Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 12/03/14

Opsimaths place one hand on the league title with a home win over TMTCH; INBTO beat the Bards to confirm at least second place

Results & Match Reports

Albert lost to The Prodigals. "A really close match and another 'down to the last question' game for The Albert." reports Anne-Marie.

Ethel Rodin beat Compulsory Meat Raffle at the White Swan.

The Charabancs of Fire beat The Electric Pigs. Damian's twopennyworth:

After whipping us handsomely last week, the Historymen very kindly made amends tonight by setting a quiz that clearly suited our tastes for the clash with the Piggies, a foe we have had many tough matches against in the past and often come up short! From the very first round, we set out our stall by scoring 8 points to their zero - and we never looked back for the remainder of the quiz. The paper clearly played to our strengths. Many commiserations to the Piggies who admitted that it just wasn't their cup of tea. So often it turns out like this - we play well on one week's paper and then manage to do diddlysquat on the next week's. One reason might be that, for all our appreciation of carefully crafted themes and pairs, we tend to favour the pot luck approach offered by Bingo and 'Pick your own' rounds. That way 'you pays your money and takes your chance'!"

The Opsimaths beat The Men They Couldn't Hang to put themselves in an almost unassailable league position - 4 points ahead with 2 matches to go and enjoying a points difference of plus 60 over their nearest rivals (INBTO). The Men were their usual affable selves with Dave (as expected) greatly relishing the challenge of the World War One questions in Rounds 7/8 especially when the 'Home Front' question involved his own North East neck of the woods. With Graham away at Cheltenham, Dave and Steve were joined by a couple of newcomers (well at least they hadn't played against the Opsimaths before) who were somewhat younger than their team mates. Excellent! One of the best features of this season is the appearance of a number of new players around the teams suggesting that WithQuiz will be alive and kicking for a few seasons yet.

I've Never Been to One beat The Bards of Didsbury. Kieran reports:

"Good all round Historymen quiz relocated to the Cricket Club and played under the supervision of authors Ivor and David.

We seem to have the upper hand on the Bards just now but it's always a friendly contest with plenty of banter and a great deal of mutual respect between the teams.

We led by only one point after round six and up till then it had been very close all the way through - but The Bards really don't like 'Pick your subject' formats and we won those rounds 11 - 6 to seal a victory that the bald numbers make appear more comfortable than it was.

In amongst this Jim and I managed to 'confer' on the Racing question when he announced he would leave if it wasn't about the sport of kings. Once the question was asked I invited him to honour his pledge but he welched on the deal! The bonus came over to us and gave rise to one of the finest team moments in all our Withquiz history. We worked out that the unpronounceable polysyllable looked more Dutch than German which suggested skating (probably only because the Winter Olympics are so recent in our memory). Then someone - Barry I think - clocked that a good reason to explain why the race had only happened 15 times in over a century might be because of an external condition such as the weather. As a result we pocketed the steal for working out that it was skating on frozen canals. Very satisfying. The Opsimaths may have comfortably won the league, and congratulations on that, but we can still pull out the odd spectacular moment that convinces us we're still competitive. Here's to next season."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by The History Men.

An excellent compilation ending with, what is becoming a fairly regular feature, a couple of 'Pick Your Own Subject' rounds. The real quality though lay in the crafting of the questions themselves and the feeling at the Club was that the History Men authors had done a first rate job weaving intriguingly worded questions out of the material at hand. We enjoyed the question nominated below as Question of the Week but for me the best of the evening was the one about the statue at Liverpool Street and Alf Dubs (Round 4 Picture 1). We went for something to do with Barnardo's but when it went across to Dave and his colleagues they reasoned their way impeccably to the correct answer.

Damian's view from the Charabancs/Pigs match was similar:

"We thoroughly enjoyed tonight's paper from the Historymen, although our esteemed opponents may take a different view. Lots of variety in the subject matter with some carefully placed clues. Even though none of us guessed the bingo lottery colours theme round, the fact that we latched onto colours seemed to take us to the right answer more often than not. At the very least, trying to guess the theme did not distract us from getting the right answer and that has certainly not always been the case with hidden themes!"

...as was Anne-Marie from the Albert/Prodigals encounter:

"Overall a great quiz but we would all like to know the criteria for the 'biggest grossing musical' answer. We all thought it was Phantom of the Opera and a quick Google search confirmed Phantom had grossed around 5 billion dollars (no wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber looks so smug). Does the question also include film & DVD sales? We were all a bit confused. But no matter - it was great fun this evening. And well done to Mary too for keeping us all in check in a noisy FM."

The Question of the Week

Quite a few candidates this week but I think Kieran's suggestion wins it - Round 7/8 Question 13 (on the subject of 'Racing'):

What kind of race is the Elfstedentocht held 15 times since 1909??

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

Chatterbox

More good news: Yet another crunching victory by Liz and the boys on Monday, this time putting Southampton in their place. The Manchester University team are now through to the semis.

Spring is sprung! The nags are lining up at Cheltenham and here in South Manchester it's time to polish the balls and make the draw for the Val Draper Cup. As soon as the Opsimaths v TMTCH match was done Dave and his gang did the honours. The resultant draw is now up on the Fixtures page. The format is much as it has been for the past few years - namely:

every team will start every match with a handicap score based on its 'Average Score For' compared to the 'Average Score For' across all the teams in the end of season league table (e.g. at present the table shows an overall 'Average Score for' of 34.3 but the Opsimaths 'Average Score for' is 42.3; if the cup were to start next week the Opsimaths would start their match with a score of minus 8).

In determining highest and lowest scoring losing teams the score after handicap will be used

we will play 3 first round matches (6 teams) with the 5 remaining teams given a bye into Round 2

winning first round teams have the privilege of playing at home in Round 2

losing Round 1 teams and the highest scoring losing team from Round 2 go through to the Plate Semi Finals

question papers to be set by:

(Round 1) first team out of the hat with a bye into Round 2 (it happens to be TMTCH)

(Round 2) losing team from first match in Round 1

(Semi finals) lowest scoring losing team from Round 2

(Finals) 'Knocked Out United' - i.e. rounds from each team not taking part in either the Val Draper or the Plate finals compiled by someone from one of these teams that I will finger in due course

...although I may change the setters if the draw and results place an undue setting burden on any one team.

Hope this is all clear and acceptable. We have a couple of weeks before we start the cup so if there are any burning issues please get in touch or use the message board to vent your spleens.