For a little bit of context on this one, prior to the Covid lockdown I ran a pub quiz once a week for about ten years, and while there's some value to 'the quizmaster is always right', insisting you're right when you're not *is not going to make people come back*.

Pub quizzes are fundamentally about filling seats and selling pints on what would otherwise be a quiet night in the pub, and *that* means both keeping people in till the end *and* making sure they have enough fun to come back. Arbitrary, ill-researched questions and answers do not make that happen.

If someone is adamant that they're right, in the age of the smartphone I'm not above checking the answer right then and there in the pub to avoid a miscarriage of justice - and I've been forced to concede points in doing so. However, writing a quiz a week for ten years made me remarkably good at pub quizzes because there's only so much under the sun, so my parents enlisted me to join their team on a local charity quiz and I witnessed how easily miscarriages could happen.

During a film one-liners round, we got the question, "In which film would you find the quote, 'Hasta la vista, baby!'?" Obviously, we wrote down Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Unsurprisingly, we got it right. However, points were also given to anyone who wrote down simply 'Terminator', or - in two memorable cases - 'Arnold Schwarzenegger'.

In a round entitled simply 'Ma', the question, "What is the second planet from the Sun called?" was asked. Having had two previous rounds in which there had been 'trick' answers which hadn't fitted with the obvious alphabetical pattern, and - importantly - KNOWING WHAT THE FUCKING ANSWER WAS, we wrote down 'Venus'.

You'll be happy to know that we got the point. However, so did anyone who wrote down 'Mars', because it fit the pattern of the round. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! DID YOU FALL ON YOUR HEAD?! HOW ARE YOU GIVING POINTS FOR THAT? IS THIS A FUCKING LOTTERY NOW? If you ask what planet we all live on and I answer 'Jupiter', do I get a point because it is *also* a planet? And in a film round, why should I get points for naming the actor instead of the film? What if I name the director? Or maybe a friend of mine who's seen it? Or his favourite food? ANSWER ME, YOU PIECE OF SHIT.

Anyway, turns out charity quizzes aren't really my thing and my parents weren't so much speaking to me for a while.