Quiz Night 2025 - The report
The IISF Annual Quiz night is one of the social highlights of the year for many IISF members, and this year's event was a massive success.
Prior to the Quiz, our May Chapter Meeting took place with guest speaker Jim Simpson - representing the SANS Institute, gave an excellent presentation titled "Understand LLMs, exploring attacks and starting to build defences".
Read more here
As is now traditional and expected, the annual IISF Quiz Night event was a great success, and a good time was had by all. Hosted by Paul Conaty, with excellent support from our sponsors, and full participation by the audience, the most recent Quiz Night was a fun social event for the IISF members & guests.
Once again, the event was held in Lost Lane - and once again, it's NOT a lane at all.
After the shenanigans last year, in which several members and guests had difficulty finding the venue, this year we all arrived with no drama or fuss, apart from one committee member who got delayed by a bus, but that's ok Richard.
No drama or fuss that is, until we tried to gain access, as the venue have made some changes to the entrance & exit doors ... which at least one committee member found very confusing (not Richard, he was OK with it).
This same committee member (not Richard) later confessed to being slightly confused in general, following an unscheduled lunchtime celebration.
Once access was gained, observant IISF members will have noticed that the dank & dark aspect to the staircase has been improved considerably, with a brighter and more pleasant aspect, in which the stairs are actually visible, which is nice. This theme continued into the venue itself, where we were delighted to see that the troublesome and non-specific paint colours from last year (dim fuschia? grim mauve? dank purple?) were replaced with a fresh and pleasing soylent green.
This year, we had 11 teams (some say 12), nominally of 4 people (some say 8), but closer inspection showed that some teams elected to identify as a foursome, regardless of their actual numbers. It was ever thus, and we draw a merciful veil over these piffling details. The team names showed, once again, an interesting take on the mindset and perhaps the sobriety of the leaders & spokespersons.
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Team "Mark Sutton" showed a refreshing humility and simple statement of fact, which contrasted with the more aspirational Team "Dream Team" (Spoiler: They weren't) and Team "This Is Our Year" (Spoiler: It wasn't). Team "Hop House" may have been inspired by some of the beers on tap (No judgement here, I'm sure it's very nice, if you like that sort of thing). Team "Ask AI" were perhaps tongue in cheek, as no obvious display of cheating by AI was detected., and this was nicely offset by the presence of Team "Natural Stupidity". History does not record any noteworthy examples of natural stupidity during the night. Team "Reigning Cats and Dogs" went for the comedy angle, which is always appreciated. Team "Rosetta Stones" got lost in translation, while the intent of Team "Not Irishlish" (which is how they spelled it) and Team "Not SOC - Not Irish" got lost in the wash. Team "Analbum Cover" need to try harder next year, and invest in some spaces.
Having learned from last year's debacle, several committee members (Yoey) were encouraged not to take part in the quiz itself, but instead take a supporting role, in which they couldn't argue as much. Well, that was the thinking (Yoey).
Following the popular format of 6 rounds, with 10 questions each, each question getting it's very own slide, for clarity, and sometimes subtle clues in the background.
The actual questions this year were crafted, not by Artificial Intelligence, but by natural stupidity (no relation to Team Natural Stupidity), in an effort to inform, educate and entertain (bonus marks for next year if you spot the reference).
Our Quiz Master for the night was the excellent Farmer Paul Conaty, whose dulcet tones and patient delivery helped to lull the audience into the most suitable mindset for the Quiz, despite a faint whiff of barnyard at times.
Team Not Irishlish embraced the spirit of the occasion by absolutely going full tilt for the booby prize in each round, with some spectacularly wrong answers. That said, Jim Simpson gets a pass based on his excellent presentation, and the wonderful laptop stickers he shared, though he loses several goodwill points for banging on about Manchester City, which we understand to be an Association Football team popular in certain parts of England.
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Round 1 was Irish Geography. Admittedly, the questions may have been a little obscure, especially for our Manchester based guests, but for the most part the teams did very well here. One of the supporting pictures for this round featured a bottle of Gin, which eagle eyed observers found to be a recurring theme of the night, for reasons which remain a mystery.
Round 2 was Music Related. Again, these questions may have been a little obscure too, but the profile of the audience was such that most teams did even better in this round. One of the questions involved Lewis Capaldi, and his birth-place. The first conflict of the night occured when one of the teams claimed to know the birth-place of Lewis Capaldi, and to have proof that "the Internet is wrong!" After some fisticuffs, pushing and shoving, and good natured hurling of abuse, the committee decided to accept both the "official" answer, and the "wrong" answer provided by the Scottish midwife who shall remain nameless to preserve their modesty. The picture of Christy Moore with hair provided one of several rabbit holes that teams fell into as the night progressed, as many of us have never seen such pictures before. This phenomenon was also seen in the Billy Joel with a Hat question. The "Half Man Half Biscuit" question proved too easy for many of the teams, in the first of several upsets to the Quiz Masters who vowed to come back next year with even more obscure bands. We understand the Music questions next year will be of a much higher standard. (Make of that what you will)
Round 3 was "Food & Drink" - which is a topic close to the hearts of many of the IISF members & guests. This was a keenly contested round, and the first round in which teams could be heard to bicker amongst themselves. Strident whispers about "that's the ROMAN God, not the GREEK God" could be heard, and at least one punch was thrown by a guest who shall remain nameless. After a swift debate about the difference between a topping and a garnish, the Quiz moved on to another Gin question, again for reasons that are not yet clear. Thoughts of Gin were put to one side, when farmer Paul Conaty revealed some of the wonders of his back garden, in which he apparently grows artichokes, which was news to many. Swift on the heels of the artichoke news, farmer Paul then announced in support of the next question, that his back garden also supports a fine crop of fennel, who knew? The committee are pleased to note that almost all teams got the Waldorf Salad question correct. Those who didn't will recieve a link to the transcript of Fawlty Towers, Season 2, Episode 3. This round ended with a recipe for a Cosmpolitan, which almost all the teams knew anyway. So that's a topic we won't be seeing next year.
Having whet our appetites with a Food & Drink round, the Quiz then paused for some light refreshments and finger food, sponsored by our good friends in Corrata, many thanks!
Once sated, the quiz resumed with Round 4 - Sports. This is where the teams started to pull away from each other, with some feedback suggesting "the sports round stinks worse than that Sardinian cheese". This may have been due to the Irish focus, and the Rugby focus, and the narrow spread of years involved, to which one member of the committee was heard to opine "you get the questions you deserve" ... which we don't quite understand yet.
Round 5 - TV & Movies was a more evenly balanced round, with only one question based on the DC Comics universe proving difficult.
Round 6 - Useless Knowledge, proved the various teams had a full gamut of useless facts to call on, with the possible exception of the Bill & Ted question. It was in this round that Team Analbum Cover pulled ahead in the last few minutes, to romp home in first place. Rumours persist that there were some unscheduled and unmarked Tie-Breaker rounds, featuring Anagrams that have no place in a professional setting; history does not record if anything like that actually happened, but I do have the answers to hand if anyone is interested. These Anagrams proved a great distraction while the scores were being totted up. Also, those people who were at BSides in Trinity College on Saturday morning, who heckled certain committee members (Derek) because "those questions stank worse than Sardinian Cheese" ... I'll see you in the long grass. For the avoidance of doubt, that's another Irish sports reference.
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Many thanks to our Quiz Master and Part Time Green Grocer Paul Conaty, purveyor of the finest artichokes & fennel, and the best MC available to us free gratis on the night. Thanks also to our judging panel of David Cahill and Yoey Hazimee, who managed to correct the answer sheets in jig time, despite the lack of any coherent marking scheme or suitable preparation for this most crucial part of the evening.
The provision of "Extra Smooth" Biros by the committee, along with the stapled answer sheets, just goes to show the level of care and attention lavished on IISF members, it's the very least you deserve. We would like to point out that 20 "extra smooth" Bic biros were distributed on the night, and only 14 returned. We can only assume this was an oversight, and nothing more sinister. Please bring these missing biros back at the next Quiz and we'll say no more about it.
The IISF committee would like to give special thanks to our wonderful sponsors who once again provided excellent prizes.
Of special note is the contribution from Corrata, who sponsored the delicious Finger Food served up at half time, which was greatly appreciated.
Integrity360 sponsored the Team prize of 4 x Green Spot Whiskey, which was snapped up by the winning team.
Our friends in Triangle also sponsored a Team prize of 4 x delicious bottles of wine which was selected by the runners up.
The third place team were delighted to win 4 x One4All vouchers sponsored by Ekco.
Spot prizes of hats, gilets, water bottles, pens, notebooks, and other schwag staples were sponsored by Crowdstrike and by Foxit Software, with the pick of the spot prizes being a SANS Course sponsored by the SANS Institute, not to mention the wonderful SANS pens with bonus highlighters.
THE FINAL RESULTS
Winners: Analbum Cover
Second Place: Mark Sutton
Third Place: Hop HouseSANS Course Spot Prize was won by Elaine Pearson
Finally, the IISF committee would like to thank all members who attended and supported both the Chapter Meeting and the Quiz Night; your continued support and year round participation is what makes it all worthwhile.
Reminder: Don't forget the upcoming IISF Summer BBQ event - with a wonderful Charity Raffle prize of a laptop, sponsored by PFH - this event is always popular, so get your tickets early!
See you all at the next Chapter meeting.
If you are interested in finding out more about the IISF, or would like to attend one of our Chapter Meetings as an invited guest, please contact the
IISF Secretary:
By email:
secretary@iisf.ie
By post:
David Cahill
GTS Security,
Exo Building,
North Wall Quay,
Dublin 1,
D01 W5Y2
Enhance your Cybersecurity knowledge and learn from those at the coalface of information Security in Ireland
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