Event Review by Catherine Bryan: Winter Warmer Quiz

SLA Europe DigiComms

Our thanks to Catherine Bryan, who kindly accepted to offer a review of the Winter Warmer Quiz that took place a week ago in London. Following a 20 year career in the City, most recently managing the EMEA and APAC research teams at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Catherine Bryan is setting up her own company, Global Business Information Ltd. Launching in mid-April, the company will provide global private company filings and an ad-hoc research service.

 

There’s little that can be said in praise of January. The post Christmas bloat, empty wallets, endless DFS adverts and the once bejewelled trees that took pride of place in our homes, tossed out onto the pavement awaiting their final journey to landfill. With my friends and colleagues all on self imposed fitness regimes that would make even Arnie wince, and the prospect of at least another 18 ‘dry’ days ahead (personally I find Movember a lot easier!), the SLA Winter Warmer Quiz offered the perfect antidote to the de rigueur New Year detox!

Screen Shot 2015-01-20 at 10.58.48As I descended into the subterranean world of Balls Brothers, Minster Exchange I could hear the chatter and laughter of those who had already broken the shackles of their desks and arrived promptly for the 6pm start. Whoever said librarians were quiet?! I was warmly greeted and within minutes had joined in the friendly banter with friends, colleagues and acquaintances old and new. So good was the conversation that poor ‘Ask Tony’ (aka Steve) our quizmaster for the evening, would have had more success herding cats than trying to halt the gossiping long enough for the quiz rules to be explained.

With a record turnout that even Norris McWhirter would have been proud of, the 18 teams listened intently as the topic for each of the eight rounds of ten questions was listed. Each team was given a joker to play at the start of any one round of their choice. Playing the joker resulted in the scores for that round being doubled…and as we will read later in this blog, the power of the joker should never, ever be underestimated.

Screen Shot 2015-01-20 at 10.59.43With all formalities done the quiz began with ‘The Year Ahead’. A gentle enough start filled with royal babies, welsh dogs and world cups. This was followed by ‘Advertising’, again not too taxing on the old grey matter, with a couple of the adverts containing cats I was settling in nicely! For the third round we were given a map of the UK with numbered rivers, which had to be paired to the list of names. My wonderful team mates adeptly named all ten correctly, as I sat back smugly thanking the quiz master god for putting me on this team of ‘hydrophiles’. A motley crew of ‘Famous Voices’ followed, from Esther Rantzen, Krishna Guru-Murphy through to Andy Peters.

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Halfway through, we had a break and enjoyed warm platters of finger food washed down by the au gratis beer and wine that were omnipresent on each team table. I took the opportunity to look at the leader board and had a chuckle about some of the imaginative team names. ‘The Quizzly Bears’, ‘We’ve Outsourced our Answers’, ’Winalot Dogs Dinners’ and ‘Ice Publishing Icicles’ to name but a few.

Platters eaten it was time for the game to resume and for the joker that we had held on to, to come out and work its point doubling magic. ‘General Knowledge Connections’ – or what I now call ‘the defining round’. A round that had us quoting the Bible as the answer, rather than The Apprentice! Our joker was no longer smiling.

I no longer feScreen Shot 2015-01-20 at 11.02.02lt smug as we entered the ‘Movies’ round and I could only identify Paddington Bear! My teammates thankfully were far more movies minded so I left them to it, as I took a back seat and licked my wounds (aka sticky mini sausage fingers!)

The music round followed, a mixed bag of music from the seventies through to the nineties – pretty much something for everyone. We ended with the mystery round, a random drawer resulting in ‘Literature’ and ‘Human Body’. This had us all hurriedly listing the most viewed Shakespeare plays and the top 5 elements that make up the human body. Before we knew it the Countdown clock was ticking and the final 30 seconds of a fabulously entertaining quiz was upon us.

Before the winners were announced, the team with least points had to do the walk of shame to collect their wooden spoon, to the soundtrack of ‘I’m a loser’. Who would have thought that ‘Ask Tony’ could be so cruel?! To spare their blushes I have taken the executive decision to print their team name in that little used and much maligned typeface, Windings Missing Links.

With tension mounting the winners were announced: taking bronze BVD, silver Quizzly Bears and gold went to the reigning champions Dewey & The Decimals. This was the third year in a row that the Dewey’s had won, so I rushed over to the champions’ table to get some words from these wise kings and queens of quiz. Interestingly two members of the team had appeared on the BBC quiz show ‘Only Connect’ the week before. The secret of their success? Playing the joker on the same round each year. Which round I asked, almost a little too enthusiastically, alas they would not divulge. Congratulations Dewey!

The evening ended with more socialising and networking. A big thank-you to Acquire Media for kindly sponsoring such an excellent, well-organised and fun event.

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