Results & Match Reports

PLATE SEMI FINALS

• Ethel Rodin sneaked home against Albert in a thriller at the Fletcher Moss

• History Men triumphed in the other match pipping St Caths

This means that next week's grand finals will be:

(CUP) Fifth Finger v Brains of Oak (at the Griffin)

(PLATE) Ethel Rodin v History Men (at the Red)         

As both losing teams (St Caths & Albert) scored 32 points it was decided that the team with the lowest number of 2 point scores should qualify as this week's 'Lowest Scoring Loser' and have the honour of setting the paper for the Finals.  This turned out to be the Albert who scored 7 '2s' as opposed to St Caths' 9 '2s'.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week's setters were the the Electric Pigs.   On the whole reaction to the paper was favourable from both matches.  To me it seemed a 'straight down the line' paper with first half/second half pairing and no themes.  In other words the sort of paper we thought of as par for the course until the recent spate of themed rounds.  John Major would have welcomed it as 'a return to basic values'.  Clearly there were some moments to relish.  For instance Ivor greatly enjoyed Mike Heale's successful attempt to describe a 'waxing gibbous moon'.  However there was some real angst over the 'WWI Triple Entente' question (Round 7 Q3).  The countries given as the answer in the paper were in fact the 'Triple Alliance' countries.  Arguably this lost Albert the match since they gave the right list of countries but were marked incorrect whilst Ethel, sensing the questioner had confused 'Entente' with 'Alliance', got points for giving the wrong answer (I have left the answer in the question paper on the website in it's original erroneous form).  Hard luck Albert!!  I have to sympathise since Opsimaths similarly got dumped out of the Cup a few weeks ago by correctly giving Leicester (rather than Lincoln) as the answer to the question about the Roman town of Ratae.  "C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre!" as some other noble British loser once said.

The average aggregate score this week was 67.0.

The Question of the Week

I'm always a sucker for a good geographical question and so my 'Question of the Week' award goes to Round 4 Q8:

Which English county has the shortest coastline?

(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.