To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book being published, Bloomsbury released 20 official Harry Potter Quiz sets to a set of lucky bookshops and Mostly Books were chuffed to pieces to be one of those shops!
Imogen was beside herself with excitement because she had pitched the idea of a Harry Potter quiz as a potential Mostly Books event just a couple of weeks previously. Given her level of enthusiasm and the fact that a lot of our customers are clearly huge Harry Potter fans, we had already agreed that we would be doing a quiz - we just had no idea that we would be doing it with direct support from the official Harry Potter publishing house!
After releasing the tickets on July 14th, we sold out pretty much immediately - all 60 tickets were sold in less than five days - and excitement started to mount. The official quiz pack, including questions and the all important answers, appeared at the shop and we had to store it under lock and key. Our wonderful neighbours at Oxfam popped by with a whole load of goodies for us to decorate R&R with and many a discussions took place around costumes.
When the 17th finally arrived, Draco Malfoy (AKA our very own Imogen) took centre stage to host the quiz. Participants arrived in droves and excitement started to mount as they settled down at their tables and ordered some yummy refreshments from the R&R team. Wands were brandished and costumes compared as each team chose a suitable Potter-esque team name before the event kicked off.
Seven rounds, each containing seven questions then ensued with plenty of banter between Draco and the teams. A break halfway through enabled the quizzers to replenish their dwindling supply of refreshements and to browse the selection of Harry Potter goodies on offer.
Once all questions had been asked and the answers were checked and verified, the winners were announced. The first set of prizes were for the best costumes of the evening with three quizzers each winning a handmade wand kindly donated by Charlie & Elijah (Also known as the Cross Eyed Cat Wand Makers) and the team with the winning name (Two radishes short of a bunch) each won a voucher to spend at Mostly Books.
Then it was the all important results! It was a tight run race with the decision about second and third place being decided by the tie-break question*. The team coming in in third place each won a Mostly Books voucher, the team in second place received a set of the 20th anniversary Philosopher's Stone paperbacks - and the great thing was that each member of the team was linked with each of the four houses so they all got the copy that they wanted!!
A huge congratulations to Simon, Jeanette, Anna & Tom for winning first prize with a staggering 45 questions right out of 49!! The members of the winning team each won a whole stack of goodies, courtesy of our friends at Bloomsbury:
- A copy of the Illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
- A hardback copy of the 20th anniversary 'House Edition' of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
- A Hogwarts House Bookmark
- Some Harry Potter Bunting
- A Harry Potter doorhanger
After a prize-giving ceremony and some more Harry Potter related banter, the quizzers started to drift off, happy and relaxed after a brilliant night out.
Check out our Facebook page (here) for more pictures of the event. In the meantime, we will all enjoy memories of an enjoyable night out and the fact that Abingdon was lucky enough to give Harry Potter fans a great quiz!
* In case you're
wondering, the question was 'How many words are there in the
Philosopher's Stone?' and the answer is 76,944......You know what they say - every day's a school
day!
No comments:
Post a Comment