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The All New All New Groundspeak UK Pub Quiz


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Posted (edited)
Ooooh I think I know this one, was it the HMS Bulldog?

That would be a DING!!

 

Thank you :blink:

 

Lord Robert Baden Powell set up Scouting. What was the name of his sister (Who set up Guiding)?

 

Agnes?

DING nicely done Edited by Smithbats
Posted

Woohoo.

And as they haven't been posted for a while, the rules......

 

 

Rule 1 - No googling!

 

Rule 2 - Try and keep your question at the level someone in a pub quiz might be able to answer...

 

 

What have these got in common?

 

Monty Python - Matching Tie and Handkerchief

M - Pop Muzik

Kate Bush - Sensual World

Posted

Are we allowed to consult a houseguest?

 

I have a guest whose name is Mr Bean, yes really!, and he owns a record label in California. He's told me the connection, technically. Am I allowed to blow the gaff on that basis?

Posted

Are we allowed to consult a houseguest?

 

I have a guest whose name is Mr Bean, yes really!, and he owns a record label in California. He's told me the connection, technically. Am I allowed to blow the gaff on that basis?

 

You can, yes. Although I'm not sure why him owning a record label would help. :blink:

Posted (edited)

Here goes:

We think the link is that all three records were reorded on twin groove vinyl. On the Kate Bush album, for example, if you placed the stylus in one groove you could listen to the normal vocals, the other groove played the instrumental version.

 

My chum experimented with a few whacky vinyl technologies in the 1970s, including a now defunct method of recording video onto LP's. His idea was to combine video with pop music. It was an idea ahead of its time and the technology wasn't quite up to it. He produced the world's first video for the system which RCA were going to launch as "capacitive electronic disks". He worked with Michael Nesmith (Monkee) and Kevin McCormick (went on the produce Saturday Night Fever) and William Dear who went on to direct Harry & The Hendersons and some other guff that I've never heard of. RCA got cold feet and pulled the plug on the technology, thinking that nobody would ever want to watch a pop video.Heidbanger.gif

Edited by The Forester
Posted

Here goes:

We think the link is that all three records were reorded on twin groove vinyl. On the Kate Bush album, for example, if you placed the stylus in one groove you could listen to the normal vocals, the other groove played the instrumental version.

 

 

Ding :blink:

Posted

Hence my reference to Blorenge. Many people thought that orange doesn't have any rhyming words.

 

Month does have a rhyming word. It's in quite common useage in the UK (and elsewhere in Anglophone and some other countries).

Posted

Here's one I think the Blorenges can probably answer:

 

What word rhymes with 'month'?

Quite a few if you have a slight lisp. :blink:

 

How about Millionth, Billionth, trillionth ...

 

Do I win a nice juicy Blorenge? Or a Slurple? :blink:

Posted

That's a good Ding to Keehotee.

 

QI was where I discovered that little bijou.

 

Fry is right, by the way. I checked before uploading the question. I asked a chap whose surname is Singh. Seemed a pretty good credential to me!

Posted (edited)

One difference that immediately springs to mind may not be the one you're looking for.

 

Belugas have no dorsal fin. That's one of the reasons why they are so at home in the Arctic under ice.

 

Orcas regularly come to grief in the Norwegian fjords in winter. The ice there is mostly freshwater ice from waterfall runoff. The Orcas have huge dorsal fins and they rip them to shreds when desperately trying to find a lead or a polynya in the ice. Because that huge dorsal fin sticks up a couple of metres and is some way behind the blowhole they just can't make use of small gaps in the ice to breathe, so they drown. I've seen it for myself. Very distressing to be able t odo nothing to help the poor blighters. I suspect that drowning must be the worst imaginable death for a marine mammal.

 

Perhaps that's the reason why the Belugas always have that silly grin. They're giggling at the stoopid killer whales!

Edited by The Forester
Posted

I think it's the Killer Whale, which isn't a true whale.

 

Ding :blink:

 

They are all - with the exception of the killer whale - whales.

The killer whale isn't a whale at all - it's the largest of the dolphin family.

Posted

Just watching Shooting Stars, and they said that James Bond had shoes with a dagger in them. In fact they're wrong it wasn't 007 who had those shoes, so the Question :

 

Which of Bonds adversaries had shoes with a dagger in the toe, and which film did it appear in?

Posted

That was an early one so it's either Dr No or From Russia With Love. I'd guess at FRWL but I'm not 100%.

As for the character / actress I have no idea. Probably someone named Ivana Killalott

Posted

Born in Texas, this singer, songwriter and actor earned a Blue at Oxford in Boxing.

 

Although pretty successful in his own right he will also be know for many hit versions of his songs that were performed by others. In fact one of his sons is named Johnny Cash ........

Posted

I know! He is the last person you would think! Okay here is a new question...

 

Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, is the official title for Ambassadors of which country?

Posted

All of 'em.

 

It's the standard title for any Ambassador to the UK.

 

It's something to do with the fact that traditionally a Royal Court was quite mobile, so an Ambassador's title would have to change dozens of times a year. They (whoever "they" are) decided to simplify by making one single Court the designated location to which ambassadors were, err, ambassadors. They chose the oldest Court, which was St James's.

 

The reason why I know is that my first ever bank account was a Post Office savings account which I proudly opened at the delightfully quaint PO at the Palace of St James at the age of 7, with a shilling which my great-aunt Phoebe gave me to start me off at my first term at boarding school. I still remember those flint-lined walls today! As a kid I always thought of my money in that account being held somewhere deep inside St James's, carefully guarded by enormously tall Guardsmen in red tunics and huge bearskin hats. Whenever I heard the name of St James I always paid close attention in case it might affect my precious shillings.

Posted

The Russian equivalent of NavStar GPS is Glonass.

 

What was the name of Russian equivalent of the now obsolete US Navy Transit satnav system?

 

And for a bonus point, describe its operating principle. How did the thing work?

 

Usual rules: no Googling etc.

Posted

The Russian equivalent of NavStar GPS is Glonass.

 

What was the name of Russian equivalent of the now obsolete US Navy Transit satnav system?

 

And for a bonus point, describe its operating principle. How did the thing work?

 

Usual rules: no Googling etc.

Along the lines of the Space Pen/Pencil myth...

 

The SEXTANT? :laughing:

 

I've never studied how it worked, never having had need. But I know its to do the position of the stars & sun.

Posted (edited)

There are spacecraft which can measure their own co-ordinates by measuring angles between stars, but this satellite system wasn't/isn't one of them. The Shuttle Orbiter uses that optical system, as do Trident misssiles and other ICBMs.

 

The satellite system in this question is still in use, albeit using its priniciple of operation in reverse. It is part of the Search and Rescue satellite system. Instead of indicating position of receivers on the ground, it now measures the position of transmitters on the ground, specifically emergency locator beacons such as are fitted to trans-oceanic aircraft and ships.

 

Its former counterpart, USN Transit, is also still in use, but not for direct position fixing. Its signals are used to measure ionospheric effects and those measurements are used to tweak GPS data.

 

Edited to delete two grocer's apostrophes which had smuggled themselves in.

Edited by The Forester
Posted

If you sum the total IQs in that pub, do you reach triple digits?

 

This sarcastic remark adds nothing to this thread.

 

The Russian equivalent of NavStar GPS is Glonass.

 

What was the name of Russian equivalent of the now obsolete US Navy Transit satnav system?

 

And for a bonus point, describe its operating principle. How did the thing work?

 

Usual rules: no Googling etc.

 

I agree with the comments that others have made: I consider this question to be too difficult for "Pub Quiz"

standards.

 

MrsB

Posted

I doubt that the locals in the pub in my local village would be able to answer any question that isn't about football or tv soap-operas. They're type of people who say "Ooohh!" when ever they hear someone pronounce a trisyllabic word.

 

The denizens of another pub three or four villages away, however, easily beat the kids on University Challenge every time.

 

I suspect that even in the dumbest pub you'd find someone who could guess the name of a very loud insect though. :shocked:

Posted

I'll accept that (the spelling of the answer, not the bar order).

 

The Russians actually called their SatNav system Tsikada. It worked by transmitting a constant tone which rose and faded as it passed your location like the sound of a passing train. Knowing its orbit and by timing the exact time that the tone's frequency nulled (known as the Doppler effect) you could calculate a line of position along which you were situated. Match several of those satellite pass measurements and you had your co-ordinates on the ground.

 

It worked quite well, but was as cumbersome as the American equivalent and lacked the sophistication of the US Imperial globe-spanning tracking network to tweak the orbital parameters.

 

They're still up there and they're still doing useful work, but unlike their American counterparts they're now integrated into the worldwide SARSAT (search and rescue satellite) system for the saving of human life at sea.

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