Chairman, Kay Day, welcomed everyone and asked us to arrange ourselves into tab

les of 6 or 7.

I looked around for the table with the best looking array of drinks and nibbles. Then quizmaster, Jonathan Pegler introduced our first task – to think of a name for our 6 newly formed teams.

The names selected were the Travellers, Ospreys, Double Crossers, Newbies, Exiles and Dwygyfylchi (it’s a village near Conwy – I looked it up).

.

Jonathan explained that would be 5 rounds of questions plus 2 table rounds. These were sheets of 20 questions placed on each table, to be answered over the course of the evening. The first was a series of 20 photographs of people with a Welsh connection, and the second set of questions involved guessing the language used for 20 different phrases each saying “I’m sorry I don’t speak Welsh” in a different European tongue (including Latvian, Azerbaijani and Bulgarian).

Jonathan, aided by his lovely assistant and score keeper, Gwyndaf John, then started the quiz proper, with 2 rounds of 10 questions, the first on general knowledge and then a second round on the subject of Chad or Chard.

Whilst the scores from these first rounds were being collected, an evening supper was

provided –either chili con carne or fish pie, followed by a wide choice of puddings and tea or coffee.

After supper we had a little time to continue with identifying the people in the photographs, and wildly guessing some of the languages (was that Spanish or Esperanto, Russian or

Bulgarian?) Gwyndaf revealed the half-time scores, and it was really quite close, with all teams still in the running – i.e. we were all failing quite badly in answering Jonathan’s

cryptic questions.

Three more rounds followed, with subjects including events that occurred on 22nd

January in recent or distant history, a tricky round involving estimating distances (in

Wales, around the earth, and a mathematical puzzle based on Jonathan’s swimming regime), and lastly another general knowledge round, with more than a few questions based on the society’s trips to Wales.

By this time my brain was hurting, as Gwyndaf revealed one of the closest sco

res yet, with only 4 points separating the top 5 teams, but Dwygfylchi emerged as clear winners of the 2016 Quiz.

 

Congratulations to the team, and many thanks to Jonathan (and Gwyndaf) for the quiz.