Results & Match Reports

CUP ROUND 2

• Fifth Finger had a comfortable victory over their closest league rivals, St Caths - Kieran writes:

  "A combined score of 55 between us and St. Cath's says it all I think.

  It was a bad toss to lose and play second.  I played number one going first in the first half and seemed to get normal quiz questions.  Indeed if I had had the courage of my convictions and gone for the 1,000 Guineas I would have recorded seven twos. Everyone else, especially Mike Heale playing number one going second, seemed to be playing a different quiz.  St Cath's certainly got the rough end of the pairing on more than one occasion. 

  Question of the week? The one about the Pioneer and the Ship Canal I think.  Barry got it for an all too rare two and was very pleased with himself.  At least you had a chance of working that out, since quiz buffs would know the Ship Canal was opened about then.  Mike Heale did say he didn't think Queen Victoria (as the first to alight from the Pioneer) would appreciate being described as a cargo."

• Electric Pigs just edged past History Men to win by 2 points

• Brains of Oak carried on towards the final by defeating Albert

PLATE ROUND 1

• Ethel Rodin scored a hollow victory over Stumped who, sadly, were unable to field a team and thus go out

• Albert Park started well but faded leaving Opsimaths narrow winners in the Albert Club local derby

When I put all these results into the computer to work out who plays whom, and who sets next week's paper, I realised that, as is now becoming the tradition, we have got our knickers in a twist. 

There are 2 conundrums to resolve:

1) the losers from the 3 Cup games last night have 4 roles to play:

• the highest scoring losers carry on in the Cup (as it happens this means Albert play the Brains for the second week running!!)

• the other 2 losers (St Caths and the History Men) play each other in Round 2 of the Plate

• but the lowest scoring losers also have to set next week's paper (this would mean the History Men setting the paper as well as playing St Caths - a situation even Mike Heale would not tolerate I suspect)

2) when a team wins by walkover (as Ethel Rodin did) how is their score assessed in the 'Highest Scoring' comparison

Gary and I have put our heads together and decided that Ethel Rodin's walkover should be regarded as a lower score than the Opsimaths winning 21 and, therefore, that Ethel should play next week in Plate Round 2 as the lowest scoring winners from Plate Round 1.  This leaves the Opsimaths (as Highest Scoring Winners) a free week and so they will set the paper next week to relieve the History Men of their double burden.  Hope this is all clear!!

What this means for the next round of cup/plate matches is shown on the fixture page.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week's setters were Snoopy's Friends.  As History Man Ivor said: "This was the hardest quiz of the season so far".  Scores certainly bore this out.  In our match at the Albert Club only 28 of the 64 questions were answered correctly by either side - and in both Rounds 2 and 7 only one of the 8 questions gained a correct answer.  In summary we spent a lot of time puzzling over things about which we hadn't got a clue.  Having said this I liked the round on the new EU members - and it was nicely constructed so that we weren't just ticking off the 10 states so that the final answer of the round had to be one of the only 3 left unmentioned.  

The average aggregate score this week was 79.8 - a respectably high tally.  Actual aggregates around the games varied from 74 (St Caths/History Men) to 86 (Fingers/Pigs).

The Question of the Week

My selection this week  for 'Question of the Week' (agreeing with Kieran & Barry above) goes to Round 7 Q8:

What first was achieved by The Pioneer in 1894?

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

Chatterbox

Thursdays et al

Over the past few weeks, as we approach our summer break, Opsimaths' post match chit chats have involved some exchange of views on how we run things (as well as the usual 'What shall we call ourselves next year?'  argument).  I suspect other teams have had similar chats.

I think it a good idea if 15/30 minutes at the start of the end of season do at the Albert Club on June 9th are devoted to representatives of each team discussing matters of mutual interest (including the Wednesday/Thursday topic dealt with in the feedback remarks below). 

The 2 big Opsimath proposals for change are: a) to start the season earlier (say mid September) and thus finish earlier (say early May) and b) to revert to more conventional Cup/Plate competitions which last no more than 4 weeks and allow the teams knocked out in the first round of the Cup a chance to dominate the Plate competition without being swamped by the big guns who get knocked out of the Cup in later rounds.  In other words the Plate should be (as far as is possible) exclusively for the lesser teams.

Below is the feedback received so far this season in the Wednesday evening/Thursday evening issue:

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.

Fr Megson

Quiz Feedback and Wasps

There were an awful lot of quiz players in the Fletcher Moss last night.  I thought that the alcohol must have been laying claim to my faculties even earlier than usual because every time I looked up I caught sight of some reprobate or other from our hallowed quiz league.  Were they holding auditions for Fifteen to One or something?

Anyway, when they weren't avowing their disappointment at West Brom once again failing to make it to the European Cup Final, or being sick at the bar, they all seem to have been united by a common feeling about the quizset for last night.  A lynch mob was gathering momentum by the door and shouts of "Let's drive the varmints outa town" could be heard all down Barlow Moor Road.

Nobody enjoys an occasional lynching more than me but, at the risk of sounding like Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, I think we should give the setters a fair trial.  Who wants to be Lee J. Cobb?  OK so it was hard and not to everyone's taste.  We won but our score wasn't marvellous.  It wasn't the type of quiz where you were encouraged to go for cavalier 2 pointers  (Ivan Denisovich from our team and Mike from the Albert excepted) but personally I felt that the questions encouraged quite a bit of logical conferring and many of them were gettable at least as a guess.

I thought the "nearer home" round based in the North West of England was a good example.  Eminently difficult but we had a lot of interesting debates trying to puzzle out the solution.  We hadn't a clue about the obscure Roman settlement name but we eventually arrived at Ribchester as a good guess given its North West location and the fact that it was a settlement rather than an actual modern town.  I think the round based on the new entrants to the EEC could have been made slightly more easy and interesting.  Ten intriguing countries should have been able to supply more inspiration to the setters than an insipid double portion of national dishes - whatever a national dish is when it's at home.  I speak as an Irishman who has not eaten cabbage and bacon since I was four.  But the concept of the round was nevertheless sound.

All I'm saying is don't automatically jump to the conclusion that a difficult low scoring quiz is the same thing as a "bad" quiz.  Marshall Dillon has already made this point so try to pay more attention in future.  After all, a scoreless draw in football can be just as exciting as a 4- 4 draw.  But, as a former manager of West Brom, Fr. Megson feels he should now drop this entertaining football analogy before it blows up in his face.
What's that?  You still want to lynch poor old Snoopy Dog.  Oh, all right then.  They're in the attic.  But no torture mind, or I will cancel our trip to Wacky Warehouse on Sunday.  This is a British quiz league after all.

Fr. S.M.

PS. Incidentally, Copeland, I read your very impressive and impassioned plea for Civil Rights for the humble wasp in last Saturday's  Guardian.  Like you, Fr. Megson has many friends who are wasps and proud of it. WASPs are a different matter and should be swatted twice a day for refusing to go to mass and incestuously conspiring to spawn the Bush dynasty.

One question though.  How do you know that ALL wasps feed meat to their kids?  Surely a fairly large percentage of Didsbury-dwelling, Guardian-reading parenting wasps would tend towards vegetarianism.  In which case it would probably be fair play to swat them, at least playfully, if they land in your muesli.
What does the rest of the league think about this moral dilemma?  No answer.  Probably not back from the lynching yet.