Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 05/02/14

Opsimaths win the battle at the top while the Bards slip further behind in 3rd place

Results & Match Reports

The History Men did it again as they tied with The Electric Pigs. What is it about the History Men that make them this season's tie specialists? It's quite a skill you know. Ending up level is a much harder trick to engineer than surging to victory or collapsing to defeat. What's Ivor's view?

"Our second consecutive tie and the third of the season. Last week we were 8 points ahead after three rounds which got whittled away. Tonight we were 7 points ahead with only one round to go but somehow contrived to achieve zero points to the Pigs' seven in the 'In the News' round. Our only saving grace was that we could very well have lost by a point had Dave gone for a two with the last question of the night.

Tonight saw the Pigs debut of Tom, Guy’s son, and he was well placed to provide answers to the more contemporary questions that we old codgers struggle with (he is only half the age of our 'young David'). It also saw the return from New Zealand of Rupert in the QM seat but even his stentorian tone struggled against the cackle of lady student drinkers at the surrounding tables in the Red Lion snug. Just like it is on an empty bus when the swivel-eyed loon wants to sit beside you , so it seems in a largely empty Red Lion the toping undergraduates of Manchester want to natter next to serious quizzers."

The Opsimaths beat I've Never Been to One in perhaps the most important match between now and the end of the season, as far as the League title is concerned. Without a doubt the key was the inclusion of Paddy Duffy on the Opsimaths team. Paddy has played fairly regularly for us this year. He works on University Challenge, is a published best selling author (Did That Actually Happen?: A Journey Through Unbelievable Moments in Irish Politics - available from all good book stores/sites), is Irish (of course) and, most importantly for us, can go head to head with Rachael on contemporary pop music. Perhaps Paddy's only weakness is an admiration for Jeremy Paxman (although I must say Paxo's script and delivery on his Monday evening Great War documentary has been riveting and totally devoid of the haughty 'put down' style he adopts as his default mode on Newsnight as he sneers his way through our political class). Against INBTO Paddy was electric.

The Bards of Didsbury lost to Ethel Rodin in what would have been the Didsbury Cricket Club derby until Ethel decided to return to The White Swan a few weeks ago. Both teams have been enigmas this season - at times promising world domination and then falling back to mediocrity. Perhaps this victory will kick off a late Ethel Rodin surge for a place in 'Europe'. BTW did anyone see James' missus on the box at the weekend being interviewed on her doorstep by Sky News? I thought she did pretty well at besting whichever feckless Tory was on the other line. When Labour get back in, will world leaders (or Nick Robinson for that matter) be dropping by Fairfax Avenue?

Albert scored a comfortable victory over The Men They Couldn't Hang at the Fletcher Moss. The Men's mid season flourish seems to be over. Mike O'B reports: "Albert avoided yet another Arab Strapping by virtue of having Stephen (my son) in our team. His knowledge of music and modern culture was too much for the rest of us 'Fudds'. This would have been hard going for us without him."

The Charabancs of Fire lost to The Prodigals by four points in the 1950s comfort of the sedate Turnpike.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by Compulsory Meat Raffle.

With an aggregate average across the matches of 66 this was pitched at just about the right level of difficulty (the season's average score across all matches currently stands at 68). What's more the balance seemed pretty good with another tied match to testify to the fact. Although the relative difficulty within some question pairings seemed pretty skewed (like the racing circuit layouts) I think the 'skewiness' evened out. So a well constructed paper which was well received.

The best aspect of the paper for me, however, lay in the themes - especially those deployed in Rounds 2 and 6. In the Opsimaths match we got both of these themes early on with the result that by the time the questioning got round to me in seat 4 I had a list of all the possible theme words that might occur in the answer. I'm sure this made a pretty big difference to the outcome of our match (my impression was that INBTO were a little behind us in picking up the themes). Isn't this the way themes should work giving a distinct advantage to the team that picks up on them - else why have them?

Downside? Well it wouldn't be a CMR paper without a bit of contemporary music material from Rachael, our resident record label entrepreneur. Of the 64 frontline questions I counted 7 pop music questions plus a whole round where cracking the theme relied on a knowledge of the pop music scene. Arguably this makes almost 25% of the paper on one subject. In slight mitigation there were 2 classical music questions.

So what were the views from round and about?

Mike O'Brien from the Albert team: "The themes were cleverly done and there were relatively few unanswerables - so a good quiz."

Ivor from the History Men v Pigs match: "Quiz included 18 unanswereds and a combined score of 61 - which rates it as quite hard by our estimation. However a sufficient number of interesting questions to give it an overall thumbs up."

James from the Ethel/Bards match: "It felt like the Bards (who went second first) got the harder questions but in fact the unanswereds only fell 7-6. Ethel got more 2s though (12 to the Bards' 7) and it seemed like our 2s were easier. QotW is hard to assess. Question which took a week was the 6-line R3Q3 - but it was unanswered after all the effort put in. We thought R1Q3 was a worthy contender; we discounted The Sixth Sense as an answer on the basis that the whole point of that film was that he was a ghost and this was revealed at the very end of the film!"

Finally Anne-Marie from the Prodigals v Charabancs battleground: "A great quiz from CMR - and dirt cheap beer at The Turnpike. QotW Round 1 Q3 & Q4. We all loved that pair."

The Question of the Week

Mike O'Brien and Anne-Marie both agree on Round 1 Question 4:

Which book's title is said to have been translated into Japanese as meaning the equivalent of The Angry Raisins?

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

Chatterbox

Still waiting to hear from Eggheads as to whether they want us in Glasgow. I'll let you know as soon as I hear.