Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 19/10/11

The Bards march to the top of the table overtaking Smoke Fairies on points difference

Results & Match Reports

TMTCH lost at home to the Charabancs. Damian reports:

"Finally a 3-man Charas team stick a thumb into the bursting dyke of their quiz aspirations and stem the flow of successive losses. This was a game of two halves. The Charas established a fairly comfortable lead in the first half with the second half dominated by the Hangmen and their impressive familiarity with chocolate bars and Napoleonic victories."

Last season's runners up, Smoke Fairies, took revenge on last season's champions, the Opsimaths, with a masterful performance at the Griffin.

Ethel Rodin, despite being behind by 7 points after the first 3 rounds, recovered to beat the Historymen by 4 points at the Swan. James commended Historyman David for spotting the Caramel Aero and Rodinist Geoff for knowing that heavyweights start at 12st 7lbs. Ivor comments:

"We decided not to play either of our Annes in case they turned up in stiletto heels and upset Sean the Barsteward and this may have proved our undoing. Once again we sprinted to an early lead only to see our opponents level after 6 rounds and hurtling forward like Red Rum past Crisp in the 1973 Grand National.

On the subject of horses we had a 'steal' on the banned horse names though I must say we were disappointed that the name of a potential Grand National winner Noble Ox was not included. We then had to concede that our version of the Fulham fanzine ('The organ of football in Fulham') was not rude enough. The Nobel questions proved equally frustrating even though there were only 4 possible answers (Peace and Literature being obviously wrong). Both sides plumped for duff answers."

Despite the debut of Kate (the erstwhile Bardette) the Prodigals slipped back after last week's victory over the champions, and lost at home to the Electric Pigs.

Compulsory Meat Raffle were no match for this season's invincibles, the Bards

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week's paper was set by Albert. The average aggregate score of 59.8 meant that it was pretty tough with too many unanswerables for comfort.

At the Griffin the verdict was pretty favourable after the first four rounds ("Best of the season so far" was David's comments to me at the bar as we bought our half time round). After the break, however, opinions deteriorated. The succession of indistinguishable chocolate bar pictures, the too-obvious-to-state reason for the racehorse names being banned and the far from exclusive Wimbledon Junior title link between Orantes, Borg and Lendl left us unimpressed in the second half. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh as both teams liked Round 6 which provided an inventive twist on the usual format for a themed round.

From the Swan Ivor's feedback:

"Quiz itself quite tricky with 19 unanswerables. I do think this year has been the hardest in the 10 years we have been in the league - not that there is anything wrong with that. We shall just have to practice harder in the close season. We were annoyed with the first pair in Round one. We gave the new £50 answer rather than the old one, only to see the new £50 note appear for our opponents in the next question - but that’s quizzing!"

....and from the Parrswood Damian's verdict:

"We thought this was a good, straightforward quiz of the old-fashioned type with no fancy frills or esoteric subject matter. Having said this I was a little miffed to be denied 2 points when I answered Hades to the question about the kidnapping of Persephone (Hades being the Greek equivalent of Pluto)."

The Question of the Week

This week the Pigs nominate Round 8 Question 5:

Who is the only sportsman to have played World Cup football and World Cup cricket?

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

Chatterbox

If you've looked at the Message Board in the past few days you'll see I've made reference to a new Quiz Show being produced for Sky Atlantic called Cleverdicks. Here's the flyer I received with applications details. I think I'll give it a whirl myself.