Peggy Lee and the capital of Armenia

Pubs and and pints... beer, wine and spirits by Lois

Tuesday is pub quiz night at the Dolphin; there is no strict limit to the number of people in a team, but it always seems not quite right to have big teams pitted against threes and fours. Usually we are Team Ice-cream, me, two friends who have an ice-cream parlour and another friend – husband often arrives late after band practice, but tonight he was there from the start. We each have a quiz sheet so if we can’t decide on an answer there can be r different guesses! Usually our son and beautiful girlfriend join us, so a team of six/seven isn’t excessive… However, tonight there were the seven of us, two friends of son and beautiful girlfriend, our lovely recently married South African friend, her best friend, and her son… so to play fair we divided ourselves into three teams (although we did ask for a little help sometimes!

We had moderate success, but a lot of fun! Great conversation, many laughs, a lot of puzzlement and scratching of heads, the best beer, and a few glasses of other things too.

The quiz is different from many in that it is a bingo quiz. The answer sheet is divided into twenty-five boxes, with random numbers 1-25 in each, and the questions are read out in numerical order – so far not too tricky. The real fun comes when the answers are read out, in random order; if you get an answer right, you circle it, if it is wrong you cross it out. If you get five correct answers in a straight line – like in bingo, you shout ‘Dolphin!’ at the top of your voice – and the first team to do this gets a prize. Straight lines are vertical, horizontal or diagonal; once Dolphin has been called the rest of the answers are given and the team with the highest score wins.

The great thing about the bingo element is that it is just luck – it gives a chance to teams who are not so knowledgeable – if by chance they are the first to get ‘a line’ they win! At the end of the quiz, when it’s virtually over there is one last thing, the beer question; a totally random question,and the team with the nearest answer wins free drinks next week. The question this week was ‘How many prisons are there in Malaysia…

The questions in the quiz are totally random… and here are some examples of tonight’s:

  • What is the capital of Armenia
  • How many number 1 records did Peggy Lee have?
  • Which prime minister wrote a novel entitled ‘The Devil’s Tune’?
  • Which fruit is known as a soap berry
  • Who was Henry Antrim/William H. Bonney better known as?
  • Which Whoopi Goldberg film had the same title as a Rolling Stones hit?

40 Comments

      11. simonjkyte

        georgian? it is a kartvulian language – nobody really knows where it originates but there are some others in the area such as Svan which is clearly in the same family but more archaic. neither is related to the languages of the north Caucasus. Armenian is an IE isolate probably most similar to proto-Greek and Phrygian but also heavily influenced by persian in vocab terms.

        Liked by 1 person

      19. simonjkyte

        I have a book
        It’s very hard to get into
        but google georgian language peace corps youtube – there is a basic course in 5 minute blocks on there. it is not as good as the armenian one but sort of does the job.

        Liked by 1 person

      22. Lois

        Our mouths aren’t practiced in making those shapes… trying to teach some sounds in English to non-English speakers shows that! Even what we think of as simple, like ‘o’ in ‘fold’ – let alone the whole th/th thing, voiced and unvoiced!

        Liked by 1 person

      25. simonjkyte

        Looking at that, gamarjoba should have a T on the end because in that scenario I would have to be formal because I would be meeting you for the first time? I still think Բարև՛ Ձեզ. Ինչպե՞ս եք / Ո՞նց ես? is much nicer.

        Liked by 1 person

      29. simonjkyte

        grammatically i don’t have an explanation yet

        armenian has two yous
        du singular
        and dook plural and polite
        so the informal / formal verns change endings in much the same way as, say, french

        Like

      30. Lois

        In Dutch there are two forms of ‘you’ and I just can’t ever get the right one – mind you, this isn’t speaking to actual real Dutch friends, but practising at home!

        Liked by 1 person

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