Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 31/03/10

Stockport's Alexandra win through to the WIST final against the inevitable SPW

Results & Match Reports

This week has seen the semi finals of the WIST Champions Cup....

Bards of Didsbury were unable to thwart the mighty SPW despite having home advantage

Opsimaths went behind n Round 1 and never got back onto level terms against the Alexandra (Stockport League)

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was set jointly by the Prodigals and Ethel Rodin on behalf of the entire WithQuiz league.

As befits the semi final stage of an inter-league competition the questions were really taxing. Having said this Stockport's Alex found them "about par for the course" in terms of difficulty (compared to the regular Stockport fare) but the Opsimaths struggled. When we got to the WithQuiz format in the second half and had a theme to guide us it was as if a light had suddenly gone on.

At the Metropolitan Kieran says they found the Stockport-formatted first half pretty good but then got bogged down in the WithQuiz-formatted second half.

The Question of the Week

This week I make the choice, and my vote goes to Round 2 Question 9:

In 1996 Tony Blair said: "My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love.....". Complete this sentence.

For the answer to this and all the week's questions click here.

Chatterbox

I know there has been quite a bit of chatter on the message board about SPW scratching from their game against the History Men last week - and also from next week's encounter with the Charabancs. I do know that Kieran has been trying very hard behind the scenes to avoid these cancellations and is very upset that he has failed to get at least a 3-man team together for these matches. There was also some doubt about SPW being able to manage to field a team for the Val Draper Cup matches but I have suggested to Kieran that it's better for the competition if they play Round 1 and then deal with any player shortages as and when (who knows they might lose to the Opsimaths in Round 1 anyway).

Since both the Charas and Ethel (the candidates for 5th position in the table)have shouldered extra setting duties recently I have asked TMTCH to set for Round 1 of the Val Draper Cup, and - many thanks Dave - they have accepted. For the WIST Final on May 12th the Opsimaths will create the paper.

Tony has let me know that the Bards have agreed Didsbury Cricket Club as their home venue from the start of next season. It seems a combination of the Metropolitan's beer prices and the West Didsbury set's noisy tittle-tattle has forced the Bards to a new spot. I'm told Eric is distraught having just started to make headway with the Met's manageress (at least judging by last week's exchanges). Still the Bard's are notoriously restless so on they must move.

Father Megson

Pismo Iz Stockport

A Chairde,

Two weeks after swapping the warm sunshine of Stockport for the snows of Eastern Poland I left the warm sunshine of Kiev for the driving rain of Luton. Hard to imagine a less enticing place than Luton in the rain but I suppose Enniskillen with snow, high winds and no electricity on the same evening might have run it close. They were complaining bitterly in Ukraine about how cold their winter had been but it seems to have been shorter there than here.

I left you in Odessa last week. After an eleven hour train journey from there I eventually arrived in the capital city of the Crimea region. Which, as all you Withquiz buffs will of course know, is Simferopol..... No?.... Well to be honest I had never heard of it either until a few weeks ago. Despite being a sizeable city with excellent industrial and transport credentials, as many Drive-in McDonalds as you could wish for (even better, it is also well served by the local rival chain McFoxys) and some of the best examples of concrete high rise buildings this side of Luton, Simferopol remains one of Ukraine's best kept secrets. A wise choice though as a touring base for the whole of the Crimea. I was able to stay in a first class hotel for £15 per night and negotiate with the local taxi drivers to drive me wherever I chose for very reasonable amounts. For a total of £25 I got a personal tour of the otherwise inaccessible mountain villages of the local Tartar minority (descendants of the Mongols and only fairly recently allowed to resettle in their native Crimea after having been sent in their thousands to Siberia by Uncle Joe). After driving me through some spectacular mountains and lunar landscapes honeycombed with cave villages and 8th century churches my driver then invited me back to meet his family and have a cup of tea. Taxi drivers rarely do that in South Manchester these days.

I ended up in Yalta. This was more the Crimea I had been expecting: the lush playground of the Russian intelligentsia and ruling classes for over 200 years; the Chekov house and the Livadia palace where the 1945 summit meeting took place; the holiday dachas of the working class lads who once led the good old CCCP. Much of Yalta was undoubtedly grand and you could see how exclusive it must have seemed in the old Soviet days. But, as I wandered along its cheap and cheerful promenade in a light drizzle, past the cheap souvenir stalls and the speak-your-weight machines, bumping into joyously overweight kids eating their Tasty Sendviches and drinking their Cokes it was easy to see how it came to be twinned with Margate. Rats! I was going to save that interesting fact for a future Question of the Week.

Gerry