Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 05/12/12

Opsimaths & Charas (3rd and 4th in the table) slug it out for a tie - above them The Fairies and The Bards widen the gap with convincing wins

Results & Match Reports

Ethel Rodin beat The Prodigals in a low scoring affair at the Cricket Club. Anne-Marie reports a massive 22 questions going unanswered.

I Blame Smoke Fairies got the better of The History Men at Fortress Griffin. Kieran tells the tale....

"A very good quiz but the game unfolded in a curious way. The Historymen won five of the eight rounds - the unanswered and the bonuses were equally shared - but the three rounds that we won gave us a margin of 18 which was more than enough to withstand the loss of the other 5 rounds. 13 twos on our side against 4 for our visitors is an imbalance that rarely happens but there was nothing at all wrong with TMTCH's paper. We Fairies clearly just have a thing about helicopters, professors and downmarket TV programmes.

As Ivor put it after losing the second round 8-1, 'Well we fu***d that round'.

A great evening as always playing one set of Men on another set of Men's paper. Can we keep our revival going next week when we play the Albert on a Meat Raffle paper? Keen students of quiz league history and statistics (i.e those with no life) will know that our first defeat last year came against the Albert on, yes, a Meat Raffle paper. Not that I detect a conspiracy or anything.

BTW aren't Old Harry Rocks to be found at Loftus Road (though I'm not sure he'd fit in in an area of outstanding natural beauty)?

The Opsimaths fought the The Charabancs of Fire right up to the final question which saw both teams on the same score. Neither bunch of players knew enough about the protocols of the Facebook generation to score any points so an evening out for both teams ended with, well, an evening out. The match was enhanced by the presence of Hangman Dave who did the honours as QM.

Compulsory Meat Raffle couldn't rustle up enough info. about their parents' and grandparents' generations to get past the wizened old Pigs. A series of texts from Andrew provides the low-down...

"A really enjoyable evening in The Turnpike with bitter at £1.80 a pint! Compulsory Meat Raffle are a really good addition to the league - all the more so when you realise that an event just around the corner of my mind, such as Coventry City winning the FA Cup in 1987, occurred before three of tonight's team were born! As we got on with the quiz we were conscious of a gang of people gathering. What was it that connected them? Seeing Stuart Riley at the bar gave me the clue. The Whole Hog Big Band on their Christmas Night Out! Stuart reminded me of the time I played with them in the early nineties. These days they rehearse at St Pauls on a Wednesday evening."

Albert were well beaten by an in-form team of visiting Bards. Tony unloads....

"Apart from the gales of laughter that greeted me, as the oldest citizen present (by far), for pointing out that the Dardanelles was also known as the Hellespont, and was swum by Leander and Lord Byron, we had a very pleasant evening with Evelyn and co. at the 'Sock and Sandal' as it is becoming known as in trendy Didsbury. It was not so noisy that we had to ask Mary to repeat the question more than a dozen times. We had brought Eric as a supplementary QM but he seemed preoccupied with his own interests to be of any use to us. Jim was on babysitting duty, so Dom stood in to good effect and we eventually enjoyed a comfortable win. Why I didn't recognise the shape of a monkey's fist in the rubbish cufflinks supplied with all my Charles Tyrwhitt shirts I shall never know." (Ed: Who's Charles Tyrwhitt for heaven's sak

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the setters were The Men They Couldn't Hang.

It was a paper absolutely bristling with information (as is always the case with Dave's output). I must admit that on occasions I'd forgotten what was being asked of me by the time I'd absorbed the last nugget of ancillary data. Dave does like laying a devious trail. Often he uses this device (IMHO) to ensure that even the most obscure fact that lies at the heart of the question is adequately clued for most to get a reasonably intelligent guess at the answer. Tonight I thought he may have overplayed the obscurity and thus the need for 'sideways' clues a tad. But what a feast! On the downside it did mean that the final question didn't get out of the traps until about 10.55pm so there was little time to sit down and enjoy a 'post-coital' chat with our opponents.

Tony's view from the Fletcher Moss? "The quiz was a mixture of the brilliant and the totally opaque and thoroughly enjoyable."

James sums up reactions to the paper from the Cricket Club on behalf of Ethel and the Prodigals:

"There were some very good and thought-provoking questions worthy of collective debate but....the problem was that too many provoked too much thought and protracted debate. This all led to to quite a long night. One of us commented that it was 'not quite up to the Hangers' usual standards'. Another described it as a bit painful. Not many 2s.... far too many unanswered questions. Without some inspired guesses from both sides, the scores would have been even lower.

BTW there's a Labour Party fundraising quiz at the Albert Club this coming Sunday evening."

The Question of the Week

This week a number of teams mentioned Round 6 Question 8:

What was introduced to the British public in 1910, weighs less than 6 grammes and is missing from this list of the British Army’s Standard Iron Ration of 1914: bully beef, cheese, biscuit, tea, sugar, salt and….?

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

Chatterbox

Yet another invite to take part in a TV Quiz show. This time it's the Beeb. Researcher Jack Kisby-Carroll (Jack.Kisby-carroll@bbc.co.uk) phoned and emailed me....

"Thanks for taking the time to speak to me earlier. Like I said, I’m a Casting Researcher working on an exciting new Quiz show for BBC1 called ‘Beat the Pack’ where you don’t need to have all the answers, you just need to be sure that your opponents don’t have them! We’re trying to spread the word to see if anyone might fancy taking part to have the opportunity to win a huge cash prize! We would be really interested in trying to get contestants from all across the UK and from all walks of life. It would be great if you could send around this information or forward on to anyone who might be interested, or post up on a notice board, intranet or on the Withington Pub Quiz League website and forums. All the details of how to apply are on the poster."

Father Megson

Through plate glass darkly - a belated view from the Reeks

(NB. written and submitted before this evening's reports about Stuart Hall)

A Chairde,

Dusty phoned me the other evenin' wantin' to know how the calves were doin' and if I'd ever heard that aul eejit Stuart Hall doin' match reports on the wireless. She was wonderin' why the BBC Light Service would pay good money to a demented geezer in his 80s who thinks he's visitin' the People's Republic of Wigan and spouts on about some football match in a voice like you would only normally hear when the Reeks Amateur Dramatic Society put on the Erse version of Shakespeare's Richard the Turd on the Eve of St Bridget's Day.

"That job's so easy even ye could do it", she said, "and Fr Megson would like ye to start this Wednesday night. Mind you, I'm not forkin' out good money to Ryanair to have you over here gallivantin' around South Manchester in your short frocks and maybe causin' a passin' Opsimath to shed his load on the A6. Ye will have to watch the quizzes on the telly and then write up the reports. And don't forget to feed the calves first, ye idle wee hussy".

Well Daddy doesn't own a telly so here I am standin' outside O'Toole's Television Shop, Undertakers and Baby Clothes Emporium on what is the nearest thing Muckross has to a Main Street. It's lashin' it down with the sleet and blowin' a gale and it's very hard to take shorthand notes and stop me short frock blowin' up around me ears at the same time. The RTE Guide says that The Big Quiz tonight will be featurin' "live and exclusive highlights of the Smoke Fairies' grudge match against The Men That Wouldn't Hang" so I suppose the stroppy bloke with the armband that keeps givin' grief to the QM must be Kieran. He's a bit of a letdown to be honest. In my schoolgirl dreams I always picture Kieran with a big bushy red beard and a manly sporran the size of County Laois. Ah well, maybe the nuns are right when they say ye can't always tell a man by the heft of his sporran. I think the Fairies are in the lead because they keep thumpin' their chests and then pullin' their ganseys over their heads and slidin' across the lounge bar on their knees whereas the other team just keep lookin' at their watches and bangin' their heads against the table, but, to be honest, it's very hard to know what the fcek is goin' on when you're stood outside in a gale and can't hear a blessed word that's being said. The sooner the government people bring the electricity up the mountain and Daddy gets a telly in the kitchen the sooner I can start doin' proper quiz reports.

I'm Concepta by the way, Dusty's younger sister. Dusty was the one born with the brains and the bunions so she was packed off to play quizzes in Manchester. I was the one born with the milky white breasts so I had to stay at home and help Daddy feed the calves. I'd love to go to the quizzes but Dusty says that if God had meant me to go quizzin' He would have given me poise and sophistication not to mention brains. But she also said that if I work hard at school and get decent 'O' levels in the Latin and the Eschatology I might be lucky enough to end up with a proper job like being a priest's housekeeper. She even reckons that in these enlightened times there would be nothing to stop me crackin' through the glass ceiling and becomin' a bishop's housekeeper. Mr Dusty passionately agrees and says there's nothing that would give him greater pleasure than to see me crack through a glass ceiling but he always goes red when he says this and splutters beer through his nostrils. He never says it when Dusty is in the room.

Well, I'm soakin' wet and friggin' freezin' now but at least I've seen all the quiz highlights except for the Charabancs game which was on last - and by that time Mr O'Toole had put the shutters down and told me to fcek off back up the mountain because he wanted to say the rosary and then hunker down and watch Danish Dentist On The Job in the peace and quiet of his own shop. I'll phone Dusty when she gets up tomorrow evenin' to find out who won the matches and then I'll be ready to write the match reports. They should be with you by the middle of next week always assumin' that Alphonsus the postman is sober enough to drive his van. Maybe when the government men bring the electricity up the mountain Daddy can get one of them new fax machines as well as a telly. That would be fierce handy.