No room for mercy in our family Zoom quiz since the Brother went rogue

The Family Zoom Quiz isn’t going well. The Brother went rogue from the very start. It was agreed that we would all play as individuals – all 12 of us – in order to be fair to The Mother, who is cocooning without team-mates. The Sister also lives alone but since we all knew she’d win anyway, we weren’t particularly concerned about her. There were other rules: small nieces would be participating so there was to be no bad language (me), contestants were advised that this was a fun quiz and not to start getting wildly competitive (me and the aforementioned sister), and questions about Netflix shows and Cardi B were banned (The Boy) because The Mother wouldn’t have the first clue about either.

But from the very first question in round one, it was clear that The Brother was ignoring the rule to play as individuals, since he was simply telling his wife the answers and she was writing them down. The fact that we could all hear him doing this was simultaneously a bonus and an irritant: it wasn’t until round three that they found the mute button and by then, the whole family had benefitted from his knowing that the first skyscraper was built in Chicago.

Also, there were 12 rounds, which is a lot at any time, but especially when your Wi-Fi carrier pigeon is asleep and consequently you’re on a screen which keeps flashing ‘your connection is unstable’ at you every couple of minutes. On the first day, we had to give up on the Zoom and literally dial it in. Also, on that difficult first day, everybody’s self-written questions were so wildly difficult that the winner — The Sister, obviously — only scored something like 16 points from a possible 84. We agreed that we would lower our standards and a week later, we went again. That was the week I cheated. Niece Number One offered three questions: what is the name of the second Harry Potter book?; what is the name of the fifth Harry Potter book?; and what are the names of all the Harry Potter books? The third question was quickly ruled invalid (by her own mother, to be fair), but the two younger quizzers in my house had no trouble with the other two, and so, inspired by The Brother’s whispering, I did a little of

my own — with, as it happened, considerably more success than The Brother, whose wife misheard him and wrote down Harry

Potter And The Philosopher’s Phone. Still, neither my nor The Brother’s efforts came to anything: The Sister won again.

After that difficult second round, it was agreed that we would have a single round per household and that we could follow The Brother’s cheating heart and play as teams. I need to stress at this point that this wasn’t my idea, though since I didn’t particularly want to spend the intervening week reading

Harry Potter books, I readily agreed.

And so to week three, for which I appeared to be naked. This was due to the fact that I was wearing a bikini top (it was a lovely day), and, by angling the laptop, I could make it look as though I wasn’t wearing anything at all. This is what we are reduced to for entertainment in this house these days.

By now, I should add, The Boy and I had taken to the drink during these quizzes in order to make them feel more like the ones we used to do in the GAA club (for which I am, as a rule, fully clothed) before everything turned to sh***.

But even with all those distractions, we still won. Now, in nice families, this change of winner after a double header would be welcomed as a novelty on a par with somebody other than Kilkenny winning the Leinster Hurling Championship. In ours, our victory was announced by the score-keepers as ‘the winner is the household with the most adults,’ and socially-distant abuse rained down on our brainy heads from several postcodes, EVEN THOUGH THE RULE CHANGE WAS NOT OUR IDEA.

A week later, we approach the screen with caution.

The Mother accuses The Boy of looking up the answers on his phone – even though everyone in the family quiz, herself included, has the same access to phones — so it’s something of a relief when we only tie for first place with the sainted Sister, who isn’t accused of anything. Tie break, suggests The Other Sister. But taking into consideration our unstable Wi-Fi increasing drunkenness and very real threat of a remote drone strike by a close relative, we decide to settle for the draw. And an undoubtedly tricky, tetchy replay.