"We started the new year well for once with a victory over one of our oldest foes. Of course we are not foes and tonight, in what was about our 40th meeting, we all had a very merry evening in an almost deserted Red Lion."

...and Mike H chips in....

"A decent win to start the new year against old rivals and friends, the Electric Pigs.  A comfortable enough win in the end but we were 5 points down after three rounds and didn't get our noses in front until half way through Round 6.  After that we were never headed.  Twos were evenly split, 11 each, so yet again it was conferred questions and pass-overs that won it for us.  The Pigs clearly got the rough end of the unanswereds with 7 against only 3 for us. 

Didsbury's own far superior version of Gertrude Shilling, QM Bob, was sporting a new cap - this time honouring Peru.  A present of course, and there must be at least 50 or so countries yet to find a home on the Ganley cranium so there's plenty of scope to mark future birthdays and Christmases.  Just a hint for any Withquiz team who are even half as impressed with our superb master of ceremonies as we have been these past few years. 

A couple of days ago when John sent me the paper I had to get my wife to print it out and check that all was OK so that I didn't compromise myself as a player.  When she said only two pages had popped out of the printer I had to get her to check that there were 8 rounds of 8 questions.  "Yes" she said, "Of course, isn't that what you always have?".  "But will it be legible to an an aging QM with so-so eyesight in a gloomy pub backroom?" I said.  "Yes - shall I read some of the questions out just to prove it?".  "NO!!!!"

No themes, no pairs, no run-ons, no bingo and no essays attached to the answer to inform you of everything the question-setter also knows about the subject in question.  Indeed the whole affair could have been a Bingo paper where you just chose a number between 1 and 64.  The downside, of course, to such potpourri-ity was some questionable balance.  My sense however was this evened itself out over the 8 rounds.

So what did others make of the paper?

Kieran....

"The quiz was a throwback; no themes, pairs, mash ups, top to tails, crosswords or any fancy business at all.  There was even an appearance from 'which British city is served by such and such airport', the question format straw that finally broke Chara Gerry and caused him to rage in print against the dying of inventiveness when question-setting.  That said, from start to finish it took little more than an hour including the half time beer break.  Somewhere Mike Heale is wearing a huge grin and channelling Mr Punch, 'that's the way to do it'.  For all the merits of brevity and simplicity though there was something dislocated about it.  A sense that this used to be great and it's nice to experience it just once more but things have moved on and now we're playing a different game entirely.  Like watching Yaya tread the Etihad turf on his Shirley Bassey farewell tour.  It was once absolutely brilliant but now it's a bit.... meh."

Ivor....

"As expected from John Tolan, formerly of the Red Lion team in its various incarnations, a good old traditional quiz.  64 unsorted general knowledge questions.  No themes, a sprinkling of gee-whizzes, some quiz classics and the occasional chestnut - with a difficulty level to ensure everyone went home with a couple of 2s and the feeling one’s brains had been lightly exercised rather than flogged to death.

In what must be the shortest quiz paper of the season tucked into an A5 envelope with barely a question longer than a line and all compressed onto two sheets of paper it ended well before 10.15, resulting in some of us being two sheets to the wind such was the available time for supping ale and chat.  There was even time for jokes during the quiz with the pantry question reminding me of the old classic riddle: 'What is the difference between Fanny Craddock and a cross-country run'? (ED: No, nor me)

The quiz itself certainly tested areas last visited at primary school: scalene triangles, the Fosse Way and Richard I’s marriage en route to the Crusades (surely a marriage as convincing as Elton John’s to Renate in 1984).  And a quiz mercifully free of the distasteful modern world, by which I mean Cabinet ministers, silver screen nonentities, popular beat combos - indeed anything after about 1980, and this suited us very well.  The only curiosity was the greyhound racing colours question as no one had ever seen a race with more than six traps."

Mike O'B....

"One doubt - no-one of the 8 present, understood the question about greyhound racing.

The questions contained as they were on just two sheets were difficult for the QM to navigate.  It would not have been difficult to get into the Two Ronnies situation where the answer to a question was given to the preceding or following question - but I survived with just one faux-pas, asking Spares Question 1 rather than Round 8 Question 1."

....and finally Shrimp Tom (who knows a thing or two about setting balanced and enjoyable questions for general consumption) chips in these comments as a counter-balance to some of the remarks above....

"Shrimps and Prodigals alike will remember this paper for the unfortunate pairing of Dennis the Menace and Vera Menchik, which gave plenty to talk about at the half-time break.  But to retain only this memory would be unfair and unfortunate; it was really quite a good paper, with short, pithy questions, good balance of subject matter and plenty of what I call 'inherent interest'.

Holst’s Planets - Tom: ‘It's either Neptune or Uranus but I remember my brother’s LP… blah, blah….. shall we try Neptune?'

1908 Olympics - James, Rachel and Richard: 'Was it something to do with a volcano?  Tom: 'Maybe, but there was a major earthquake in Messina in 1908, isn’t that more likely…?'

Clothing labels:  Rachel: 'Could it be Do not bleach?'  Tom and James: 'But how about Do not dry clean?’

As far as we were concerned, the ‘oldie’ popular culture questions were all perfectly gettable.  Desmond Llewelyn, Trevor Francis, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Puppet on a String – these are comfortably within the standard quiz canon, in the ‘old but enduring’ category.  None was in our condemned category:  ‘nostalgic but dead and buried as far we are concerned’.

....and the Dave Barras Question of the Week award this week has been nominated by The Opsimaths in memory of all those innocent days of the late 1970s when quiz leagues were just kicking off and mop-headed footballers were fetching ludicrously high sums of money.  As it happens the footballer in question later went to Man City and lived just a few hundred yards from the Albert Club on Holme Road just the other side of Marie Louise Park.  Who knows he might even have observed the new-born Quiz League in its infancy when he popped into his Didsbury local for a pint after training.  Anyway the question chosen was Round 4 Question 1:

"As you know a small group of us have been planning the ‘WithQuiz ar 40‘ Celebration Evening that we’re holding on Wednesday March 28^th 2018 at Didsbury Cricket Club.

The time has come to issue invitations so that we can be sure of the numbers attending.  We want Team Captains to be responsible for issuing the bulk of the invitations.  The attached document describes the evening and is intended for you to include when you send out your invites.

We have decided that we should limit each of our 10 teams to 7 invitees (current and past players).  We are keen to meet up with as many former players as possible so you are urged to make an effort to contact former players and get them in on the act.  The capacity of the Didsbury Cricket Club Function Room where we are holding the event is 80 – so if every team takes up 7 invites that leaves the planning group 10 more invites to send to former WithQuizzers who might not be on the radar of any current team.

Please send me a list of those that have accepted your invitations by February 10^th.

Please let me have their name, their email address and whether they would prefer the veggie option on the buffet (if you say nothing about dietary preference I will assume they’re OK with meat).

No individual attending will be asked to pay anything but we will cover the cost by asking each of the current 10 teams to pay (what we currently estimate to be) £50. 

I will place the gist of this email on the website Home page along with other information about this special evening as we get closer to the date."