Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 11/03/15

Has the the league title struggle ever been this close?

The Opsimaths lose while Albert, the Bards and the Dunkers win - meaning that, with just three league weeks to go, only a single point separates the top 5 teams

Results & Match Reports

The Charabancs of Fire lost to Compulsory Meat Raffle in the final Turnpike derby of the season. No reports of disturbances this evening to upset the cerebral puffing and panting in the famous old panelled saloon. Rachael sends this account....

"After a very convivial evening at the Turnpike I can report that we finished 7 points ahead. At half time only a single point separated us but we pulled ahead of the Charas slightly in the second half and, for once, managed not to throw our lead away! The Charabancs were lovely opponents as always and we all found much to enjoy in the paper."

....while Damian sees it thus....

"The Charas continue their downward spiral as, in our second derby of the season, the Rafflers avenged themselves in fine style for their defeat to us last October. The atmosphere was friendly, the beer was drinkable and cheap, and the air full of banter and good humour as is always the case when we play against our fellow Turnpikers."

The History Men lost to The Prodigals at the Red LIon. Anne-Marie reports....

"Welcome back to the Prodigals fold for Ed. It was yet another last couple of rounds comeback from The Prodigals maintaining our unbeaten run of 2015."

....and Ivor tells the losing story....

"Ethel quizzes are usually low scoring affairs but tonight we had a combined score of 83 which is pretty good for a couple of mid-table teams. The match swung from one side to the other but the HM went into the last two rounds 2 points ahead. Then came the radio bingo…. Anne-Marie’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the topics on offer overwhelmed us."

The Opsimaths lost to Albert at the Albert Club in a desperately close contest between two teams with realistic hopes of lifting this season's league crown. Going into the final round the Opsimaths were 3 points ahead but, by the time I had to choose the final question for the home team, the scores were level. Only needing a 'one point' conferred answer to secure a famous victory, I chose the 'safe bet' of Radio 1 with pop guru, Clare, poised to strike. Unfortunately she has a blind spot when it comes to Ms Cotton and opted instead for Jo Wiley. A delighted Albert ensemble filled their Cotton socks for a 'steal' and recorded a memorable victory. Happily for the league this means that there is only a single league point between the top 5 teams as we enter the final 3 weeks of the contest. Even 'points for/against' differences are level on 112 between the top two teams, The Bards and The Opsimaths. The Bards just sneak ahead in the official table as a result of having scored more 'Points for' during the season than the Opsimaths.

James was on hand to act as QM (many thanks, James) and as an apologist for the paper (though apologies were certainly not needed - it was another excellent high-scoring paper). I gather he was the author of the 'Radio themed' final 2 Bingo rounds.

Finally it is worth recounting a brief conversation I had at the bar during the half time break with veteran Albertiste, Eveline. I gather the secret of Albert's rise through the ranks this year is Mike's 'Paddle of Rebuke' (a wooden spoon adorned with a severe face which Mike brings along in a plastic bag kept by his side throughout matches). Apparently it scares the living daylights out of his team mates. Never mind positive stroking and all that touchy feely nonsense it's fear that wins titles!

Mike O'Brien has these thoughts from the winner's enclosure....

"This was another of those quizzes which I found hard but the final score tells us was very fair. Luckily other members of the Albert team found it easier going than I did. I think it was a good quiz for music buffs, but it did produce an exciting result."

The Electric Pigs lost by some way to Dunkin' Dönitz at the Fletcher Moss. Kieran reports....

"Fun quiz - 27 twos scored overall including Martin's first straight eight for a couple of seasons. It really suited us so thanks Ethel you've buggered up our handicap in the only competition we have a chance of winning!

Enjoyable night made even better by the demise of the all conquering but unappealing team everyone loves to hate - yes Chelsea! Who did you think I meant?"

After their victory last week The Men They Couldn't Hang were unable to sustain their resurgence and lost to The Bards of Didsbury. In Tony's words...

"Everyone enjoyed a very cheerful and convivial evening at the Parrs Wood and the Hangmen were, as ever the best of company."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was set by Ethel Rodin.

Traditionally Ethel papers are a bit on the bookwormish side with aggregate scores in the lower reaches, but this was strikingly not so with Ethel's effort this week. An average aggregate of 79.8 made it the fourth highest scoring paper of the season behind the two Opsimaths 80+ papers and the Pigs 81 point December paper. Judging by the close scores in the evenly matched table-topping contest at the Albert Club the distribution of hard/not so hard questions was well balanced (that is until the Bingo lottery of the final two rounds of course) thus avoiding the trap that many of this season's papers have fallen foul of. My only gripe (shared by a few of you such as Mike O'B) was the heavy load of music (predominantly pop music) questions. I counted 17 music-related questions out of the 68 on offer. Does music really represent a 25% share of all human knowledge?

As for QotW a few of us at the Albert Club really liked the Round 1 Question 3 pearl about the Bank of England Secretary's literary hobby. The Opsimaths are not great opponents of the Bingo style so had no great objections to the final two rounds. The Radio theme was a good idea as a way of hinting at what questions lay in store - though of course it did enforce a tilt towards music questions since the vast majority of our radio stations pump out mindless pop music 24 hours a day! God, I am getting old!

Comments from elsewhere?

Kieran....

"Not sure the radio station bingo worked that well but a (guilty?) liking for The Commodores allowed Martin to score his eighth two. So we're pretty happy tonight and anything could happen this season - even Aguerrrroooooo in the Nou Camp? Maybe that's too much to ask."

Damian....

"Tonight's questions from Ethel Rodin, delivered in the presence of Rodinette Roddy, did not play to our strengths but - hang on a minute - haven't we been using that excuse rather too often lately? Yours Truly is beginning to wonder what actually are our strengths these days? I vaguely recall us having some once but, whatever they are or were, they are just not coming to our rescue much these days. The last 2 bingo rounds themed on radio stations dug our grave as none of us have actually listened to any radio since dear old Caroline was taken off the air (that is with the sole exception of Father Meggers who secretly tunes in to Radio Croagh Patrick every night to find out if there has been any progress in the Irish Catholic Church's proceedings against him). So disgusted was he with our latest debacle, that he announced he was off for a 2 week tour of French monasteries and that we could all just 'fcekin fend for ourselves' until he gets back! I suspect we got off lightly!

Question of the Week? Most of us opted for the nickname by which Irish cricket fans are apparently known.

Shame of the Week? Notwithstanding the presence of no less than TWO Irish people on the team, the Charas totally failed to answer this question. Personally, I blame that Samuel Beckett chap!"

Ivor....

"We enjoyed the Ford cars theme (though my anticipated question about the Cortina Winter Olympics never arrived) and we made up ground on the Cups round (gaining a steal on the Congo town Stanleyville). Prodigal Ed thought that 'Wightman Cup' as an answer might be too Jeremy Clarkson-ish for him to hazard a blurt!

We totally failed on the Venn diagram for French and German-speaking schoolchildren though Anne-Marie amazed us by calculating the number in the (presumably upper middle class) form who did cricket and rowing."

Rachael....

"Although a few questions went unanswered we did learn a lot of interesting new facts and there was plenty of variety to keep us interested. The radio round drew a somewhat mixed response. We enjoyed it (I'm a Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra obsessive so couldn't wait for those quesrtions to come up!) but the Charabancs felt that the category may have gone on too long being stretched over two rounds. Both teams enjoyed the nickname given to supporters of the Irish cricket team even though none of us knew it!"

....and finally Tony....

"The quiz was a bit of a curate's egg. I suppose as a test of 'general' knowledge it was fair and even wide ranging but questions in a 'Blockbuster' bingo format involving radio stations and their obscure participants left me cold. No matter. Tonight's fare did strike me as the sort of quiz to produce the odd surprising result. I look forward to finding out."

The Question of the Week

This week a number of you mentioned Question 11 from the 'Radio Station themed' Rounds 7/8:

Radio 5 Live Sports Extra: In the 2015 Cricket World Cup, what is the witty nickname for the travelling fans of the Irish Cricket Team?

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

Thr Megson Archive

The Getaways - Mad, Bad and Unlikely to Know

During the week I was trawling the WithQuiz site and came across this gem from QuizBiz published on October 15th 2008.

For those that don't know 'The Getaways' was the previous name of The Prodigals who at the time were captained by Clive Berry and included Richard Seed as one of their team. 'The Napier Girls' was the name used at the time by Dunkin' Dönitz. The other characters mentioned are still Wednesday night regulars for The Prodigals. The picture was rumoured at the time to show Richard with a selection of staff from the Didsbury Village Day Nursery posing during a staff day out at Platt Fields. Somehow I doubt this.

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

Several of our listeners gleefully hurled buckets of night soil into the WithQuiz studios last Wednesday night in protest at the outsourcing of the first quizset of the season to a bunch of unknowns called the Getaways. The Bishop of Bath without Wells points out, however, that many of the Getaways have in fact played several games in our Quiz league in various guises, albeit under cover of darkness. Indeed he can recall one famous occasion when they actually came away with both points after four players from the opposition, Amboß, had been sent off for substance abuse in the first half.

Anyway, for the benefit of any of you too young or too inebriated to remember meeting them, here are some brief pen pictures of four of them - not the brainiest four, I admit, but perhaps the four that would be best avoided on a dark night in Parrswood.

CLIVE

in 1946 Woman’s Realm predicted that young Clive would be "bigger than Mrs Miniver" - but then his mum splashed out the best part of a tanner to have his golden tresses lopped off and he disappeared forever from the women's problem page. Later he announced that he wished to become a thespian. This turned out to be nothing more than an unfortunate typographical error, though he did receive rave reviews for his performance in the 1962 Gorton library production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the Observer Kenneth Tynan noted that he had been greatly touched by Clive's Bottom, and that he looked forward to seeing it run and run in London's West End. It is perhaps this incident that Tynan had in mind when he went on to utter the first four-letter word ever broadcast on the BBC. In his heyday Clive was very much the Lord Byron of the quiz world - mad, bad and unlikely to know. Today he lives quietly in a two bedroom chateau on the banks of the Mersey where he cultivates award-winning marrows, his memories and a growing sense of worldly ennui.

MARK

The only member of the team to have been given the name Stibium at birth, he renounced this title after his first day at primary school when he came home still friendless. In retaliation his parents barred him from using the name Bassett and from spending any of the sizeable family fortune accrued from their liquorice mines in Uruguay. In retaliation against their retaliation he announced that he was going to his room. Furthermore, he would henceforth be known as Mark and would never grow up. True to his word he still plays quizzes with the boyish enthusiasm of a 12 year old. Mark adds:

“I love quizzes. Quizzes are brill. I could spend all night playing quizzes. Sometimes I do spend all night playing quizzes. It's brill! I hate people wot hate quizzes. Especially people wot hate quizzes just ‘cos they don't know nothing. I don't never give up even when I don't know nothing. I remember one night they asked me a stinker. Name the capital of Belgium? Obviously I hadn't a clue ‘cos I wasn't even born in bleedin' Belgium but I gave it a go anyway. Using my skill and judgment I went for Tintinville. It was wrong…..but only just. I wasn't put off. I guessed and guessed. and then on guess number 54 - bingo! I'll never forget that moment of epiphany. It came just as the opposition were on their final question of the evening which was ‘Which city is renowned for its flavoursome sprouts’ and I said ‘is it perhaps Brussels?’. We lost narrowly by one point that evening and nobody spoke to me for the rest of the season. but I still love quizzes. I think quizzes are brill. PS I think Curb Your Enthusiasm is a very silly name for a TV programme.”

DAVE

Today Dave is an icon of the quiz world and is freely available on desktops all over Ladybarn - but in the early days he was largely unknown. Then, in a last ditch effort to revive his career, he turned to TV and became the first seven year old to win a million guineas (a sizeable sum in those days) and a Meccano set on Junior Criss Cross Quiz. Shortly after that he was persuaded to turn professional and the rest is history.

Despite his stardom Dave remains as unassuming as ever. Indeed, if it wasn't for his distinctive vocal chords (which helped him pick up an Olympic bronze in the Men's Boom in Helsinki in 1952) and his tactile habit of bear hugging everyone within a forty yard radius (he was once mistakenly yellow-carded for heavy petting with the opposition) you would hardly know that he was in the room. In 2005 he broke Pope John Paul's world record for shaking hands with the most people on their way back from the toilet.

Today Dave eschews the razzamatazz of TV quiz shows and divides his time between leafy Ladybarn and the taproom of the Red Lion where he does regular Harry Belafonte tribute evenings. In his spare time he likes listening to music ("anything by Rambling Sid Rumpole really") and watching ladyboys play football. He hopes one day to be rich enough to buy Man City FC and to steer them to their rightful place in the Beswick and District B Division League.

RICHARD

(extracts from a recent interview first published in the Guardian Weekend Magazine)

Q: Full name?
A: Richard Brinsley Sheridan Schwarz.

Q: Really?
A: No.

Q: Which living person do you most admire?

A: Mike Bath.

Q: Really?
A: No.

Q: Who would you like to share your desert island with, Paris Hilton

or Simone de Beauvoir?

A: Angelika Merkel.

Q: Really?

A: No. Let's cut the crap ok? Why isn't Bjork on this menu? I saw

her once, you know, in Iceland. She was buying fish fingers and so was I. It's nice to have things in common.

Q: Who is your favourite playwright?
A: ..........(long pause).................................Pinto.

Q: Don't you mean Pinter?

A: ................(long menacing pause)............maybe................why

must you always contradict me?...........(very menacing pause.)............Merde!.................

Q: If you could only have one wish, what would you wish for?
A: A monkey's paw.

Q: Really? Why a monkey's paw?

A: Don't know. I suppose I had to say something and a monkey's

paw just sort of floated through the ether...you can have it back if it's that important. But really, you shouldn't promise things and then take them back. It's very hurtful. How can I trust you in future. Bjork would never do that.

Q: This interview isn't really going very well, is it?

A: Don't know. Anyway you're the one that keeps asking the

questions about sex. Why can't you just let me walk my dog in peace?

Q: Don't you start asking me questions, buster. I'm the bleedin'

journalist around here. If you want to start asking questions why don't you just pi** off back to your little boys' quiz league?

A: You're very feisty aren't you? I like that. It's how I imagine Bjork

would be. How's about if we lose the dog and then maybe I can walk you back to your place? You can call me Brinsley if you want.

Q: ....(pulse racing but trying to sound calm).....really?
A: No.