong gets. Same for Charlie Fairhead actually haha! Really glad you enjoyed R4 as well - I've had some lovely feedback on that one, and I'll definitely be recycling the concept in a future week: unless I discover that I've used up all my good brow-spanning question ideas on the first go.
Pleased with that on science; in the past I've been guilty of thinking science was too inaccessible (despite being fine at it to GCSE level at school), but I've made a conscious effort to get over myself and put in a bit of work. Less so soaps (should have got more than that, though. R5 I was frankly being a bit lazy - felt it was a little bit easier than previous weeks and I should probably have got a few more (IIRC, I got Guillemets, Nan Madol, Stella Dallas, Squarespace and Doris Salcedo).
R1: 16/20 (The Observer, Leith, Keats, Ross - yeah, i am non-british ;-))
R2: 4/20 (i am really bad at Science)
R3: 0/20 (Non-British, yeah. Was thinking of Minogue, but guessed the wrong song)
R4: 9/20
R5: 1/20 (Nan Madol)
I think your masterclass is great! However, I would also like to make a brief comment. I realise that the masterclass is presented by a British quizzer and that most of the subscribers are from the UK and its quiz scene. Accordingly, it's fine for British topics to be included from time to time. However, over the last 2–3 weeks, I have felt that it has become very British. Not only with regard to soaps, British military history and London, but also with regard to topics such as pop music from the 2000s, which could certainly be covered more broadly in my opinion.
I think there are also many quizzers outside the UK who are interested in your programme, and I imagine it would attract even more international subscribers if the topics were a little bit more diverse from time to time. Just my two cents as a non-Brit. Keep up the good work!
Hi Hendrik! Thanks so much for your positive engagement and feedback; I really appreciate it. I can't promise to avoid this sort of local content entirely in the future, and my distribution is probably going to remain closer to that of e.g. the UK Online Quiz League, compared to e.g. the World Championships. However, I completely take your point with regard to entire rounds of hyper-UK-specific content, which have (semi-accidentally) been more common in the last few weeks than is entirely fair to international subscribers. In this respect, I'll definitely make a point of redressing the balance in the next few weeks.
R1. 20
R2. 10, much better than I thought I'd do. Obvs got Cooper Pairs. Still not sure what they are but have learnt how they are described 😀
R3. 18. Honestly never watch soaps but seems to absorb a lot. Miss The Young and Restless and Bubbly’s in the fridge
R4. 15, almost all from the lowbrow. Missed Suriname, Napoleon III, Beyond Good and Evil, Llosa, and Dagestan
R5. 9!! Savón, Squarespace, Salcedo, Ischia, Dourif, Iko Iko, Boulby, I Saw The TV Glow - excellent film, Mark Ronson
72!
Phenomenal scores Mark! Very well done indeed. I think this is the first week that I've seen/heard every answer in R5 being claimed by someone, which is particularly gratifying - and you've done quite a lot of the heavy lifting there, for which many thanks!
R1: 20
R2: 8 (I've improved at science but there is a lot still to be done! This was useful because some of my hard learning paid off (telomeres, Cori) but it exposed my lack of the basics (carburettor, cervical)
R3: 15 (only watch Corrie really but overall a strong area)
R4: 12 (big fan of the Iglesias-Vargas Llosa connection)
R5: 2 (a bookender with Guillemet and Ronson; used to know Pinkie as well)
TOTAL: 57
Great scores Andrew! With R2, I always try to include a good amount of what you might call "L3/4 classics" - or L4s that get asked about regularly enough that they're on the verge of becoming L3s. I think that was particularly true this week, so while I'm not surprised that it's been playing quite difficult across the board, it's also hopefully a useful resource. I've got the vertebral sections mixed up numerous times, but learning the fun fact about sloths and manatees has really helped me remember which ones the cervicals are.
I also hadn't realised until reading your comment that I asked questions about Cori and Corrie in consecutive rounds!
Lovely quiz. As someone struggling together one (1) quiz for six months' time I am in awe of you writing a hundred such elegant questions every week
R1 - 20
R2 - 8 (better than my usual science score tbf)
R3 - 11
R4 - 14
R5 - 5 (Squarespace / Salcedo / A Perfect Spy / Iko Iko / I Saw the TV Glow
Worst misses: Saturn V (space missions, like the seven wonders of the world, are something I just can't get); Take the High Road; Amanda Burton (I said Gabrielle Glaister, Brookside's other posh woman but very much not in Silent Witness or - probably - Northern Irish)
Lovely scores Nick. Glad to have found a fellow Le Carré fan among the commenters!
I'm historically useless at space exploration stuff as well - although there's an excellent and pretty short documentary called 'Apollo 11' (2019) that I watched quite recently and would really recommend.
And I'm always delighted when someone shares a wrong guess that points me towards another useful quiz fact that I didn't previously know. Gabrielle Glaister's Brookside role will be a great new addition to my memory bank, as will shell-sort (thanks to Ben Spicer).
Team Spicer:
R1 - 20
R2 - 13
R3 - 10 (which was a great score; we would have been happy with 5)
R4 - 11 (the first 11 in fact, and then we collapsed in the back 9)
R5 - 2 (Pinky and Savon)
Total - 56
Twice during this quiz I was infuriated by bad misses. One was the Maillard Reaction, which I must have heard 20 times but which never seems to stick. The other was Bubble Sort, which I always seem to mix up with Shell Sort.
Any advice on how to remember something that won’t stick, or discern between two things you always seem to mix up?
Nice work! I watch a lot of 'Binging with Babish' cooking videos on YouTube, and he's always on about the Maillard reaction. It's been really interesting seeing how much soap opera knowledge a lot of people have absorbed without paying any conscious attention to them - that was my mum's best round this week, and she hasn't watched five minutes of a soap since before I was born!
On those perennially frustrating questions, I've personally found that trying to remember the details of a specific occasion when you made a particular mistake can be helpful in avoiding making the same mistake again. I.e. if you just internalise the thought "I always get this wrong", then you can just get stuck in a loop; but if you can remember a story of "this was what I said in that game, this was why I got confused, and this is what I should have said", then that can often be the path to a breakthrough. It doesn't always work, and admittedly I've found it more effective with mistakes that I've made in live games (like a league match or mimir), because the competitive stakes and drama of the moment make the memory more vivid.
Exact same with Maillard :(
19/20 (Keats coin flip)
6/20 (Going to hand back that Chemistry degree)
0/20
8/20
4/20 (Nan Madol, Pryderi, SquareSpace, Ischia)
Not my week, but all part of the learning process
4 is an excellent result in the brutal round - Pryderi especially I thought was one of the harder questions in the whole quiz. Science was tough this week as well, and is playing so across the board, so no need to reproach yourself on that front - more than with any other subject, my definition of a "notable" fact in science is primarily shaped by what I've seen come up in quiz, rather than what proper scientists actually care about!
46, well I’m consistent. 19 on round one.
Remarkable consistency! Consistency is one of the great cardinal virtues of quiz I always think, and being able to stay solid in the c.50% zone from week to week is honestly something to be really proud of, especially given the high difficulty level and the extremely broad range of topics I'm asking about.
R1: 20
R2: 11
R3: 0 (I think I may stick to team quizzing)
R4: 13
R5: 4 (Kate Beaton, Nan Madol, Ischia, Khawarij)
A second faultless R1 - you're on a roll haha! I knew that R3 would divide opinion this week, and I can promise it'll be the last soaps round I ever write in this or any other context - although, saying that, I did kind of enjoy researching a completely unfamiliar zone. Aside from that though, excellent work across the board!
1. 20
2. 10
3. 13
4. 13
5. 2 (why is I Saw the TV Glow coming up in so many quizzes…)
Great scores Tom! I'd never actually heard that film asked about in a quiz before (or if I had I'd forgotten) and thought I was getting ahead of the curve in introducing it to the curriculum, although evidently I couldn't have been more wrong haha!
It’s come up in either Squizzed or Hot 100 in past month, and at least one other too. Plus clips of it keep coming up on my Instagram, think the universe is making me watch it now…
R1: 20/20
R2: 13/20 - feel like I should be scoring higher on science round than a lifestyle one, although last week it felt like all my guesses and barely-remwmbered answers came off, whereas this week there were at least a couple I would hope to get on a different day, so such is quiz.
R3: 2/20 - Anita Dobson and The Dog in the Pond, despite never having watched a minute of Hollyoaks
R4: 13/20 - a couple of frustrating misses, said Cruel Instincts instead of Cruel Intentions and despite Jenna leaving her bottle of micellar water out on the shelf behind the sink, I couldn't remember the word (she could). But I have finally learned what the Maillard reaction is so will take that win.
R5: 2/20 - Squarespace and I Saw the TV Glow. Jenna also knew Playboi Carti, once again proving that she is better than me, at least on the R5 qs
Lovely stuff! 13 is as good a result on science as I've heard this week - I might have made it a touch too hard tbh, although it's hopefully all stuff worth remembering. Micelles are something I carded as a pure science fact and then very soon afterwards starting hearing about all the time on Channel 4 adverts, so felt tailor-made for that round! I've also definitely had that experience with lifestyle questions of getting a question wrong only to see the answer-line staring me in the face in my own home - Crosta and Mollica was a memorable example from an OQL match a few months ago!
I've also been told by a friend who actually pays attention to contemporary rap that Playboi Carti is properly massive, although I had no idea who he was before last week!
It's felt like I've definitely lost more knowledge than gained it this week. I wish I could say it's just the heat that makes me score so badly - although it definitely has.
Science is definitely easier with a bit of understanding - and also, popular science books for background reading: I would recommend you one that's been a help recently but will have to wait until a particular quiz has expired. As for electrons, I think most scientists would say they don't really understand them either.
Soaps on the other hand... eesh.
R1: 19 (I could not pick prue leith out of a police lineup, and would not have remembered the friends one in OQL time either)
R2: 13 (actually the most disappointing round)
R3: 2 (I freely admit to assuming the questions would just keep getting less accessible and throwing the towel in without thinking about a couple)
R4: 8 (stop thinking one single plausible guess is good enough, Tom, and go and find a better one.)
R5: 4. (Eh, I'll take it)
4 is excellent work for R5, and 13 is on the high side for what looks like a notably tough R2. So lots to be proud of there! And as always in quiz, every question you miss represents an opportunity to get the same question right in a future match; e.g. Prue Leith who you'll definitely hear asked about again. On R3, for future reference, I always try to randomise the difficulty level over the course of the round, rather than getting consistently harder as the questions go on - so if you hit a rough patch early, it will often still be worth pressing on.
R1: 19 (just missed the sport, as is my wont)
R2: 5 (a couple of bad misses, but was glad to get tellomere and cooper pair)
R3: 1 (Charlie Fairhead; I care not for soaps!)
R4: 10 (This was a really fun round! A couple of wrong 50/50s including the Nietzsche and annoyed I couldn't remember Richard Hamilton having looked him up just the other day!)
R5: 5 (Stella Dallas; Squarespace; Brad Dourif; I Saw the TV Glow; Kharijites)
This is becoming something to look forward to each week even as it regularly shows me up, keep up the good work!
Some stellar bits of knowledge across the board there. Telomeres and Cooper pairs were both pitched (I thought) on the harder end of that round so both very strong gets. Same for Charlie Fairhead actually haha! Really glad you enjoyed R4 as well - I've had some lovely feedback on that one, and I'll definitely be recycling the concept in a future week: unless I discover that I've used up all my good brow-spanning question ideas on the first go.
R1 20
R2 15
R3 4
R4 17
R5 5
Pleased with that on science; in the past I've been guilty of thinking science was too inaccessible (despite being fine at it to GCSE level at school), but I've made a conscious effort to get over myself and put in a bit of work. Less so soaps (should have got more than that, though. R5 I was frankly being a bit lazy - felt it was a little bit easier than previous weeks and I should probably have got a few more (IIRC, I got Guillemets, Nan Madol, Stella Dallas, Squarespace and Doris Salcedo).