Big start to the year. Enormous £269 jackpot next week.

Charles C

Since the last quiz, a child has swallowed an Air Pod he’d received for Christmas, someone manhandled the Pope, and Craig David has relaunched his music career. So much has changed but, consistently as ever, Duchy Arms opened its quizzing arms again last night and, boy, what a quiz. Along the way we learned: the shoulder blade is the most broken bone in the body; ‘gardien du but’ is French for goalkeeper; and, the Babylonians gave us the 60-minute hour.

At half time, across all the teams, there were only three scores, effectively meaning that everyone was on the podium. The second half saw the teams face five different three-part questions (some sort of record!) on London Olympic stadia, film posters, cryptic tube station clues, Smurfs and the infamous song lyrics question, which this week was Lady Gaga – Paparazzi. Unbelievable scenes.

Come close of play, “Party III” just missed out on the second-from-bottom bottle of wine, but did earn 2020’s first packet of consolation midget gems. The wine went to “Gineric”, who impressed all by getting 3-from-3 on the song lyrics. They were closely followed by “One Of Us Talked To Quentin Tarantino Today” and “Oliver's Army”, with the former solid on science and Japanese telephone etiquette, and the latter doing excellently to recognise the Three Stooges. Just ahead of them, also tied, were “85G”, who knew that Theo Walcott has the record for the youngest England player, and power duo “The Dubliners”, who won my prize for the highest points-per-person score.

Finishing with the medals, “Nicky’s Lil Angels” took bronze, having been particularly solid on the tube stations. Taking silver were Meghan Will Always Be Our Queen, who were excellent on the Olympic stadia, but in first place, performing strongly on everything from triangles to Snoopy, was “Fake Quiz! Sad!, who won the £40 bar tab.

The jackpot question invited teams to guess how long it would take the average snail to run(?) a marathon, with “The Dubliners’” guess of 843 days proving closest to the right answer of 550. Unfortunately, they didn’t pick the correct envelope from the four they then faced so the jackpot rolls over. Nearly £270 to be won next week. Come and get it and start 2020 with a quizload of impressive trivia, a truckload of happy memories and pocketload of cold hard cash. See you there. #onlytheduchyarmshastheanswer