Mary Arden: do you know who she was? Or, in which Greta Garbo film did that lady say: "I want to be alone"? Or, what is it that starts in the black and ends in the black? Are you aware that the Lance Todd Trophy is awarded to the man of the match in Rugby League? Or that a "shaded cameo" is a breed of cat? Can you remember that it was Lita Rosa who sang the hit song, How Much is that Doggie in the Window? If you know all these things and a lot more, you're probably a quiz freak and would be well advised to get a life.
Tom O'Dea, in this space, recently excoriated Who wants to be a Millionaire? as dumbed-down TV; and he's right. But quiz games have a long and honourable history here, equally popular in town and country. Children's matinee
My first experience of quizzes should have put me off for life. It was in Kilkenny, when I was about 11. Eric Boden, a Canadian who worked for Radio Eireann, went around the country with evening entertainments, the high point of which was a quiz. There was an afternoon matinee for children. Having practically devoured the Children's Encyclopedia, I was quietly confident.
There were so many children that the system had to be sudden death: if you missed a question you were out. Boden's one and only question to me was: "Ding-dong-dell, pussy fell in the well . . . Who pushed her in?"
I could have given him the definition of spectrum analysis, or recited the wonders of the world ancient and modern, backwards if necessary, but I knew sweet damn all about nursery rhymes. I was told - and am unlikely ever to forget, however hard I try - that it was Little Johnny Thin who pushed that pussy in the well.
A quiz show can be said to have reached the zenith of public acceptance when its associated phrases ease their way into the language. Joe Linnane was one of the early presenters and his Question Time had rounds of two- four- and six-markers. People who never heard of Joe Linnane will still say of a difficult question: "That was a six-marker." And in America the name of the show The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Question itself became part of everyday speech and is in common use even now, although that particular contest proved to be a fix and a fraud.
"I've started, so I'll finish," crops up in all sorts of contexts, decorous and ribald. And who can forget "Stop the lights" and that glorious night on Quicksilver when the question, "What was Hitler's first name?", elicited the answer, "Heil"!
Now we have "Ask the audience", "Phone a friend" and "Fifty-fifty"; and the other day I saw an advertisement with the headline, "But we don't want to give you that."
College Green
At the end of the 18th century, one James Daly ran a gambling and drinking club in Dublin's College Green. It was a haunt popular with the rakes and roustabouts of the day. It was here, in 1788, that Buck Whaley accepted a £15,000 challenge to travel to Jerusalem, play handball against the Wailing Wall and be back in Dublin within the year.
He won the bet, was nicknamed "Jerusalem Whaley" thereafter and very possibly inspired Jules Verne to write Around the World in Eighty Days a century later. Some 10 years before Whaley's wager, the club's owner, James Daly, himself accepted a challenge to "invent a new and meaningless word that would be on everybody's lips within 24 hours." He hired hordes of youngsters to go around the city daubing the four letters "Q-U-I-Z" on every available space. He, too, won his bet.
Quizmasters are best when they confine themselves to reading out the questions clearly. They can be tiresome when they try to inject little passing jokes and absolutely insufferable when they say: "And the answer is, of course . . ." The implication is that you're a ninnyhammer of the first water if you got it wrong. That, of course, has brought many a quizmaster near to public execution.
Hints and whispers
One evening a friend of mine was running a pub quiz in the country. I had typed out the questions and answers and so could not take part. I spent the evening walking around the room, dropping the answers - a hint here, a whisper there - especially to the people who were floundering. . .and I felt like - God!
And, no, I haven't forgotten the few little teasers at the start. Mary Arden was the mother of Shakespeare; Garbo said, "I want to be alone" in Grand Hotel; and the answer to what starts in the black and ends in the black is: blue (the Blue Danube rises in the Black Forest and flows into the Black Sea).
Of course.