Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 05/11/14

At the top The Bards and Ethel both win - The Opsimaths storm the Albert Club derby

Results & Match Reports

The Opsimaths notched up a very comfortable win against The Prodigals at the Albert Club (whilst I suffered for my sins down the road at the Etihad).

Ethel Rodin beat The Men They Couldn't Hang by a comfortable 9 point margin at The White Swan. James sent this report:
"Ethel started well and extended their lead in every round until round 8, by which time there was no doubt as to the result. The Men were hampered by playing as a threesome - and their order of play further scuppered their hopes, as 'conferred answer' played a blinder. Plus, there must have been half a dozen times when it was clear Dave & co were poised for a steal, only for Ethel's deliberation to make an educated guess and take the point.
Roddy found most of his own questions to be outside his sphere of knowledge - but he'd have scored massively in any other seat."

The History Men lost at home to The Charabancs of Fire who now leapfrog them in the table. Ivor reports from the loser's camp:
"Remember, Remember the 5th of November? Well, although we managed to win the final round we did not do much remembering for the previous seven and the Charas had a comfortable victory. This despite them getting eight of the 13 unanswereds. Their margin of victory was due to them getting 8 steals to our 2. In mitigation we were three-handed with Anne off poorly. As always with our games there was plenty of banter before, during, and after, the quiz."
...while Damian reports from the winner's enclosure:
"The Charas recorded only their second win of the season tonight against a 3-man History Men team with Peter, yet again, making the supreme sacrifice and performing QM honours. In our case, the wise words of that well-known Irish cricket enthusiast, Sam Beckett, seem to be coming true: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.” Unfortunately, some idiot drew Father M's attention to the fact that this year's Australian Open tennis champion, Stan Wawrinka, has Beckett's quote tattooed on his left arm and he now wants all the Charas to do the same. Personally, I suffer from needle-phobia so I'm hoping he'll get too drunk to notice the difference between tattoo ink and felt tip!"

Compulsory Meat Raffle just edged it against The Albert at the Turnpike (many thanks, Ashton, for sending in the result). Rachael sent this brief account of the match:
"A lovely evening at the Turnpike with an incredibly close match the outcome of which was uncertain up to the last pair of questions. The Albert were great opponents as usual. It was a cracking paper with lots of variety - I think we all learned something new!"

The Electric Pigs lost to The Bards at the Fletcher Moss. Tony gives us the lowdown:
"The Pigs were tenacious opponents and fought all the way. Occasionally we surprised ourselves with our ability to pluck out a correct answer, whilst at other times we talked ourselves out of being correct. It was not the easiest of quizzes, but then who are we to complain? It was not so much the difficulty, as the dullness, which at times lessened our enjoyability of the evening. We are happy for a quiz to be a test of general ignorance, as well as of general knowledge.
Happily, for most of the evening the Fletcher Moss quiz corner was quiet, but then we were invaded by a typical Didsbury group - some German visitors with their accompanying hosts. They did not know how to keep their voices down and Mary had to work hard to make sure we could hear the questions. Whilst I rated the evening as 8 out of 10 for the quality of the quiz, it scored much higher for the affability of our hosts."

Quiz Paper Verdict

The paper this week was set by Dunkin' Dönitz.

Since I wasn't playing this evening I had the chance to go through the paper earlier in the day and get it ready for the website. I found it pretty challenging but very interesting with plenty of WIN (Well, I never) moments. Unfortunately for Kieran, David and myself there were no WIN moments for us in east Manchester. According to Ivor there were 13 unanswered questions which is a tad too high. Here's what he had to say:

"Fairly hard quiz tonight and, as often the case, the Dunkers managed to expose the dearth of our knowledge on many topics - even topics we think we know something about e.g. the birth places and death places of monarchs. We managed to fall into every 'either/or' trap in our early round questions e.g. Dracula instead of Frankenstein, Monster instead of Monster’s Ball. Although our efforts were somewhat feeble and we did grumble about the prevalence of Association Football, the quiz itself got a good pass for interest and balance. However, setting a simultaneous equation late on in a quiz is a particularly sadistic trick!"

...and these were Damian's views from the same match....

"Tonight's questions from the Dunkers once again proved to be right up our street. They seem to have an unerring knack of appealing to our collective strengths. Mind you, they nearly floored Yours Truly with the 'Old Queen' pairings. I flatter myself that I am probably more au fait than your average Withquizzer with the comings and goings of Brit royalty down the ages but even I stumbled over answering the ones about which buildings most of them came and went in! Fortunately, it did not in any way halt our steady progress, round after round, until we finished 10 points ahead. Nice, well balanced, straightforward offering from the Dunkers full of basic General Knowledge. Who can argue with that?"

The Question of the Week

This week Damian votes on behalf of the Charas for a pair from Rounds 4 and 5 (Questions 4 and 6 respectively):

In which building have the most English monarchs been born?

....and....

In which building have the most English monarchs died?

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

Chatterbox

Next week this season's 'European adventure' begins with 8 of our 11 teams engaged against Stockport League foe. Please note that the papers for all the matches will be left in the Red Lion so - whether playing at home or away - it is the responsibility of the WithQuiz teams to collect the papers.

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Following last week's quiz paper, which included reference to veteran Northern Irish goalkeeper Roy Carroll, I was berated on the WithQuiz message board for not taking the opportunity to mention Notts County (Roy Carroll's current club). I was also rapped for missing the chance to name check their star French player Monsieur Balmy. So to put the record straight I include this picture.....

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Finally could I ask team captains to spare a little time to have a look at the website's team archive page and review the details about their teams. There is space to record the names of all the players past and present as well as a few pertinent details about the team's history (the details shown at present are, by and large, from my own recollections which are not always the best). I will update as per your comments. Also some of the team photos are a little out-of-date. Again I'll happily replace if you send me new team photos. Many thanks.