Withington Pub Quiz League

Four teams at the top on 6 points with The Prods keeping their noses in front on 'goal difference';

Albert however remain the only team with a 100% record

Prodigals beat Ethel Rodin

Albert beat Opsimaths

Charabancs lost to Electric Pigs

History Men beat Bards

Latest WithQuiz League Table

Prodigals beat Ethel Rodin

The evening's highest total sees the Prods retain their top spot

Michael misses James

A close-run thing, but we managed to nurture a small lead through most of the evening, as Ethel visited the club without the Second Lady of the Labour Party.

... while Greg plays Musical Chairs ...

We tried to change our luck by me taking Seat 1 rather than 4 but to no avail. We've lost all 3 matches despite having the highest match aggregate each time.

... and QM Anne-Marie sums up

Both Ethel and The Prods played really well. 'Man of the Match' was Greg in Seat 1 for Ethel.

1969's explicit Chart-topper

(R1/Q5)

Albert beat Opsimaths

Despite one of the lowest scores of the night Albert retain their 100% win record

Mike's early coaching lecture gets Albert across the line

After a poor first round the team responded to my coaching skills when I reminded them that to win requires them to know some correct answers. The aggregate suggests that for us it was a tough quiz. The first half was evenly contested but we pulled away in the second half. The quiz contained some interesting rounds and clever questions. We liked the music round and the run on variation. Ashton would have liked the reference to Drake because it was the subject of his specialisation when he won a round on Mastermind. Personally I prefer the other Drake: "She said do you love me? I said only partly; I love my momma and my bed and I love to party".

Finally many thanks to Brian who nobly stepped in to QM when most of our squad had decamped to Botswana, Turkey and Malaysia.

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe; c'est Maigret"

(R1/Q1)

Mike reports from where the Sun don't shine any more

Oh dear! A very low-scoring encounter at the Sun between the season's only remaining 100%-ers (Eveline, Julian, Mike and a very welcome guest appearance from Mary 'Dusty' O'Brien) and the 0% Opsis (Paul, Hilary, Howell and myself).

The Sun is a weird pub, unlike any others in the vicinity. On entry I veered left to the Gents to be greeted by a notice warning patrons of firm action against drug users and then, inside the Gents, by a trio of men swapping little packets who shot out as soon as I entered. Drugs are not the only no-no at the Sun; mobile phone users get short shrift too. Indeed Opsi, Charlotte, has let it be known she will not play whenever we're at the Sun for that reason (the mobile phones, that is, not the drugs).

Talking of Opsi absentee, Charlotte, her team, The Worker Bees was on Only Connect this Monday and put up an excellent, though ultimately losing, fight against the best team to appear so far this series, The Pitchers. No matter the Bees will get another chance later in the series.

The match notched up 19 unanswered questions (11 for the Opsis and 8 for Albert) - far too many. As for twos just 10 (3 to the Opsis and 7 to Albert). So a very low-scoring affair and not a great night for the Opsis as far as the result was concerned but, as ever with Albert, a very friendly encounter full of laughter. Here's hoping they keep that 100% going a little bit longer.

Hancock carves a name for himself on the big screen

(R1/Q3)

Howell gets some captaincy tips from MOBO

A rather draining quiz for the Opsis I'm afraid - the 'list nature' of many of the questions made it difficult for us to select the winner from a round up of the usual suspects - and we failed to do so in style!

23 points is a very low score, headlined by a couple of twos in the first 3 questions followed by just one more in the subsequent 29!

Going 'second first' felt a lot more difficult (I got a single two and 5 unanswered questions in Seat 3 ... but would have got 4 twos and 1 unanswered if the toss had been different - the bulk of these were paired questions).

Still, on the bright side I was encouraged to develop my captaincy by overhearing Mike O'Brien address his team after Round 1 (which the Opsis won 7-2) with the warm words "I think you lot would do better if you actually knew something". With Albert winning Round 2 his follow-up was an equally enlightening: "See - you responded to my coaching".

Still there's always the next match to look forward to!!

Folk singer genius who died too young

(R5/Q8)

Charabancs lost to Electric Pigs

A comfortable victory pushes the Pigs up to third place

Damian overthinks his way to defeat

A weary sense of déjà vu is beginning to descend on us after these last 2 weeks. Tonight seemed like a replay of last week; competitive in the first half, going into half time a point ahead and then almost complete collapsing in the second half. 21 points in the 1st half and then a mere 9 in the 2nd! What is it with us and second halves all of a sudden?

We were fairly level on the number of twos scored (9 to the Pigs, 8 to us) and even on the steals (4 to the Pigs, 3 to us). What did for us was the high number of unanswereds which I counted at a whopping 13 with no less then 9 falling to us! It's a miracle we managed to keep the deficit to 8 points.

I again must take responsibility for overthinking some questions and forfeiting points as a consequence. For example on the Kubrick/Arthur C Clarke question which I should have got for a two, I recall reading his short story The Sentinel many years ago which was the basis for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and got confused about the book and film having the same title. I've got into a bit of a bad habit with this and have now made myself a resolution "STOP OVERTHINKING AND JUST GIVE THE BLOODY ANSWER WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S GOING TO BE!"

I think we definitely need next week's break to lick our wounds and try and focus on getting back to winning ways again!

Democrat after Democrat

(R8/Q3)

History Men beat Bards

The History Men leapfrog the Bards to 4th place with a convincing win

Ivor 'GC' Cartmill reports

Our first home game of the season where we did battle with the other Parrswood-based team, the Bards. Young David was missing; he's in Japan for a few weeks so expect a round or two on Japaniana (if there is such a word) for our setting next year. Fortunately the return of Anne, Guy and Vanessa meant I still only had to call on just one colleague from the bench (no not Tony’s bench) and Rupert got the nod over Ray.

This must be about the fiftieth match we have had with the Bards and was somewhat atypical. Usually Tony is in Seat 4 and he and I have had one question shoot-outs more times than is comfortable to remember. Tony now seems to have ceded his seat to Robin.

We won the toss and went first. We had a 'mare with our first two questions resulting in steals. By the end of Round 3 we had yet to hit double figures and were nine points adrift. But this was a quiz of two halves. Round 7 was won 6-1 and Round 8 was won 6-2 to produce an unlikely victory. It was a hard quiz for both of us: 12 unanswereds, the Bards getting 7 to our 5 with the Bard’s John getting four of them. Steals went 6-6 and we had slightly more twos (8-6). But enough of the stats. Did we have a good evening? We did.

Belgian punk

(R1/Q8)

What interesting facts did we learn or recollect tonight: Inspector Maigret’s first name is not Inspector; one of the Marx brothers did not just waste his time making millions doing madhouse comedy; and the recipient of a VC and bar in WW2 had the most splendidly appropriate surname (they don’t like it up ‘em). There were a few teasers that caught us out and the wrong answer of the night was "French letter" rather than 'French horn'. The question we most agonised over was the double grand slam golfers where the answer was so obvious we thought we must be missing a trick, especially when it was paired with lesser known (to us) cyclists. Anne found herself (like in the famous Two Ronnies sketch) answering the question that came after with her 'Panama hat' answer. She also forgot about Je t'aime, but as she always reminds me, she does not do smut and was less than pleased with my 'French letter' answer later.

I had remembered the RUC got the GC almost like getting a clock as a retirement present before they became the PSNI, but had forgotten the NHS got the GC as well. I wonder if my CV should read "GC (shared)" - and given that the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 perhaps "GC (shared) - Peace Prize (shared)" is not as untruthful as some cabinet members’ CVs. Might there even be a Maltese born police surgeon in Belfast who could be "GC with two bars (shared) and Peace Prize (shared)"? That would tick a lot of boxes in the casting for Blue Lights.

Tony tells us what thoughts this week's paper prompted ...

Whilst I didn't wake up this morning feeling unhappy about last night's paper I confess I was not entirely gruntled.

I was pleased to start off our scoring with the christian name of the husband of the author of one of the many cookbooks that have littered my dining room floor since the bookshelves exploded. I was also pleased to remember the only other chef d'oeuvre produced emanating from Finland. However we couldn't recall the meaningless handing out of gongs by the head of the House of Windsor to the NHS and the unlamented RUC.

This morning I remembered that an ex-girl of mine was presented with a 'Daily Herald Award for Bravery' for rugby tackling two thugs peacefully engaged in robbing a betting shop manager of the day's ill-gotten gains. I did think she would have been a worthier recipient than the RUC. I was prompted to ponder if the dishing out of pieces of tin is enough hard work to justify all the income that flows from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall into the coffers of 'The Firm'. Then I recalled that a fellow bar student went on to write Ing on Bona Vacantia thus filling a long unmissed hole in shelves of the Law Libraries and a valuable tool for the income collectors of the House of Windsor. I recommend that worthy tome to Kieran and co. as reward for last night's paper.

Quiz paper set by...

... CKC

Average Aggregate score 67.5

... however just taking an average simply doesn't tell the story this week. CKC managed to come up with a paper that attracted the greatest range of scores I can remember for some time - from a paltry 32-23 at the Sun in September between Albert and the Opsis to a towering 42-39 between the Prods and Ethel at the Albert Club.

At the Sun the Opsis sort of liked the first half - albeit the scoring was hardly prolific. But the second half lost us completely culminating in Round 7 about the things named after the wrong place (bonnets, hats and horns). Just a procession of uninformed guesses. Not much fun.

Hollywood's torpedo girl

(R3/Q2)

... but what did Mike O'B make of it ...

Most of the quiz was fair enough, apart from the pair on specialist woods and the whole of Round 7. I suspect the setter had a decent pair in Spanish flu and Guinea pigs then tried to scrape a round from the idea. The remaining questions in this round were almost impossible.

Our favourite question was the Sibelius / Ancient Egypt connection in Round 5 but to know the reference to Chinese Checkers with the clues provided seems to stretch the definition of general knowledge to beyond what is reasonable.

Stop on the Bury line

(R4/Q7)

... and Damian's verdict ...

This was an even harder paper than last week's. It started off fine but then the last 3 rounds were horrendous. In particular Round 7 which had us scratching our heads and misunderstanding what was required after the enormous amount of length and detail in the question text. Other than that there were some really good ideas in there but too often these didn't work out in practice for us.

My favourite round was the 'All things French' round. I was waiting patiently for Plastic Bertrand to come up which he did eventually even though he was actually Belgian just like Jules Maigret. If only the whole paper had been like that.

... and Anne-Marie's ...

I QM'd at the Club last night and the consensus was Round 7 was a bit sketchy, but the rest of the quiz was perfectly fine WithQuiz fare - albeit a bit on the difficult side.

Liz, Howard and Felicity

(R4/Q2)

... and finally Ivor has his benign say ...

I know it is traditional to criticise and even traduce a quiz paper but as Anne always points out we are quick to remember perceived injustices or annoyances when all around us is a feast of fine quizzing fare. A question is always easy if you know the answer. Even the hard questions were of some interest and that always matters in our quiz. The themes were well developed and this was not a quiz rustled up with three days to go (that will be our quiz in two weeks time).

Hollywood heart-throb to watch

(R3/Q5)

Question of the Week

This week Albert vote for Round 5 Question 5 ...

Which bird connects a tone poem by Sibelius and a Nilotic structure approximately 900 km from Cairo and 1200 km from Khartoum?

For the answer to this and all the week's other questions click here.

Next stop after Elba

(R2/Q8)