Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 30/04/14

The Charas lift the Cup for the second year running; the Electric Pigs win the Plate

Results & Match Reports

Val Draper Cup Final - The Result

The Prodigals lost to The Charabancs of Fire in a long drawn out thriller that was eventually tied after 8 rounds. The Spares round was brought into play which suited the Charas fine as they romped home 6-2. There was quite an audience with three of the four History Men (Ivor was QMing the other final), a stray Hangman, a Prodigals substitute and myself watching on in the small lounge area in the Albert Club. Chara Jane asked the questions and officiated. It was a wonderfully taut and tense affair with the gap between the teams never more than a couple of points. Damian was back to earth after his pyrotechnics just before Easter and once he had notched up a two in Round One was content to confer and settle for ones. The tied result after 8 rounds was a fair reflection - nobody really deserved to lose. The Spares round, however, did its tiebreaking bit and left the Charas as clear winners. Well done to both teams!

Plate Final - The Result

Meanwhile Ethel Rodin lost to The Electric Pigs in the Albert Club Snooker Room. The lead oscillated between the teams with the Pigs falling behind early on but then surging back into a confident lead in the second half. Towards the end though Ethel staged a comeback and just fell short by a single point.

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was compiled by 'Knocked Out United' - in other words the teams that didn't end up in one of the two finals i.e. The History Men, INBTO, The Opsimaths, Albert, The Compulsory Meat Raffle, The Men They Couldn't Hang and The Bards. Ivor acted as Editor-in-Chief.

As a spectator who had seen the paper earlier in the day it was interesting to overhear the teams' speculation as to who had set each round. When Round 5 Question 4 turned out to be about a Swedish DJ duo who'd had an international hit with a song that nobody had heard of there was little doubt amongst the teams that Rachael's hand had been exposed. Round 7's 'Doo doo doo doo....Walk on the Wild Side' theme pointed to pretty well anyone other than Tony Hammond so the Bards were not in the frame. However at the end of the evening Ivor divulged that the Bardic offering had come from Sarah rather than Tony so the provenance of Round 7 did indeed make sense. Round 6 (the 'Seconds out' round) had Dave from TMTCH written all over it in terms of question text style. The Opsimaths contribution (Round 3 put together by Brian) seemed to me to have a theme that was a bit too tricksy, but the intro to the round gave a big hint and, in the Val Draper Final, the Charabancs cottoned onto it in time to get some advantage.

At the end of the evening after a few hurried conflabs all four finalist teams opted for The Opsimaths' Round 3 (K-A-T for C-A-T) as their round of the night. So The Opsimaths will get the bottle of wine at the End of Season evening in a fortnight's time.

The Question of the Week

This week the Charas and The Prodigals both went for Question 6 in Round 8 (the round assembled from pairs submitted by each of the knocked out teams). This particular question was submitted by Paddy from The Opsimaths:

Which 20th century US president is, to date, the only former labour (trade) union leader to have been elected to the presidency?

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

Chatterbox

Next week an all WithQuiz A-Trophy final takes place between Albert and The Prodigals, with the WIST Champions Final between INBTO and Chunky being delayed until May 21st (football you understand!), the week after the End of Season evening.

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Did anyone watch the University Challenge : Champion of Champions programme the Saturday before last in which the Manchester team of All Stars trounced Magdalen, Oxford? Manchester boasted 3 WithQuiz players with Adam Barr playing an absolute blinder.

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Nick Mills has asked me to mention the following proposal - he would like to know of anyone in our league who is interested in taking part. He can be contacted at nick.mills7@ntlworld.com

Summer Buzzer Quiz

The idea is to set up a tournament in which recent graduates (and/or final-year students) compete with each other and with quizzers who play in other types of quiz competitions. The aim is to provide some post-University quizzing for recent graduates using a format familiar to student quizzers.

It will take the form of a series of buzzer quiz evenings lasting for about two hours at one or more venues. Each evening will have at each venue three matches for three teams, each taking it in turns to sit out, and moderate and score (a format used in the QLL Summer League).

The current proposal is for a league in London and one in Manchester (using the same questions).

Each league will be half student (or recent graduate) and half non-student. The teams could also be a mixture of student / non-student.

The plan for London is for six squads and two venues and a five week tournament, which allows the teams to play each other twice. Ideally, we would do the same in Manchester, but we could run on a smaller scale with three squads and one venue, although it does mean that the same squads will play each other every week. This depends on the level of interest. London are playing on Monday evenings starting June 16^th - Manchester would play late in the same week.

The next step will be to collect names of those interested (via Facebook?), following which there will be an online draft evening, in which players will be recruited into teams (I guess in the meantime I will accept expressions of interest via email).

MOST IMPORTANTLY: this will be hard-core academic buzzer quizzing (more high-brow than University Challenge); prospective players who are unfamiliar with academic buzzer quizzers are advised to look at the following page for some example questions http://collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com/634/