In the second section of that poem, Eliot imagines an exchange between two Cockney-sounding women, one of whom has taken pills to end a pregnancy. When I came home from my post-miscarriage night in the hospital, the words that echoed were from T. ItвЂ™s not that I reach for them-theyвЂ™re just there, rattling around in my head. Usually this is automatic, rather than for comfort. It happens so often.Д«ecause I am a poet, I filter my experiences through lines of verse. I bled too much too fast and came to in the emergency room, hooked up to someone elseвЂ™s blood, while a sweet young doctor held my hand and told me the facts. The first time I miscarried, in December of 2020, I took pills so that my body would expel whatever wasnвЂ™t growing inside me. вЂњWe had two before we had our son.вЂќ вЂњA neighborвЂ™s aunt had four miscarriages and then four children!вЂќ вЂњMeghan Markle had a miscarriage.вЂќ вЂњMark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan had three.вЂќ Your friends, if you tell them about your miscarriage, will confirm how ordinary it is: вЂњI had one,вЂќ someone will say. And the risk gets higher as you get older. Those are just the ones we know about many others happen too early to ever be detected. According to the American Pregnancy Association, 10 to 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. The BBC Two trivia triumvirate proves that youвЂ™re not a true quiz-head until you secretly prefer being wrong.When you have a miscarriage, one thing that gets drilled into you fast is that miscarriage is common. In Quiz, James GrahamвЂ™s ITV drama about the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? coughing scandal, the British love of pub quizzing was explained as appealing to our love of вЂњdrinking and being rightвЂќ. It permits the delusion that, while it is technically telly, it is also educational, as if you retain the answers youвЂ™ve heard on University Challenge for longer than two seconds. Quizzing feels of a piece with this outbreak of virtue. YouвЂ™re more likely not to drink, or to have a meat-free day, or eat less pasta, or pray, or give to charity, or however it is you prefer to top up the moral totaliser after the disasters you enacted on Friday and Saturday. After the weekend, Monday night is the big reset. Failing to answer questions on The Chase is a sign you should probably go back there. Failing to answer questions on Only Connect is a sign that you had a reasonably good time at secondary school. One advantage to the quizzes being so difficult is that they become strangely uncompetitive. There is also a lively scene on social media, where people show off about getting one question right. The questions are too fast to be googled, but if you are moved to google, for example, Sylvia PlathвЂ™s contribution to The Atlantic, as I was after Mastermind the other day, itвЂ™s easy to do so. Yet the Monday night quizathon works weirdly well when you have a smartphone in your hand.

Sex miseducation: The messy history of TVвЂ™s most disappointing formatДЄll the same, if you were coming up with an entertainment format for the 21st century it would not be вЂњthree slightly different hard quizzesвЂќ.Squid Game, Money Heist and how Netflix discovered the secret formula for an international blockbuster.Jeff Bezos, The Wheel of Time and the futility of throwing cash at the telly.For the teams that prevail, the prize is a perspex trophy. Again, the viewer is lucky, or gifted, if they know the answers to even a handful of questions. Victoria Coren Mitchell presides with an entertaining no-nonsense tone. There are sequences, connections, links and missing vowels. The USP here is that, as well as knowing the answers, contestants have to work out the questions, too. Next up is Only Connect, the baby of the trio, having only been around since 2008 and made the transfer from BBC Four a mere seven years ago. For those who ultimately prevail, the prize is a glass bowl.

Sometimes the contestants only know a few answers to their own special subjects, which is embarrassing but nevertheless testament to the difficulty of the quiz. The average viewer will know the answers to a mere handful of these questions. Thrusting brainiacs sit in a large office chair and submit themselves, in the glare of a spotlight like a Stasi interrogation, to very difficult quiz questions asked by Clive Myrie. At 7.30pm, the first of three famous theme tunes sounds, timpani banging like a starterвЂ™s pistol, and Mastermind begins. Some with cups of tea, many with glasses of wine, the majority вЂ“ I expect вЂ“ with their reading glasses on. On Monday nights during the festive season, millions of otherwise sane and well-adjusted Brits settle down in front of BBC Two for a sick and twisted ritual.

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