Читать книгу BBC Radio 4 Brain of Britain Ultimate Quiz Book - Russell Davies - Страница 6

Brain of Britain: A Note on the Questions

Most of the questions in this book are drawn from Brain of Britain contests broadcast during the last ten years. There are always questions left over from every contest, and although most of those are recycled, it may be that a few here were never actually broadcast. A few more have been added for topicality’s sake, or because, having popped up, they seemed too good to leave out.

Clearly whole classes of question which we can use in the radio programme don’t suit the printed page at all – “How do you spell eczema?”, for example, falls a bit flat. We have also had to say goodbye to music questions where the sound of the music itself is vital to the search for an answer, and to questions which follow on deliberately from the answer to the previous question (thus giving it away).

From the remaining huge pile of possibilities, it’s actually not hard for a question-master (as we used to be called) to choose the good stuff. By its very nature Brain of Britain tends to eschew the kind of question which can easily be answered by that breed of quiz player (and there are such people) who spends large amounts of leisure time rote-learning reference books. We’ve never been very interested in robotic answers about capital cities, the colours on a particular country’s flag, or the world champion in a particular sport in a particular year. One actually looks forward to asking a good question, for the pleasure either of hearing the correct answer given, or of revealing the answer because it is useful, surprising, entertaining, or downright odd. Some of the answers here, you’ll quickly notice, are a lot longer than the questions – which is as it should be. There would be nothing more frustrating than giving an answer which merely left the reader (or listener) thinking, “I wonder what the story behind that is…?”

RD