Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 02/01/13

Victories for the Fairies, the Bards, Ethel, History Men and Albert to kick-start 2013

Results & Match Reports

I Blame Smoke Fairies just couldn't (quite) keep up with the Opsimaths in the first half. Never mind, they pulverised them in the second half. As QM I witnessed it all - even the sleeping on the roses after the beer break. A jolly end to the festive season and a 'soft landing' return to the totally serious business of 2013 WithQuizzing.

Albert just, but only just, squeaked past The Charabancs of Fire in their first 2013 outing - ending up a mere one point to the good. Damian reports in...

"A great start to the New Year for the Charas with a loss to a 3 man (whoops, apologies to Evelyn) Albert team! What is it about 3 man teams that seem to be our nemesis this season?"

The Compulsory Meat Raffle, after setting a distinctly contemporary paper at the end of 2012, were made to return to fuddy-duddy land as they were routed by Ethel Rodin. James checks in...

"CMR were somewhat disabled by the fact that students don't need to be back for another fortnight... even so Rachel and Richard felt they delivered a performance that the full team would have been proud of. A few more film questions, and they'd have been right up there."

The History Men groggy and replete from their Christmas festivities just about managed to defeat a pair of Men They Couldn't Hang at the Red. Ivor writes...

"Half our team were on detox regimes tonight (whose idea was it to have our first game of the New Year on Jan 2nd?) and perhaps we were not firing on all cylinders. However that is no excuse for a modest performance because we were facing a two man TMTCH who acquitted themselves so well that the result was still in doubt until the last two questions. Congratulations to Dave and Neil (we can see why TMTCH are having their best ever season). And a final word of thanks to our QM Alison (Mrs Cartmill) who gave up an evening when she could have been watching another Everton victory on Sky Sports 1)."

The Bards of Didsbury played in the late kick-off, beating The Electric Pigs a mere 144 hours after the other matches. The Pigs were well up with the pace until Round 4 (when coincidentally Andrew arrived from the Council Chamber) when they proceeded to bomb. Eric was once again in fine form as QM only distracted from his serious mission briefly when the rehearsing cast of Dick Whittington in the Cricket Club Function Room burst into a chorus of In the Navy (no I couldn't work out the relevance of this song to that Panto either).

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the setters were The Prodigals. An excellent paper full of taxing content and interesting formats. I just wonder whether the Blockbuster format for Rounds 3 and 4 couldn't have been applied to the answers rather than key phrases in the questions. But that's a mere quibble on such a well crafted paper. Damian pretty much agrees:

"Nice, well balanced paper from the Prods with something for everyone which, in our view, is always the hallmark of a good and interesting quiz! Well done to the Prodigals!"

..as does Ivor...

"Excellent questions from the Prodigals though we were not quite sure to expect from Cheryl's round (is Cheryl interested in cross-stitching and cinnamon buns or was that Anne-Marie?) and as always we did not have our finger on the pulse of contemporary culture (it's a wise child who knows its own father but at least Kate Hudson's child can Muse over this; and is Harry Styles really old enough to be Taylor Swift's toyboy?). We do crave novelty in this League and Danny's deceptive alphabetical progression round was delightfully unpredictable. Controversies of the night? The Angola/Zambia 13th parallel was confused in the wording, and Jackson's surname was missing."

The Question of the Week

This week the Fairies choose the week's favourite poser plumping for Round 7 Question 7:

Which film was the first to show a flushing toilet?

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

Father Megson

A View from the Fiscal Rocks

A Chairde,

For some time now the financial situation within the Charabancs' camp has been perilous. This will come as no surprise to anybody who has been forced to huddle up close to them in a poorly ventilated taproom of a sultry Wednesday evening and drink in the noxious fumes of home-made coal tar soap. Sadly the inevitable has happened and it was announced early in the new year that three of them have slipped over the fiscal cliff and hurtled headlong into the gaping abbess (Fr Megson's spelling, not mine). The fourth is said to be in a critical condition, clinging onto the crumbling rock face by his fingertips which ever and anon are being viciously gnawed by various small rodents.

The good news for Withquiz is that interim team manager, Dusty, has given assurances that all fixtures will be fulfilled. A small slush fund found under Fr Megson's bed - along with some very interesting and collectible magazines charting the meteoric rise to stardom of various buxom artistes such as Diana Dors and Chesty Morgan to name but four - will be used to defray expenses. Please note however that all games featuring the Charabancs will now commence at 9:30 pm as it will now be necessary for the team to get drunk before they come to the quiz. Investing in industrial quantities of Lidl's excellent and much underrated own-brand vodka makes a lot more financial sense than forking out anything up to a fiver for a round of drinks in glitzy over-priced tourist traps such as the Turnpike in Withington. It remains to be seen what effect this pre-drunkenness will have on the team's performance but the general consensus seems to be that the only way is up.

One unfortunate side effect of this fiscal collapse will of course be that the Charabancs will no longer be in a position to maintain the time-honoured tradition of buying a round of drinks for the losing team. On the positive side however, Dusty knows a bloke in Strangeways who used to be an actuary and he reckons that statistically this is unlikely to be a problem. He calculates that if Dusty accurately monitors the team's vodka consumption before leaving home they should have little difficulty in getting a round of drinks down their necks before closing time. And, in the unlikely event of a Charabancs win - well, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I suppose one viable idea might be to issue vouchers to the losing team. The vouchers (one per losing team) could then be saved up and any team lucky enough to collect, say, six vouchers would be entered into a prize draw with the top prize being a free round of drinks. We might have sold the Chesty Morgan magazines by that stage so I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem financing this solution. Anyway, it's still a good few years off yet and who's to say that the price of booze won't have gone down by then.

Hope that's OK. I appreciate that there will always be a small majority in any quiz league who like to whinge and who find it difficult to cope with change - I can still remember the furore caused by the decision to put a new toilet roll in the Gents in the White Swan! If you are one of these moaning Minnies please feel free to contact Dusty or Fr Megson and they will be delighted to tell you where to go. This recession is here to stay and it's time you lot started living in the real world. Dave Cameron has managed to do it so why can't you?