Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 27/04/16

The Bards lift the WIST Champions Cup whilst The Prodigals nick the A-Trophy in an all-WithQuiz pair of finals

Results & Match Reports

WIST Champions Cup

Dunkin' Dönitz lost to The Bards of Didsbury in the clash of the titans at the Griffin.

Tony sends this from the victor's corner....

"It was a great night out with old friends and old rivals at the Griffin. Bob really is a superb QM and knows how to move a quiz along, and when to allow a little leeway. The Dunkers are great fighters and, if quizzing is about the tenseness of 'will he won't he get it right', and it is, we had a good quiz played in the best of atmospheres. The Bards managed to build up a decent lead in the Stockport Format section and held on to run out winners by a reasonable, but still reasonably close, margin. Post-quiz time was jovial; Barry told us that poor immigrants to the USA could only be refused entry on grounds of feeble-mindedness and glaucoma; Jim wondered how the Bush Family managed to get in.

The Bards now play The Dunkers in the Val Draper semis next week. Given our propensity to bow out of the knockouts with as much grace as we can muster I think William Hill should be offering decent odds against The Bards doing the treble."

WIST A-Trophy Cup

The Prodigals beat The History Men in the back lounge at the Albert Club. Danny and Cheryl (on a short trip back to blighty from Vienna) were there to cheer on the Prods whilst I did the honours as QM. After opening up a goodly lead in Round 1 the Prodigals kept their noses well in front and finished at a canter. The history of the A-Trophy in the 3 years since it was inaugurated reads 'Prodigals - History Men - Prodigals' so it should be ready for the History Men to nick back next year but for the fact that they finished in 9th place in the table this season so sadly don't qualify to take part in the WIST competition next season.

The quiz rattled along at a fair pace with little need for me to remind the teams of the time they were taking on any of the questions. A few unfortunate pairings didn't seem to favour the History Men (in particular the Stoke City Welsh song v the Wynne Evans question) but nonetheless the unanswerables broke fairly evenly so the overall impression was one of a fairly well-balanced paper.

Defeated History Man, Ivor, sends this....

"A re-run of last year’s A-trophy final but with a rather different outcome. Our 12 point victory then being dwarfed by the Prodigal’s emphatic 17 point margin tonight. The Prodigals won all three formats of the quiz and were worthy and (as always) gracious winners. Sadly we have no prospect of wrenching the trophy from Anne-Marie’s hands next year as our lowly ninth place in the league leaves us out of 'Europe' for the next season (as well as seeing us sink to becoming merely the fourth greatest WithQuiz team of all time!)."

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week's paper was set by Mike Bath on behalf of WithQuiz.

At the Albert Club the two teams were pretty complimentary about the paper (perhaps because I was there QMing and breathing down their necks). The pace was reasonable with all done and dusted before 10.30 leaving plenty of chatty time. Candidates for Question of the Week were....

Round 3 Question 2 (the Shard, Thisbe, The Help connection)

Round 4 Question 1 (the scientist living in the Old Vicarage at Grantchester)

Round 5 Question 6 (the torpedoed old sea dog)

The variety of subjects and formats seemed to be enjoyed though it didn't seem that the French Department connection was much appreciated as none of the contestants showed any signs of knowing their Departments. No matter there was only one unanswered question in this round (that was the one about the first third tier team to win the League Cup). Slavic knowledge seemed a bit light on the ground, too, as nobody knew of the Sorbs, or of Vojvodina.

From further afield in Stockport (The Griffin) Tony sends this....

"The quiz itself was one of the best of the season. There was no controversy and lots of interest. Both teams reacted well to the 'French Department' Round and the 'Down and Out' round. Mike deserves a small ripple of applause for showing us all how quizzes should be set. Tonight's quiz was a good test of the width (or is it depth?) of knowledge of both teams over a reasonably wide spectrum. There was enough historical and geographical stuff to please at least our number four player and plenty of the other stuff to cheer up everyone else."

....and Ivor sends this....

"Quiz setter Mike Bath was in the QM seat and produced a challenging but enjoyable feast for us WithQuiz picky eaters (but he is rather good at this). Amongst the many contenders for QotW were the Shard musical connections, the scientist who was a woman (!) and the GoCompare ad campaign that seems to have been forgotten already. Once again knowledge gleaned from primary or secondary school days seems to have been retained by the ageing (but agile) brains of WithQuizzers with pluperfects, subjunctives and New Testament books well remembered."

It seems last night's paper even attracted favourable attention from non-playing teams as this message from Father Megson headed 'AbSORBing quiz' reveals....

"Fcek, Mike! I've been waiting 20 years for a Sorb question and then the Charas are not even there when one comes along. I liked your quiz last night. Always easier to answer questions the following morning when one is comparatively sober but I think the Charas would have run any team close on this paper. I'm only sorry now that we decided to concentrate on the League instead of qualifying for the WIST final. Shucks! Even legendary managers like Megson get it wrong sometimes. Take a bow!"

Many thanks, Gerry. And to prove Gerry has Sorbian tendencies here's a photo he took in Cottbus as he WENDed his way across Germany on one of his recent peregrinations.....

The Question of the Week

This week the Prodigals and the History Men vote for Round 4 Question 1 (if only to expiate the Prodigals assumption that the answer had to be a male). In this round each answer had a word that ended with the name of a French Department:

Which British scientist specialising in solar power conversion lives in the Old Vicarage at Grantchester, once the home of Rupert Brooke the poet?

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