A couple of weeks ago Bob, who was wearing a niche market Peruvian cap tonight (the man has an endless supply of intriguing headgear), told Mike that he thought we'd become much better at seizing opportunity when the tide turned in our favour and closing games out.  That was certainly the case tonight.  We were five points behind at half time and barely hanging on to the Shrimp's tails.  And then inspired teamwork kicked in; Barry stopped worrying about what was going on at Selhurst Park courtesy of Ibra and David, and I similarly relaxed thanks to the apogee of god's best creative period embodied in David Silva.  We scored 17 points in rounds six and seven to our opponent's 6 and coasted home in the final Bingo pot luck offering without any mishaps.  The Shrimps are some team this season though, and we couldn't relax until the win was mathematically certain,  i.e. when I was able to tell Martin that we only needed one point to win thus forcing him to confer on a question he would have routinely put away for a two.

And so this is Christmas and what have we done?

Well we've won ten from ten.  It's a long time since we've started a season in this sort of form.  We won the first eleven before 'Tooting Becgate' seven seasons ago - and the first sixteen the year before that when we were quite good.  We're nowhere near that yet but feeling a lot happier at this stage than we have for many years.

Bob's visiting Swinton over the holidays.  I can't wait to see what terrorist-inspired titfer he picks up and is sporting when we meet again in January.

A very merry Christmas,

And a happy New Year,

After the match we fell to debating all sorts.  One topic that concerns the Venerable Megson right now (and me for that matter) is the relative absence of comments on the message board.  So get on in there - let us hear what you think each week - scurrilous, controversial, whatever.  I try to make this weekly QuizBiz page a little provocative - so be provoked.  Or just scream back at Kieran if you like.

Enough of my thoughts - what did a gobsmacked Damian have to say...

"Yes, the struggling Charas managed to overcome the mighty Opsimaths in a close-run, down-to-the-wire contest at the Turnpike in the last match of the pre-Christmas season.  What better way to approach the coming festivities than to finally break our long streak of sometimes sub-par, but often unlucky, losses - and we couldn't have picked a nicer and more impressive team to break it against!  It was all we could do to persuade Father Meggers not to discard his soutane, climb up onto the table, kick all the beer glasses away and dance a jig (but, as Old Ironhorse once put it when scraping a win against some French fella, 'It was a damned, close thing!').  Thanks for that early Christmas present Mike, Brian, Hilary and Nick!

Ivor and co. have a welcome appetite for the 'Ho! Ho!' type of question (wholly appropriate at this time of year) and this was in evidence again this time round.  I know this for a fact because Ivor was our QM and he ho-hoed when each of these questions came up - the golfing pair being the most obvious example.  I gather the Sunday Telegraph recently carried a humorous list of lesser known golfing terms though I did wonder whether Ivor had made them up from scratch along the 'if this were a fact wouldn't it make an amusing question' principle.  The second of these golfing term questions ('an Arthur Scargill') had a rather feeble answer ('Good strike but poor result').  Much better was the pearl offered up as an answer by Brian: 'Hitting a child on the head with a lofted golfball' i.e. a minor's strike.

In general quiz papers are made up of questions which have a variety of motives behind them....

• "I know this and I want you to know I know it"

• "I know this - I bet you don't know it!"

• "I think this is an amusing/odd/unlikely bit of knowledge - go on, have a chuckle!"

• "I think you'll enjoy discussing possible answers to this one"

• "This is generally known but if I dress it up in an entertaining way you may well struggle until a very rewarding penny will drop"

• etc. etc. (please use the message board to augment this list)

....and I'll let you judge which are the more virtuous motives on this list.

The History Men's paper was a good mix of all the above (apart from perhaps the first).  In our match there were 8 unanswered questions which broke 4-4 between the two teams - so that's fine.  Ivor (who was doing his usual statification as well asking the questions) announced that Damian and I were joint MVPs with 4 twos apiece - so that's fine too.  All in all a very pleasant evening's quizzing at The Turnpike to end the first half of a most enjoyable season (so far at least!).

Feedback from other matches was as follows....

From Kieran....

"Lots of really good questions but an odd balance, with the majority of the rounds being dramatically one-sided.  Ethel won rounds with scores of 7-2, 8-2 and 6-3 - but alas the Prodigals won rounds with scores of 9-4, 9-1 and 8-2.  It would probably have been similarly unbalanced had we lost the toss - but the Prods are a solid team and well deserved their win."

From Anne-Marie....