Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 19/02/14

Chunky and INBTO go through to the WIST final; Albert will play The Prodigals in an all-WithQuiz A-trophy final

Results & Match Reports

The Results - WIST Champions Cup - Semi Finals

Chunky beat The Bards by a fairly convincing margin at Didsbury Cricket Club (The Pineapple was clogged with other matches). Tony (or it may be Steve - the text message had no name) reports in:

"Another bloody Blockbuster Bingo battering - and whatever happened to the comma in the Stalin question?"

...whilst for Chunky John provides this account:

"We switched the game to Didsbury Cricket Club, to avoid a ladies darts match and a pool match at the Pineapple. Many thanks to the Bards for helping us out in that respect, and for providing a QM and scorer.

We won the first verbal round by four points, but lost the written round by two, so it was tight at half time. In the Withington round (almost) all the questions fell to the wrong people (as ever), so we managed a grand total of 7 two-pointers between the two teams, however there were very few unanswered questions. We thought this represented skilful quiz setting, and we liked the confabs the questions generated, and the scope for good guesswork.

Once again we really enjoyed the evening itself, and playing half a quiz outside our comfort zone. Will we ever get this two point thing right? Probably not."

Traveller's Call lost to INBTO who carried the honour of WithQuiz into deepest Stockport and came back victorious. Kieran gives us the lowdown...

"Excellent quiz and a very enjoyable evening at the Travellers Call. Our hosts were very friendly, very good company and ended the evening by providing an absurdly generous serving of sandwiches and crisps. We felt we were rather poor guests to be walking away with the win!

There was no blood tonight, a welcome change from our recent WIST contests. Our room at the Travellers was pirate-themed, interrupted by a photo of an incredibly girly (sorry) Argentinian wall at a free kick, I would guess about 10 to 15 years ago. We identified Zanetti, Batistuta and Veron but the other two, who I'm afraid would be nominated 'pansies' by an unreconstructed Brian Clough, escaped us. We have no idea what that photo was doing there.

Moment of the night was our greatest bit of misdirection ever and Barry, our military historian was the unfortunate victim. We always try to work out some Blockbuster Bingo answers before the question is asked - usually those with the most initials. We assured Barry that question 12 ('TDOPS') could only possibly be The Duke of Parma Sidonia, commander of the Armada. He duly, and touchingly, selected it. Imagine his face, and our helpless giggling, as the music question, which in other circumstances he would have nailed for a two, unfolded. The all-round laughter made any attempt at individual glory impossible, so sorry about that Baz. We had conflated the Duke of Parma, commander of the land forces which were supposed to invade, with the Duke of Medina Sidonia who commanded the Armada. However we rather like the sound of this fictitious aristocrat and he may feature somewhere for us next season - we think it's about time our nonpareil QM Bob was elevated to the peerage!"

The Results - A-trophy Cup - Semi Finals

The Prodigals beat The Alexandra in a most convivial atmosphere at the Albert Club. Cheryl QMed and Anne-Marie and myself watched from the sidelines whilst Ed, Dave, Danny and Mark piled on the points for the home team. The Alex might have gone into the encounter as favourites (just) in my book, but the Proddies were on stonking form and the questions seemed - more often than not - to favour the home team. A really good evening out which went on well after the questioning had finished as old quizhands recalled days of yore: Monday evening quizzes at the Red, Gerry Hennessy, Ebony & Ivory, Amboss, etc., etc. The Alex's Barry claimed that after winning the Withington trophy back in the 1990s with Amboss there was no other pinnacle to scale so he repaired to Stockport for challenges anew!

There were many high points in the evening's entertainment but I think Mark's recollection of 'Little Miss Stalin' and the explosion of relief as Mike Wagstaffe came up with "my middle name is Danger" for the Austin Powers question raised the biggest cheers. Mike Starkey's sense of geography, as he placed Haydock Park north of the border in an uncharacteristic blurt, made for the reddest face.

For an authentic take on the view from the visitors' corner Mike Wagstaffe has sent this bit of feedback:

"Last night’s events are a bit strange in that our usual, highly complex quiz evaluation criteria (win = good, lose = bad) don’t apply. We can't remember a more enjoyable evening of quizzing, despite being on the receiving end of a beating that was more comfortable than the score suggests. The Prodigals fully deserved their win and we can’t blame unfamiliarity with the venue, opponents or question format for our demise.

Our team are no strangers to either the Albert Club or (most of) The Prodigals and have known Dave since he was a young man-about-town and our only serious rival in the weekly quiz 'upstairs at Squires'. We always enjoy European evenings and last night was no exception. As there are no valuable league points at stake they seem to be played in a much more relaxed (a curmudgeon might say 'rowdy') atmosphere. The Prodigals were great hosts and their sporting decision to allow us the points for a 'muddled' answer also deserves a mention.

As for the paper, I can't add much to what has already been said by other correspondents: it was a belter, with plenty of two's scored and not many unanswered questions. Even though (as we'd expect from a WithQuiz paper) there was a hint of green, it was nowhere near celtic enough to prevent us Stockport WASPs enjoying it. The themes worked well and there was no obvious advantage to either team in terms of difficulty. This was (I think) our first taste of Blockbuster Bingo and we liked it, even though our predictions of the answers from the given initials were ever-so-slightly off the mark (The Diary of Peter Sutcliffe?). As the less-creased Redknapp might say, this was literally top, top quiz setting: well done Gerry!"

Albert beat History Men at the Fletcher Moss in the evening's only all-WithQuiz tie. According to Albert's Mike O'Brien...

"The quiz seemed to suit us more than the Men because there seemed to be a lot of sports questions. There were few unanswerables. In the bingo round Ashton's vast knowledge of German produced the answer that the initials IC stand for Irish Centipede presumably because he believed it had 11 legs. Our favourite question was the Lana Peters question in the bingo round."

...and from the losing corner Ivor chips in:

"We played three per side tonight. We nearly did not play at all with nobody collecting the paper from the Red due to a misunderstanding. Luckily Ashton had a vehicle and could retrieve the questions to bail us out. The Albert won all three formats of the quiz and go on to potential A-trophy glory. Should they meet with the Alexandria we wish them well as the Alex has twice knocked us out of 'Europe' and, in their alter ego as the Stockport Reivers, often take the spoils

at the Albert Club's Monday night monthly Challenger Quiz."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by The Charabancs of Fire on behalf of WithQuiz - and to be perfectly honest I happen to know that it was a solo Father Megson chef d'oeuvre. At the Club there were plenty of murmurings in favour of the standard of the paper as the evening progressed. Perhaps the Alex's favourite moment was the point in Round 3 Question 6 when Cheryl launched into Fr Megson's preamble..."The only useful thing this guy has ever done is to fit perfectly into this theme...." Mike Wagstaffe couldn't even wait for the question's Daily Mail reference as he blurted out the answer. A perfect example of a theme and a shared prejudice coming together under the guise of General Knowledge.

Kieran sums up for the Traveller's Call/INBTO match:

"A typically fine Charas paper. We detected the hand of Fr. Megson all over the place. Could probably have done without quite so much Gaelic football and Hurling especially since I insisted that Kerry and The Kingdom would be the answer to all the questions. The mind that came up with Marx and Spencer is a thing of beauty and even more twisted than that owned by Hangman Dave!"

From the Albert/History Man match Ivor surmises:

"As might be expected for a Euro semi final the questions (as far as we were concerned) proved somewhat testing. Without David or Anne the football and fashion had us flummoxed.

QotW would have been the Lana Peters parent but neither team got the answer due to some ambiguity in the punctuation of question text whereby we thought the father died in 2011 rather than the daughter. The Earl of Orkney namesake was a close run second."

The Question of the Week

As is often the case with a Charas paper a Blockbuster Bingo question gets the award so this week the Prodigals pump for Round 5/6 Question 10:

Which SOL became, in 1886, the first recipient of a ticker tape procession in New York city?

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

Chatterbox

Good news: Another convincing victory for Manchester University in Monday's University Challenge....

Bad news : The WithQuiz team were not selected to take part in the Eggheads programme. Their loss!