Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 07/11/12

The Fairies keep their 100% record intact and stay top - with The Opsimaths in hot pursuit

Results & Match Reports

I Blame Smoke Fairies motor on with an 11 point home win against the Electric Pigs. "Even Steven until just before the half way break - and then a three/four point margin until round seven when the Smoke Fairies opened up a big gap." according to visiting Pig Andrew.

The Men They Couldn't Hang lost to The Opsimaths. Brian gives us the low-down...

"An enjoyable evening as always at the Parrswood. A close fought match most of the way through, but one of those papers that you either knew the answer or didn’t. Not many eureka moments. Reasonably hard paper, with each team scoring 11 twos, but TMTCH were dragged down by facing 11 unanswered questions, whilst the Opsimaths only had 5. Not our best performance. Must do better to have any chance against Chunky next week!"

The Prodigals lost to The Charabancs of Fire. Anne-Marie sees it thus:

"Afraid it was another Prodigals drubbing in the Albert Club snooker room last night. This time at the hands of the very impressive Charas. I am off to Argentina for 3 weeks, so our celebrity player will be making a guest appearance in my absence - Mr Rainford is back!!! (I don’t think I am going to be missed)."

whilst Damian reports from the same match...

"A jolly affair at the Albert Club in the presence of Anne-Marie, Mark and co. Our opponents were forced to do their best without Dave 'Tremendous Knowledge' Rainford who was apparently away in Hollywood rehearsing for his part in 'Eggheads -The Movie'. They assured us they would be happy to come away with 20 points. Well, they came away with a well-deserved 30. They'd probably have managed 31 if only Mark could have brought himself to admit that he knew the names of all the judges on the X-Factor instead of pretending to confer with his team-mates! When there's a quiz to be won, just hold your hands up and admit you know the answers to all sorts of crap. Personally, I just pretend to come up with an inspired guess!"

Albert lost at home to Ethel Rodin - James reports....

"A low scoring quiz.... lots of questions that provoked discussion and deduction, hence not very many twos.... Albert won what probably proved a bad toss to win. The unanswereds fell 8-7 to Albert .... 5 of which landed in Mike's lap, and 4 in mine. The 2s fell 6-2 to Albert, although to be fair, we were far enough ahead to be able to confer even after round 2 - but it was the bonuses where this was won... they fell 9-3 to Ethel. We are disappointed by the enforced rest next week, having hit a rich run of form!"

Compulsory Meat Raffle lost to The History Men. Ivor's summing up....

"(Extreme) age triumphed over youth tonight at the Turnpike (even our Young David was old enough to be a parent). As always an enjoyable evening with the cream of this year’s University Challenge team (all doing proper degrees in economics and astrophysics and other hard sums) ably captained by 'Old Girl' Rachael who finished the evening with five consecutive twos. Although we had a good lead at the end this was entirely due to the 'steals' breaking 8-1 in our favour. As for twos and unanswereds the game was very even indeed (10-9 and 8-8 respectively).

Next week it's the 'Europe' matches and we take on Traveller’s Call who apparently are the new Chunky. A week’s a long time in quizzing…"

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the setters were The Bards of Didsbury. I've not played the paper so it's hard for me to comment but as an outside observer I'd say it looks a tad on the hard side.

From the Ethel Rodin camp James offers this view...

"Round of the week was probably the hidden Manchester bands.... QotW was probably Question 1 about Hirohito - but nothing leaps out. The 'Not QotW' (an award which should be introduced!) was the AH Albut question."

The History Men (courtesy of Ivor) see it thus:

"Quiz itself was a bit of a challenge especially in the first half but scoring picked up considerably in the second half. Plenty of questions where answers were tantalisingly on the edge of one's knowledge. When at the last minute you remember which famous person was a marine biologist it's the quiz equivalent of hitting a five iron from the rough to the pin. We had a good share of the luck (not usually much of that with Bard quizzes) with the 'plaster of Paris' question falling to Tim who has used a bit of it in his time.

Controversy of the night: Wasn’t Mr Blobby an eponymous hit as well as the band given as the answer (not that we are complaining as it was Meat Raffle who came up with this alternative answer)?"

...and Kieran's summary:

"For the first 5 rounds it was a very typical Bards quiz. 31 points scored in total, only 4 twos in aggregate and 14 out of 40 unanswered (Martin had 5 of them in a row). Then a different author seemed to take over, 30 points were scored in 3 rounds, 9 twos (Martin got all 3 of his) and only 4 out of 24 going unanswered."

Anne-Marie agrees with me that the paper was toughish...

"It was a usual WithQuiz with pairs (some of which were a tad unbalanced in my humble opinion) and hidden themes. The overwhelming majority voted Q4 Round 8 as QotW."

Damian gives the paper an OKish verdict...

"Tonight's questions from the Bards were a no-nonsense combination of paired rounds and hidden themes. We all managed to guess the themes without too much difficulty although that didn't necessarily mean we could find the answer. It was all fairly straightforward despite the occasional obscurities such as being asked to know who Alfred Harold Albut was, or the name of the copper who was tried for killing that guy at the G20 protests, or whoever the hell the 1994 pop-group/single, Doop was/were.

QotW? We would probably have plumped for the one about the Wicked Bible, even though it was a spare, but decided instead to vote for Round 8 Question 4. We were all intrigued by this one and thought that it would probably have been an absolute pearler of a question if only the Bards had deigned to inform us what it was! Maybe it should come under the category, 'Most Enigmatic Absent Question Of The Week!"

ED: If you're wondering what Damian and Anne-Marie are on about......On the paper as delivered by the Bards Round 8 question 4 was missing. In the paper on this site I have shuffled all the Round 8 questions up so that question 4 is what was presented as question 5, etc up to question 8 which is the first of the two spares.

The Question of the Week

This week Ethel, Albert, the Pigs and the Fairies all favour the first question of the evening:

Which marine biologist was reborn as a god in 1928?

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

Chatterbox

Europe (metaphorically and literally)

Next Wednesday we play the first round of the WIST Champions Cup. WithQuiz teams playing at home (The History Men and The Opsimaths) should collect their question papers from the Red Lion (where the Stockport setters will have left them). The Fairies and the Bards playing over the water in Stockport will find the papers already at their respective venues.

I will still be in Madrid next Wednesday evening so please let me know your results - whether you've won or lost. I'll endeavour to update the website albeit without the 'hot' opinions gained by actually playing. Who knows, this might make for a fairer assessment!
Last Knockings
Tuesday was a fairly crap day for me. City were all but knocked out of the Champions League courtesy of a crap Dane (referee); my passenger window was knocked in by some Beswick scrotes; and my mobile phone was knocked off by the same scrotes. The day (or rather night) ended in an Autoglass repair warehouse in deepest Salford at 4am getting the car window repaired so that it was safe and sound on my drive at home when I jetted off to Spain the next morning. So if you are sending me match results I'm afraid text messages are no use to me right now as I won't have my mobile phone number back in use until the end of next week. Can you please use emails or the WithQuiz message board instead and I'll pick up the results, comments, etc. from there? Thanks.