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Good night for
the WithQuiz teams with just Stockport's Alexandra
(in the Lowly Grail trophy) and Smart Alex (in the
WIST Cup) making it through to the semis
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WIST Cup
Prodigals beat Tiviot
Traveller's Call lost to Mantis Shrimp
Railway lost to Albert
Opsimaths lost to Smart Alex
Lowly Grail
KFD beat Railway Fliers
Ethel Rodin beat Wandering Star
HMRUFC lost to History Men
(w/o)
Alexandra beat Bards of Didsbury |
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A label to Peel
(R3/Sp)
WIST Cup
Prodigals beat Tiviot
A comfortable victory for the Prods with the
second highest score of the evening
One helluva 1981 beating!
(R1/Q1)
Traveller's Call lost to Mantis Shrimp
A good victory for the Shrimps against one of
Stockport's consistently strong teams
 Rachael
checks in...
After a very enjoyable evening of quizzing against
our formidable Stockport opponents, we finished 9
points ahead. We had a small lead after the first
Stockport-style set of questions which we extended
slightly to leave us six points ahead going into the
Withington-style rounds. We did terribly on the
local round while our opponents hoovered up the
points we kept dropping. So we only had the
slimmest lead going into the penultimate round.
We pulled back somewhat in the last two rounds and
so managed a fairly comfortable win in the end.
However, the final scores don't really do justice to
how close the match was for much of the evening. Our
hosts were extremely welcoming and we had a lovely
evening away in Stockport, polished off with a
complimentary plate of sandwiches!
Auden and Britten’s paean to the GPO
(R1/Q3)
Railway
lost to
Albert
The Railway' home venue in Stockport was
unavailable so they played at 'Home' in the Fletcher
Moss - only to suffer defeat
 Mike
O'B brings us up-to-date...
As has become traditional in our WIST encounters we
breezed through the Stockport rounds, building up a
lead of 12 points and then proceeded to micturate it
away in the WithQuiz rounds. At one point we were
just 3 points ahead and then finally crawled over
the line, partly because young Stephen knew all
about the Limerick Soviet. Come off it Megson,
8 and a quarter miles from Withington to Wilmslow!
The Railway are a very resilient team and you can
see why they are going well in the Stockport League.
Grudgingly however, I must say that in general
Megson's paper was pretty entertaining with a wide
range of topics. How did he remain sober enough to
create it?
The footballer that prompted
A Lap of Honour
(R1/Q9)
At the Albert committee meeting this week we
discussed how to apportion the points from our
non-victory over the Turing Testers. I
modestly suggested that I should be awarded 8 twos
but strangely this seemed to meet with resentment
and derision. I was forced to impress my team
mates by revealing that I had been sent an e-mail
from Fuji systems (allegedly) offering me the
services of no less than 218 sexy ladies living in
Manchester and anxious to meet me. I shall spend all
next week drawing up a shortlist for interviews so I
may be somewhat distracted next Wednesday.
Easter fair in East Manchester
(R3/Q5)
Opsimaths
lost to Smart Alex
Smart Alex ensure at least one team from
Stockport goes through to the WIST semis
 Mike
Bath reports
In the end we were well beaten by a very proficient
team from Stockport (which included Rodinistas Roddy
and Greg who quiz weekly both sides of the Mersey).
Hilary called in sick late in the day so we only
fielded three but this shouldn't detract from the
Smarties' superiority. They led from the start
and we never got back on terms.
D’ye ken the answer to this one?
(R1/Q5)
The real star of the evening, however, was our QM,
Chara Graham. He bravura-ed his way through
the whole evening embellishing Gerry's questions
when a personal memory flitted across his mind. My
hearing aids were totally redundant. Imagine a
whole evening of interrogation by Brian Blessed and
you're not far from the mark. Even Jitka who
seemed disapproving at first was won over as Graham
sailed through to the winning post well ahead of
all-comers.
Pre-Tate
(R1/Q15)
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Lowly
Grail
KFD beat
Railway Fliers
KFD top-score to gain a comfortable win
 Kieran's
elated...
When
former President Bob emailed me a few days ago to
confirm he was ready and willing to QM for us
tonight after a five week sojourn (who knows where)
he said he had been perplexed by what had happened
to us since last we met and that he longed for his
'street fighters' to unleash our inner 'Peaky
Blinders'. I interpreted this to mean we had
perplexed Bob in the way that Raheem Sterling had
perplexed Gareth Southgate on Monday morning and
decided we needed to win back his trust and
approbation. He really does deserve a lot better
than what we have served up recently.
So to
the 'climate change in microcosm' front room of the
Griffin and a disappointed-looking Bob,
disappointed- looking in the way that Gareth
Southgate had looked disappointed during his press
conference on Tuesday, and sporting an echt 'Peaky
Blinder' cap - in a disappointed sort of way. No
Bogota, Lima or revolutionary Vietnamese logos
tonight, Bob was in serious mood and we'd better
shape up or he'd be calling James Maddison away from
the gaming tables and we could start looking around
in the Adlington, Nether Alderley and Rainow League,
Division 3 (North) for ways to occupy ourselves on a
Wednesday evening.
The bear of Bern
(R1/Q30)
And
it worked! And how it worked. The highest score of
the evening and the kind of comfortable win we
haven't had since our incontinent PM last took
little Boris out for a pleasingly solo spaff. Our
flying guests certainly got the rough end of the
deal with ten of the thirteen unanswereds falling to
them but we seem to have had that experience so much
recently that we fell upon our luck with the
enthusiasm that our bubbly PM reserves for foreign
national IT hackers with a pole dancing sideline.
We
won without Young Liam®! Sorry Liam but you
just ain't ready for us yet.
The
Fliers were excellent company throughout the evening
(note to drawmaster, if we ever qualify for either
WIST competition again and are up against the Fliers
can we please play them in their fabulous sounding
home in Portwood?). Flier Jim seemed to have a
finger in, and a story about, every civic inspired
pie that has been baked in Stockport, Sale and all
of South Manchester over the last forty years or so.
Cleaning up after the Nazis
(R1/Sp1)
I
spent my Saturday mornings between the ages of five,
and nine or ten, at the matinée at the beloved Scala
(though that question fell to the Fliers). Ah!
the Scala; two cartoons, the kind of cliffhanger
western/adventure film which inspired the Indiana
Jones series and an usherette who doubled as a
dinner lady at St Cuthbert's primary school during
the week and who I later discovered had been played
all along by Louise Fletcher. Who knew the Stasi
had penetrated so deep into 1960s Withington?
Our
season remains alive, at least until the end of
February, and I think maybe Bob isn't 'Waistcoat'
Gareth - but more 'Middle Manager' Mauricio. Barely
a third of the season played and we're already
purely a cup team. But it's something to cling
on to.
Next
week the super heated Griffin again and the champion
Prodigals. Ah!
Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Spot'
(R2/Q2)
Ethel
Rodin beat Wandering Star
Quite a close contest throughout according to
James but Ethel came out on top
Wandering Star Charlotte reports...
Despite losing we enjoyed the game. Some
highlights: an interesting local knowledge round
and two good rounds on flowers (however they're
pronounced). Our resident geographer will be
refreshing his knowledge of Russian regional
capitals - bound to come in useful again sometime -
and we need to work more on constructive conferring
without a time limit; the 30-second habit was too
ingrained. Nice to have a mention of Terence Trent
D'Arby, too.
Modern Impressionist or Soft Porn?
(R2/Q7)
HMRUFC
lost to History Men
Unfortunately the Rugby Club had to scratch due
to unforeseen absences
Alexandra
beat Bards of Didsbury
The Alex keep the Stockport home fires burning as
they move through to the semis at the expense of the
Bards
 Alex's
Mike sends this...
We still have painful memories of meeting the Bards
in ‘Europe’, having been absolutely larruped by them
in a semi-final in February 2016. Halfway through
Round One it looked like déjà vu all over again, as
they raced into a 10+ points lead. However, we
clawed most of this back over the next few
questions. We then drew the written round, the
Bards impressive EAIPM answer being cancelled out by
our (Rob’s) less impressive but equally pointsworthy
'Girobank'. We started the WithQuiz-style rounds
just two behind.
The Bards shaded the flowers round, but we did quite
well on local knowledge, which surprised us as three
of our four were raised in Cumbria, deepest
Merseyside and even deeper Lincolnshire. We twigged
the meaning of ‘cryptic flowers’ immediately, which
meant we went into the final round with a lead of
three. In a tense, low-scoring round Derek's
2-point Symphonie Fantastique meant Tony
needed a ‘maximum’ on the penultimate question to
keep the game alive. When he said that he only knew
one person who was shot in 1812 we feared we would
need to get something on the final question. Our
sigh of relief was probably heard in Withington when
he plumped for the shooter rather than the shootee©
and said "John Bellingham". Fine margins!
We had a lovely post-quiz chat with our visitors,
covering subjects that included our pub's resident
parrot, intimidating quiz venues of the 1980s,
methods of capital punishment and Tony's extensive
knowledge of the life (and death) of Tommy Handley.
A most enjoyable evening.
Macron remembers with his Bleuet
(R3/Q3)
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Quiz
paper set by...
...Gerry Collins (for WithQuiz)
Average
Aggregate score 94.7
By no
means an easy paper with quite a few unanswered
questions along the way (at least in the Opsimaths'
match) but absolutely loads of Fr Megson-style
ornamentation to lighten the load and make the whole
evening a delightful trip around the backwaters of
the trivia that Gerry has stashed away over the
years.
By
way of example I doubt if anyone got the Round 2
Question 8 Blockbuster 'EAIPM' but just 2 questions
later Olaf Falafel's 'Funniest Joke of the Fringe'
was great value (our 'Florets' trumped the Smarties'
'Courgettes').
Oh,
and what an excellent picture of L S Lowry adorned
the question paper's front cover!
So
all round an excellent evening - many thanks Gerry.
Rachael had similar thoughts...
"We
enjoyed the paper very much, lots of variety, and I
was particularly taken with the pop music and film
questions of course. Nice to be reminded of
Terence Trent D'Arby! We really struggled with
the local round and didn't have a clue on most of
these questions, though we all very much enjoyed the
spare about Lowry's description of the Stockport
Viaduct!"
...and finally Alex's Mike has his
say...
"The
first half of the quiz was well balanced, with just
about the right number of unanswerables which seemed
to fall fairly evenly between the teams. The next
four rounds were certainly not easy, with only eight
two-pointers. That said, there were plenty of
interesting, entertaining and occasionally whimsical
questions, with one or two 'well I never knew that'
moments - which is always a good thing.
Many thanks to Gerry for a very good paper."
Question of the Week
This week the Alex, the Bards, the Opsis and Smart
Alex all opted for the 'well I never' fact embedded
in Round 6 Question 2...
What self-declared and short-lived status was
held by the German states of Bremen and Bavaria and
- even more briefly - the Irish city of Limerick,
during the political turbulence of the year 1919?
For the answer to this and all the week's other
questions click
here.
1919's ten bob note in the West of Ireland
(R6/Q2)
...and
also
Mediawatch
This week it's Prod Michael Taylor. On Monday
his trio of Wickets had their second appearance on
Only Connect but were sadly stumped by a trio
of Electrophiles. So, despite putting up two
strong performances, the Wickets are on the bus
home.
Website
After spending approximately 650 hours over the past
14 months I have completed the main tasks of
updating the website...
-
550 question papers (from 17/10/01
onwards) are now all in the same format whereby
each round's questions are shown on their own
with an option at the end of the round to go and
see the same questions shown alongside the
answers (by my calculations we now have around
41,250 WithQuiz questions stored)
17/10/01: Round 1 Question 1...
Name one of the 2 British scientists
who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine.
-
533 weekly QuizBiz articles (dating from
05/02/03) are stored, each displayed using
roughly the same design and colour scheme, the
only major changes being the addition of
pictures inspired by the week's question paper
from the start of 2012 and a move from one to
three columns at the start of the 2018/19 season
05/02/03: First QuizBiz headline....
"Braggarts win at home to Historymen"
05/02/03: First QotW from a paper set by Snoopy's
Friends....
"Which 'child' appears at intervals of between 3
and 7 years?"
From End of Season evening 2001
captioned: "Some Pigs conferring"
-
A raft of archive material prepared for the Quiz
League's 40th anniversary in 2017 is stored
-
Many pictures (mostly for picture rounds) that
were lost and appeared as blank spaces on the
site have now been restored
-
Fixtures, results and end of season league
tables since 2001 are all accessible
I
will continue to carry out the weekly updates for
the foreseeable future as well as adding some of the
Albert Club monthly quiz rounds (currently there are
23 of these uploaded). However I do now feel
the site is in a fair shape to handover to someone
else when the time comes.
Correspondence demonstrates that this site is widely read and used across the quizzing
community. I know there is always room for
improvement so do let me know of any thoughts you
have for enhancements - or just pages that need
attention and have
somehow escaped my keen editor's eye over the past
busy year.
Mastermind
A
chance to visit Opsimath Innis who's currently
marooned in Belfast working with John Humphrys...
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