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WITHQUIZ The Withington Pub Quiz League QUIZBIZ 21st February 2018 |
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| WQ Archive | Comments | Question papers | |||
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WITHQUIZ The Withington Pub Quiz League QUIZBIZ 21st February 2018 |
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| WQ Archive | Comments | Question papers | |||
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Results & Match Reports |
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Opsimaths lost to Prodigals Electric Pigs lost to Charabancs Mantis Shrimp beat Bards Dunkin' Dönitz beat History Men |
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It was tough going for valiant QM Stella as she battled the Head Roast that turned out to be both Round Two and and the TV-watching United fans in the front lounge of the Albert Club. She soldiered on and in the end officiated a close run quiz that saw the Prodigals just creep home in the last round. The Opsimaths got the majority of the unanswered questions (by a margin of 6 to 1) but the Prodigals were good value for their win with returning Master(ish) Mind Michael (we'll see in the MM final which he tells me will be televised in 3 weeks time) on great form. Prodigal John was in good shape too and the world's number one Jefferson Airplane fan (Danny) got the (you've guessed it) Jefferson Airplane question.
Despite the struggle with noise and
the complexity of the early part of the paper it
turned out to be a most enjoyable and (yes I'm going
to say it, Rachael) convivial evening. At the
close we fell to debating the virtues of today's
more cryptic questions versus the straightforward
'know it / don't know it' questions that
characterised the early days of the league. On
the whole I think we prefer today's more complex
brainteaser style whilst at the same time begging
setters not to overdo things. We're all
getting older and deafer and pubs are, by and large,
not getting
The Electric Pigs lost to Charabancs of Fire in a thronging Fletcher Moss. Damian sends this from the victors' side of the table.... "In a
crowded pub full of footie fans hoping to see Man U
win a European match, the Charas took on the Piggies
whose number included the welcome presence of one of
the very founders of our quiz league, Mr Barry
Whitehead no less. The Piggies, being on their
home turf, decided not to follow Man U's lazy
example of settling for a goalless draw and decided
instead to seize the bull by the horns and win their
first match of the year. However, coz that's
the kind of guys we are when the mood takes us
(which is admittedly not that often), after drawing
in the first round, we duly led in every subsequent
round and managed to stave off a Piggie revival in
the second half to come out as winners by 11 points.
Each member of the team duly scored at least one
two-pointer and thus qualified for next week's team
with new boy Graham
So overcome with emotion was Father M that our reverend captain promptly declared he was going on a 2 week retreat to the wilds of Bohemia in order to instruct the suspicious natives of the benefits of mid-week quizzing as a worthy accessory to drinking and fornicating. As the resident historian on the team I felt it my solemn duty to caution him against standing near any upstairs windows whilst sermonizing in front of the restless citizenry!" ....and from the home benches Andrew sends this.... "With The Electric Pigs' latest defeat tonight the discussion turned to our last victory in the league and the realisation that with us setting next week, defeat at Ethel Rodin in a fortnight's time would mean that the Electric Pigs will have gone a whole calendar year without a single victory. Team manager Gary has two weeks left to save his job…….the Mark Hughes of the Withington Quiz League."
Compulsory Mantis Shrimp kept their title challenge on the boil with a home victory at the Turnpike over The Bards of Didsbury. Rachael reports.... "We
had a most pleasant evening in the company of the
Bards. The first half
Dunkin' Dönitz beat The History Men at the Griffin by nobbut a short head. First we hear from Kieran....
"Not again. Wednesday nights
are cutting the Dunkers' life expectancy by years
week after week. For once it wasn't a tale of 'conferreds
and bonuses vs twos'; almost all the stats were
evenly balanced. The only tiny difference was
that the History Men copped for four unanswereds to
our three and in contests as tight as this that
makes a huge difference. No criticism of Ethel's
paper though, the odd one in only seven 'strike
outs' can't be predicted and overall they crafted a
paper which produced yet another superb finish.
If I am to carp about the paper it would be that it
was somewhat complicated and rather wordy. It would
have been a challenge for the absent Bob (in the
Canaries and nothing to do with arranging his
finances in advance of the Spring statement in a
couple of weeks - honest) but our QM for the night
was a debutante. Having said that she coped
admirably with the paper's difficulties and didn't
make any of the classic first timer's errors such as
giving the answer after Team One has answered
incorrectly without giving
Our usual approach of letting the opposition draw out a significant lead which we then reel in right at the death has worked well all season so why change it now? We duly let the History Men race away to a five point lead after Round One and, despite some toing and froing, they maintained that up to the end of Round Six. Time to get serious, so we duly did. Ivor and I were Eve Muirhead and Kyle Smith for the evening - you know both of us well so you can decide who is whom, but the stars were Barry and Anne who each reeled off four second half twos to keep the pressure on both teams. The usual story: a King Rat guessed without much conviction, a Vandebilt here, a White Rabbit (back off Danny) there, with David looking daggers at me if I dared to think about stumbling and Martin withdrawing the five finger sign out of embarrassment when he saw the look I gave him. Most
of all Barry, mocked and chastise I don't think we've got much left in the tank and next week we have the in-form Prodigals, University Challenge and potential Mastermind champion Michael to the fore no doubt. Merrrrrrrrrrcy as the Ig Bo would have it." ....and then from Ivor.... "We do like to give the Dunkers a bit of a scare even though we seem to lack the ability to deliver the coup de grâce these days. At one stage we got seven consecutive twos and were five points ahead by the end of Round 6, then one point ahead after Round 7, setting up the game for an exciting finish. However the wheels came off with three unanswereds to us in the last round which led to a comfortable win for the Dunkers. Young Elizabeth Wood made her debut in the QM seat tonight and - considering this paper had the most complex rubric yet, more than a smattering of Latin binomials and French loan words, and the trickiest handouts of the season so far, she did a splendid job. Not a single QM blurt all evening." |
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Quiz Paper Verdict |
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This week the paper was set by Ethel Rodin The average aggregate was 73.8 |
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To
coin a well-worn Damian phrase, for us it was a
curate's egg of a paper. Overly complex at
times but full of fascinating teasers at others.
Christian names and Scottish football grounds themes
fine; spoonerisms nice try, but no cigar. The
trouble with spoonerisms (as the setter of this
round found) is that viable examples are too few and
far between to make for natural question
construction leading to contortions which were
really hard to get hold of. A long question
concerning a single subject can have a natural flow
both for the QM and for the thought processes of the
competitors but when length is accompanied by three
totally different strands of knowledge (not to
mention ambient noise) it becomes well nigh
impossible. Nick who is normally so good at
concentrating and absorbing the question text gave
up a number of times claiming he simply couldn't
remember what the first bit was about by the time QM
Stella had reached the last element. The
Prodigals had a similar reaction. Having said all that the second half speeded up and the dreaded 11pm finish was comfortably avoided with us being done and dusted just after 10.30pm (by which time the United hubbub next door had gone home). One little gripe....County Down is not a province of Ireland (the Irish provinces being Leinster, Munster, Connacht and Ulster); it's a county (though understandably the setters didn't want to use the word 'county' in the question). They could have referred to it as an 'area' or 'division' - words which have no specific meaning in relation to the subdivisions of the island of Ireland. My own favourite question was the marvellous Marie Lloyd one which I have promoted to Question of the Week (see below). Why was it a mere spare? Meanwhile Ivor offers this review of the paper.... "Quite a high scoring game for an Ethel paper. The match speeded up in the second half; as can be imagined the complexities of spoonerisms and run-ons did result in a few 'constipaters' in the first half. Good to have a few memories of O-level English e.g. Keats' “A thing of beauty is a joy for Ivor”. Sadly the nightmare of A-level Maths was sufficient to totally suppress any chance of me resurrecting the answer to 'force times distance'." and Damian adds these thoughts....
....whilst Rachael provides this feedback to Ethel.... "It was a fun and challenging paper which provoked much furious conferring on both sides. We enjoyed the run-on rounds; we'd be quite happy to see more of these, and the spoonerisms round was fun, though the 'Big O' question caused some argument as Richard informed us that the 'g' in 'Igbo' was silent not to mention that the first half of the question failed to make it clear that we were looking for a nickname." |
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For the answer to this and all the week's other questions click here. |
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'WithQuiz at 40' News |
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Make sure you've got Wednesday March 28th in your diaries as this is when we will be gathering to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the formation of our Quiz League. The event will take place at The Didsbury Sports Ground, Ford Lane, Didsbury and will start at 8pm. The bar will be open until midnight. |
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Earlier today I emailed all team captains with details of the formal invitation to this event. Here is an extract from that email....
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The Opsimaths
suffered another Orkney Dark derby defeat at the
hands of The Prodigals.
any
quieter.
proving
to be the star of the evening, notching up four of
the little blighters!
was very close with the lead changing hands a few
times but never being more than a point or two.
We pulled ahead a little in the second half and
finished four in front." 
Team
Two the chance to answer (yes I've committed that
one several times) - and OK I'm biased about the
QM's performance because my daughter Elizabeth took
the role for the evening and dealt with everything
as if she'd been doing it for years. Fortunately
our opponents have been playing in this league for
almost as long as we have and are the most affable
companions to spend a Wednesday evening with scoring
points as and when. It was pretty unlikely there
would be any flashpoints. 
d
by me earlier in the season for head-scratching
blurts, refusing to be intimidated by fifteen
fingers and figuring, quite correctly, that Disraeli
was the only possible answer for the 'Jude'
bestriding the world stage and knocking the rest of
Europe on their arse. Those were the days
....Boris? Boris.......? 
At
the Albert Club (as mentioned above) we were
afflicted by Man U fans in the front lounge which
made the delivery of the early rounds with their
complex instructions and lengthy text very difficult
for both the QM and the worn out ears of the
participants. However, full marks to Stella
who stood in as QM for The Opsimaths (Howell has
gone to Vietnam and Clare is Challenging
Universities so we were down to our last four
available players).
"Tonight's
paper by Ethel was a real brainteaser with plenty
for the old grey matter to chew on - especially in
the first half where we had further parts added to
questions that were already two part in their
format. The upshot was some very wordy and
lengthy questions that elicited some very lengthy
conferring stretching proceedings to the limit
despite some judicious QMing from our favourite
local councillor, Andrew S. Nevertheless the
paper was generally well received with plenty of
variety, and the pace picking up in the second half.
As a result we just about finished on time and so
were forced to dig into our pockets and do that
comparatively rare thing for Charas these days:
stump up a round for our beaten opponents!"
....and the Dave Barras Question of the Week award this week has been
nominated by The Opsimaths and goes to the first Spare Question in Round
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