Opinion: Want to quit the quiz? Tired of trivia? Time to return to work | rgloveroz
Every summer holiday, various newspapers decide to print a daily quiz. They have an image, I suppose, of an extended family, happy and sun-kissed, some kindly uncle or aunt reading out the questions, and then the joyous sound of the tribe delighting in its collective intelligence.
“Here’s the cricket question, where’s grandad?” or “This is about contemporary fiction, one of my clever nieces will know.” Twenty minutes on, every question has been answered and the group is basking in triumph. They are, they think to themselves, the greatest family ever. They will subscribe to the newspaper for another year. The Bennet family as seen in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice. Mr and Mrs Bennet, with Lydia, Elisabeth, Jane, Mary and Catherine. But which is the fourth daughter?For a start, there are whole areas of human endeavour that have bypassed every member of our group. “Oh, not another sport question,” we all groan. Or: “the periodic table...again!” As a family, we’ve failed the first rule of the pub trivia quiz: make sure your team includes a sport nerd.Pride and Prejudice ?” asks the quiz master. “Oh. That’s easy,” we all chortle, having read the book, seen the movie and watched at least five of the TV adaptations. Then there’s a pause. Around the table, in the library of our minds, we are each sending a message to the storage area out the back. “Would you mind grabbing that file?” we ask the helpful assistant while we lean nonchalantly against the front desk. “You know, the one with the names of all the Bennet sisters? I used to have it to hand but I remember sending it to the stacks for safekeeping.”“Certainly,” says the chief librarian, straightening her spectacles and tucking a lick of loose hair behind her ear. “It will be here in a minute.”Next up, a question about mid-century British politics. All heads turn to me. After all, I spent years at university studying just this topic and mention the subject whenever possible, in a way that is incredibly tedious for everyone I know. There is no cabinet minister so minor, so dreary, that I can’t find an excuse for mentioning them. “What’s happening with the Prime Minister is almost an exact replica of what happened to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1973,” I might observe, only to be rewarded with the sight of people fleeing the room. So, of course, I know the answer to this question, which concerns Atlee’s foreign secretary. His name is right here on the tip of my tongue. Except it isn’t. I consider, for a moment, my brain. There was once a largish library back there, of that I’m certain. I’m not claiming it was the Great Library of Alexandria, that wonder of the ancient world, but it seems to have suffered an identical fate. It’s been sacked by the barbarians. Someone has lit a fire in the stacks. The vandals have run amok. All that’s left is a pile of smouldering papyrus. Having failed to identify the foreign secretary – yes, I now know it’s Ernest Bevin, I looked it up, there’s no need to go on about it – we move on to question 9. This one is all about maths. No one in our group knows the answer and so Jocasta, not for the first time, falls into a reverie about her first boyfriend, the one before me, the one who studied pure mathematics, then went on to be a famous professor, and how if she’d only stuck with him she might have ended up with sons able to add up. We all laugh politely and look at our shoes.. “Which drummer is the father of the actress who plays Emily?” I immediately reply with the correct answer. I don’t even need to ask at reception.Credit:I’ve forgotten nearly everything I once knew. The smouldering papyrus of my mind permits the most basic of answers. Every question that involves German literature receives a confidently barked answer: “Gunter Grass.” Every question requesting the name of a Scottish city receives the confident reply: “Inverness.” Every Australian cricket question is rewarded with the stentorian reply: “Kim Hughes.”On this particular day, we are headed for a fail. Even to achieve a pathetic 50 per cent, we need one more correct answer.At the end of it all, I find myself delighted to return to work – a place in which you are generally asked only about the things that happened in the last five minutes. Maybe that’s the real point of the holiday quiz: they don’t half ease the transition back to working life.
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