most
of the match the Travellers were comfortably ahead.
Obviously we've met the Travellers umpteen times
over the years, so it was a refreshing change to
play them using the mixed question format."The Magic 8-Ball is a hollow plastic sphere resembling an oversized, black-and-white 8-ball. Inside the ball a cylindrical reservoir contains a white, plastic, icosahedral die floating in alcohol dyed dark blue. Each of the die's 20 faces has an affirmative, negative, or non-committal statement printed in raised letters. These messages are read through a window on the ball's bottom.
To use the ball, it must be held with the window initially facing down. After asking the ball a 'yes-no' question, the user then turns the ball so that the window faces up, setting in motion the liquid and die inside. When the die floats to the top and one face presses against the window, the raised letters displace the blue liquid to reveal the message as white letters on a blue background. Although many users shake the ball before turning it upright, the instructions warn against doing so to avoid white bubbles, which interfere with the performance of the ball itself.
The 20 possible messages to be revealed
by the mystical sphere are:
-
It is certain
-
It is decidedly so
-
Without a doubt
-
Yes, definitely
-
You may rely on it
-
As I see it, yes
-
Most likely
-
Outlook good
-
Yes
-
Signs point to yes
-
Reply hazy try again
-
Ask again later
-
Better not tell you now
-
Cannot predict now
-
Concentrate and ask again
-
Don't count on it
-
My reply is no
-
My sources say no
-
Outlook not so good
-
Very doubtful"
If
I recall right the ball was
consulted twice during the
evening by the Albert team.
On both occasions it seemed
to me (as QM) that the team
spent all their energies in
the dimly lit room with
their failing eyesight
trying to read what the
bloody message was on the
ball's bottom never mind how
to interpret it to arrive at
an answer. It may be
that Mike is onto something
to boost his team's thrust
for the league title, but
somehow I doubt it.
It was a most enjoyable evening that - as is becoming the custom this season - finished in good time for a natter. After a picture quiz Nick had brought along and a quick flip through a set of statistics that Howell has been keeping of every Opsimath team member's performance since the year dot, we got to discussing the sad fall of Granada TV over the years from the most revered British cultural powerhouse of the last half of the 20th century, helping to shape western liberal democracy, to the home of Jeremy Kyle and Judge Rinder (perhaps accurately reflecting the decadent and fractured times in which we now live). Granada executives used to be motivated to tell the public what they needed to know - now they just feed them what they want to see. There was talk of great TV shows long since vanished from our screens such as All Our Yesterdays, Brideshead Revisited, Jewel in the Crown, World in Action, and University Challenge (oh, hang on a minute, isn't one of those still with us?). We also got to talk about the greatest documentary series of them all Seven Up! which was originally a one-off World in Action programme and is now looking forward to filming 63Up! due to go out in 2019. One of the key members of the production team (Kim Horton) lives on Old Lansdowne Road just a few yards from the Club. So perhaps the flame that was Granada still just about flickers on.
Oh, and after Mike's tales of unrest in the Albert team's ranks over recent weeks he sends in a brief account of the perils of life as a WithQuiz Team Captain which appears below.
They
were just too easy - but they did give rise to
efforts to find a suitably apposite anagram of
'Donald Trump' to be used in some future paper a
decade or so from now. I offer you: 'Land Turd
Mop', 'Dump Old Rant', 'Damp Old Runt' or 'Mad Lord
Punt'. Anyone else got suggestions?
that
the individual in question has now been sequestered
in a remote monastery to think things over).
Why, our own eminent leader, Lord Michael Bath, has
implied that he is now so fearful that he chooses to
be a reserve rather than face the wrath of his
murderous companions. There he sits, with his
back always to the wall in the bar of The Bowls
Club, quivering in the knife-proof doublet he stole
from an exhibition on the Reign of King James I.
Indeed he is beginning to resemble that worthy
monarch in other ways. I am reliably informed
that his spindly legs will no longer support his
body and he moves only with the assistance of two
virile young men; and is it true that when he eats
the food trickles out of each corner of his mouth?
He has not yet developed the piping voice with its
Grampian whine but it can only be a matter of time.