Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 16/12/15

Wins for Dunkin' Dönitz, The Bards, The Opsimaths, Albert and CMS in the final round of the first half of the league season

Results & Match Reports

The Charabancs of Fire lost to The Opsimaths at the pub with the cheapest pint, The Turnpike.

What better way to enjoy a Wednesday evening in South Manchester just before Christmas than in the company of the most affable Charas? The result was a long way down the agenda as two teams that have been playing each other in pub quizzes since long before Flavia Pennetta was just a glint in her father's eye, enjoyed each other's company. Having said this there was ominous talk from Chara manager, F.R. Megson (I think that's what they called him) of 'betrayal' by some of his highly paid stars. During a Megson toilet break a number of his team talked openly of leaving for pastures new (although they don't seem that hot at ruminating to my mind). Apparently there is a high level meeting at the Vatican due for Thursday morning which will consider the situation. Needless to say a Chara top four finish has been ruled out and even 'Thursday night on Channel 5' seems unlikely. Cesc Land feels it all started to go downhill early in the season when Megson made a rude gesture at Dr Ivor in a local derby. Let's hope things turn round for them. Perhaps they need a Pep talk!

As for the match itself, it was a case of an increasing score gap with little respite for the beleaguered Charas. They didn't get the rub of the green on various questions (e.g. 'Cabinet Office Briefing Room A' and 'Don Black') but overall such mishaps were irrelevant to the outcome. The Opsimaths were in good shape throughout. I was pretty pleased that The Iceman Cometh and David Jack's memorable Bolton Wanderers goal against West Ham in 1923 both notched us some 'black' points.

Damian sums up for the home team....

"As Mike correctly points out, t'was a most convivial evening in the Turnpike to round off the first half of the season and, fittingly, against some of our oldest and favourite competitors. Yes, it was yet another drubbing for us but as dear old Rudyard once put it, 'If you can meet with triumph and disaster etc. etc.' - except that we wouldn't 'arf mind if Triumph would condescend to meet with us just a little more often these days! Incidentally, all this wild talk of back-stabbing and betrayal is mere fantasy! If truth be told, no-one else would have us and Father M dare not consider replacing us as we all know where the bodies are buried (or, more precisely, bottles). Alas, we are shackled together like galley slaves and condemned to keep rowing in the murky waters of Withquiz until the great Quizmaster in the sky decides to release us from our sufferings!"

The Electric Pigs lost to Dunkin' Dönitz as Kieran reports....

"A crowded and noisy Fletcher Moss and the Rodinista himself QMing.

A quiz that really seemed to suit us (yes for the fourth week running I enjoyed it) but sadly it was not so favoured by the Piggies.

Having Roddy as QM meant we were treated to some asides on the questions including that, in Roddy's opinion, Ravel was only half Basque. Well that mental image set off the fourth formers in all of us. Barry, moved by this reverie, then produced his extremely impressive accoutrement. At least 8 inches long, with a serious weight to it as I discovered when I handled it. It had a bulbous, contoured end which emitted the unmistakable scent of.......... vanilla. Yes, he was vaping again and fortunately the 'miserable bastard who owns the Turnpike' was nowhere near. 'Bloody hell Barry, you'll be bringing a hookah next week.' Collapse of the 'fourteen year olds at heart', Dönitz. Soundalikes always cause us problems. The inevitable riff into it being the lost companion piece to Girlfriend In A Coma. Hooker in a half basque. I know, I know - it's syphilis.

Really enjoyable evening - and second half of the first half of the season. There's now serious pressure (all from me) for David to fall on his sword and forego the delights of Messrs Deulofeu and Lukaku when we resume, same place, same time v The Albert on January 13th."

The History Men lost to The Bards of Didsbury at the Red. Ivor reports....

"A 12 point defeat is pretty bad and the only mitigation is that it could have been worse as we were 19 points behind after round 6. Unfortunately the first half of the quiz was somewhat unbalanced with the team going first getting all four unanswerables. The game ended on quite a high combined score but the Bards got rather more steals and Steve got far too many twos for us to have a chance tonight. The half way point of the season and we remain in the bottom half of the league!"

The Prodigals lost to Albert at the Albert Club as Anne-Marie reports....

"Hard quiz but fair - and thanks to James for stepping in to QM for us last minute as we were a man down. Get well soon, Ed."

The Men They Couldn't Hang lost to Compulsory Mantis Shrimp. According to Dave....

"Mantis Shrimp had it won by Round 4 and took their collective feet off the gas in the second half allowing a mini TMTCH rally. Having said that I don’t think it was CMS we were playing – they knew far too much seventies crap!"

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the questions were set by Ethel Rodin.

The overall average aggregate at 66.8 was a tad below the season's average of 73.5 but there was plenty of interesting material and one or two controversies (as you'd expect). All in all a fine way to end the first half of WithQuiz 2015/16.

I was back in the Opsimath line-up and so was able to sample the paper first hand. In our match (unlike some of the others according to reports) the unanswerables fell reasonably evenly - 7 to us and 5 to the Charas. So no complaints there. Our score aggregate was 70 which is just about par for the course this season. So neither too hard nor too easy. As to the content - well I thoroughly enjoyed it. Both hidden and given themes were well executed (we all enjoyed Hilary struggling, and eventually failing to retrieve her basque). My personal favourite was the 'black' round though we did feel that 'Don Black' as an answer was a bit out of kilter with the other answers in that there was no close verbal tie (no pun intended) with the word 'black' - just the fact that it was a person's name.

From the same match Damian proffers his view....

"Dubious metaphors aside, we actually enjoyed Ethel's Scrooge-like tribute to the spirits of Christmas past, present and yet to come by steadfastly avoiding any references to them in their entertaining paper. Although we fared no better on it than most of this season's offerings, we cannot honestly say that it didn't play to our strengths as there were many questions we probably could have answered if we had put a little bit more thought into it. Quite frankly, we were up against a team to whose strengths it played even more effectively. So, there it is. There were some minor quibbles with one or two of the pairs and a classic example of how themes can prevent you from answering the question when we talked ourselves out of giving the correct answer 'Don' in the Russian river question because we couldn't think of any connection with 'black' and then talked ourselves into an incorrect alternative ('Ural' with the 'black' connection being 'All Black'). Also, we thought that the 'COBRA' question probably should have been avoided given that the last letter apparently stands for nothing and so we got denied the point for thinking that it must. Naughty, naughty! But all in all, a jolly good quiz to put us in the right mind for Christmas, oops, sorry Ethel, The Holidays!"

Kieran provides the Pigs/DD feedback....

"A low aggregate score of 60, and 17 unanswereds which broke, rather unfairly, 11-6 against the Pigs who went first. But a quiz doesn't have to be a pointsfest to be good and this one certainly was full of enough interest to keep the brain cells twitching before their inevitable pickling in just over a week's time.

We liked the words which could go before or after 'black' which had lots of tempting red herrings - Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Caboose, Taekwondo and so on. The country anagrams were good too. As Martin wrestled with his Smokey Robinson question I whispered to Barry 'if he has to write it down he's not going to get it'. And he didn't. David, Barry and I loved the Star Wars round which we won 8-0. Barry is, even as I write, at Parrs Wood with his son Will, reliving his youth with Mr. Abrams' apparently brilliant reboot of the series. I'm incredibly jealous. Martin is a refusenik on such matters but I imagine the east coast is such a wonderland that he never had any need of escapist fantasy."

....and finally Mike O'Brien's feedback....

"As our score suggests this was a fairly hard quiz - but not an intrinsically unfair one. There were relatively few unanswerables but also few twos. The themes were interesting and encouraged enjoyable conferrals."

The Question of the Week

I've received no nominations from around the grounds this week so I'll chose my own favourite this time. The honour goes to a question which it took us at the Turnpike about 5 minutes to understand before eventually Nick cracked open the right answer. It was Round 5 (where ladies' garments were the theme) Question 2:

Which edible is named for its resemblance to an object which takes its name from the eponymous character of a poem written in 1790 who, while drunk, rides home on his horse and crosses the Brig o'Doon?

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

Chatterbox

A very Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year to all our teams - and our extended family who browse this site from time to time. An especial thanks from me to all the guys who text and email me late on Wednesdays/early on Thursdays to let me know not just the results but their views on what went on at their own match. Without your diligence I wouldn't be able to compose this site every week. Keep your match reports coming - be they outrageous, funny, rude, sweary, drunken, geeky, even boring - for without your feedback the whole Wednesday circus would be much less enjoyable. Many thanks!