Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 26/03/14

Ethel squeak into 4th place on points difference after a tie with INBTO

Results & Match Reports

The Prodigals beat The Electric Pigs at the Club to deny their visitors what seemed likely to be fourth place in the end of season League table and a place in the WIST Champions Cup matches next season. Andrew drops in this postscript which confirms what we already knew - i.e. that the Pigs are renowned throughout quizzing circles for their unstinting fairness:

"Hopefully the Pigs are regarded as a sporting lot and last night was a good example as we agreed to the use of untested goal line technology which ended up denying us a place in Europe. The George Bush middle name question saw The Prodigals provide 'Herbert' for two points which then came across to us to score a point for 'Hubert'. QM Mark referred to Google and we then agreed to reverse the score when he confirmed that, despite what the question paper said, the correct answer was indeed 'Herbert'. We lost by 2 points."

The Charabancs of Fire beat The Men They Couldn't Hang in a pretty low scoring encounter between two teams both playing one short. Damian sums up:

"Although the Bards' season-ending paper did not much excite either team, everyone agreed that the natural bonhomie between us and our always entertaining opponents, coupled with the always welcome addition of cheap beer, lent a festive and good humoured atmosphere to the season-ending proceedings chez Turnpike!"

The History Men lost to The Opsimaths in a thriller at the Red. Rumbustious, loud and mirthful, the History Men were as entertaining as ever. As the long-time Opsimaths skipper and a professional student of captaincy techniques, I have observed Ivor's unique team management style over quite a few years. This evening he kicked off with a team talk that majored on the recording-breaking achievements of their opponents in winning the League with more points than had ever been managed in the long history of quizzing. As the praise for the Opsimaths mounted you could see the looks on the faces of Ivor's flock drop and those of the Opsimaths sparkle. Despite this inauspicious start for the Red gang, it was a tremendous tussle with every possible result available up to the point 5 minutes after the final question had been asked of me, when I glanced at Anne and inspired by some distant memory cried out "Green Gable". The Opsimaths made it home by a single point and, as Howell put it, "there was merely a big green 'un between the History Men and victory".

A sadder but wiser Ivor reports from the History Man corner:

"Only the season's minor placings to fight over tonight but the Bards provided a paper that ensured the crucial games went to the wire. We needed a tie at least, and preferably a win, to secure fourth place but it was not to be as the Opsimaths gained the crucial last point on the last question of the season to condemn us to sixth place - our equal worst placing in our 12 seasons in WithQuiz. This season we have had four ties and lost four games by a single point so, in this campaign, we have been the Nearly Men! The Opsimaths have been very strong and were able to rest Hilary and have Nick on the bench tonight. At least we gave them a bit of a scare before succumbing. With only one defeat and one tie to rain on their parade the Opsimaths have equalled the Mad Dog’s (aka INBTO's) great 2005/6 season. We might play the Opsimaths in the second round of the cup (if we overcome CMR’s 8 point handicap advantage in Round 1) and on tonight’s form we fancy our chances."

Ethel Rodin tied with I've Never Been to One in a match that, thanks to the Pigs and the History Men losing elsewhere, just about ensures fourth place for Ethel. As James reports:

"This is the second year in a row that Ethel have secured 4th place with a tied match on the last day of the season!"

Albert beat Compulsory Meat Raffle at the Fletcher Moss as Mike reports:

"Once gain we've blown it. Our absent tactician Ashton had instructed us to lose by about 60 points in order to benefit our handicap score for the forthcoming Cup matches - but we forgot to follow orders."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by The Bards.

Not an easy paper but certainly a fair one with close results and a good balance on the unanswerables. The themed rounds seemed to get better as the paper progressed. In the History Men/Opsimaths match nobody got Round One's anti-heroes theme - and at the end of the round when the theme was declared there was a vigorous debate as to what an anti-hero really was and whether half the names put forward were heroes, anti-heroes or just complicated characters somewhere near the heart of the work of art in question. Brian (I think it was) wondered whether the answer to the spare anti-hero question, might have been Mother Theresa.

That was my view, but Ivor's take on things from the same match?

"A tricky paper from the Bards but by and large very well balanced. The Mandela/de Klerk answer was a bit sneaky given that the sequence hitherto had been single winners (and in the end swung the game to the Opsimaths - guess who gave just half the answer!). There was an interesting thematic collection though the antiheroes did not generate many points. A number of correct answers got conferred because we lost our nerve not knowing whether the answer complied with the perceived theme (e.g. me not saying Buzzcocks because it did not sound like an airline) - but it is good that sometimes a theme misleads rather than helps on the journey to the right answer.

'Answer of the week' was given by Opsimath Mike spending ages to work out the correct Lake District peak thus denying us the win that would have got us fourth place. Grrrrrr. On to the cup…."

From the Turnpike Damian offers the combined view of the Charas and The Hangmen.....

"We found some of the early rounds a tad obscure with a great deal of 'Oh, really, well I never knew that!' type reactions from both of teams leading to the corollary that we probably wouldn't remember the answers anyway. There were a great many themed rounds. The early ones we found hard to fathom and in one case it wasn't clear whether the theme was supposed to be hidden or not. The later themed rounds were easier to work out.

Also there were a few inaccuracies such as....George Bush Senior's middles names are actually 'Herbert Walker' as I correctly answered and not 'Hubert Walker' as given in the answer - and the actress who played Sabrina in Charlie's Angels was called 'Kate Jackson' and not 'Karen Jackson' as given in the question."

Graham from the same match at the Turnpike offers an even harsher verdict than Damian:

"The Charas and The Hangers snoozed through Round One and wept our way to the end of round four by 10.00pm. Was this the Bards' revenge for not winning the title? I always thought a themed round should provide some kind of suspense, or seduction, or deduction. This provided none of the above! I should add that the man who made Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (aka 'Dad') also won a BAFTA for A Bridge Too Far but could I identify Sean Connery's Urquhart character? Could I hell!"

...and from the White Swan James weighs in...

"We enjoyed this quiz. Quite tough - but fair. The 'Crosses' round was an excellent hidden theme - one of the themed rounds of the season, with seemingly random and unconnected decent stand-alone questions. 'Allo 'Allo was fun too - with Greg being left on Q8 to work out whether the cartoon ant was called Crabtree, Michelle or Flick... and fortunately getting the 2!"

...and from the Fletcher Moss Mike O'Brien's view....

"The paper seemed fair and the match was close all the way through - the gap was never more than 3 points. We especially liked question 3 round 4. The hidden theme in Round 2 proved to be too well buried for us, but the defunct air lines theme was good."

The Question of the Week

This week Albert took a fancy to Round 4 Question 3:

Which king allegedly had a maze constructed at Woodstock in order to conceal his mistress Rosamond Clifford ('the Fair Rosamond')?

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

Chatterbox

.....and so our league season comes to an end with a Windy Gap between two Gables.

Next week the Val Draper Cup competition kicks off with TMTCH setting a paper which will whittle 6 of our teams down to 3 to play against the other 5 teams in Round 2. We have adopted the same handicap system as we used last year based on a comparison of a team's 'Average score for' and the overall league 'Average score for' in the end of season League Table. You can see the implications of this on the Fixtures page where I have shown each team's starting points tally - minus or plus - going into each match. Team captains can you please make sure each match finishes with a clear result so that if the scores are tied at the end of Round 8, you implement a deciding mechanism using the spare questions or whatever. Thanks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sadly this week the present caught up with ancient history as we watched Manchester's University Challenge team lose to Trinity Cambridge in the semi final match recorded many moons ago. If body language is any indication it wasn't just WithQuiz that was disappointed, HRH Jeremy Paxman was distraught. It was pretty clear through this series that he had taken a shine to Manchester and taken against the Trinity of prigs from Cambridge.