....that's where you're wrong.......

A nice serene blip of the fishing lodge this morning........in complete contrast to how I'm feeling tonight.

We lost the quiz tonight....again....due to skewed questions....but mainly because of one question that was completely wrongly worded.

I missed the quiz last week due to Dad's visit...but controversy reigned because one question wrongly placed Mexico as a SOUTH American country. Several teams complained about the question but two teams had a major falling out. The question-master should have seen the problem and corrected it...but he didn't.....when the dispute arose a spare question could have been asked....but it wasn't...and the Q-master awarded the round 4-0 in favour of his own team. This led to accusations of gamesmanship by the Q-master, just falling short of accusing him of cheating....countered by a claim of bad sportsman ship by the winners against the losing team and both teams complaining about the behaviour of each other!

Tonight's quiz was nip and tuck all the way with some very difficult questions, although the opponents got a couple of very easy four point questions....but they're all easy if you know the answers.....but then came the all too frequent (this season) cock -up in the questions.

Tonights fiasco centered on my individual question on the theme of ELEMENTS. I was asked about a gas which when mixed with oxygen causes an explosive mixture....I answered Hydrogen and was ruled incorrect....2 points lost...the opposition answered methane and gained a 1 point bonus....but methane isn't an element!....it's a compound of Carbon and Hydrogen...chemical formula CH4.

The opponents where then asked about the element Plumbago..... and answered lead.... I couldn't offer an answer because I thought it referred to lead too.....seems it is an old (very) name for Graphite which is an allotrope of Carbon........I did O-levels in Biology, Chemistry and Physics and A-level in Biology....I've taught Sciences for 32 years and I have never, ever seen Graphite called Plumbago in any text book...so I looked it up...it seems it used to be called plumbago in the 19th century because it was/is used in pencils and it was originally wrongly thought to be a form of lead...hence pencil lead!

Now I know I'm a bad loser.....I sulk.....and don't give me any bollocks about it's the taking part that counts....it's winning that counts....but to lose because a so called professional quiz setter....who gets paid for setting the questions....knows F all about Chemistry is particularly annoying....and it was compounded by the smug smiles of the winners who knew they'd got off the hook and won because of my question.

What made it worse was the Boss was asking the questions....and she did Chemistry A-level....but she stuck to the rules of the quiz and only accepted the answers provided....so we had a bit of a domestic.

I'm off now for a major sulk......I might be some time.

Das vidanya moy padruga.