A Creditable Score in the Inner Wheel quiz.

Rotary and the Inner Wheel quiz

Rotary entered a team in the Inner Wheel Quiz in aid of HFT (Home Farm Trust) a couple of weeks ago, using the traditional though hardly imaginative team name of "Rotary". At least that way, people know who we are. In addition, Rotary members Nick R, Phil H and Bob R made up the bulk of the 41 Club team. Not surprisingly this team was called "41 Club".

Represented by Stuart, Tyrrell, Trevor, Kevin and former member John Harbison, Team Rotary got off to a flying start as four bottles of wine emerged from concealment, along with a set of wine glasses. Then the quiz began.

In the first round, each answer began with the letters of the alphabet in sequence. We scored 23 out of 26, not being sure of the first commercial frozen food in Britain (asparagus - John said it right at the beginning as an inspired guess, which was ignored even by John), the web browser named after the wolf spider (Lycos - which we had heard of) and a Viking festival still held in Shetland (Up Helly Aa - which we hadn't). That put us first equal after round 1.

Round 2 was general knowledge and we got 18 out of 20, not knowing that Switzerland was Europe's biggest chocolate manufacturing country. (We said UK. Subsequent Goggle research seems to indicate that the German industry is bigger than either, but those who said Switzerland got the point.) We also didn't know the official royal residence from 1698-1837 (St James's Palace, which again we had mentioned in discussion but not selected). Still, we were leading overall.

Then came the break, followed by a music round notable for its complete lack of Mozart, Handel and Beethoven. At this point, your reporter ceased to note the answers to the questions we got wrong, due to overwork. We scored 5 out of 10 on girls' names in song titles, due entirely to Stuart, and 7 out of 10 on themes from TV shows. Scoring as high as 12 seemed to surprise question master Robin Moorcroft, who clearly thought we would only ever tune in to the BBC Home Service.

The miscellaneous round gave us a solid 15 out of 20 and the table questions 14.5, for a combined score of 82.5.

Then came the listing of the scores, starting from the lowest place team. "41 Club" came 15th= (out of 22 teams). Stuart said he'd be happy with top 5, and position 5 came and it still wasn't Rotary. Two teams were tied on 3rd, ourselves and the "4 Brexiteers", so there was a tie-break question to separate us. "How many FA Cups did Manchester United win under Sir Alex Ferguson?" We wrote 5. So did the other team. And it was right, so we had another tie-breaker. "How high in metres is the Eiffel Tower?" We were not close, they were, and took 3rd place outright. Second were "Misfits & Halfwits" with 83.5, and the winners with 85.5 were the "Dads", who generally win these things.

So it was a close run thing, and we did manage to clean up three of the raffle prizes as consolation. The evening raised around £750 for HFT, so great thanks to the Inner Wheel for organising it and providing nuts and crisps throughout, and to QM Robin and his glamorous assistants Mike and Marie.

Report by Kevin Smith