Albert got the better of the Electric Pigs.  Mary writes in:

The Fletcher Moss derby resulted in a narrow win for the Albert.  The Albert went first in the first half and trailed for the first two rounds but then took a narrow lead and kept it for the rest of the match - but there was never more than 4 points between the teams.

The Historymen amassed 47 points, enough to win any other game this season, but they were outscored by I Blame Smoke Fairies by 4 points giving an aggregate score of 98 points.  Is this a record?  Well Kieran certainly thinks it is:

Now that's what I call a points fest!  37 twos (21-16 in our favour), only two questions unanswered and only four bonuses (2 for each side).

Opsimaths clearly intended to set an old fashioned 'loads of points on offer' quiz and achieved it with something to spare.  The whole thing took little more than an hour, though Mike Heale would have harrumphed that it was far too easy.  No one sets out on a Wednesday evening looking forward to being made to look stupid and there will have been a lot of happy quizzers tonight.  We registered the first 50+ score of the league season and the aggregate of 98 is, I'm sure, a Withquiz record.

From round 2 to round 7 we scored 20 twos out of a possible 24, including 15 out of 16 in rounds 4-7 (Barry's lack of familiarity with Ellery Queen causing the only conferred question in this sequence).  Thirteen consecutive twos from the last question in round 4 to the end of round 7 gave us the victory, and I can't remember there ever being three successive rounds where all questions yielded a maximum for us.

All in all an interesting take on quiz paper setting which left everyone happy.  Mind you if we'd scored 47 and lost I'd be hacked off.  I look forward to hearing what The Historymen and The Charas take on the paper is.  The evening ended with a Spurs fan, two City fans, a United fan, a Grimsby fan and, a Liverpool and Zambia fan (one and the same person in History David) needling each other about their teams and how the season will unfold in a true 'after Quiz match' tradition.  We are in general agreement that the boycott of of Les lettres de France should be awarded question of the week.

Oh, and Mike, YOU'RE NOT SECOND ANYMORE!  Yup that's all we have to boast about these days.  (Ed: Fair dos, Kieran, but the fight for second starts here!!).

The Charabancs of Fire also powered to a massive 47 only to be edged out at the last by visitors Ethel Rodin.  James texts in:

Close all the way through.  Jeff had a magnificent 7 twos, scuppered only by the unanswered Discworld  8th.  Unanswereds fell 3-1 to Ethel.  Twos fell 18-17 to Ethel - and bonuses fell 2-1 to Ethel too.  QotW quite hard in this type of quiz - but French letters got a vote and Lucy got a vote. The condoms have it!

In a right-down-to-the-line thriller at Chez Turnpike, Ethel pipped us at the finishing line by one point. All through the quiz we were level pegging.  It was a high scoring affair with plenty of 2s achieved by  both sides.  Unfortunately for us, more of the 2s came from Ethel than we could manage - but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles in WithQuiz.

This week the paper was set by The Opsimaths.

A very high scoring evening all round with the setters deliberately aiming for an average aggregate score into the 80s (and in the event achieving 91.4).  It seems justified by the comments received from around the grounds.  At least this goes some way to strike a balance with the toughies we faced early in the season.  Although I would like the whole ensemble of Opsimaths to take the credit for tonight's paper, in truth it was the work of Brian with just a little feedback from the rest of us when we dry ran it last Sunday.  Did anyone groan at 'Arson' Wenger or 'White Vin Man'?

Mary sums up the paper as the Pigs and Albert saw it:

The paper contained many relatively easy questions but this created a very different pressure from a difficult paper.  It was hard not to feel disappointed if you didn't get a two - especially when the other team members had rattled off their answers for full points.  We couldn't decide on a question of the week but the Electric Pigs liked R.3 Q.4  (Champagne Supernova) and R.7 Q.3 (Lucy).

Ivor reports on the Historymen's view of the paper:

Quiz was very well received with setter Brian in the QM seat.  We actually led for the first half before the Smoke Fairies caught us and ran out worthy winners.  Anne got 7 2s and ended up on the losing side.  In the second half the Smoke Fairies had a run of 13 consecutive 2s and when a team is firing on all cylinders like that there is not much that can be done by any opponent.  Plenty of comment and laughter along the way of which the most appreciated was Brian’s additional information on the sad demise of Lord Sutch’s successor as co-leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party.

And Damian's verdict from the Turnpike:

We found the quiz to be a nice, flowing and relaxing effort.  Not too many lengthy and fevered consultations required for either of the teams which was why we were done by 10 o'clock.  That gave us plenty of time to get an extra round or two in and enjoy some post-quiz banter.  Frankly it's not often we get a chance to do that!

For QotW, Roisin picked the one about the British response to the French ban on British beef at the height of the BSE crisis.

This week the new league champions get the vote and they cast it (like most of the rest of the teams) for Round 3 Question 6:

In 1996, in the ‘Mad Cow disease’ panic, largely at the instigation of France, the EU banned the import of British beef.  A popular graffito at the time was "If they won’t buy our beef, we won’t buy their…....." what?