Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 11/12/13

The Opsimaths and INBTO power on whilst the Pigs sneak up above the Bards into third place

Results & Match Reports

Compulsory Meat Raffle were Rachael-lite this week (she's on a cruise apparently) and so could only field three (Jeremy Paxman was unavailable to stand in it seems). The upshot was a fairly heavy loss to the The Opsimaths. A result made even sadder, according to the Raffle, by the fact that Rachael is a sucker for Christmas and would have loved the first Round. Yet again I couldn't help admiring the way the students accepted the predominance of prehistoric 'popular culture' questions with equanimity. Perhaps it's just the 'selfish student gene' adapting to the fact that we are heading for an era in which four out of every five people will be more conversant with Cliff Richard and The Shadows than Lady Gaga, and every street corner will be occupied by a Granny waiting to mug you.

Oh, and for those that like to follow these things, a mutation of the Raffle team will be appearing on Only Connect in the new year. Called The Record Collectors I'm reliably informed that they compete in at least 3

The high-flying Electric Pigs beat The Men They Couldn't Hang at the Fletcher Moss. It does appear that the most popular Christmas present we could all receive would be the first TMTCH victory of the season. As Andrew reports:

"A hard fought quiz against the three-man Men. How on earth are these guys occupying such a lowly place in the league table?"

The Bards lost to I've Never Been To One at the Cricket Club. Kieran spills the beans:

"A paper which really suited us and one of those nights when all the questions on our side fell to the right people. So the man in the Barbour jacket got the bird questions the opera buff got Philip Glass, the pop music aficionado got both Oasis and REM and I got Michael Ball!

Well done Ethel, we really liked this quiz and the 'two-part three word answers' round was a good innovation, crowned by the magnificent 'Chow Mein Kampf'.

Tony would like it minuted that he was very hard done to by the paper since he was the undoubted Jonah receiving twice as many unanswerable questions as anyone else - two to everyone else's one!"

The Prodigals beat Albert by the narrowest of margins at the Albert Club. Anne-Marie sums up:

"Blimey another close match at the club. Glad I was QM for what seemed quite a tough quiz. Evelyn was the star player with some inspired answers. For us QotW and AotW was R3 Q7 about the traditional Mothering Sunday present given by daughters in service." (Ed: Like you I'd love to know what answer was given to this question but A-M hasn't mentioned it)

The History Men lost to The Charabancs of Fire in a thrilling 'down to the wire' contest at The Turnpike (the Red was just too full and noisy). Ivor tells the tale:

"Don’t you just hate the Christmas season? Still two weeks to go and people already out making a nuisance of themselves revelling in local hostelries (and I don’t mean us). Don’t they know there’s serious quizzing going on? How can we settle into the few seats remaining surrounded by inappropriately premature merriment? Answer: we can’t, so it was off to the Turnpike for our home clash with the Charas. We won the first round 6-0 (more of a tennis score than a cricket score) but then there was inexorable and inevitable whittling away of the lead until at the very last question they got their victory. This is the third match this season we have lost by a single point as well as sharing a tied result. So we continue our slide down the table. At this rate we will meet the Charas coming up."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by Ethel Rodin. Another good paper with plaudits from most quarters. Perhaps slightly more accessible than your usual Ethel offering. The average aggregate score at 65.8 was just a tad below the average for the season across all papers (67.7). The 'Linked Answers' round clearly went down a storm and ought to be copied by other setters before the season's out. As Kieran says above, the serendipity of being able to marry the machinations of the world's most evil mind with a takeaway menu somehow brings everything down to earth.

The History men's views - through the Cartmill prism....

"The paper? We never do well with Ethel papers. We are just not on their wavelength - tonight literally so. As usual the birds questions stumped our resident twitchers and the pictures proved a bit of a trial. Of course it doesn’t help if you have forgotten your reading glasses though Tim commented that the city pictures looked as if they had been taken by a U2 spy plane on a foggy day (or perhaps we’re getting cataracts).

Round 2 (3 word double answers) was round of the week, while Round 2 Question 6 gets QotW."

In the posh people's bit of The Turnpike (The History Men and The Charas played in the public bar) The Raffle and The Opsimaths loved the paper. "So much to learn about what it was like in our grandparents' day" was one comment I think I caught. Writing this and glancing at my scribbles from the evening I see the names of all The Shadows successfully recalled. In the mid-20th century listed decor of The Turnpike what could be more in tune with time and place?

The Question of the Week

This week a number of the teams voted for Round 2 Question 6 (Round 2 is the Round in which the questions give 2 answers each of two words, where the second word of the first answer is the same as the first word of the second answer):

Which artist wrote "I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow and death stood by my side since the day I was born"? His Nazi-orchestrated funeral left the impression with his fellow countrymen that he was a Nazi sympathiser

and

Which series of children's books is about a group of unwanted vegetables, legumes, fruits and nuts who were swept to the corner of the shop but ran away together and set up home in and around an old forgotten garden shed? They spawned a brand of yoghurts based on the name of the characters.

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