Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 05/03/08

The Girls win a thriller at the Griffin against the Charabancs and thus secure their tenth League title in a row

Meanwhile the race is on for second place with the Charabancs, the History Men, the Opsimaths and Ethel nip and tuck

The Results

Albert slipped up at home to Ethel Rodin who are now creeping up on the leading pack

Albert Park lost at the Gateway to the X-Pats

Napier Girls fought out a thrilling game to beat title rivals Charabancs of Fire - never more than a few points apart the game went to the wire but ended, as the last 10 seasons have, with the fabulous Girls crowned as League Champs - 3 cheers!!!

Opsimaths just edged home against the 3-trottered Electric Pigs with whom they had tied earlier in the season

Snoopy's Friends against History Men also proved pretty close with the Men just holding on for a victory that keeps them in second place

The Paper

The Men They Couldn't Hang set this week. I've been passing (and passing on) judgements on quiz papers in this section for some years now but I can't remember having received such high praise before. Scarcely midnight and both Kieran and Ivor have gone orgasmic. Kieran first:

"Now - fantastic quiz - best of the season by streets. It would still be that if it had been set by old hands, but given that it was only the second attempt from The Men then it deserves even higher praise.

In our game the lead changed hands four times and there was never more than two or three points in it. All the rounds were full of questions that you could think about, think about discussing or punting and get to somewhere near an answer after a brains trust between team mates. All round a terrific paper and a great evening (as it always is with the Charas). Many congratulations to The Men who were the real stars of the night."

....and Ivor:

"All agreed at the Didsbury that this was an excellent quiz with the themes novel, and well presented. This is only TMTCH’s second quiz but they have already discerned the thinking of our strange little community and served up a menu more mixed than the metaphor I am attempting (it’s the Didsbury’s Old Peculiar I’m afraid). Where else on a Wednesday evening would one’s breadth of knowledge be tested to such an extent to include questions on Spartan admirals (I didn’t even know they had a navy) to lyrics from Blondie hits (at least I knew that)?

QotW was the quote from '1984' describing Big Brother - it was one of only six 'unanswerables' - but beautifully constructed to exclude obvious sign-posting such as mention of '1984' or Winston Smith.”

By and large the Pigs and Opsimaths concurred with the views above. Jitka (as QM) particularly asked me to commend TMTCH for the painstaking care that had clearly gone into the preparation of the paper, with the introductory remarks and extra comments throughout the paper. Andrew Simcock enjoyed the evening overall but found it hard to conceal his disappointment when he failed to make an appearance as an answer in Round 6 - but then we were waiting for Dick Turpin and he never turned up. Thank God there was nothing about Kevin Keegan's first league team.

Just to balance things out Roddy has written in from the Albert/Ethel match:

"As to the paper Ethel was of a different mind to the views expressed on the website to date. There were 18 unanswered questions in our match. There was too much 80s pop music and films for our liking. Fortunately the spares were not needed because most of them seemed to be unanswerable!!"

The Question of the Week

Despite the comments above I'm going to plump for Round 2 Question 1 - which contained a beautifully concealed theme word which had the Pigs still wondering what the theme was until well after half way through the round:

Name the former Labour MP for Walsall North who was convicted for fraud in 1976 and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.

Click here to see the answers to this and the rest of the week's questions and answers.

Chatterbox

Just a reminder in case you haven't already noticed that I have fiddled around with the fixtures since the initial list was placed on the website at the start of the season:

The WIST Semi-finals are now on Wednesday March 19th
The final round of league matches is on the following Wednesday, March 26th