British education is a contentious subject. There are those that think our education system doesn’t fit our children for the modern world. We beg to differ. All that geography and history sets people up nicely for pub quizzes. How else would you be able to answer questions on the capital of Peru and the date of the Battle of Agincourt?
There is one weakness in our education system though. Balls, I hear you say? Got it one! We teach our children to run with them, kick them and hit them with all manner of sticks and racquets, but ask them who was the runner up in the 1933 FA Cup and they are lost. A weakness indeed. The problem with this lack of knowledge on sports history can leave you floundering around like Ian Hislop being asked about a heavy metal band. Your only alternative is to co-opt some sporting nerd onto your team. Not the sort of bloke you’d want to live next door to, let alone share a bar room table with!
Fortunately, today’s pub quiz skates around sport. Instead we are going for a “generation game” round. And who better to host our pub quiz than the pub landlord, Al Murray. An exceptional talent for commonsense, and more importantly, as far as B &B are concerned, he wears a tie, unlike every other Tom Dick and Harry expert and politician on the TV who don’t wear one because they want to appear like the man in the pub.
The ties that bind
So, on with the quiz. Which generation are the following, given Al is generation 0
A. William Makepiece Thackeray (1811-1863)
B. John Murray, 3rd Duke of Atholl KT (1729 – 1774)
C. Count Bernhard von Kuenburg ( -1918)
D. 10th Earl Kinnoull (Lord Lyon – King of Arms) (1751-1804)
E. Lt.-Gen. Francis Grant (1717- 1781)
F. Lady Sarah Maria Hay Drumond (1788 -1874)
Lovely British names, except for C that is, which is, er, German. (There’s a bonus point if you know which one owns the brewery.)
So, before last orders and we throw you out into the cold, a bit of algebraic commonsense.
N51 55.(C-1)(F-1)(D) W000 08.(E-D)(D)(A+2)
A final thought about geography questions. Recently we posed a QI type question to our son Simon. The question was “What was the capital of Wales in 1950”. Expecting the answer “Cardiff”, with the attendant QI lights and klaxons, we were a bit taken aback when he said “W like it’s always been”. There’s potential there for a puzzle cache compiler we thought. We took him into the garage to show him our stash of recycled Tupperware boxes. “One day son all this will be yours,” we said. Underwhelmed is the word. Work in progress.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.