February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
After taking the time to come up with 105 fairly challenging questions, you’d have thought we’d make sure that the answers were, at the very least, correct. We offer the following excuses:
The dog ate our quiz answers.
The library was closed.
We changed a couple of questions but forgot to change the answers (true).
We actually thought that Laois was smaller than Louth. (It’s the one we always call the wee county.)
Anyway, to avoid influencing an entire generation, who could grow up thinking that Bono, and not Douglas Hyde, was the first president of Ireland, we’ll try to correct our mistakes here. Please keep those helpful postcards, e-mails and phone calls coming (well, maybe not the phone calls), although we ask that you keep them polite – it’s Lent, after all. So here goes:
Geography: OK, OK, so Leitrim’s not actually part of the province of Ulster — who knew? Certainly not a Mr. Joe Whyte, who gave us that answer (and was so adamant that he was right, we didn’t bother to check). As the rest of you smarties know, the Ulster counties that are not part of Northern Ireland are Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal. And as we mentioned, Louth, not Laois, is the smallest county. Which we should have known, since it’s the birthplace of The Corrs — and they’re teeny and svelte.
Entertainment: Everybody knows that Bing Crosby started that whole “Dial O for O’Malley” thing in “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” And he didn’t actually sing it, as a nice caller pointed out today.
History: The qeustion: How embarrassed were we to discover that Douglas Hyde, and not Eamonn de Valera, was the first president of Ireland? (The answer: very.)