It's Quizness Time
With Christmas on the horizon, Domhnall O’Donoghue celebrates his family’s favourite festive tradition – the afternoon quiz.
Today, I purchased my first Christmas present - a bumper quiz book for my father, bursting with thousands of general knowledge questions. While many gifts are put to one side once they are unwrapped on Christmas morning, this title is guaranteed to be well-thumbed before the turkey even browns.
Every family has their traditions for December 25 - playing board games, singing carols or plunging into the nippy sea. For us O’Donoghues, it is the afternoon quiz. Before the mountain of food has time to digest, my quizmaster father is scrawling the various names on the scoreboard.
The contestants have varied over the years; in addition to my mother and siblings - aunts, grandparents and our respective partners have all tried their luck.
Our afternoon quiz has evolved over the decades. Its humble origins are found in the five questions printed towards the back of the newspaper, initially asked to allow our mother to catch her breath after rustling up feasts worthy of Michelin Stars. (So long as we discount that occasion when she misinterpreted a tip to cook the turkey in a pillowcase - it wasn’t just the Baked Alaska that caught fire that year!)
Since then, the quiz has advanced to what it is today: a near five-hour spectacle that has witnessed the whole gamut of emotions – from amusement to frustration, jubilation to abject misery. The prize has also grown from a simple ‘congratulations’ to a tidy one hundred euro for the winner and fifty for the runner-up.
In his booming Co Clare accent, my father warms us up with some riddles – for instance, what gets wet while drying? (answer: a towel). Or what has a head and tail but no body? (answer: a coin). Calling upon his former experience as Navan’s Town Clerk, he then brings order to proceedings before officially beginning the quiz in earnest.
In fact, discipline is what’s often missing. Even as we advance in years, the lifelong rivalry between my siblings and me has never diminished. There is certainly no time for politeness or charity with a crisp, hundred-euro note on the line! This spirited competitiveness is best illustrated by the drama that succeeded the question:
What is the world’s largest mammal?
A WHALE OF A TIME
It was the final quiz of the 20th Century. Outside, temperatures were dropping; inside, however, things were heating up.
“The whale,” my sister, Deirdre, confidently answered, convinced that the winnings had her name on it.
However, the rest of us were ill-prepared to concede defeat. Knowing that her answer wasn’t complete - the world’s largest mammal is the blue whale – we demanded the exact answer in that year’s quiz book, something she ultimately failed to give. Don’t mind blue; the only colour she identified with at that moment was red, and let me tell you, a Ros na Rún omnibus couldn’t compete with the drama that ensued around the dining-room table that Christmas afternoon!
But, my sister wasn’t the only person to feel unfairly treated during one of our quizzes. Sitting next to my father, I am invariably accused by my rivals of spying on the answers and, using leftover crackers and empty jars of cranberry sauce, they have now begun to build protective, make-shift walls around the book to thwart any wandering eyes!
QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOUR
But when we aren’t crying over unfair questions, we are laughing - often at my father’s expense as he attempts to pronounce those tricky foreign words or phrases like paella or force majeure.
Instead of Marie Curie, he once asked what Mary Curry invented, leaving us wondering if she were Ireland’s answer to Uncle Ben, who specialised in Indian cuisine! Always a chancer, Dad would blame his latest faux pas on his ineffective reading glasses or even argue that he was holding the book upside down!
My late grandmother - an ardent follower of the news - once compiled a selection of questions. After my father read out her first, well-meaning effort – Who is the Deputy Governor of Mountjoy Prison? – we collectively agreed to return to the more manageable quiz book instead.
Even the pandemic couldn’t put a dampener on proceedings as my Holland-based brother, Déaglán, joined us on Zoom last December. And it was certainly worth his while - equipped with Dutch courage, he held his cool, pipping me at the post in the tie-breaker.
This Christmas’ annual quiz will be challenging for another reason – my sister sadly passed away this summer, but her presence will undoubtedly be felt. In her honour, we are introducing the Blue Whale Cup - an award designed in the shape of the infamous mammal that caused such a splash over 20 years ago.
Knowing Deirdre’s love of tradition, it wouldn’t surprise me if she convinces Saint Peter to test her general knowledge on Christmas Day.
For his sake, I just hope that there won’t be any questions about whales - blue or otherwise.