Withington Pub Quiz League

Pigs, Charas and Ethel join KFD in the Val Draper semis;

Albert, History Men and Opsimaths join Prods in Plate semis;

Based on the 'lowest-scoring loser' principle the Bards should set for next week even though they set 2 weeks ago for Round 1 of the Cup. However if that's asking too much, Tony, please get in touch and we can explore alternatives.

Val Draper Cup (Round 2)

Bards lost to Electric Pigs

Opsimaths lost to Ethel Rodin

History Men lost to Charabancs

The Voice of Horse Racing

(R3/Q5)

Val Draper Cup (Round 2)

Bards lost to Electric Pigs

The Pigs snuffle on to a semi with a decisive victory

Hanks and subject

(R7/Q2)

Opsimaths lost to Ethel Rodin

The League's Numbers 1 and 2 remain in that order

Disappointment for Howell & Co.

A disappointing Cup match as far as we're concerned!

We started pretty well in Round 1, going ahead 8-3 (7-0 after handicaps had been applied) before losing 4 of the next 5 rounds (and drawing the other one) to languish 10 points behind with 2 rounds to go. A minor rally in the 'Space' round - thanks mainly to Nick - saw us claw back a little of the deficit but it was never close. I'm not exactly sure that we loved any of the rounds but the quiz moved on at a decent pace with Albert's Jeremy performing excellently in the QM's Chair.

Les Dawson's Butt

(R1/Q1)

Nick had an excellent evening with 6 twos - while the rest of us got just another 5 between us! In terms of difficulty and balance, we had 9 unanswered questions (split 5-4 in favour of the team going first-first) and they were spread pretty evenly with just 1 person not getting any.

QotW was the one about the Ridley Scott 1984 advert for Apple Mackintosh. QM Jeremy told us all about it. You can watch it here.

"Tell them I said something"

(R2/Q5)

"a snob, a bigot, vain, self-deceived, entranced by the trivial, a bore and a boor both" - but otherwise ...

(R5/Q5)

History Men lost to Charabancs

Comfortable passage to the semis for the Charas

Damian conjures with memories of Cup triumphs from yesteryear

Wow! Three of our last 4 games have resulted in a victory and the other one was a near miss. Why couldn't this sudden run of form have occurred earlier in the season so that we could have ended up somewhere higher than the league basement? But, hey, we're not complaining and so find ourselves in the next round of the Val Draper Cup. I don't think this has happened to us for quite some time (at least if my memory serves me right).

Our star players tonight were Captain Emeritus Gerry kindly standing in again for absent team members and Chara John each of whom scored 4 twos. Accordingly we have agreed to keep this winning format for at least another week to see how far it will take us towards memories of successful Val Draper campaigns of long ago.

Winning the toss and going first served us well as we quickly built up a lead that we were able to sustain all the way through. It's just as well that we managed to do this since we' have been goners if it had all come down to the last round in which we scored just a single point to the History Men's 5. That was our worst round by far - but fortunately our opponents also suffered badly in Round 2 scoring nothing at all and after that we never looked back. All in all we scored 11 twos to the Historymen's 9 and fared better on the unanswerables which split 6 to 4 in our favour. I calculated we got 4 steals each so it was enough to see us through. The handicap system granted us 3 points which we applied at the very start but, as it turned out, we would still have finished ahead without them.

Paperclip Manager

(R7/Q7)

Ivor sees last week's victory in his absence turn to defeat

I was in Athens last week so missed the preliminary game between the Historymen and the Albert. The team did not miss me at all as they had a handsome victory in any case. However they forgot to relay the result to Mike, and they did not send in any match comments because “you always do that”. The win was very important as we also avoided having to set the questions this week. Our silo of usable questions is now emptier than Pharoah’s grain stores after the seven years of famine.

Tonight there were two matches in the Parrswood - and two committee meetings occupying our usual seats. One of these had older men in scouts uniform complete with woggles, so they must have been either very senior district management or perhaps they were a fetish group - I lacked the journalistic drive to ask. I myself was in the Boys’ Brigade in the days when the uniform was a blue jersey, a lanyard and a sailor’s cap so I cannot really mock the attire of our rival organisation. The Parrswood is a huge venue and Mike, the bar manager, ensured we had separate areas for our harmless pursuit.

We faced the Charabancs tonight. We beat them twice in the league but they started with a three point handicap lead. All was on track after Round One when their lead was reduced to two. Then came our disastrous Round 2 which we lost 7-0. By half-time we were 10 points adrift (24-14) and morale was as low as a snake’s belly button. Efforts were thus redirected at attempting not to be the lowest scoring losers. By Round 7 Anne announced “I’ve run out of swear words”, noting that a round on Space Flight is obviously “a boy’s round”. We did win the second half 21-16 but the Charas had their overall win (even without using the handicap). Anne did mellow a little at the end stating “I try to be nice but it’s really difficult”. We were also pleased to discover that the Bards had an even paltrier score to our 35 so we progress to the Plate.

Quiz paper set by...

... Albert

Average Aggregate score 73.3

Along with the Blue three fifths of KFD I was suffering at the Etihad this week so I only got to see the paper on Thursday morning when Jeremy emailed it (many thanks Jeremy - and for standing in as QM at the Club).

Seems an excellent paper to me prepared in short order as is always necessary at this time of season. And the (almost) always reliable barometer, the 'Average Aggregate', shows the Albert's efforts were comfortably close to the season's average. Very acceptable!

The smallness of us

(R3/Q8)

... so what did Damian make of it ...

A good set of questions from the Albert with the kind of variety that we have come to value as the mark of a good paper. We guessed all the hidden themes without too much difficulty and at least somebody on both teams was receptive to the various announced ones. I totted up 10 unanswerable questions, but the final scores seemed to be just above the season's average so I guess that says it all.

... and Ivor ...

The quiz stats suggest a well balanced quiz: 12 unanswereds (6-6) and eight steals (4-4), but it did not feel like that to us at the time (playing second). The Charas got 11 twos to our 9. Maybe it is not the Charas getting 'easier' questions but our questions falling to the people in the wrong seats. Not for the first time there were several occasions when everyone on the team knew the answer except the person whose question it was.

The questions and themes were not without interest. The photo verbal questions are indeed iconic; the Blue Dot is only a pixel or two yet that is our whole existence and Bruce McCandless looks like a CGI Sci-Fi shot. Sadly Steve McCurry was less well remembered than his work. The music round (Jeremy’s?) had plenty of confounders. I plumped for Prokofiev as the prelude composer rather than Shostakovich. Both of them wrote piano pieces for their children; in Prokofiev’s case for his daughter from the age of seven and getting progressively harder as the years pass. The literature quotations (Ashton’s?) were a good revision of 'O' and 'A' level texts but we would be a Grade C at best (though that might be an A* in the new marking).

Down Under Polly

(R3/Q1)

Question of the Week

This week Howell was captivated by memories of the advert talked about in Round 4 Question 5 (you can find a link to the YouTube clip of this ad in the Ethel/Opsis match report) ...

In 1984 an advertisement directed by Ridley Scott was shown on US TV during a break in the third quarter of the NFL Superbowl final. It featured a female athlete who throws a sledgehammer at a screen. What did it advertise?

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

... and also

The lowest scoring losers this week turned out to be the Bards and so the burden of setting next week's semi finals paper falls on them - but that will have been two Bards papers out of the past three which does seem unfair.

Tony if you get in touch we can discuss possible alternatives but please make contact asap. If you are willing to shoulder the burden, Bards, well there are 8 other quiz teams who will be eternally grateful!