I ADORE themed sets. I remember very vividly how I felt the first time I played one. It was season 3(?) of FLQL, in a game week that coincided with Valentine's Day 2021. 16 quads, all somehow related to love. Question after question went by and I just sat there, largely giving up on actually doing well that week and instead just taking time to appreciate the questions and the creativity that went into making a set like that.
Last week saw B612’s first themed set and the feedback has been fairly divisive, but there's plenty to talk about.
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Feedback is welcome here: GW3 Feedback Form. We read every single submission and it is occasionally very upsetting (it’s that the Amazon reviewer problem, only a unhappy customer has the motivation to write in great detail) and sometimes it ruins our whole weekend but theek hai. This is what we signed up for and this is how we will improve. Somewhere in that rant, please explicitly mention what you liked and what you hated. No vague references, go ahead and name the quads/questions. We cannot read your mind, and the anonymity of the form means we can’t reach out to ask what you really meant. So be clear. Thanks.
Themed Sets: Love, Colours, Rain, and Food
For me, a big part of the appeal of a themed game week is the slow reveal. Nobody sits down for a Mimir quiz hoping to find a connection between all 60+ questions. Since you're not looking for it, the realization is necessarily a passive one. At some point, perhaps in round 2 or 3, or even 4 if you're a particularly focused quizzer, you'll think "Man, that's like the fourth colour-related question I've seen today, are there 2 similar quads today? Maybe 3?" From that point, it'll take maybe 2 more questions to confirm and you'll realize what's really happening.
Another reason why I love the concept so much is that it emphasises an important truth about quizzes in general: the answerability of a question has very little to do with the 'topic' it is often tagged with. Just like you don't need to be a Dr Rajkumar fan to guess the names of the movies he sang for, and you don't need to know my friend Prakash is to guess his favourite books, similarly, you can go a long way in a rain-themed question set without ever having stepped out into the rain yourself. It all depends on the questions.
Since FLQL did their Valentine's Day set in February 2021, there have been a couple of other themed sets, all by the same team. They did a Colours set, not on Holi but in May 2022, and then a Rain-themed one in August 2022. ZQL did an India-themed set in the week around Independence Day 2022.
B612 had never done a themed set, but we've always wanted to, especially now that a precedent has been set. The opportunity presented itself when one of our most prolific question setters, Ananya Upadhya, had an unusually directed week that saw her exclusively making F&B quads. B612 does at least one F&B quad every week, so she was trying to set us up for the whole season. But the quads she picked were so diverse and intersected so nicely with other categories (Dining Tables in Art, Restaurants in Sci-Fi) that it was immediately apparent to the rest of us that she'd essentially gifted us a themed game week.
Even in its final state, a massive chunk of this game week was the work of just one woman. Nidheesh Samant contributed the next highest number of quads, picking up on Ananya's accidental food theme. Vikas and I squeezed in some questions at the last second just so we could say we were part of something special.
1. "Sweet" Songs
A straightforward List quad to start out: songs with 'sweet' titles.
Brown Sugar was one of the 'checkpoint' questions this week. The question text didn't actually mention food, so the guesses players make for this one will tell you whether or not they've picked up on the food theme. Since this question appeared in Round 5, it's quite possible that many people had figured it out by then, but simply forgot it when they looked at this question. Stay calm while reading people!
I liked the phrasing of the Cake by the Ocean question. With "titular item", "imperfectly-named band" and "sex on the beach" there were tons of hints in the question, but it somehow still managed to be challenging. This is the kind of question that will make your friends groan when they don't get it right. Try it on them.
The music video for which 2015 song depicts a food fight (featuring the titular item) between several bikini-clad women and social media personality The Fat Jew? The frontman of the imperfectly-named band explained that the title came about from one of their producers repeatedly misremembering the name of the cocktail 'Sex on the Beach'.
Answer: Cake by the Ocean, by DNCE
Milkshake and Cookie Jar played easiest, the latter in spite of being a relatively lesser-known song (the reason for it being marked as an L4), probably because of too many hints in the question.
2. Sci-Fi Restaurants
Another straightforward List quad.
Stranger Things was almost never missed, and the Star Wars Cantina was almost never answered (although several knew that it was "some cantina"). Even when it was answered, folks went with “Mos Eisley Cantina”, which was an accepted answer but is actually the name of the region and not the cantina itself.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy attracted some good guesses, in some cases from people who correctly identified that 'Gnab Gib' was Big Bang in reverse and just went with the only book series set in space that they knew.
3. Strange Billionaire Eating Habits
Zuckerberg's wild eating habits attracted some of the funniest guesses this week, including "he has to raise the animal himself", "if the animal can defend itself then it's allowed", and "whether you can eat it depends on the specific animal's intelligence."
Most games saw Mars Bar get answered as the apt choice of confectionary for Elon Musk, although I heard some other great guesses too including Galaxy and Fruit Loops.
Everyone made out that Branson was a tea drinker, but when prompted most went with Earl Grey or green tea instead of English Breakfast Tea.
4. Fad Diets
Probably the most unexpectedly difficult topic this week for participants who were trying to guess future answers based on the quad. They were ready with their Atkins and Keto guesses, but that stuff never came up!
Instead, we had Macrobiotic which had almost nothing to work with in the question, and Werewolf and Drinking Man, which did have clues but were tough to guess if you'd never heard of the diet before.
Pat Gibson was the question setters’ Saviour of the Week, being the only person to answer Macrobiotic diet correctly, resulting in another week of 0 unanswered questions. Phew.
5. Binging with Babish
Nice, light movies quad that I'm honestly kind of surprised has never come up in a Mimir league before, considering how popular the Binging with Babish channel is.
Ratatouille may have been hard to identify just from a picture but our old friend "titular" helped a lot of people guess this one.
Goodfellas broke away from the 'foodie movies' sub-theme, but the garlic scene is iconic enough that we didn't really mind that much.
Big Night is this week's B612 Recommendation. Excellent movie, and very clearly made by someone who loves food.
Julie and Julia served as an unintentional tribute, as Julie Powell passed away just a few days before the start of the game week. The news coverage that followed might have resulted in this being a much easier question than usual.
Here's an extra that does stick to the foodie theme but was dropped cos you only need one L1 per quad.
One of the oldest videos on the *Binging with Babish* channel is one in which Babish makes Pasta Aglio e Olio as shown in which 2014 film that's also a food- lover's delight? The episode ends with Babish saying "the only thing missing was Jon Favreau for me to make sexy eyes at".
Answer: Chef
6. Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking
Please take my word for this, this book is genuinely life-changing. So much of cooking just starts to make sense if you know what's really happening on a molecular level, and the book is detailed enough that we could probably do a quad per chapter for every remaining week of the season without coming close to repeating ourselves (We won’t though).
Science quads in our league and in others have a tendency to confuse people who are actually familiar with the subject that is being discussed. My guess is that this happens because question setters who are only barely familiar with a subject will sometimes attach too much importance to the terminology they find online. Real experts don't use hastily googled Wikipedia pages as a foundation for their reading, so they have trouble understanding "what is really being asked here."
If you're a setter, the only way to avoid this problem is to actually study. Use a primary source (like a single book) for your questions, and frame them only in the context of that source. Resist the temptation to use simpler, unqualified statements just cos they look prettier in a quiz.
Air Sac was a fun question to ask because the first person would guess egg yolk, the second would guess egg white, and the third would just stare blankly at the screen wondering what else was left that the question could possibly be asking for. The final funda is a pretty cool one and makes for a very nice 'example' question, i.e. a question to use when people ask you how Open quizzing in India is different from regular trivia contests.
Acid (vinegar, lemon juice) was another puzzle-like question that required players to slow down, read carefully and then actually solve the problem like they would in a kitchen.
Browning was relatively straightforward and employed an old trick of question setting: Throw in lots of scientific jargon and ask people what is really being discussed. I don't think I ever saw this question get missed.
Curd and Whey was a relatively accessible L4 for a science quad. Maybe that's the trick to a good L4? Instead of asking for 1 unfamiliar term, ask for 2 familiar ones!
7. Crayola's Big Box No. 96
A creative quad idea and a pretty great find considering it doesn't follow the lazy setter's approach of just using stuff that's notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia page. (Nidheesh does this quite a lot actually, including for that Ada quad in Week 1. It's quite cool and I'm curious about his actual process for making quads, but I haven't gotten around to asking him yet)
The named colours of a Crayola Big Box form an eclectic set.
Asparagus making your urine smell funny is a very satisfyingly obscure piece of knowledge to make a question on.
Granny Smith Apples saw some unfortunate Wrongs because we weren't accepting simply "green apple."
Cherise gave me one of my favourite moments of the week. Nishant Mal had heard of 'Irresistible Cherry', and the question told him he had to French-ify the fruit name. He pouted his lips and just said "cherry" in a ridiculous impression of the French accent, and the sound that came out was indistinguishable from the correct pronunciation of the answer. I even asked him to repeat it and he said it again, exactly the same way. The man got a point without having a clue what he was saying! Much respect.
8. Dining Tables in Art
Have to love a quad idea that's this specific.
Nighthawks is an important painting because quizzing has told me it is an important painting. I even tried watching one of those explainer videos to learn why it's so significant but I fell asleep at the 3-minute mark. Let me know if you have better results.
Freedom from Want is a familiar painting, but plenty of people had either forgotten or had simply never heard the proper title of the work.
Several people were going with the only French movie they knew when they guessed Amelie, and they got points for it too.
Judy Chicago's Dining Party popped up in an FLQL set a few months ago, when the entire quad was about the women commemorated in that artwork. Well done if you managed to recall her name.
🎯 Saransh Mohapatra and Achyuth Sanjay both picked up muskets in this quad. Ask them for tips on how to retain names you’ve come across only in quizzes.
9. Foodie Graphic Novels
Get Jiro! sounds like a pretty interesting comic, but I found it underwhelming, which should be a bigger deal cos I love almost all of Anthony Bourdain's writing.
Chew had some Sourjo Sengupta-esque hints for your subconscious in the question ("the protagonist found that he had bitten off more than he can...handle"), so very well done if you picked up on that.
The Bojack Horseman question was modified a few quizzes into the week to also accept Tuca and Bertie as a valid answer since Lisa Hanawalt worked on both shows. If you're among the unlucky few that got Tuca and Bertie wrong, please accept our apologies, and thank you for making us aware of the mistake.
I'm pleased to report I read all 6 volumes of Scott Pilgrim vs the World in the 9 days of this game week after seeing appear in the set, so you can too! It's free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription and comics are easy wins for that Goodreads target you set months ago (it’s mid-November, get on with it). It's a pretty great series, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny and sometimes (albeit rarely) pretty serious. Would recommend.
Quick update on the poll from last week's post. The advice we've received via the poll and via other channels is this: If a factual error is noticed (like the existence of an additional answer), then the question should be fixed right away. If it's just a seat balancing issue ("this L2 isn't playing like an L2"), that we should keep the question as it is, so every game plays with the same rules. So that’s that.
🎯 Santosh Swaminathan picked up yet another musket for the season by scoring 4/4 on graphic novels!
10. Strange Meals with Anthony Bourdain
THAT quad. The one with the videos of slit cobras, warthog rectums and seals simply pulled apart.
We have received a fair number of complaints about using this kind of content, enough to balance the feedback that called this one their favourite quad. There were warnings before the particularly gruesome videos, but I suppose looking away isn't really an option when there's a point at stake.
“What am I doing with my life? Is this any way to make a living?”
I enjoyed watching people's faces as they watched the videos, a sort of live reaction video. Anthony Bourdain's narration is fairly gripping too, so there were audible sighs at the end of each clip as people realized that they had been holding their breath the entire time he was talking. Additionally, I think his message comes through in each clip: our cringe reactions to these foods and our labelling of traditional meals as "shocking" or "disgusting" are just a reflection of our own internalized xenophobia. Even as he gagged on the barbequed warthog rectum, Bourdain was berating himself for being rude and culturally insensitive. It’s an admirable viewpoint and one that more of us could share.
The questions themselves played surprisingly well.
Vietnam seemed to be within the realm of guessing, although at least one player got it based on a tiny snatch of Vietnamese being spoken in the clip.
Philippines had a bunch of pointed clues, including ‘Southeast Asia’ and ‘island nation’.
Namibia is a tough one, since Bushmen (San people) are spread over Botswana and South Africa as well, so that’s why it’s the L4.
My favourite one was the L3, which quite a lot of people answered correctly by treating the video as a puzzle. What's a cold country (the seal is being eaten raw) where you can join an indigenous family for a meal and speak to them in perfect English? Canada is a very good guess.
11. Harry K Yee’s Bartending Innovations
A real outlier in terms of quad difficulty, practically speaking this one had 3 questions of L4 difficulty. Would’ve been great as a non-ascending quad, in hindsight.
While some had seen purple Orchids and Backscratches sitting in tropical cocktails, very few remembered what they were called. And almost nobody picked up on Blue Hawaii, let alone figure out the similarly-named (but still very different) Blue Hawaiian.
12. Food as a Literary Device
Our snooty quad of the week actually ended up playing pretty okay.
Bell Jar had initially been intended for use as an L3, but I moved it arguing that “this author’s only novel” and “gender roles” and “Esther Greenwood” gave a lot away. I was quite wrong though, and I’m frankly still astonished that Babette's Feast was answered more often!
Marcel Proust would’ve been an L4 on any other day, although Remembrance of Things Past tends to come up often enough that I now guess it whenever someone says “7 volume epic”. That book was also published under the title In Search of Lost Time. Just FYI. Let me know if you ever find that useful.
13. Drinks in Sports Celebrations
God damn, look at that difficulty gradient, we might never have gotten a non-ascending quad so perfect.
I myself knew just 2 of these answers, but the stats like that are the ultimate food1 for thought. If you got even one of these and felt the others were a bit obscure, well, no. Statiscally, they’re all equally well-known fundas and any differences between which ones we knew just arise from a natural variances in what information and consume. I know, right?
14. 21st Century Food Protests
I thought this was arguably the most interesting quad we did this week. Personally, I would’ve scored 0/4, but these are the kind of fresh fundae I would be happy to call the day’s TILs.
V for Vinegar is a tough question, even after you pick up on the V for Vendetta reference, simply because you still need to guess that the bottled product mentioned is vinegar. Some went for ‘V for Vodka’, which actually fits a little better given the “bomb manufacturing” hint.
River Crab was tough too, but possibly everybody’s favourite funda that’s almost certainly going to come up again in future quizzes: The Chinese phrase for ‘river crab’ sounds very similar to the phrase for ‘harmonious peace’, so crabs are a great way for Chinese activists to poke fun at the government.
15. Foodie Named Artists
We follow up that fresh nuggets quad with a quad of slightly more familiar chestnuts.
Eminem was never missed in the games I read.
Cardi B and Spice Girls were missed, several times, but when the answer was revealed it always provoked some very satisfying groans.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers was the other ‘checkpoint’ question. A band that sounds like Louis Armstong’s '“Hot Five”. If you’ve picked up on the food theme, you’ll guess right. If you haven’t, you’ll probably go for Maroon 5 instead.
Seat Averages
X’s, or direct questions missed by all 4 seats. Seat 1: 5.35 Seat 2: 4.95 Seat 3: 4.78 Seat 4: 4.78
Owns, or direct questions answered by each seat. Seat 1: 5.00 Seat 2: 5.73 Seat 3: 6.00 Seat 4: 4.85
The first quizzes of Game Week 4 are starting a few minutes after this mail reaches your inbox. See you there.
