Results & Match Reports

This week:

• Ethel went down to Fifth Finger in a high-scoring match at the Griffin - something that only the close season name changes have made it possible to report!!

• Snoopy's eased home past the hapless Opsimaths in a close match at the Albert Club

• The History Men continued their march at the top beating Albert Park at the Red Lion

• St Caths kept up the pressure at the top with a win over the homesick X-Pats

• Brains outthought the Pigs in a last question cliff-hanger - reports reaching us acknowledge that "the Pigs were too sporting for their own good" - a thought I've often entertained myself whilst tucking into my Saturday morning rashers

Quiz Paper Verdict

Albert set the paper this week.  It was a good 'straight down the middle' paper with the highest scores so far this season.  Average aggregate score came out at 75.2 with the Finger/Ethel match notching up a record aggregate of 79.  There was a 'spot the town/city' picture round using extracts from local A to Z maps.  We really enjoyed this in our match at the Albert Club - though I'm not sure you'll be able to make out much on the website page as the maps are rather too detailed for clear reproduction.

The Question of the Week

My vote for Question of the Week goes to (Round 6 Q5):

Complete the pairing: Tony and Cherie, Charles and Sarah, Michael and who?

Who'll be able to understand what that one was about in 5 years time, yet alone answer it I wonder?

Click here for the answer to this and all the other questions and answers from this week.

Chatterbox

Musing with Colin after the match we recalled the days of John Turrell's 'Mild & Bitter' column in the Reporter - when the Reporter really was worth reading.  There were quite a few of John's whimsical tales that made us smile but one in particular came to mind.  A certain colleague of John's, who used to drink regularly at the Red Lion (and elsewhere by all accounts), was particularly worse for wear one evening and finding it almost impossible to stand up.  In something of a panic he took what seemed to him the only sensible course of action.  He lurched towards the pay phone on the bar and dialled 999.  "What service?" came the reply.  "Ambulance" quoth he.  "Who is it for?".  "Me, of course".  "Where can we find you?" came back the operator.  "Well, I'm currently at the Turnpike, but if you can't find me there you'd better try the Red Lion."

Fr Megson

Troubled times for the Opsimaths

A chairde,

Troubled times for the Reeks' oldest - but by no means grumpiest - quiz league team, as The Opsimaths are declared  all out and bankrupt, both encyclopaedically and morally.  Grizzled chairman Mike Bath, looking more dog-eared than you would normally expect after a mere 76 winters of discontent, spoke exclusively to Money Reeks .  Perched in his Ikea cardboard box high above Old Lansdowne Road where he has vowed to remain until his team pick up their first league point of the season (you will be lonely this Xmas, Mr. Bath) he explained:

"It is a very complicated and technical cock-up and you would need to be a financial Wunderkind like wot I am to fully understand its complexities but to put it in simple layman's terms for oiks like you and your
readers we have gone to the dogs and it can only be a matter of time before they bring in the retrievers.  To make matters worse my assets are likely to be frozen if I stay up here much longer.  Throw us up another Gypsy Cream for the love of God!"

In a brave but futile effort to stave off the inevitable Mike has rebranded  and relaunched his team as "Consignia-ed" thought to be short for "Consignia-ed to the Beaver Road primary school quiz league next season".  He also has plans to bring new blood into the team by signing other teams' cast off dross under the Bosnich ruling.  So, if you happen to be a smug unemployable Australian tub of lard with disturbing racist tendencies and difficulty coming off your lines, Mike would love to hear from you.

Mike was unwilling to confirm persistent rumours that a, as yet unnamed, Rusholme ghee billionaire is poised to buy the team hook, line and sinker.  "No comment" he barked in a very convincing Glaswegian accent, "though obviously we would welcome an injection of cash or indeed any other substance that might be going cheap on the streets of Rusholme".                          

Such a move would not be welcomed by Griffin regular and occasional quiz player Marshall Dillon (not his real name).  "A brain-drain would then become inevitable,"  he fulminated, "and as always it would be the smaller teams like us that would suffer".  (The team based in the Griffin who cannot be named for legal and aesthetic reasons currently has a combined length and girth measurement of 25 feet 7 inches but take away the girth and you could easily squeeze them into a Swan Vesta box).

If anybody has any old quiz papers that they have already memorised or dodgy magazines that have similarly been committed to memory could they please make paper aeroplanes out of them and waft them up gently to Mike who is in need of some new stimulation having just completed his eleventh count of the roof tiles of West Didsbury and its environs (he could be wrong but he reckons there's one missing).

Gay Gordon McGecko