Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 04/12/13

Top two teams win; Ethel and The Pigs win the two derbies

Results & Match Reports

Albert just lost the Fletcher Moss derby to The Electric Pigs. Andrew reports:

"Nip and tuck all night with both teams ahead twice. A very convivial evening. Quote of the night came from myself. After a long delay in the questions caused by everyone enjoying a good chortle I thought it was my question. On being informed that I'd already had my question I asked 'Well, how did I do?'

Ethel Rodin just edged home in the Cricket Club derby against The Bards. Ivor the Setter was in attendance and tells us....

"It was 37 all with two questions to go - John got his 2 with the Spinnaker Tower but Tony just failed to remember the Rolls Royce engine."

I've Never Been To One bounced back with a win over Compulsory Meat Raffle at the Griffin. Kieran gives us the lowdown...

"Very decent quiz QM'd by Historyman Dave who denied responsibility for almost all of it - and very genial company with our Raffler guests. Both teams played three handed and the conferred questions were allocated the names Thaddeus (CMR) and Bill (for us). This was to acknowledge that Barry's absence at Old Trafford was partly driven by his wish to honour the memory of Bill Foulkes. Unfortunately for him he also had to watch Marouane Fellaini and witness, alongside his manager, Everton at last winning at the Theatre of Screams. Tough gig. His mood won't be improved when he reads that we answered all the horse racing and astronomy questions without him.

Question of the week? Bryan Ferry's progeny. We expected Otis to look much more of a twat."

The Charabancs of Fire and The Opsimaths fought a close battle in the first half but with the pictures at the start of the second half the visitors leapt ahead and maintained their lead through to the whistle.

The Prodigals beat The Men They Couldn't Hang at the Albert Club. Anne-Marie reports a close match for most of the rounds with the home team just getting their noses in front.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by The Prodigals. For the Opsimaths this was not a typical History Men paper. Our usual reaction to papers from Ivor and co. is dread. However well we've been doing up to that point in the season we know we're in for a rough ride ending in likely defeat. We just don't seem to know the same stuff as them. This time, however, there were plenty of questions to our taste - and to the Chara's taste as well. I think the only gripe was that some of the pairs seemed a bit skew-whiff in terms of evenness. I'm happy to report that by and large the Opsimaths had the skew and the Charas had the whiff. When it came to the post-match banter a few nominations for Question of the Week were suggested which is always a good sign......for pure impenetrability Pick Your Own Question 14 had plenty of backing:

'Leos Janacek’s 1926 orchestral work Sinfonietta (JW 6/18) plays an important role in the plot of which trilogy of novels by Japanese author Haruki Murakami?'

Roisin went for Pick Your Own Question 12:

'Which song by Ian Dury, written as a protest against International Year of the Disabled, which Dury thought patronising, did the BBC ban in 1981. However, it was played at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games having been recognised as a powerful appeal for understanding to 'people in normal land'?'

and Round 4 Question 7 gave rise to an enjoyable (but ultimately fruitless) bit of conferring:

'Which is the most northerly city (in the Northern Hemisphere) to have a population of greater than one million people?'

I won the Answer of the Week award hands down for my suggestion that the picture of the 4 lads was showing the progeny of Cliff Richard. Despite guffaws from both teams, Nick seemed to think this was just possible but only if they were quads - or if the volume of Mr Richard's activities had been under-reported.

Anne-Marie and her Prodigals liked the paper too: "The best sort of quiz, where if you don't know the answer you can't wait to find out!"

Ivor unashamedly contributes a review for his own team's paper (aren't you meant to shed an article of clothing for doing that sort of thing?) saying:

"Although there was some grumbling about perceived mismatches in the pairs, in the end everything evened out pretty well with only 7 unanswereds (breaking 3-4), 19 2s (breaking 9-10) and 15 steals (breaking 7-8). With a combined score of 76 the setters think we pitched it about right. No doubt others might disagree but that is what makes the news page fun."
Finally, thanks to the setters for reminding us of a famous WithQuiz moment from the past with their Lordi question in the Spares round. See 'Chatterbox' below for an explanation.

The Question of the Week

This week the Pigs and Albert liked Round 2 Question 4:

So far four British Prime Ministers (all serving in the 20^th century) have lived long enough to celebrate a 90^th birthday. Name 3 of them.

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

Chatterbox

Listening to Question 5 in the Spare round at the end of the evening brought to mind the pulsating climax to the 2005/6 season when the Pigs snatched the Val Draper Cup from FCEK (now The Charas) on the dramatic final question of the evening. For old time's sake the Quiz Biz article from that evening (gaudy old colour scheme and all) is reproduced below. By the way note that the QotW back then sort of cropped up last night. Plus ca change!

Quiz Biz 24/05/06

The Val Draper Cup Final
The Result
Oh my Lordi what a Finnish - and at the same Albert Club that only days before had sat mesmerised as the melodrama of the Eurovision Song Contest unfolded on the big screen. In a pulsating match that went with the Pigs then swung violently to FCEK, the Pigs just managed to edge back in the final 2 rounds so that with the last question falling to Pig Dave it was 2 points to tie. After what seemed a lifetime Dave muttered "Tosca" and miraculously he had earned the Pigs the right to extra time. With great foresight Ethel had provided a tie-breaker question for just such an eventuality. Both teams were asked to guess the 1952 Eskimo population of Greenland (what!!!!). The Pigs guessed nearest and walked off with the Val Draper prize. Hard luck FCEK you wus robbed - but was there ever such a final? So the Pigs are our Cupwinners and FCEK the season's everywhere runners up. Thanks to both teams for such an enjoyable evening.

The Withquiz Plate Final
The Result
....meanwhile next door in the same Albert Club the Mad Dogs ran up a relatively easy victory over the local heroes from Albert Park.

The Paper
Ethel Rodin set the Final - and final - paper of the year. Before passing any comments I must first of all apologise to them for inadvertently assigning them to set 2 papers during the cup competitions (Ethel set the first round paper way back at the start of April). By rights my own team, the Opsimaths, should have set for the Finals. By the time my error was pointed out it was a bit late in the day and Ethel, having prepared some of the question material, agreed to carry on with the setting duties - thus breaking all records by setting 4 papers in the season!!

As to the paper itself? Well everybody loved it. A great way to end a most enjoyable season. Good taxing questions with a reasonable balance (as the tied result proved).

Question of the Week
This week the award goes to Round 6 Q7:

Who was the only king of England since 1066 that did not die in England or France?

Click here to see the answers to this and the rest of the week's questions and answers.

.....and finally
Next week (Wednesday May 31st) we celebrate the passing of yet another bumper quiz season with the End of Season social evening at the Albert Club. A friendly quiz set by Cupwinner Gerry 'Dummy' Hennessy and read by John Tolan in his last Withquiz evening before he retires to deepest Yorkshire, will be rounded off with the awards ceremony. Plenty of jollification. Do get your team along.

And if you want to limber up for next Wednesday, the monthly Albert Club quiz evening takes place on Bank Holiday Monday (29th) starting at around 8.15pm. The monthly Brainbreaker prize is now up to £30 - so coming along could be well worth your while.

Fr Megson

JUMPING OFF THE BATTLEMENTS INTO GLORY

WITH A BLOOD-CURDLING CRY OF "TOSCA" A PIG CALLED DAVE HURLS HIMSELF AND HIS TRUSTY STEED OFF THE BATTLEMENTS.............................WILL HE SOAR PEGASUS-LIKE INTO THE WELCOMING ARMS OF WINGED NIKE, GODDESS OF VICTORY AND NAFF SPORTSWEAR...........................................OR WILL HE SIMPLY GO SPLAT ONTO THE ROCKS BELOW?

TUNE INTO WITHQUIZ NEXT WEEK FOR ANOTHER EXCITING ADVENTURE OF "PIGS IN SPACE". WITH SPECIAL GUEST STAR GARY HEARTTHROB.

Only kidding. Relax, Dave and fellow Piggies, it's all over and you really have won probably the most exciting Cup Final of all time. I remember watching Kieran's lot being narrowly defeated on the last question by St. Caths in (I think) 2003. That one certainly was up there with the classics but I think the gut-wrenching drama of Wednesday night just pipped it to the post.

Not much to say really since I think the match spoke for itself and most of you were there in person to witness either our match or the Plate Final (well done, Dogs - hard luck, Albert Park). A big thank you for the splendid turnout which added greatly to the atmosphere of the Finals......let's make sure we all take note and continue to pack all future Cup Finals to the rafters.

Thanks also to Ethel for setting their second paper of the Cup Season - fill in your overtime docket, Roz and send it to Mike. Should be worth about 3 casks of finest Bishop's Finger (myself and Mr Dennison Snr. still wince at our blurt to this question!). The questions were fine. Some people felt they were a bit uneven. Maybe so. Certainly the scoring graph indicated many peaks and troughs for both teams and I suppose it was inevitable that the Piggies handled the troughs better than us since they have had their snouts in them for more years than Gerry H. would care to admit. But, as always in a drawn game, you have to conclude that the balance was just right. Well done Ethel for upping the ante and making the questions a bit harder than usual. This is exactly as it should be in a final. Your motto was obviously MAKE THE BUGGERS SUFFER IF THEY WANT TO WIN A CUP and it worked admirably.

I will however quibble with the means used to decide the outcome after our drawn Final. Both teams worked really hard to achieve a draw and I thought the overall level of G.K. and inspired guesswork was very high. A shame then that we had instantly to resort to penalties instead of giving us a little bit of extra time or possibly even a golden goal outcome. What I mean is that some genuine G.K. could have been used in a fairly brief format - e.g. one rep from each team in a life or death face off or something similar using a question (or questions) similar to the standard of the spares. Then if still unresolved, you could resort to the dreaded Eskimos........just a personal point of view, maybe it could be discussed at greater length before the next drawn Final (quite possibly not until May 2076, but you never know....

A big thank you to our very own Theo Walcott aka Charles Dennison who stood in at very short notice to replace Roisin who had to cry off due to a family illness. It was only his third quiz ever and was by his own admission a bit of a baptism of fire but he can be proud of the part he played in such a good game.

Well done Pigs. Enjoy your lap of honour next week.

Gerry

Fr. Megson adds:

Not so fast there - we will of course be appealing against last night's result. Apart from the fact that all of the Pig's answers were clearly offside and that Gerry H. spent all evening passing love notes (and quite possibly fivers) to the QM, what about that last answer? I spent all last night looking at the video replays and it is now quite obvious to me that what Dave actually shouts out is "Tusker". And, as you know, a tusker was a type of primordial warthog common in the swampy area now known as Didsbury. So Dave's cry wasn't an answer - merely an atavistic cri-de-coeur to an early ancestor of his team. Replay next Wednesday, White Swan, 8pm sharp. FCEK to set.

Fr. M.