Results & Match Reports

• Fifth Finger duly put themselves out of reach with a convincing win over their nearest rivals, the History Men.  This now makes it 6 years in a row that the Fingers and their variously named alter egos have won the league - and as far as I'm concerned they have done it in fine style.  Certainly the Opsimaths always enjoy the challenge of playing Kieran and crew.  Kieran writes:

"We only needed a draw and Martin (who else?) ensured that, answering question 4 round 8 (transcendental number) for yet another two.

 I think that's now six years' running.  I remember The Albert winning the title in 1998 but I can't think of anyone else since.  I don't suppose records exist that far back.  Before everyone gets too disheartened though I would remind them that we only won last year on the last game, finishing just one point ahead of St. Cath's."

• In the slip up of the week, high-flying Snoopy's went down at home to table-proppers Albert Park

• Electric Pigs enjoyed a thriller at the Fletcher Moss just pipping Stumped by a  single point

• In the other Fletcher Moss match Albert were beaten by Ethel Rodin who are now challenging hard for top 3 honours with a fine late run in

• And with a very high score of 48 the Brains beat the X-Pats.  Curate Keegan (Damian the Brain) writes:

"Following The Brains innings victory last week at Stumped, Megson's team continued in fine form at the Sun in September, outgunning X-Pats by 48 runs to 33.  After winning the toss, Megson decided to bat first.  Young Damian was opening, and after 3 rounds, had scored 6.  Victory in the end was inevitable, with Fr. Megson & Vicar John both taking a five wicket haul, and young Damian hitting an unbeaten half-century. The only downside was Sister Roisin's inability to stay at the crease for any length of time.  She was out of form and scratching around for only 8 singles (nothing to do with copious amounts of Sam Smiths either).

OPSIMATHS YOU ARE NEXT - BE AFRAID!!!!!!" 

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week's setters were the Opsimaths so I'd better be careful what I say.  Well certainly the scores were high (third highest aggregate of the season) but as has been said here before high scores do not necessarily a fine quiz make.  So here are some comments received from the newly crowned league champions:

"As for the paper, well in the end very good.  Lots of clever themes and a good spread of questions.  We hated the first two rounds and the scoring was very low.  It was only after the quiz was over that we realised our virgin QM (that's a comment on his quiz experience not any other area) had omitted to tell us the letter 'A' and 'U. S. President' themes.  While there undoubtedly will be a President Flinders Petrie at some point we had to concede that History Men would have played safe with Howard Carter had they been aware of the theme.   On the other hand my Jefferson Airplane answer for 2 was all the better for not knowing and would have been nothing like as satisfying if I had simply been looking for Presidents' names.  Shades of the debate over our round of se7en.  Glad I didn't say String Driven Thing though.

A few quibbles: -

• Scharnhorst was not the sister ship of Tirpitz.  Tirpitz and Bismarck were sister ships as were Scharnhorst and Gneisnau.  Believe me Barry, Martin and I were Airfix anoraks and would be again given the excuse of children of appropriate ages

• And John Nash while a mathematician won the Nobel for Economics, there not being a prize for Maths

• Barry also jibbed about Dabchick, claiming that this is a small type of Grebe rather than a young Grebe, but the rest of us just switch off when there's a bird question so we left him to chunter

Overall very good and the scoring would have been higher if we had known the themes for the first two rounds.  Not sure about question of the week,  I liked the successive letters idea."

Gerry writes in similar vein below in the Fr Megson slot.  I do apologise to the X-Pat who could have stayed in doing crosswords if he wanted to spend the evening solving anagrams (maybe anagram questions should take a rest now), and, possibly, to Snoopy's and the Park who, I'm told, argued long and hard about Colin's (oops the secrets out!) long and discursive transcendental and strangeness questions (Round 4 Q4 & Round 8 Q4) without getting either right.

Kieran's remarks do emphasise how important it is to get the QM to check for themes and follow any instructions given by the team that set the paper, before launching into each round.

The average aggregate score this week was 79.0.  Actual aggregates around the games varied from 75 (Albert/Ethel) to 83 (Pigs/Stumped).

The Question of the Week

Following Gerry's suggestion below, the 'Question of the Week' award goes to Round 3 Q3:

Who is this April Fool?

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

Chatterbox

Thursdays?

You may recall that we had a vote at the end of last season on changing from Wednesday to Thursday evenings as our regular match day.  It was a close run thing but Wednesdays just won the vote.  Chatting to the teams at the Oak a few weeks ago there was a feeling that the groundswell for Thursdays has increased and that we need to have another vote.  Can we please use the website as a sounding board for this issue?  I'll publish any feedback I get.

Feedback 1:

St Caths and X-Pats discussed this issue after their recent match and were firmly in favour of sticking to Wednesdays.

Feedback 2:

Copland has come back saying that Stumped also vote strongly against switching to Thursdays.

Feedback 3:

Mary O'Brien (Albert) favours keeping to Wednesday - at least until we've had a chance to debate the issue again at this season's gala night.

Feedback 4:

Ethel Rodin are finding Wednesdays at the Red Lion almost impossible to negotiate, what with wide- screens and football at every turn.  They would favour moving to Thursdays.

Feedback 5:

On balance the Fingers wish to stick with Wednesdays.

Refurbishment at the Red

We now know that the Red Lion will be closed on Wednesday March 31st and Wednesday April 7th.  The History Men are at home both weeks, so, Ivor, can you rearrange the venue for your Fifth Finger (31/03) and Snoopy's (07/04) matches?

All please note that on both Wednesdays the Fletcher Moss will be the question-paper pick up point.

Fr Megson

Fr M - the Voracious Reader

Father Megson has long been a voracious reader.  By the age of 15 he had devoured the entire oeuvres of JANET AND JOHN and CHICKEN-LICKEN and he was ready for a new challenge.  Consequently he set himself the goal of reading Chambers Autobiographical Dictionary and, in a lighter vein, the Complete Oxford Dictionary.

Understandably for a priest with a very hectic social life and a congenital narcolepsic condition, he has yet to get past page 7 of either tome.

How fortunate for his team then that last night's setters suffer from a similar tardiness in their reading. The letter 'A' posed no difficulty whatsoever.  In fact we revised the life and times of John Aubrey at the end of Tuesday nights's training session.   And people wonder why Fr. Megson is so successful!  He would have been slightly less successful had the setter gone on to ask about the lives of famous people beginning with the letter Z but forewarned is forearmed and he will be stopping off at the library tonight for the MASK of ZORRO video and a few Lena Zavarone tapes.

Very enjoyable quiz.  I think it was similar in temperament to the previous week's Piggy effort - i.e. wide subject base, some mental teasers, a few anagrams (not the highlight of one of the X-Pat's night: "everybody else gets effin' general knowledge and I get effin' anagrams!") and generally reasonably difficult but with a sense of humour e.g. Methil (no more) Rodin.  Bet she didn't get that one.

My own QOTW would be the photo of Kenneth Horne.  But then I'm biased.  For truly Fr. Megson is the son of Fr. Horne.  Just my luck to be handed a photo of somebody bloody Robey who I had only vaguely heard about.  But that's quizzing for you.  I also had no idea about the apple with its origins in Essex so I went for a Dagenham Piper.  I strongly feel that such an apple should exist.

Congrats. to John B. for getting the long scientific question - sorry, essay - right.  I was very relieved that it didn't come across for a bonus because we didn't understand a word of it.  Are you absolutely sure it wasn't a brief synopsis of the plot of LORD OF THE RINGS?  Oh well.

Gerry