Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 27/02/13

Wins for The Fairies, The Bards, The Opsimaths, Ethel and the History Men as the form book rules OK

Results & Match Reports

First of all I need to apologise to Chunky for my report last week. Far from enjoying the Wall round they were 'hopping mad' with it. It lost them 8 points (I think) - and thereby the match. Other rounds were pretty even with Chunky marginally ahead. I have a feeling the Wall will not be making a reappearance in Stockport any time soon

The Men They Couldn't Hang couldn't quite catch up with The History Men. Ivor tells us what went on:

"A game of two halves tonight. With three rounds to go we were 15 points ahead and wondering if 50 was in reach. Then the predictable hubris as the Men (or rather 3 men and a woman) made up considerable ground. Lucky there are no Round 9s in this league."

The Prodigals were done over by I Blame Smoke Fairies at the Albert Club. Kieran gives his usual commentary on the evening's doings:

"The evening did not start well when, while genning up on David's crib sheet outside the club, we were told by a Frank Gallagheresque Albert Club member that we had no chance.

Things improved when we moved inside to discover that the back room was occupied by an art class. Everyone asked in turn "oh er is it....?" and no one got to finish the question before being told, very firmly "NO!". "I was going to get my charcoals out" said David. We decided this must be rhyming slang - charcoal stick............. oh suit yourselves.

Art students and non existent models, clothed or otherwise, removed, we played the quiz to the backdrop of the best music in the league. As The Stones, Beach Boys, The Who and Velvet Underground serenaded us we had a most enjoyable evening in the company of the ever genial Prodigals. We were always comfortable on a Pigs paper offering plenty of points and took to indulging ourselves by rubbishing Mark's non-existent knowledge of chemistry.

Barry went from David Attenborough to Johnny Morris in a heartbeat as he identified the Okapi as a Quagga but he hadn't been told the Alpha and Omega structure of the round.

Question of the week was the one about the Hibbitt brothers just for its mind-numbing length.

I'll leave Mark to pursue the argument over the antecedents of the Chancellor of the University of HUDDERSFIELD and lifelong supporter of HUDDERSFIELD TOWN, Patrick Stewart!

Next week is Super Wednesday with the top four playing each other as the season reaches its climax. Will the start times be staggered for the worldwide audience? If Gary Neville comes anywhere near me there will be trouble."

The Charabancs of Fire tagged along on the coat tails of The Bards but could never quite get further up their legs. Damian reports:

"The Charas entered into tonight's proceedings a tad more philosophically than usual. After managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against the Opsimaths a fortnight ago, we were kind of resigned to our inevitable drubbing this week at the hands of the Bards. We were not disappointed. We stayed solidly behind our opponents in every single round - but at least we managed to finish on 30 points, just 7 behind the Bards. That seems almost like a victory for us these days, especially when facing last season's league champions who are prime contenders to win this season."

Albert chose to go second and regretted it for the rest of the evening as The Opsimaths steamed away to a comfortable victory. Andrew, who was QMing for us, was able to provide a valuable insight into the legendary Pigs setting process. The scrupulousness with which balance is maintained throughout is only dashed by the completely unpredictable circumstance of one team knowing bugger all in one round and the other team knowing bloody everything. Having said this the balance was quite evident on the Cheltenham Gold Cup round - no-one got a thing (well actually the round went 1-0 to the Albert)

Ethel Rodin beat Compulsory Meat Raffle - but more than that I cannot divulge.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by The Electric Pigs. Despite my rather caustic comments above in relation to the Albert/Opsimaths match we enjoyed the paper. It scored more on average than the Pigs' effort earlier in the season and was full of interesting ideas. The hidden theme in the first round was nicely executed with a few misleading trails before the Home straight (Oh God, another horse metaphor).

Damian gives his usual summary:

"The Piggies' paper had some interesting theme rounds although we were all left wondering what exactly the Poseidon Adventure had to do with Superman? However, we felt a vote of congratulations to the Piggies was in order for managing to set a round on no less than EIGHT famous Bradfordians that, bar our own dear Chara John, did not include the most famous Bradfordian of all, composer Frederick Delius! Both Bard Tony and Yours Truly had been salivating patiently in anticipation of that one."

Judging from the match reports above there does seem to be doubt about Patrick Stewart coming from Bradford - but then Bradford and Huddersfield are just two small northern towns fairly close to one another. One can hardly blame the setters for getting them muddled up (Oh, hello, Mark!)

Ivor weighs in (whoops another horse metaphor):

"Plenty to entertain tonight with the themes - the 'oh too obvious' PMs actually turning into a Home Secretary connection; the psychologists, no, theologians, no, it's Superman (but too late recognised to help us); and paradoxically the Cheltenham Gold Cup being spotted on question 1 (QM Gilly did say the quiz was a "boy's quiz"). Interesting extra fact from Graham was that War of Attrition was owned by RyanAir boss Michael O'Leary - we wondered if the jockey gets charged extra if he rides overweight."

The Question of the Week

This week the Fairies vote (somewhat ironically for) Round 8 Question 6 (the Bradfordians round):

These footballing brothers both enjoyed careers primarily in the top flight of English football. The eldest, born in 1947, began his career at Leeds United before joining Newcastle United in 1971. He played in the 1974 FA Cup final before moving to Birmingham City in 1975. He went back to Newcastle in 1978 before retiring in the early 1980s. He died of cancer in 1994. The younger, born in 1951, began his career at Bradford Park Avenue before joining Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1968. He played for Wolves for 18 years until 1986. A 2 year spell followed at Coventry City before he finished his career at Bristol Rovers. Who are they?

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

Chatterbox

Spurred on by an exchange of emails with Chunky's John Holden this week - and by the recent debate on the message board I thought I'd venture once more into the 'Perfect Quiz' controversy. For me (and I know there are some very different views about) these are the most important factors that make for enjoyment on a Wednesday evening - in order of importance:

1. Interesting question/answer content

I want to be entertained by finding out something I didn't know - or by having my brain dragged through a process that leads me to realising I do know something I didn't think I knew. Ideally by the end of the evening I'd like to have engaged in at least a couple of conversations about questions in the evening's paper with like-minded friends. For me the antithesis of the interesting question is the 'know/don't know' question which used to be the staple diet of our league when I started in the late 1970s. In my book Gerry Collins is the shining example of how to ask interesting questions. As I did a few years ago I'll quote this Collins example: "Dublin’s most prestigious shopping street is, somewhat annoyingly, named after which former British Prime Minister?". Perfect! In a few words you have two ways into the answer with a bit of Collins prejudice to boot. Compare this to the boring: "What is Dublin's most prestigious shopping street?" or "Who preceded Lord North as Prime Minister?". I quote Gerry but there are now quite a few setters in our league who've mastered this art and whose papers I really look forward to. In short knowing things is better than ignorance but being able to connect pieces of knowledge in relationships then that way lies invention and improvement, and in our activity, interest.

2. Diverse subjects and round types - with the prospect of innovation

This means a wide range of subject matters (a whole round on one subject is usually OTT) - and a spread of round types (a whole quiz full of pairs or 8 rounds of hidden themes is not enjoyable to me). We are much better at this than we used to be but occasionally setters do get carried away with the fun of the new and a paper gets dominated by a setter playing with a new idea at the expense of the playing teams. Nevertheless I think we should be aiming to invent one new form of round each year to keep things spiced up. Perhaps when we establish how best to fit the Only Connect Wall into our playing and scoring format this will become this season's main innovation. Or maybe the Pointless format could be adopted. I've already got a Pointless-formatted round in my end of month Albert Club quizzes where there are a number of right answers but you have get the one that the least number of people have nominated in the traditional 'we asked 100 people...' survey. Is this valid for Wednesday evenings? A bit of knowledge and a bit of inspired guesswork rammed together into a single question. One thing's for sure it's a lot of fun else why would Pointless be such a popular show?

3. Questions that can be answered

Ideally there should be no questions in a quiz which no-one on either side cannot answer correctly. Ivor's religious observance of stats on the number of 'unanswerables' seems valid to me - a stat well worth publicising (as is the Average Aggregate score that I place against the paper each week on this site).

4. Fair balance

This means that by the end of the evening neither team has had all the 'stinkers'. Incidentally the Bingo round debate seems to me to have missed the crucial point that if you are setting such a round you need to ensure that all the questions are of similar difficulty. If you do this then a Bingo round can be fairer than a paired round where the second of the pair of questions is usually easier because the conference surrounding the first of the pair may have unearthed the answer in passing. Similarly a hidden theme round may favour those going later in the round once the theme has been established. Bingo rounds should not be where setters dump crap questions absolving themselves of blame by saying "well you shouldn't have chosen that number".

5. The better teams tend to win

Now and again, by dint of good fortune with the toss or because all their good subjects and none of their weak ones came up on the same evening, the less able team can come out on top. Over the whole season, however, the league table should reflect merit pretty well. In my exchange with John I suggested that a subjective ranking of the 11 WithQuiz teams from someone who played throughout last season would have placed the teams in pretty much the same order as the final league table shows. Can't say fairer than that!