Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 05/10/16

Wins for The Opsis, Ethel, DD and The Prods - whilst The Pigs and The History Men slug out the first drawn match of the season

The Results

The Men They Couldn't Hang lost to The Opsimaths at the palatial, but virtually empty, Parrs Wood Hotel.

When we arrived the slightly raised front lounge where the quiz is usually staged was curtained off making us fear that the area was in use for some other purpose - a gathering of the Oasis fan club perhaps keen to be as close as they could to the scene of the Gallaghers' educational skirmishes at Barlow High School across the road? No way! The room was empty like most of the rest of the pub. How on earth do they make money? An episode at the bar further underlined the economic nonsense of the place. I asked for a whisky but sadly there was only about three quarters of a single shot left in my chosen bottle of Jura so I offered to pay £2.50 instead of the standard £2.65. The whisky was duly poured and I was asked for £2.65. I challenged this but the bar staff were adamant that I should pay the full whack. "Well what happens if I refuse then?" "We'll throw the whisky down the sink and write it off as waste." I changed my choice to Oban. Whilst all this was going on the outside heaters beamed down their warmth on the vacant tables reserved for smokers and visiting arctic explorers ensuring the Didsbury sky was a few nano-degrees warmer. Bonkers!

All of which said the conditions made for a wonderful quiz evening full of warmth and fun. In these pages recently there has been a concentration on the quality of the papers and the rules by which we run our quiz evenings in an effort to ensure each match is as enjoyable as possible. All this deflects from what is usually the main contributing factor and that is the performance of the QM. It comes to mind that Bob at The Griffin has often made a tedious evening light up with his adept handling of affairs, allied to his sense of fun - and such is also the case with Gilly at the Parrs Wood. She was on stellar form last night - fair, funny and interesting, adding her commentary to each question. She has recently retired from midwifery at St Mary's so is now freer than ever to officiate for The Men.

As for the scores.....the Opsis edged ahead early on but were pulled back to level pegging by the end of the Greater Manchester railway station abbreviation round. Thereafter they nudged in front again and retained their lead until the end. At the close Jitka reported that The Men had scored 8 twos to The Opsis 6, whilst The Opsis had received 5 of the unanswerables to The Men's 7.

And as for the finishing time....10.20pm (would have been a fair bit earlier but for the railway station round). Perfect! Plenty of time for chat and reminiscences.

The Charabancs of Fire lost again, this time at home in The Turnpike to Ethel Rodin. Charily Damian writes in....

"Relegated as we were to the taproom for the second week on the trot (why does The Turnpike seem to be so much busier than last year?), it turned out to be another loss for the Charas. Not even Father M can be bothered to offer a comment on our performance anymore, such has defeat become the norm for us. We led in the first round and kept pace all the way to the halfway mark when we drew level. Then, in the second half, we got royally shafted by some, for us, truly awful rounds. Don't know why, but it only seems to be The Charas that suffer from awful rounds these days. Everybody else manages fine!"

The Bards of Didsbury lost to Dunkin' Dönitz at the Cricket Club thus amplifying the home team's poor start to the season and the visitors' good start. Kieran contributes his donnish summary....

"A difficult Shrimp paper which prevented any chance of the recent run of early finishes continuing. Still an enjoyable evening though, with old rivals The Bards as welcoming as always, and a match played in the friendly spirit that characterises our encounters.

Both sides were without their star strikers, Bard Steve and Dunker Martin, but our super sub Simon was not only the MVP (Most Valued Player), shared with Tony, but he also racked up countless assists and we wouldn't have been competitive without him. So good was Simon that he's taking my place next week, temporarily - I'm away for the week - but it could become permanent with this sort of form. TMTCH, if you think this weakens the Admiral's army (navy?) it really doesn't!

At this point I have to out us as a bunch of anorak-wearing, thermos-carrying, meat-paste-sandwich-munching, nasally-speaking trainspotters. What do you mean this isn't news? We won the Greater Manchester stations round 7-1, and the quiz overall by 7 points. No, I have no idea either. I could swear that none of us have ever hung around railway stations for any purpose other than anonymous sexual encounters (oops - but you'd never believe me). In the friendly spirit mentioned above, both teams decided to dispense with the apparent requirement to name both the station and its 3 letter code. Knowing this useless stuff is hard enough without having to mould it into abbreviations or codes as well.

For once neither team messed up hugely on the bingo rounds although we both have form for failing at that format for as long as Theresa Mussolini's record for losing in court (over to you Your Lords and Ladyships of the Supreme Court to really start making things interesting).

The Dunkers are happy with our start to the season with two Champions League teams vanquished in two matches. Long way to go, and after so many seasons we never take anything for granted, but maybe last season's abysmal performance has stirred us into trying to get somewhere near the form we used to display."

The Electric Pigs tied with The History Men in a close encounter of the Red Lion kind. Ivor provides his story of the evening....

"This game, played in an excellent spirit, could only have ended in a draw - and so it did. Nip and tuck all the way. The Pigs moved into the lead at the end of round seven which was whittled away until the last question when The History Men were a point ahead. Unfortunately my pick of 'Party Hat' proved as unfortunate as my pick of 'Sorting Hat' and the Pigs picked up the pass-over to tie the game. My original choice for the last question was the picture of the trilby hat, expecting to get a question about du Maurier or Svengali, but I was informed there was no question relating to this picture since it had simply been used as a space filler.

The quiz rattled along at a brisk pace until Round 5 when severe constipation set in. Railway stations alas are quiz Marmite (you either love them or hate them) and a few of us had lost the will to live before the half way point which is a shame as I am sure the setter slogged for hours to craft this round."

The Prodigals beat Albert at the Albert Club. As ever precise rather than prodigious Anne-Marie comments...."Another interesting quiz from The Shrimps. Fun and balanced. Loved the 'Hat Bingo' rounds."

The Paper

This week's paper was set by Compulsory Mantis Shrimp.

The average aggregate at 69.6 was almost exactly the same as last week. At the Parrs Wood we had 12 unanswered questions which is about par for the course. I thought the first round of colourful names was just the right way to start. All highly gettable with a slender but obvious nudge from the theme. Things then rattled along vey nicely until Round 5 which certainly slowed the pace. The possibilities of the abbreviations (let's face it most of us are not aware of station codes) opened up great waves of conferring. Dave and his crew were somewhat more savvy on station codes than the Opsimaths so prospered in this prolonged round. After Round 5 however the quiz got its pace back and the whole evening ended on a jolly note with the bingo hats.

Views from the other matches?

Damian....

"Our fellow Turnpikers set tonight's paper and we all thought that it was, in general, a good paper given that any paper that includes bingo rounds gains credit in our book. However Chara John called it a bit of a curate's egg. Some juicily accessible rounds mixed in with some, well, not so juicy. In general, we loved the themed and paired rounds but the railway station codes round was a big no-no for us (I can remember most of the stations I have got on and got off at some point but am damned if I can recall, or even knew in the first place, what codes they had - and don't really see why I should).

The science round was interesting although we thought the question that added up to nought was a bit naughty or should I say noughty. No trick questions puhlleeasse! Yours Truly would like to make a small protest about over-elaborate questions - e.g. in the pantomime themed round where he was distracted from giving the correct answer to the question about the 2005 musical, Wicked by the profusion of information with which he was bombarded. Guys, guys....less is often more!"

and Ivor....

"Some good pairs - but some less so (do even biochemists know amino-acid abbreviations?). A question about physicists newly Nobelled the day before was certainly up to date. Sadly we are less likely to know that than obscure 1970s TV actors. At least there was no modern music tonight (that is post 1990)."

Question of the Week

The Men and The Opsimaths rather liked the one about the midwife in Round 6 if only because it gave Gilly the chance to tell us that now she was retired she had given up her toadishness, but in the end we selected Round 4 (celebrities born on October 5th) Question 6 as being cleverly misleading whilst providing all the necessary clues in the question:

A literary and political figure born in Central Europe in 1936. English titles of his works include Memorandum and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration.

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