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>>> European quizzes grew more capacious as well. “I’ve looked in old quiz books, and the questions are dreadful, frankly,” Jack Waley-Cohen, one of the questio
by aidos 7y ago
>>> European quizzes grew more capacious as well. “I’ve looked in old quiz books, and the questions are dreadful, frankly,” Jack Waley-Cohen, one of the question editors for the BBC show Only Connect, told me. “There was an assumption that everybody knew the same things.” Now, quizmasters don’t ever ask who the chancellor of the exchequer was in 1973, he said. “For one, someone who is an expert in television or music has an opportunity to demonstrate it, because there are questions on that. But also, the questions I like don’t test absolute knowledge. They test lateral thinking, and your ability to access knowledge.”
I’m sure there are plenty of Only Connect fans here (and probably some contestants too). If you’ve never seen it, it’s well worth a watch. Any question I manage to answer is a massive outlier, but frequently enough I’m left thinking “I Should have seen that”.
- ThePadawan 7y agoI still hold those moments where I had the answer to a five-pointer question very dear to my heart. It's very curious how some questions are so British that I can't even relate to the explanation after the fact, but others (especially punny questions) are probably more front-of-mind to ESL speakers.
- aidos 7y agoSo memorable. My greatest triumph being “Extra special”. (Spoiler: I count myself in the vanishing small Only Connect segment that both shops at ASDA and buys the premium range)
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoThere used to be an interactive version of it on the BBC website. One of the gems lost to the death of Flash probably. Searching it seems there's a community based replacement: PuzzGrid https://www.puzzgrid.com/ https://www.puzzgrid.com/