c4countdown

I'm trying to make a quiz in the style of Channel 4's 'Big Fat Quiz of the Year' but basically don't have much stuff to go in it. If you've never watched the annual programme then it's pretty much all about fun and laughs without really being about quizzing so you wouldn't get really hard or serious questions but instead light and entertainment based ones, such as "In September, who accepted the MTV VMA award for Video of the Year wearing a dress made from cuts of meat?"

I usually go through the newspaper each day and extract the information turning them into quiz questions but a lot of these are 'contaminated' in my list of thousands of questions and so are hard to pick out.

So if any of yous can remember anything cool, interesting, quirky that happened in 2010 or if you have a decent question then can you please drop it in here. I don't usually scrounge off other people for stuff like this but I'm finding it hard to find the kind of Golden Website that I'm after which basically lists memorable stories from the year rather than something like Wikipedia that lists events of 2010 as natural disasters, suicidal bombs, UN conferences and what the CERN has just done or not done.

Appreciate the help, thanks.

Edit: Oh yeah, then I went outside and it was raining.

Maybe you should make it about goings on in the Countdown world.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Maybe you should make it about goings on in the Countdown world.

Believe me I would love to do that but a lot of my friends switch off when I talk about Countdown because they've heard it all before. Although I have got a few people watching Countdown now and have managed to get 11 people to sign up to apterous.

With all that said I am going to put a Countdown question in the quiz under October. It was literally the first question I thought of when I was going to sleep last night trying to think of stuff to put in.

I'll show them like a clip of Jack Hurst breaking the 8 game record total (yes, I still have it Sky Plussed) and then after that kind of introduction I'm going to say something like: "Jack Hurst made national news for this achievement but it was for spotting an 8 letter word that he perhaps made more news. What was that 8 letter word?" And then of course a lot of them won't know the answer just like that (© Tommy Cooper) so I will put the selection on the screen. So if you do know it staright away then very good and well done, but if they don't they can then try and work it out. Awesome, I know.

The BBC's '7 days' quizzes might have some stuff lurking that would be suitable (you can view a load of them here), only trouble is they only seem to have the last 3 months archived (I bet the rest are hiding somewhere though). They often about those minor news stories of the week that you only know about because you've spent the whole week using BBC news as an procrastination tool.

Michael Wallace wrote:The BBC's '7 days' quizzes might have some stuff lurking that would be suitable (you can view a load of them here), only trouble is they only seem to have the last 3 months archived (I bet the rest are hiding somewhere though). They often about those minor news stories of the week that you only know about because you've spent the whole week using BBC news as an procrastination tool.

Thanks for that link it's pretty damn useful! Some quirky stuff in there, cheers man!

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:The BBC's '7 days' quizzes might have some stuff lurking that would be suitable (you can view a load of them here), only trouble is they only seem to have the last 3 months archived (I bet the rest are hiding somewhere though). They often about those minor news stories of the week that you only know about because you've spent the whole week using BBC news as an procrastination tool.

Thanks for that link it's pretty damn useful! Some quirky stuff in there, cheers man!

I might run a 'Marc's big fat sweaty paedo quiz of the year' on tumbleweediseeg.
Sorry Derek if you're lurking.

Ryan Taylor wrote:I'll show them like a clip of Jack Hurst breaking the 8 game record total (yes, I still have it Sky Plussed) and then after that kind of introduction I'm going to say something like: "Jack Hurst made national news for this achievement but it was for spotting an 8 letter word that he perhaps made more news. What was that 8 letter word?" And then of course a lot of them won't know the answer just like that (© Tommy Cooper) so I will put the selection on the screen. So if you do know it staright away then very good and well done, but if they don't they can then try and work it out. Awesome, I know.

This sounds epic. When and where do I turn up?

Dinos Sfyris wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:I'll show them like a clip of Jack Hurst breaking the 8 game record total (yes, I still have it Sky Plussed) and then after that kind of introduction I'm going to say something like: "Jack Hurst made national news for this achievement but it was for spotting an 8 letter word that he perhaps made more news. What was that 8 letter word?" And then of course a lot of them won't know the answer just like that (© Tommy Cooper) so I will put the selection on the screen. So if you do know it staright away then very good and well done, but if they don't they can then try and work it out. Awesome, I know.

This sounds epic. When and where do I turn up?

It's a New Year idea very much in it's early stages so far but it will be at my house if it goes ahead. Come along!

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Dinos Sfyris wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:I'll show them like a clip of Jack Hurst breaking the 8 game record total (yes, I still have it Sky Plussed) and then after that kind of introduction I'm going to say something like: "Jack Hurst made national news for this achievement but it was for spotting an 8 letter word that he perhaps made more news. What was that 8 letter word?" And then of course a lot of them won't know the answer just like that (© Tommy Cooper) so I will put the selection on the screen. So if you do know it staright away then very good and well done, but if they don't they can then try and work it out. Awesome, I know.

This sounds epic. When and where do I turn up?

It's a New Year idea very much in it's early stages so far but it will be at my house if it goes ahead. Come along!

got any special guests planned?

So I've actually just finished watching Channel 4's Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2010 which was first broadcast on 31st December 2010 and then later on 3rd January 2011. Now, considering I'd actually finalised mine by Boxing Day it was remarkable how similar all of the questions were. I know it isn't that strange that they are similar, after all, they are all based on the year's news but the following example was actually scarily similar:

MY ONE:

EYE PAD TWO BEE LAUNCHED BYE APPLE = iPad to be launched by Apple

CHANNEL 4's:

AHH PULL LAUNCHES EYE PAD = Apple launches iPad

Bearing in mind that not only was this news story used as a question but we both decided on doing the headline pictorially. Uncanny! (Answers underneath if you actually needed it).