UK Venue/Plans
This Sunday then, on or around 11.30 I propose to conduct the Quiz at the Hilton House Hotel (nothing to do with Paris Hilton’s family firm) in Hilton, Derbyshire. The venue is conveniently located for people travelling from most compass points, since it sits a couple of miles off the A50 dual carriageway linking the M1 and M6 motorways. It is also right on a bus route (V1 connecting Derby and Burton) and is not too far from Tutbury train station (convenient for anyone travelling from the North West).
The licensees of the hotel (quiz fans Colin and Zoe) are looking forward to greeting some of our regular quizzers, not least because the venue is set to host the 2013 British Quizzing Championships (7 September).
If you plan to come along please let me know as soon as possible. The cost for the event is just £10, and includes a Sunday roast carvery lunch. The Quiz is 200 questions over 2 hours and if we kick-off around 11.30 we can eat at 1.30 before marking our papers. All business should be concluded by 3.00pm and most of us home before it’s gone dark!
Hilton House Hotel
1 Mill Lane
Hilton
Derbyshire
DE65 5GP
A Slice of History
Before it was a pub, the Hilton House Hotel was home to none other than Group Captain Herbert Massey - after being shot down in in June 1942 he became Senior British Officer at Stalag Luft III (in Sagan) where, under his authority, plans for a mass escape were instituted which would become immortalised as ‘The Great Escape’. In the famous movie of the same name, Massey was the basis for the character Group Captain Ramsey, played by actor James Donald.
The Hilton House Hotel recently launched its own 'house real ale', brewed by the Derby Brewing Company (£2.85 a pint). This lovely drop is named ‘Great Escape’ in Massey’s honour. Do come and enjoy some!
For you ze qviz is not yet over!
Other confirmed venues (outside India) include, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Dubai, Singapore and in the US: Stanford U/Bay Area, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, NY/NJ area.
Impressions of the Quiz
Those of you who stayed late at our January 2012 Grand Prix will remember taking the original version of this quiz. There’s been some slight changes made since then, and the questions are intended this time round to be somewhat easier. This is what has been said by the KQA organisers regarding MindSweep and v.2.0…
“MindSweep, our international solo championship, is intended as a vehicle for the things that are distinctive about the quizzing that happens in some (if not all) Indian cities.
So, what the devil is distinctive about Indian quizzing? A privileging of good guesswork over memory; the triumph of generalists over specialists; bombing a syllabus, rather than using one; the pleasure of parsing, or unknotting, or sometimes being pythoned by a carefully coiled question; a festive relationship with the English language; and the strange appetite for knowing joy and defeat in one instant–a mystical state known as AJM, or Goddamn-it-I-was-that-close.
The setters (Navin Rajaram, Kiran Vijayakumar, Dibyendu Das and Arul Mani) have enjoyed taking (and bulbing at) the World Quizzing Championships, perhaps because Indian quizzing is a wee bit different from its international cousin. MindSweep is our attempt at sharing the things we enjoy about quizzing with an international audience.
After the first edition of MindSweep in Jan 2012, several embittered souls sent in their punning suggestions (not all of them were polite) for what we should actually have called the quiz. We laughed, and carried on. The first edition of a quiz, like a first kiss, must elicit some reaction, some ‘hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of repose,’ or what’s a contemptibly long zindagi for?”
…yeah, whatever, Pat Gibson won it!
MindSweep 2.0: The Topics
1. The Arts: Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Design, Architecture, Installation Art, Dance, Theatre
2. Science and Tech: Concepts in the Sciences, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Technology, The Environment, Astronomy, Medicine, Inter-disciplinary work, Popular Science Writing
3. Literature: Poetry, Literary Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Genre Fiction, Graphic Novels, Critics, Literary History, Translation
4. Social Sciences: History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies/Social History, History of Ideas, Economics,The Philosophers
5. Business: Brands, Fashion, Business History, Advertising
6. Sports and Leisure: Sporting History, Games, Television, Gaming, Sports-Writing, Sports-Coverage, Hobbies–Collecting, Gardening, Fan-communities, The Internet
7. Cinema: Hollywood, National Cinemas, World Cinema, Film Genres, Film-Technology, Film-language, Cinema & Society, Film-writing
8. Music: Instruments, Performers, Genre Music, World Music, Tech Innovations, Music-magazines, Music industry, Music-journalism
9. Food & Drink: From all over the world
10. Travel: Places, Peoples, Languages, Landmarks, Journeys, Voyages, Means of Transport
