As usual the Withington team prospered on the Stockport style of rounds wheeled out in the first half garnering a four point lead by the interval.  Atypically, however, they went on to garner a bigger lead in the second half on the WithQuiz style rounds.  Having said this Stockport were in contention up until the last few questions so it was never a shoo-in.

The paper this week was a joint effort: Stockport-style by Mike Wagstaffe and WithQuiz-style by me (Mike Bath).

On the whole the teams seemed to enjoy what was served up.  The first half à la Stockport exemplified the crisp 'what? who? where?' style that is the hallmark of a good Stockport paper.  The second half of WithQuizzery delved into 'why? how?' territory with a more cryptic format to the questions.  As a result part two was about twice the length in terms of time taken but still plenty enjoyable.

The one notable exception to crispness in the Stockport first half was a pair of questions asking the teams to nominate the proverb that was the exact contradiction to the one given (the two in question were: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "It is better to be safe than sorry").  It soon transpired that pretty well every saying that you could think of was a likely candidate.  In the end neither team scored any points for either of these questions.

The WithQuiz second half featured two paired rounds, a hidden theme round and one called 'Biggy in the Middle' in which a sequence of names were given with the middle, and best known one, missing and to be worked out.  For instance 'Buchanan, ???, Johnson' would have led to the answer 'Lincoln' as Abraham Lincoln was the US President missing in the list.  This round worked fairly well - perhaps it could be picked up as style to be used this season?

From a few candidates the teams went for Round 4 Question 10:

In 1964 it was Rupert Davies and in 1966 Andrew Cruickshank, but who was it in 1965?

The question went to Stockport who pondered for ages until someone recalled the title sequence of the 1960s TV series Maigret with Rupert Davies lighting a pipe in a French alleyway.  Bit by bit the pieces fell into place until the correct answer emerged with a note of triumph.  A herculean team effort rewarded with a mere one point.

The new league season gets underway on Wednesday October 2nd with a paper from 'I've Never Been to One' (the Fairies with a new lick of paint).

All the fixtures are now up on the website (thanks yet again to Roddy for sorting them out).

There are precious few changes this year with the same teams playing at the same venues and only the Fairies changing their name to the aforementioned 'I've Never Been to One'.

The only real change is that the WIST competition has spawned an identical competition for the teams each side of the Mersey finishing 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th (in our case that's the History Men, the Prodigals, Albert and the Charabancs).  They'll play their Stockport equivalents on the same night and with the same paper as used by the top 4 teams in the, now traditional, WIST Champions Cup (by the way the Stockport team known as Locomotiv Stöckpört is really The Railway but they felt a continental tinge might get them off to a more stylish start).  You'll see on the fixtures page I've dubbed this new competition 'A-trophy' - that seemed to get the least negative signals at the WIST Friendly so I'll stick with it.