'April is the cruellest month,' according to the poet T.S.Eliot, and as anyone who has attended one of our literary quizzes will tell you, he may well have had a point.
One question setter's easy is another quizzer's you cannot be serious, man. Just because YOU happen to have known since the age of four that the second R in J.R.R.Tolkien stands for 'Reuel' doesn't mean that everybody else does (although come on...).
Six years we've been running these quizzes now. Part social event, part festival fundraiser, our question masters' consciousnesses have been continually evolving on a steady curve, achieving literary quiz transcendence some time around the start of 2019.
Take this example from the dingbats round with which we opened last year's gathering at the Harbour Gallery, for instance:
If you didn't get GEORGE ORWELL from that then you've only got yourself to blame. Likewise with the following perfectly reasonable, eminently answerable questions that had some of last year's contestants scratching their heads (for shame), and others doing a quiet little jig at their tables.
Novelist Suzanne Collins is best known for which book trilogy starring Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark?
Complete the following novel title: Little _____ Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys is the prequel to which novel?
You see? A stroll in the park for those in the booky know. And if you really, truly, haven't got a clue...then that's what team-mates are for (The Hunger Games, 'Fires' and Jane Eyre, as if).
Fact is, we're getting good and ready for our next annual Literary Quiz, an event that we've come to view as the opening bell for the Jersey Festival of Words.
We're inviting you all to come and ring it with us, this time at the St Helier Yacht Club, who will kindly be opening their doors for us on Thursday April 16th, from 1900 - 22.00. Tickets cost £15 per person, to include a hot buffet, and as usual we're restricting it to six bibliophilic brain-boxes per team. Prizes include free tickets for festival events, amongst other treasures.
So what are you waiting for? Drop us an email at info@jerseyfestivalofwords.org to book your squad a place and show nasty old April how utterly, wonderfully, wordfully (?) quizzical you can be.
PB
