Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 14/04/10

The first round of the Cup goes with the form book as SPW and the History Men win through

Results & Match Reports

......and off we go with the Val Draper Cup. In the first week the League giants have slugged it out with only 2 of the top 4 surviving into the gentler climes of Round 2......

Opsimaths fought tooth and nail but - yet again this season - capitulated to the mighty SPW

Charabancs of Fire just failed against the History Men who seem to be ending their season in magnificent style after a rocky start. Damian as ever was on the spot:

"Not even the return of Ladybarn and Stockport's very own happy wanderer, our reverend captain Father M, could save the collective bacon of his benighted team. Yet again we went down to the Historymen. To rub further salt into the wounds, there were only the three of 'em! So it's official, the Charas are 'The Andy Murrays of the 2009/10 Withquiz Season'."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was set by TMTCH.

Another great paper from The Men. The aggregate score at the Club was pretty high and the contest was tightly fought right up to Round 8. A few items for comment....

Is it right to use the term 'theme' when the connection between the answers is that they can all be used in front of the same word to construct a compound word? Surely this is a shared characteristic rather a theme.

Loved the To Kill a Mockingbird theme in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the book's publication. Wisely the answers in this round were fairly accessible even if you couldn't dredge up all the names from the book. Not so sure about the TV Presenters theme. A pretty loose link this. How are we meant to know what Dave B regards as the classier BBC productions?

And in Round 8 when searching for the final Travelling Wilbury I was overtaken by thoughts of Ginger Baker. Howell eventually managed to talk me out this thought on the basis that being ginger is not a personality trait - it's more of an affliction.

Damian from the other match at the Swan writes in:

"Both teams enjoyed the Hangmen's questions. It was a well-crafted paper with some clever themes. Sometimes, however, it pays not to get the theme too early. Roisin was deterred from giving the answer 'Fu Man Chu' in the Snooker Players round because she couldn't think of any snooker player with a Chinese name.

Pizmo i Ladybarn!"

The Question of the Week

This week my favourite was Question 5 from Round 7 (in which a word from each answer could be used to prefix the word 'head' to make another word) :

Who is this singer and actress photographed in 1985?

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

Father Megson

WithQuiz fever in Ukraine

A Chairde,

Withquiz is huge in Ukraine. Only the evergreen gameshows Sdelki Ili Sdelki Net (Deal or No Deal) and Who Wants To Win A Bride With Her Own Tractor get a bigger audience.

Obviously all the Withquiz participants are household names by now but as you can see some contestants are more popular than others. I took the photograph of the open air telly in Independence Square Kiev. Unfortunately I arrived on the one day in the year when Big Dave wasn't being beamed out live to an adoring nationwide audience.

The other photo shows the Kiev branch of our very own Red Lion. This one is an Erotic Bar. There is talk of the Historymen moving there next season. If that doesn't stop Peter falling asleep, nothing will. But will it stop Ivor from blurting in public?

Gerry

Chatterbox

Next week the setters will be the Opsimaths, with the Charabancs of Fire setting the week after for the Semi Finals. For the Final on May 5th I will ask one of the losing Semi Finals teams to act as editor for the 'Knocked United' paper used for the Finals on May 5th. Teams eliminated this week, and in a fortnight's time, are asked to prepare a single round (of any style) plus 2 pairs of questions for use in the Final paper. As last year the finalists will vote for what they believe to be the best round of the Finals paper and the winners of this accolade will get a prize at the End of Season evening.