Withington Pub Quiz League - Quizbiz 23/02/22

Clean sweep for the away teams as the Prods, KFD and Albert open up a gap at the top of the table

Electric Pigs lost to Charabancs

Opsimaths lost to Albert

Bards lost to Prodigals

Ethel Rodin lost to KFD

Electric Pigs lost to Charabancs

Charabancs recovery continues at the Fletcher Moss

For once Damian's smile is justified...

The Charas notched up only our third victory this season - but our second since proceedings restarted just 3 weeks ago. Dare we presume that our win rate has taken a dramatic turn for the better? Well, it's far too early to make dangerous presumptions of that kind but it feels very encouraging to say the least to be the ones buying the consolation round for a change, rather than waiting for it to come to us. Hopefully we will be in a position to buy a few more before this season reaches its conclusion.

Tonight was notable for the inaugural appearance of our newest recruit, my cousin Bernard, newly returned to Stockport after twenty years of languishing in the remote backwoods of East Anglia and eager to take up the reins of weekly quizzing again. What could be more fitting than marking your maiden appearance for the Charas by helping them secure a much needed win? If he keeps it up we may be forced to confer on him the ultimate honour of buying the consolation round on a permanent basis. Who could spurn an incentive like that?

Toots gets some mates at last

(R4/Q6)

Opsimaths lost to Albert

Albert remain in the hunt as the Opsis continue to slide

Howell reflects...

Another disappointing night for the Opsimaths, coming second in what I suspect might have been one of a lowest scoring nights in the League!

We lost 4-3 in rounds (with one tied) hampered by the 10 unanswered questions splitting 7 to Opsis and just 3 to Albert.

Due to the Man U match we had to retreat into the Snooker Room and were only disturbed by snooker players when the quiz was over. The feeling of camaraderie with our Albert opponents was good with both teams finding twos tricky to get hold of!

to which Mike adds...

The lowish score indicates that this was was a fairly tough quiz although at The Albert Club it did produce a close contest in which the lead changed hands several times and the result was in doubt until the final round.

Handforth handful

(R5/Q2)

Bards lost to Prodigals

The Prods cement their position at the top

QM Mike reports...

It's not easy to criticise the captain of one of the teams I support, nor a quiz which I had a small part in putting together, however for a similar reason it was a paper that made it fun to be the QM.

A low scoring quiz, particularly in the first half, and on a few occasions rather off balance, favouring the team starting first. Even answerer Jimmy could not believe his luck when all he had to do was name Ryan Giggs, whereas the opposition had had to struggle to name two who had won twice.

Having been responsible for setting the '1972 Round' it was amusing to note that 4 of the quizzers present were born well past the year that conferred the soubriquet 'Young' on History Men’s David!

The Curling Stone

(R2/Q6)

Old Spice

(R7/Q7)

Ethel Rodin lost to KFD

KFD keep up the chase beating last season's champs

Kieran's happy...

Oh it's this again.

The last time we played Ethel my match report was written in a conflicted state of mind; elated because yet again we'd just eked out the tightest of wins against one of the league's most powerful teams, and yet appalled because Warner and Labuschagne were thrashing what was billed as the England attack to all parts of the Gabba and the contest was done before it had properly begun. Well matches between KFD and Ethel are repeatedly more keenly fought than the Ashes. For that matter tonight's Liverpool v Leeds game was more keenly fought than the Ashes.

After the profligacy of our three point victory in the reverse fixture at the Griffin in December tonight restored the natural order as nothing was decided until the last pair. I knew the answer to my question was Julian Barnes, honest I did, and if I'd needed the two that's what I would have said. But at three points ahead with only three on the table for Ethel I had the luxury of conferring with my fifteen fingered team mates for the one point which made the game safe. Huge admiration from our side for our opponents - and particularly for Greg who scored seven twos only to be defeated at the last. It seems the same thing happened to him a while back against the Historymen. Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

Kieran and Barry in earlier WithQuiz days with that distinctive KFD stare

(R3/Q8)

I love evenings like tonight. You go through sixty odd questions fearful of losing due to making the slightest error - but you know that it's always going to come down to the last pair, the last couple at most. And it's always like this when we play Ethel, going back years now there's only ever a couple of points in it. Just great fun and a serious challenge which always seems to bring out the best in us. Our star tonight was Barry with five twos which would have been six but for some understandable caution over the McPointy answer when things were tight at the start of Round 7. Martin weighed in on a lot of conferred questions near the end - it was one of those nights when we worked really well together as a four. And that of course is how we won with six bonuses against Ethel's two. I may have mentioned now and then that that's the way we win most games.

Round 4, the Woke / Non-woke round was what brought us back into the contest, winning it 7-1 and turning a four point deficit into a two point lead at halfway. I really can't work out if that means we're totally PC and would be the Guardian's teacher's pet with Ethel as a bunch of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals or the other way round. Or maybe we just know enough about the issues and what's making the news right now without having to ally to one side or the other - just like any other area of knowledge really. One gripe though, I'd like to make whoever landed me with the 'nya / nyan' question non-binary. Just so they get the full (or empty) experience.

A great evening and a great contest. We can just about see the Prodigals taillights a way ahead. We have to try to keep them in sight and hope something breaks our way. It's going to be a tense few weeks.

Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill were each Sports PERSONALITY of the Year? Twice! The world's gone mad.

Councillors for the future

(R1/Q7)

Quiz paper set by...

...The History Men

Average Aggregate score 73.8

I'll stay out of the commentary on this week's paper as I was unable to play, self-isolating at home.

so what did Damian think...

Tonight's paper from the Historymen obviously played to our strengths as their papers so often do. Plenty of contemporary fare mixed in with a few nostalgic trips down Memory Lane for long defunct TV programmes like Vision On and Mind Your Language. Gettable themes that generally helped rather than hindered with a nice bit of bingo to round off the evening. We did feel that winning the toss and going first was advantageous to us. Balancing the two halves often seems to be the trickiest part of setting a quiz. Forgot to canvass opinion on question of the week but I personally enjoyed the Hidden Theme 'Sight' round and the 'Fill In The Blank from the List of Items' round.

and Kieran...

A pretty good paper from the Historymen though twelve unanswereds was quite high (we got eight of them). I copped for four of those - have I ever mentioned about seat four? No, not this time since Greg played in seat four for Ethel and did pretty well.

and Howell...

I felt that the questions were well-crafted and, overall, pretty fair as a job lot. The theme round on 'Opticals' and 'Occupations' were smart - and with an 11.5 points average for these two rounds (compared to 7.5 for the other rounds) they were pretty gettable as well.

and Mike O'B adds...

It was a paper which demanded a lot of conferring and relatively few twos. There was a distinct reliance on lines from modern novels and sometimes the answers to questions were so obscure that we were obliged to resort to wild guesses with little hope of success - in other words there was little scope for reasoning to arrive at an answer. The Wokery round went down particularly well since it dredged up thoughts people would rather forget.

Better than lights in downtown Thimphu

(R2/Q5)

Question of the Week

This week I've chosen the curious fact on display in Round 2 Question 1...

Which song that reached No 2 in 1984 inspired a future American Grammy and Oscar winner to adopt a particular stage name? The song had a video, the rights of which had to be purchased from the then East German government.

For the answer to this and all the week's other questions click here.

...and also

I had to miss the fray this week isolating with Covid (the dreaded 2 red lines turned up on my LFT last Sunday). Maybe just lucky but the symptoms have been very mild. So far it's been just like a slight cold. No temperature, a slight headache on day one, a slightly runny nose and a sore throat which was not really troublesome. Paracetamols eradicated the symptoms. Thereafter the main problem has been isolation and the incumbent boredom. Had it not been for the rules in place I would have happily carried on with life as usual. Hopefully next Wednesday I'll be back to challenge KFD at the Griffin.

Kubrick's last

(R1/Q1)