Occasionally on our WithQuiz Wednesday evenings it seems like you're playing the same opposition every other week so familiar are the faces sitting opposite.  Well that's the way it seems this season between the two teams that slugged it out at the Albert Club.  This time the Opsimaths came out on top beating Albert in a close contest.  Indeed Albert were ahead, or on level terms, from Round 2 until the second half of the very last round.

This time I was playing whilst Howell did the honours as QM - and quite a job he had too.  The trials and tribulations of being a QM came to a head in Round 6 on Question 4 (the one about the team that had been relegated from the Premiership four times, and its Directors).  The question fell to Ashton who gave what seemed a perfectly valid answer (but not the one given on the paper).  The matter was disputed at the time by the Albert team and, after much debate, and a bit of googling, was resolved by both teams agreeing that Ashton should indeed have two points.  I think the key point was that the answer on the paper was challenged at once before we moved on to the next question.  Had we moved on, and then Albert retrospectively challenged the answer, it would have been unfair to the Opsimaths as any decisions the Opsis had subsequently made based on the score at the time (say to go for a conferred answer rather than a two) may have turned out to be misguided (ref: the case of The Bards v Pottery Motor Transport/Traction in 2015).

There were 16 unanswered questions (breaking 8-8 between the teams) and this contributed towards quite a protracted match and - for what I think is the first time this season - we strayed well past the 10.30pm watershed.  It was just shy of 11pm when we finally wrapped things up.  On this occasion I think it was the nature of the paper rather than any dawdling by the teams that caused the delay.  Perhaps we shouldn't gripe about this too much since by and large this season has been free of very late finishes.

Lovingly Mike O'B adds his own losing observations....

"Amidst the angst of defeat (with a pitiful 29 points) I am pleased to report that, after our recent personal difficulties, the Albert has reunited in love and understanding.  Acknowledging this I have (with apologies to The Fifth Dimension) adapted their famous paean to love as you can see below.  From now on this will be sung before every match that Albert participate in.  As for the quiz we lost because we didn't know enough correct answers although we put a great deal of enthusiasm into our wrong answers.

'This is the age of The Albert,

When the Prods are on their Seventh pint,

And Charas fistfight with the Bards,

Then peace will guide The Albert

And love will steer the stars.

This is the dawning of the age of The Al-bert,

The Al-bert, The Al-bert.

Harmony and Understanding,

Sympathy and Trust abounding,

No more falsehoods or divisions,

Golden living dreaming of its visions,

Mystic quizball revelations,

And the mind's true liberation.

The Al-bert, The Al-bert.

Let Eveline in, Eveline in, Eveline in.'

In the standout result of the evening (at least as far as the top of the table is concerned) Compulsory Mantis Shrimp beat Dunkin' Dönitz quite convincingly at The Turnpike.  Shrimp James tells us the story....

"It was a case of déjà vu at the Turnpike as we played Dunkin' Dönitz for the second time in two weeks, following our 'European' clash at the same venue.  We forged a four-point lead after the first round and were able to increase that lead incrementally throughout the night, managing to win seven of the eight rounds and thereby keeping our very slim title hopes alive.  Dunkin' Dönitz were very good company, as always, and this made for a convivial night's quizzing that finished around the 10.30pm mark."

There was an admirable effort to redress the perceived 'anti-science' bias of our quizzes by including some very thoughtful (and rather lengthy) science questions as the opening round.  On the downside however there were one or two questions later on where answers were open to dispute.  The best example of this was the 'relegation' question (Round 6 Question 4).  Not only does it emerge that a number of teams (rather than the one asked for) have achieved the feat of being relegated from the top flight of English football on 4 separate occasions (Norwich, Crystal Palace from the Premiership, plus others from the old Division One as Andrew mentions below) but the question then went on to ask for the names of two Directors of this team that had gained fame in other spheres.  Well pretty well every Director of every Football Club has gained fame in some other walk of life - that's why they get invited onto the Board.  Another quibble came in Round 3 where the hidden theme was included in the question text for question 1 but in the answer text in all the other questions of that round.  This breaks the usual convention and meant that the very first taste of the 'hidden theme' wasn't hidden at all.

At the Club the home team's gobsmackery quotient rose to record levels when Hilary got a pop music question right and shortly afterwards I managed (to my eternal shame) to know that Colleen Nolan had won a recent Big Brother contest.  Being a retired gentleman with a slightly prominent girth I am minded to visit the gym once or twice a week.  While suffering the incredible tedium of walking nowhere for 20 or so minutes I like to watch the TV screen in front of my nose showing some rubbish daytime programme or other (with subtitles switched on for the earplugged viewing keep-fitters).  The other day some Loose Women were interviewing a rather large lady called Colleen who was beaming at her success at winning Big Brother.  Bingo!

"We found tonight's paper from the Bards generally suited our tastes far more than it did our opponents.  Nonetheless we rated it tough going at times with some uneven pairing and, by my reckoning, 11 unanswered questions that broke fairly evenly between us.

I set a question last week where there was perhaps some ambiguity: 'On 15th February 1923 which European country was the last to adopt the Gregorian calendar?'  An answer given by one team was 'Turkey'.  If we accept that Turkey is in Europe then indeed it was the last to adopt the new calendar.  But that was in 1926, and not the date given in the question.  As such there was a specific factor to the question that avoided ambiguity, so 'Greece' was the only right answer.

Last night's quiz contained at least three questions where there were 2 different answers which could have worked: the Norwich City relegation one, where Palace have been relegated just as often; the broadcaster /poet / bowler link where 'Clark' could have been an acceptable answer; and its pair, the singer / Wimbledon Crazy Gang / Antichrist question where 'Jones' seemed to us an acceptable answer.  All these questions needed was one more fact to make them watertight.  For example saying it was a bowler who took 'x' number of wickets, or a poet who wrote poem 'y'.  Having said that, these issues balanced out fairly in our game last night.

It feels like a dangerous precedent to have allowed a challenge (as happened in the Opsimaths / Albert match) and it's a situation we need to clarify at the end of year meeting.  What higher authority was consulted?  A blog?  Wikipedia?  The Crystal Palace website?

Those members of the league who have competed in Mastermind or University Challenge know that there are rules for this kind of thing.

However, these were slight quibbles with what my teammates and I felt was a varied and entertaining quiz.  In particular the Bards did a wonderful job of including science in the quiz (of course I would say that as an applied maths PhD student).  On the negative side it's disconcerting how much we Shrimps know about Justin Bieber, Take That and Reality TV."

Andrew from the Fletcher Moss....

Torquemada, Mary Tudor and Lucretia Borgia were all subjects for this historical novelist, but his most famous works were turned into several films and a blockbuster musical.  Who was he?