And the answer is...

Cake decoration challenge

One of the events in which the Formal Methods and Tools group in Twente partakes regularly (although the last time is quite a while ago, come to think of it) is the Pubquiz, organised by the study association Inter-Actief. You may think that as a team of PhD students and lecturers we do not really belong there, but not only are some of us still members for old time's sake, but in fact they quite welcome having the chance to beat us at something. The first two times (five years ago or so) we actually won the quiz, partly because for the music section (in which you have to recognise song and performer, and which counts for a lot of points) they chose a lot of songs from the 80s; but later they wised up and changed to more contemporary repertoire, after which point we were struggling hard to win a single round of general knowledge questions here and there.

The UK has a reputation for being very good at quizzes, both general and special knowledge, something I have always attributed to the much less egalitarian society in which it is no shame to pride yourself at being good at something, such as knowing a lot of otherwise useless stuff. Certainly watching shows like Mastermind or University Challenge (of which I saw one episode recently in which one of the Oxford colleges trounced York) I am always made aware again of how much there is to know, and how little of it I actually have a clue about.

A month ago, when I had been here for jsut a short while, there was a mail seeking participants in what they called the Computer Science Quiz. To my surprise and (somewhat) disappointment, initially there was not much interest from the Enterprise Systems group, but after some time we managed to get the Star Team Enterprise together. The event was to take place yesterday (Wednesday 20-11) at 19:00. We were told to bring our own food and drink, not knowing what to expect I brought a bottle of wine which I kept cool by putting it on the window sill outside Richard's office after convincing myself that it couldn't drop off and drench an innocent passer-by after hitting him on the head.

The quiz, which is a yearly event and should be seen in the light of Christmas (as a lot of things start to be around this time of year) was much more varied than a pub quiz, and must have taken a good deal of time to prepare. There were general knowledge and picture questions and categories like sports and music, which were to be expected; but also word and calculator games, quotations, a keyboard racing game, who can rattle off faultlessly the most representatives of a given category in one minute (states in the US, cities in the UK), and not to foget, a cake decoration challenge. All in all, very good fun.

Keyboard racing

Unavoidably, a lot of the questions were England-centered (Olympic Games winners, which cities have more than one team in the National Football Leagues, what are the ingredients in allspice, that sort of thing) but there were enough of a more general nature such that a team like ours, consising of one English, one Cypriot, one Greek, one Romanian and one Dutch, had at least some chance. Of course the outcome was not left to chance, so the Star Team Enterprise will have to come back for the next episode!