The Christmas Quiz

Dominic is the jokester at the office. He’s the only one who would ever get away with putting a whoopie cushion on his boss’s chair on the first of April, or be taken seriously by his colleagues when he has pink rabbit ears on his head at easter.

When he came up with the idea for the whole firm to log off work two hours early on the day before their Christmas break to do a table quiz Dominic would conjure up in the big conference room, his boss Mr Valentino welcomed the idea. This would be the fourth annual Christmas quiz, and it gets bigger every year!

Dominic spent the whole weekend before researching questions and creating picture rounds. He had to use his flat mates computer as his gave up the ghost last week.

This year’s quiz theme is Christmas. There is general knowledge Christmas, Christmas movie questions and a Christmas song and literature round with two picture rounds in between the questions. This year it is name the actor who played a Christmas character over the years, the other is to name that Christmas movie. There is also a sheet full of fifteen anagrams for the teams to attempt to solve throughout the quiz, and had to be handed up at the very end.

Mr Valentino began to sponsor the event a couple of years ago, where they have one prize for everybody in the office, ranging from a bottle of Jameson to a Terry’s chocolate orange. The winners get to pick their prize first, then the runners up, and so on. The idea is for no one to go home empty handed.

Dominic was the one who suggested a kris kindle for the group this year. Just a token really! Something that can’t exceed €10. This is the first year they decide to do this and everyone who enters the conference room, places their kris kindle in the red sac that is positioned in such a place that it can’t be missed! This was also the first year that Mr Valentino provided some bubbly or fizzy water to all who joined in. This quiz is anticipated by all to a degree that Debra from accounting, made an excuse to come in even though she had signed off on all her cases before she went on maternity leave. She is about to pop, but was determined to take part in the festivities, all thanks to Dominic.

This year was the biggest turnout ever! So big in fact that he had twelve groups of four, all with their pens poised waiting for him to start. His boss, Mr Valentino, turned on the mic at he podium at the top of the room so everyone could hear Dominic clearly.

Both Dominic and Mr Valentino were going over the numbers earlier that day and came to the conclusion that there would be one team short a player, even with Debra from accounting added to the list.

‘Don’t you worry now!’ Mr Valentino reassured Dominic as he rang Mrs Valentino and asked her if she was free to come into the office to participate. She arrived out of the lift two hours later with candy striped tights on her, donning a beautiful chiffon elf costume, with a green hat to finish the ensemble!  

She was disgusted when she saw that everyone else were in their work clothes, something that changed at T minus ten minutes to the start of the anticipated quiz. There were a sea of Christmas shirts, and jumpers, and jewellery, all of which were fitting for the end of a very busy year!

Dominic steps up to the podium and for a change, he is the one instructing Mr Valentino what to do. His orders were to go around to everyone and ask them to pick a piece of paper out of the Christmas hat so the teams would be chosen at random. Once his job is done, he hands the hat back to Dominic who puts it on his head as people huddle throughout the conference room in their groups. The idea is to not give the team next to them any chance of looking over someone’s shoulder to steal answers.

‘Welcome everybody to the fourth annual Christmas quiz!’ Dominic says over the microphone with an air of excitement in his voice. The crowd cheered and Dominic took out all of the anagrams from a sealed brown A4 envelope which was locked in his desk drawer all day long. He jumps down off the podium and gives out a few bundles asking people to pass them on as he returns to the podium.

‘The idea of the anagrams is for you to do between rounds and also you will get time at the end of what promises to be the best quiz yet...fingers crossed.’ The room whoops and claps and is buzzing off the idea that after this they had two full weeks off before going back to work in January.

Dominic could see people huddling, plotting and scheming their way through the anagrams when he announces, ‘there are pieces of paper and pens placed sporadically on the table for you to write your answers on. I must inform you that if I can’t make out you’re handwriting to any particular question, that point unfortunately will not be awarded!’

As Dominic mentions that the answer sheets were on the conference table, he could see members of each team dive onto them and couldn’t help but laugh. Once he regains his composure, he continues. ‘Each round has twenty questions and I must receive all answer sheets before I can continue onto the next round!’

Dominic checks that he had his questions in front of him, the answers to each round in individually sealed A4 brown envelopes. The crowd cheers. ‘Ok people, round one is Christmas general knowledge, and your first question is, where does the tradition of a Christmas tree come from?’ He thought he would start out with a relatively easy one, but they’re all easy if you know the answer! ‘Question two, what colour are mistletoe berries?’ he pauses for a minute leaving the cogs in the minds of the players turn. ‘Question 19, which US president banned Christmas trees from the Whitehouse?’ he pauses again until he thinks everyone has either gotten the right answer or what they think is the right answer! ‘And the last question of this round, question 20, what is the chemical formula of snow?’ he thought he would throw that one in to flummox them.

After about 30 seconds, he asks for all of the sheets to be passed up to him. He counts them just to be sure, before handing out the first of the picture rounds. He announces, ‘what you have to do here is write down the name of the actor or actress and you get ten minutes to fill in the blanks!’ he jumps off the podium and does the same thing he did with the anagrams by asking people to pass on the pictures.

Back up at the podium he is pleasantly surprised as to how much his colleagues know about Christmas. The highest score any one team had gotten was nineteen. He writes the scores down on a piece of paper for himself and makes a table on the whiteboard behind him. He puts the number of the team down the side and their subsequent score for that round beside it.

His alarm starts to ding just as the last of the scores are put onto the whiteboard. Back up at the podium, he asks for the answers back and notices a few stragglers reluctant to release their answer sheet.

Finally, after each of the answers are handed up and counted, Dominic dives straight into the next round. ‘Ok people, are you ready to get started on the next round?’ They answer ‘yeah’ in chorus ‘It’s a Christmas movie round! Goodluck to everybody! Question 1, who played Nora Krank in the film Christmas with the Kranks?’ Dominic corrects the picture round as he is waiting for a lull in the crowd which tells him they are ready for the next question. ‘Question 2, how many ghosts show up in a Christmas carol?’ He corrects more as the teams converse, but not for as long as it took them to get question 1! ‘Question 19, What is the name of the family that starts in the film national lampoons Christmas vacation?’ With the picture round scored, the leader board changes slightly. He has the points each team got on his piece of paper to be written in, but he wants to get over this round first! ‘Question 20, Which British actor starred as Kris Kringle in the 1994 remake of miracle on 34^th street?’

After he finishes asking that question, he puts the scores up from the picture round and asks for the answers to be handed up. Only when he’s happy does he give out the next picture round. ‘This time you have to write down the name of the movie, oh and for number four I want to know exactly which one is pictured!’

He corrects the movie round and is delighted at how smoothly everything is going. ‘Ah shit!’ he says to himself, ‘I’ve jinxed it now!’

After ten minutes are up, he collects the answers and wastes no time in starting the next round. ‘This is a literature and song round!’ he says getting a giggle from the room. ‘Question 1, How many gifts in total were given in the twelve days of Christmas song?’ Dominic knew that it was going to take a minute for them to catch onto this one. ‘No calculators allowed!’ he smiled sadistically. He looked up from correcting the picture round and could see the majority of teams were still working on the question using the back of the sheet to calculate the answer.

‘Question 2, What was frosty the snowman’s nose made out of?’ Uproar commences as they are still trying to navigate their way through question 1. As the whole thing is going down a treat, Dominic asks the last question of the night, ‘question 20, What is the name of the Aldi carrot?’ As the answers are being passed to him, Dominic can see all of the twelve different teams all huddled together trying to unscramble the anagrams.

He decides to tot up the scores to see who is out in the lead and he is curious as to whether it could come to a tie breaker. He stands up at the podium, ‘team seven are currently leading by two points, team five hot on their tail!’ team seven cheer. ‘I need you to hand up your anagrams now people, I for one and bursting to see if anyone can beat them!’

For dramatic effect, Dominic doesn’t write the scores to the anagrams. Instead he decides to deliver them verbally. ‘Eight teams got eleven out of fifteen, two got twelve, and two got thirteen!’ On that note, he writes down all of the elevens first, then the twelves, and finally the thirteens. As team seven got twelve and team five got thirteen, team seven won by one point! As everyone knows its just a game the whole room erupts with applause for team seven.

Mr Valentino comes up on the podium and thanks Dominic for all the hours of hard work that went into delivering a quiz to that calibre and hands him a one for all gift voucher. Dominic is bowled over at the generosity of Mr Valentino when he notices that it’s a gift voucher worth €750. With his boss gone to the winners table to make sure no one is fighting over something in particular, Dominic sits for a minute on one of the board room chairs and watches the prize table that was packed full of goodies, dwindle back into a plain table. People seem to be leaving once they collect their prizes, Mrs Valentino handing them envelopes on their way out. And then there were three, Dominic, Mr Valentino, and his beautiful wife who hands Dominic the last envelope.

Dominic stands up from the comfort of the chair and wishes Mr and Mrs Valentino happy Christmas. A sentiment they return. He exits the boardroom, delighted that the quiz went down a treat! When he enters the elevator, he presses ‘G’ and opens the envelope Mrs Valentino. It’s a €500 one for all voucher. He smiles away to himself, purely because he’s going to have the opportunity, with the two cards combined, to get a nice laptop, a very nice laptop indeed!