Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 12/01/11

Pretty low scoring all round as SPW win the 'top of the table' clash with the Pigs

Results & Match Reports

Bards reinforced by their new recruit, Steve Conway, put the Prodigals to the sword with a fairly emphatic victory

Compulsory Meat Raffle beat TMTCH in what Rachael describes as 'a fun match at the Victoria'

Historymen were imperious in their knowledge of nonsense song titles and Z list actresses as they outscored the distinctly non-pop Ethel Rodin

Electric Pigs found SPW just too much for them at the Fletcher Moss

Opsimaths fell behind and stayed behind in their home encounter with the Charabancs - for whom pop Queen Roisin made all the difference

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week's paper was set by Calluna Pussycats - their first offering in our league.

The chief concern for me was the very low aggregate score (45.8) which was over 10 points lower than the previous lowest this season. This means that many of the questions went unanswered by either team. Indeed at the Albert Club there were 4 instances of one of the teams scoring no points in a whole round. A few unanswered questions leaves a bit of frustration - possibly tempered by admiration for the breadth of knowledge exhibited by the opposition - but a whole round going pointless can cause serious depression. I found Rounds 1 and 2 (on Doctor Who and Africa) excellent and both led to much debate in team conferences. The Nonsense Song titles Round was also a great idea and ended up in our match as a 'Roisin tour de force' with no-one else having much to say. The theme in Round 6 however was too obscure and executed in a flawed manner with some of the theme words being in the questions and some in the answers - without any warning that this was the case. The evening ended in a flourish of smut, however, with everyone cottoning on to the theme early in the final round and exceeding their brief with answers far more explicit than those given. Despite the gripes above it was a jolly affair at the Albert Club.

Ivor comments form the Red Lion:

"The quiz was hard - very hard - with 24 unanswerables in total. Unfortunately they broke 16-8 against Ethel which accounts for the skewed result. Poor old John got 6 consecutive unanswerables in seat 4 and Geoff was not far behind with 5. 'But apart from that did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?' Well all the questions were sound insofar as they had discrete and unarguable answers had we known them (well perhaps the last round’s answers were not all discreet - and Isabella Blow must be the most unusual name in a quiz answer since Declan Kidney). Some themes were a tad…well impossible and after 'jerk' and 'twelve' young David’s idea of 'Gary Glitter' for Round 6 seemed more likely than the actual theme. Overall the Pussycats need to admit that this evening's outing was 'tough tittie' and should aim to produce a 'slippery nipple' next time."

From the same match James was clearly bothered at the number of unanswerable questions that came his way:

"Themes should stimulate interest but this evenings themes tended towards dredging esoteric facts. It's worth checking your questions on friends and family before publication to judge whether they are answerable or not - and, at least, try and balance things. We went 4 rounds with 1 point in total and 3 unanswered questions in each of those rounds!!"

As ever Kieran has something to add:

"Up to round 6 both teams found the paper hard but not overly dull. A bit misjudged maybe on degree of difficulty but enough interest to hold our attention. However rounds 6 and 7 disappointed with a combined score of 5-1 in our favour. The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof round just didn't work. Overall there were 26 unanswered questions."

Rachael texted me from The Victoria:

"Not a high-scoring paper with quite a few questions unanswered but we had a really great time with plenty of hard pondering going on."

Finally Tony rang in from Didsbury Cricket Club where Eric had been QMing and pretty well blown a fuse on Round 8's theme. I could still hear the guffaws in the background during the call. Many of you will be aware of Eric's seminal role in the film Sinking the Bismarck where it was his right hand that provided some key morse code messages during the course of the action. Less well known though is his role in the sequel Raising the Bismarck. Apparently he was responsible for getting it up all by himself!!

So a lot of fun to be had around the grounds, Pussycats. We look forward to your next paper.

....and a late postscript from Gary Donely and the Pigs received during Thursday morning. The Pigs have probably spent more time thinking (occasionally even philosophising) about the format of our quiz papers than most (pace Fr Megson) and their considered views are always worth heeding. Prompted by this week's paper Gary writes about the art of question-setting as a whole in our league:

"It is usually not a good idea to have a whole round on a single subject. It risks loading the quiz too heavily in one team's direction (both in terms of interest but also in terms of points scored). When the Pigs are setting we think long and hard about including more than one pair on any subject. Occasionally you may get 2 pairs (not positioned adjacently) but never 4 pairs.

The Pigs have always argued against theme rounds whose link is in the questions rather than the answers. Think I've said enough about that in the past. Grrrrr! The Pussycats took this to a new level this week by mixing questions and answers as vehicles for the theme in Round 6. This confounded both teams' attempts to identify the theme through the lists of answers they were keeping. Even if the presence of theme material in both questions and answers had been flagged at the start of the round, keeping a list of all the possible theme material would have been a tiresome chore.

Thinking about the whole business of question-setting from the point of view of those new to our league who have been brought up on a staple diet of University Challenge questions and/or Mike Bath's Albert Club quizzes it is pretty daunting to expect them to assimilate by some sort of osmosis the tried, tested but largely undocumented conventions of our own league. Come to that these conventions may be sacred cows that are more in my head than accepted by all our teams - and anyway, why be hidebound by convention? To which, all I can say is that any round of 8 answers that recall my bedroom youth gets my vote - and any question with the answer 'slippery nipple' gets my vote as question of the week..

Most of all I am delighted that this year we have got two new teams who are great company and willing to shake the rest of us into examining what makes for a good evening quizzing."

The Question of the Week

This week Compulsory Meat Raffle have returned to their fondest childhood memories by voting for Round 3 Question 8:

What road does Mr Benn live on?

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

Chatterbox

Next week I have to be in London for the second half of the week so I won't be playing for the Opsimaths. I have put the website software and data onto my laptop which I'll take with me but I've never tried doing the weekly website update away from my own office and desktop before so I'm not 100% confident of getting all the results, tables, comments up on the site as per usual late Wednesday/early Thursday. If things go wrong I'll post the results to the Message Board and then update the site properly when I get back at the weekend. So please do email/text me your results as usual next Wednesday evening - and Gerry (Dummy) please email me the question-paper as per usual.