Many UK pubs have Quiz Night--usually on Tuesday or Wednesday when things are otherwise slow in the beer business. Many Wisconsin in Scotland students and faculty participate in quiz night at Sam's, the pub nearest the castle. Our teams of six, mixed students and faculty, usually get slaughtered by the University of Edinburgh medical students' team. Our weakness is UK sporting events, along with Brit TV shows. The Quizmaster at Sam's is very nice to the Yank visitors, and throws in questions about the CIA, the oldest university in the US, and the 17th president of the US. But we still struggle--who knows who won the Grand National in 1973? Sometimes a Wisconsin team will try to get a local ringer on the team in order to compensate for this weakness. Buying beer is a cheap price for arcane knowledge.
The winners of Quiz Night receive T-shirts, shirts usually having nothing to do with Sam's, Soctland, or Quiz Night. Rather, I suspect they fell off a truck somewhere and Sam (or his personal representative) scooped them up.
Quiz Night is a nice little business. Organizations sell questions and answers to pubs and fund-raising groups for a sum. People hire out as Quizmasters. The Quizmaster at Sam's is an English lad from Newcastle, who drives to Dalkeith twice a week to conduct Quiz Night and other events. And now that Scotland has banned smoking in all enclosed places, Quiz Night doesn't mean that you immediately need to send all your clothes to the cleaners after once again failing to know the 1983 World Cup winner's manager's name.
1 comment:
To readers of "Domestic Tranquility":
The World Cup takes place quadrennially in even years between Olympiads. The Quiz Night question about the name of the winning manager from the 1983 World Cup is thus answered by: "Nobody--there was no World Cup that year."
--submitted by OLGS...
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