Results & Match Reports

• Fifth Finger, despite being 9 points down at half time, beat second placed Snoopy's Friends in a record scoring game at the Griffin - the aggregate score was a massive 90 points!

• Opsimaths overcame Stumped in a close match at the Cricket Club and leap-frogged them in the league moving to 6th place

• History Men moved to equal second slot beating X-Pats at the Red

• Brains beat Albert and swapped places with them moving to 8th in the table

• St Caths have lost 4 of their last 5 fixtures - they got back to winning ways beating Ethel Rodin and now share second slot with History Men and Snoopy's

Quiz Paper Verdict

Albert Park set this week.  A real cracker!!  High-scoring, explicit themes that gave a sideways angle on general knowledge (rather than trapped the teams in a cul-de-sac of knowledge) and plenty to chat about.  Park lead the way this season as setters to have received the most plaudits both for last night's paper and for their pre-Christmas offering.  It seems churlish to quibble but.....(Round 5 Q7) isn't rice a crop rather than a vegetable (at least in the 'fruit and vegetable' sense of a vegetable)?  And (Round 7 Q2) what about that 'Venus Fly' trap?

For more debate and comment on question paper styles go to the 'perfect quiz paper' page.  Do email me if you have some thoughts of your own on this subject that you would like to add to the page.

The average aggregate score this week was 85.6 which now becomes the highest of the season so far.  Actual aggregates varied from 90 (Finger/Snoopy's) to 77 (Brains/Albert).

The Question of the Week

This week's 'Question of the Week' award goes to (Round 2 Q3):

Why do some football teams in the English football leagues have triangular corner flags instead of square ones?

(to see the answer to this and all the other questions click here.)

Chatterbox

Refurbishment at the Red

A warning for the coming weeks:  we believe the Red Lion will be closed for refurbishment during the last week in March and the first week in April.  The Historymen and Ethel Rodin will need to make some alternative arrangements and we will have to fix an alternative pick-up point for the questions.  The Fletcher Moss has been suggested as a pick-up point.  Anyhow, Gary D is on the case and will advise all concerned shortly.

Approaches from the Beeb

Such is the popularity of our site that researchers from the BBC are calling.  I received a message recently inviting anyone interested to apply to appear on the next series of Mastermind (go on Martin have a bash).  This was the message:

"I am looking for contestants for Mastermind 2004 - if anyone is interested could they please contact me on 0161 244 3528 or mutale.nkonde@bbc.co.uk"

....and did you, like me, get an email from a certain Jayme Saffer at the Beeb?  In case not this was the content:

I hope you don't mind your email addresses being picked up like this off the 'Team & Contacts' page from this website.

Fr Megson

An Apology

A Chairde,
 

At the weekend some good friends (non quiz-leaguers) tore a strip off Fr. Megson (OUCH!) for lacing his last sermon with a very unbecoming concoction of naked sectarianism.  He duly examined his conscience and his hastily written sermon script and, to his horror, he accepts that the charge of sectarianism has substance - but not the charge of nudity which he believes was integral to the plot.  He normally has a think about what he has written and stands back from it for a few minutes before transmission to ensure that no feelings are hurt but obviously he did not step far enough back on this occasion.  Without being naive I think we all accept that there are Orange gangs in the Northern Reeks and they probably do carry weapons less metaphorical than Occam's Razor.  However it is also true to say that there are a like number of Green gangs still in existence and it was wrong and misleading to "slag off" one side without making any reference to the other.  The respective gangs do not need or deserve any defending and are thankfully very unrepresentative of their communities.  Fr. Megson seemed to imply that anyone with Loyalist sympathies would automatically belong to a gang and that implication can only be described as sectarian.  And I hope we all agree that sectarianism is a sin even deadlier than the se7en recently committed by The Finger.
Please accept Fr. Megson's unqualified apology for getting this badly wrong.  It won't happen again.

Sorry, Jermaine, my apology does not extend to overpaid footballers from London.

Fr. M.