Dunkin' Dönitz beat The Electric Pigs by a whisker on the last question of the evening.  A relieved Kieran pipes up....

"Another splendid, proper, Withquiz evening on a perfectly balanced History Men paper.  We won all four first half rounds by a total of 8 points and then the ever amiable Pigs won the next three to reduce the deficit to 2 going into the final round.  For once we were at least competent on bingo picks and drew 4-4 to just edge our porcine guests.

One of those evenings when conferred guesses, such as three-year old Jewish boys having their heads shaved and working out that an American, or a Jamaican, or indeed Cathy Freeman, must have broken the 400m record in the last thirty years and therefore Kratochvilova's extant record must be for the 800m, all paid off.   We didn't get the Round 7 theme until an earnest discussion with Barry about the D-Day air commander made us realise that Mallory was a climber thus enabling us to shout down David who was still chuntering about Harris being a Radio 2 DJ (which is what we had thought the theme was).  That was another typical 'Dunkers at our best' moment.  The match turned on Jesse Owens/Bob Beamon.  At that point the scores were 30-29 and we were resigned to going into round 7 behind for the first time in the evening.  But an uncharacteristic Piggy slip let us in and we held on for the win.

The unanswereds broke 4-3 against the Pigs, so again a sign of a very well constructed and fair paper.  At half time Piggy Dave told me that, had I not removed Dunker David's Super Creep question about the number of year's between Harper Lee's first book and the follow up, and substituted it with the pitch drop experiment question, then the Pigs would have vanquished the Bards two weeks ago.  Ho, hum.

The evening was summed up perfectly by Councillor Simcock, the repeatedly elected representative of the cream of the well-heeled academics and professionals of South Manchester, with the words "Well, that's a f***er."  Quite so.  I feel his pain.  And those words often come to mind when driving down the newly reconfigured Wilmslow Road with its aberrant and disorienting cycle corridor.  A f***er indeed!

A perfect Withquiz evening (obviously my take on it would be completely different if a couple of points had gone the other way) and now on to the Club next Wednesday and yet another stare out with the Opsimaths.  Strangely they don't seem to welcome the idea of Bob QMing but the offer's there anyway."

The Charabancs of Fire beat The Men They Couldn't Hang to maintain their late season 'Out of the Depths' surge.  After a  good night's sleep Damian reports in....

"As the scores suggest, this was obviously a paper that suited us more than it did our affable opponents. We usually do well on papers set by The Second Best Team In The History Of Withquiz (formerly known as The Historymen) and they didn't let us down.  Despite falling behind in the opening round, we led by increasingly comfortable margins from there on in.  As befits their (former) name, the appeal of history rang strong throughout the paper and nothing is more guaranteed to gladden the cockles of Yours Truly's heart than the appeal of history!"

Albert beat Compulsory Mantis Shrimp to keep up their fierce title challenge.  Mike reports....

"The yellow card (the Paddle) was shown once to Eveline Vardy because she blurted the wrong answer to the Long Jump question.  She feels aggrieved because no one else knew the answer but the Paddle is totally ruthless about such blunders.  Signor Ranieri may leave her on the bench (or under it) next week."