You wait 2 years for a glimmer then 2 SPW defeats turn up in 2 weeks!!

The Charas beat SPW at the Swan - the Pigs win against the Meat Raffle to go level on points at the top

TMTCH missed out at home to a resurgent Ethel Rodin.

Calluna Pussycats came oh so close to recording their first win of the season after leading for most of the first half of the evening - but then fell at the finish against the Bards.

This week's paper was set by Historymen.

Well, Ivor and co., I think you did pretty well this time.  Some close matches, with a famous result to boot.  The average aggregate was up to almost 66 points compared to the 57 point average from your first paper back in October.  At the Albert Club the Opsimaths, who traditionally dread a Historymen paper, had a field day - and our losing opponents seemed to enjoy the paper almost as much.  Anne-Marie couldn't decide whether the 'Cherry Garcia' or the 'Dennis the Menace' question had provided the best entertainment of the evening.  The spare question asking for the minimum number of balls needed to win a snooker frame was a cracker as well, with much satisfying cogitation.  Best laugh of the night went to a subsidiary part of a question....CHIP (Come home I'm pregnant) was one acronym that hadn't crossed our collective paths before!!

Both the themes proved too hard for us in Rounds 3 and 7 but we managed well enough on the questions themselves in these rounds.  I gather, however, that the Callunas in the other Albert Club match cottoned onto the fishy theme early in Round 7 but then found knowing the theme provided little help in getting the remainder of the answers.  Are we trying just a little to hard with themes these days?  I thought their intention was to offer another route into the answers rather provide an extra conundrum.  And another slight gripe.......perhaps the balance wasn't always perfect with both teams suspecting that going first was a better bet.

Kieran had similar 'balance' comments:

Ivor himself adds some observations from his spectating perch at the Victoria

"Both teams seemed to enjoy the questions though with 14 unanswered it was more difficult than we thought when compiling.  In terms of 2s and steals all was well balanced - but the unanswerables broke 5-9 in favour of the team going first (the Pigs).  It is very annoying when you spend time moderating and allocating pairs for hardness and subject matter to the different seats, that it can still end up looking unfair."

......and finally Damian rounds up for the victors at the Swan:

"The Historymen's questions played more to our traditional strengths than the other offerings over the past few weeks.  Some of the pairings seemed a bit forced but overall it was a good, simple quiz paper of a type we don't seem to have seen for a while."

This week I have to let the victorious Charas choose and they have opted for Round 8 Question 9:

A memorial plaque to 16 poets of the Great War was unveiled at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey on 11^th November 1985.  One of them was actually still alive though he died a few weeks later.  Who was he?