Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 15/01/14

A tough old paper sees INBTO slip up against the Charas

Results & Match Reports

The Bards won a 3-a-side match against Compulsory Meat Raffle. Tony reports:

"Rachael volunteered to play solo as the rest of her team were exam tied - but in the event we lent her Eric and Dom, and Sarah asked the Qs. We each played three-handed."

TMTCH were quite unable to match their exploits over the past 2 matches and slithered to defeat against The Prodigals.

I've Never Been To One most surprisingly lost at home to The Charabancs of Fire. This was an achingly close encounter with the Charas always in front but never by more than a thin margin. Perhaps it was the toughness of the paper that levelled the playing-field somewhat. But whatever it was, the Charas were jubilant in victory. Bob 'The Voice' Ganley was in the QM chair to everyone's delight so that the invitation to sing in booze-themed Round 4 became the highlight of the evening. Bob then kindly stayed behind to fill me in on the quiz action (I'd been at the Etihad of course).

The Electric Pigs just edged it against Albert in the Fletcher Moss derby. As Andrew reports:

"Nip and tuck all night. Victory came on the last question. If we had got it wrong they would have drawn with Rebecca."

The History Men were beaten by Ethel Rodin in a low scoring quiz that neither side enjoyed. According to Ivor the only mitigation was the fact they relocated from The Red to The Turnpike where the noise level and the beer prices were both more than acceptably low.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by The Opsimaths.

It saddens me to say it, but I think the Opsimaths (i.e. us) slipped up on this one. The scores were universally low and - however interesting some of the material might have been - this made for some dull evenings around Didsbury and Withington. An average aggregate of 57.4 is, by nearly 5 points, the lowest of the season to date. Sorry!!

Tony remarks: "We were not impressed with having Long John Silver for the third week running!"

Cheryl, like others, reports that the paper was "a bit of a struggle."

Ivor puts the whole matter under the microscope with a searing analysis:

"We did not enjoy this quiz. Of course The History Men never enjoy Opsimaths' quizzes - but even the winners did not enjoy it. An aggregate score of 53 with 23 unanswered questions does suggest the level of difficulty was set too high.

Some pairs were rather uneven too - and the Canadian PM theme would have been difficult even as an announced theme. We were confused by being told that the University theme was only in the question and then find that Q1 had Imperial (another University) in the answer. Indeed having the theme in the question and the answer might have made for an interesting variation. Mary Robinson’s year of resignation is nigh on impossible to guess and would have benefited from a year's leeway either way for people without an interest in the non-British bit of Ireland.

23 is our lowest score for some time and we were lucky to get that. Our 12 questions from rounds 3 to 5 generated 3 points with 9 questions unanswered by anyone.

Anyway looking on the bright side we decided to relocate from The Red to the Turnpike so the alcohol was cheap (though the landlady said triple sec rather than Cointreau should be used in a Margherita and despite actually having once had a Singapore Sling in Raffles Long Bar I could not recall its contents)."

...and last word goes to an ever diplomatic Andrew (well he's a politician you know):

"The verdict on the quiz was mixed. Round 5 Questions 1 and 2 (about the Formula One father and son drivers) was a stand out mismatched pair. Some thought the quiz hard, some obscure. The Canadian PM theme was challenging. Question of the week: Round 3 Question 4."

The Question of the Week

This week Andrew votes for Round 3 Question 4:

Although it may have had something to do with this person shouting "Hello Belfast!", what musician has been banned from performing in Bangor, Northern Ireland, because of the obscenity of his lyrics?

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

Chatterbox

One of the slight irritations of looking after the website is that I get a constant stream of invitations to recruit teams from amongst your numbers to take part in pretty well all the quiz shows on the telly. I've got wise to your general appetite for such things and by and large don't clutter the website up with these invitations.

However yesterday I was phoned by a character called Bryce from Egghead-land. Now it seems to me that the thought of putting together a WithQuiz quintet to travel up to Glasgow to knock the s**t out of Dave and his mates would be quite a tasty idea to some of our number.

So - any takers? If so I'll get the application process underway.