Maddening Zoom quizzes have a lot to answer for

THERE is a new dread stalking the land. Not perhaps as deadly as the virus itself but becoming equally irritating.

I speak of course of the Zoom quiz. It’s exactly the sort of thing you can’t get out of because everyone knows you are home.

What sort of excuse can you credibly come up with? Washing your hair? A non-starter for me anyway.

‘Sorry, but I have an early start in the morning?’ – very few of us have.

Which means the bloody things can go into the early hours with countless tie-breakers failing to separate Uncle Sean in Tullamore from Auntie Sheila in Dungarvan.

‘What was Éamon de Valera’s vote in the 1917 East Clare by-election?’ To the nearest 10 votes. They both get it, of course. So on it goes.

‘It’s a school night and I have to get the little treasures to sleep’. No. We all know they haven’t opened a schoolbook in months and don’t go to bed until midnight, terrorising their frazzled parents and laying waste to a decade of house rules.

So instead, there you are greeting long-lost relatives, some you didn’t know existed and others you were sure had passed on. You even thought you’d gone to the funeral.

You find yourself competing with them across a broad range of useless general knowledge rounds to see who knows most about the stuff that matters least. The specialised rounds are the real demoraliser. Here, the questioner gets the chance to indulge a passion for the obscure.

An architect of my familial acquaintance has been known to do a picture round of famous European buildings. It’s his way of exposing family members to holiday snaps they had been avoiding for years.

These Zoomathons are not simply scattered up and down this land either, but reach out across many time zones.

I’ve heard of one family which routinely cajoles a daughter in Sydney out of bed at 6am to join in.

A breakfast quiz must have been a fun novelty on the first outing. A bit overpoached by the fifth.

Then there’s cheating. If someone were caught praying to the God of Google in the pub, he (it’s invariably a he) would be quickly turfed out the front door. Head first, deservedly.

But I admit I have been tempted to do a sneaky internet search during these tense internecine Zoom wars.

Not to find the right answers, of course, but simply to rule out the wrong ones.

Any decent priest would give you absolution for that. No question.