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2nd March 2022

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Prodigals, KFD and Albert all win to extend their lead over the rest

History Men lost to Albert

Electric Pigs lost to Bards

KFD beat Opsimaths

Prodigals beat Ethel Rodin

History Men lost to Albert

Albert's win helps them stay in touch with the leading pair

Mike O'B sends a view from the winning benches...

I chose to attend as a spectator last night.  I saw myself as a kindly, jolly elderly Dickensian gentleman; Scrooge  at the end of  Christmas  Carol who, if I saw Tiny Tim hanging upside down in a butcher's window, would buy him for the Cratchit's to gobble up. 

It was a strange quiz - 40% of Albert's points came from the first two rounds and the team really struggled for points thereafter.  It would appear that  the History Men, like ourselves, suffered from having to confer for most of the match.  The final aggregate was reasonable enough but it took some doing.  As usual the run-ons went down well and, to be fair, most of the other questions seemed OK.


...and Ivor from the losing benches...

As the self-appointed leader of the Historymen (and only because I am the only surviving 1989 Historyman still in Manchester),  I am no Putin, seeing my role as more directorial than dictatorial.  In view of our mediocre performances in recent seasons I am quite willing to innovate and run with good ideas from the troops. Anne has long held the theory that seat 4 (my seat) gets easier questions than seat 3 (her seat).  Hitherto we have been like the Academie Francaise in allocating numbered seats.  So tonight there was an experiment of seat reversal to see if there was a reversal of fortune.  This barely significant trial resulted in Anne getting 3 twos to my none.  Even worse I conceded 4 steals (two of which were blurts) to Anne's 1.  Albert (playing  first) had a similar finding with Evelyn's seat 4 (3 twos) to Jeremy’s seat 3 (1 two).  

We got off to a bad start with a blurt on our first question (Faulkes) and fared little better in the next two rounds to be 12 points behind going into Round 4.  We have found that not even being into double figures after three rounds does not augur well for the match. We had hoped that the round on film (Mike H’s specialist subject) might have stopped the rot and he did get the only two but otherwise there were a fair sprinkling of actors yet to have the impact of the Golden Greats. Even the music run-ons doomed some of us to oblivion and I would not have expected the Charas to be so cruel as to inflect popular music SOME OF WHICH WAS FROM THE 2010s! Luckily we had young Vanessa to come to the rescue there. 

The second half of the quiz we actually 'won' though it did not feel like it at the time and we did have a number of blurts (the Bronte’s Agnes Gray as an example of 19th Century multi-adulterous goings on?).  Still there were some satisfying answers out of nowhere (Cromer Ridge).  Like poor golfers it is the occasional brilliant stroke that keeps us quizzers going on (until we finally have a stroke probably).

Alison was more than happy to be asking the questions tonight.  The picture questions were in beautiful detail to the extent that the answers were readable if one knew the Cyrillic alphabet.  The final round was a witty end to the evening but when drink has been consumed the nuances of the hints in the later questions can be lost compared with those in the first half.


whilst Mike H adds...

As ever, it was a pleasure to participate and to see Anne again after several weeks.

I was happy to hear there was a round on films until those questions appeared!  At least I couldn't fail on my question in that round: to identify Sylvie's favourite, Brad Pitt.  A very interesting idea for a round but... slightly earlier films would have been more appreciated!

The History Men struggled somewhat, amassing just 9 points in the first three rounds.  We did rather better in the second half and it could have been a much closer result if I had been more positive in going for one answer, and more circumspect in conferring on a couple of others.


Part of the Partridge ridge

(R5/Q8) 


Electric Pigs lost to Bards

A comfortable victory for the visitors from the Parrswood


Prodigals beat Ethel Rodin

The home team edge in front of last season's champs

Jimmy tells the winner's story...

A close fought quiz as you'd expect from the last two teams to hold the League shield.

Ethel started strongly, racing into a formidable 9-2 lead by the end of the first round.

The movie round in Round 3 was to prove pivotal; all the Prods are big cinema buffs and this set of questions definitely played to our strengths so that we entered Round 4 leading 17-13.

After that it was extremely close but we just had enough to keep the reigning champs at bay.

The last round was a bit of a Curate’s egg with plenty of opportunities to go the wrong way.  Luckily we gathered the points we needed to secure an important win.


and on the losing side James was none too enamoured...

Not impressed by that quiz at all.  Entire rounds based on one polarising topic (i.e. films that our team were never likely to have watched, or music we haven’t even heard of, let alone listened to), well that just kills the game.  OK, so the Prodigals mopped up the points - but Geoff and Roddy were essentially excluded from the whole quiz tonight, and that’s not a good thing.

We were then left to try and catch up with a series of 'Jack and Jill' questions.  Who didn’t guess Graham Taylor for the England manager question?  Who didn’t guess Michael Johnson for the basketball one?  If it wasn’t them, then it certainly made the next guess easier.  And that round was just that: a series of ‘best guess wins’ questions. 

Feeling as if I need to be kept engaged by some recent sets of questions and I don’t think our league can afford the luxury of disengagement.


Lancelot, Neckalot and...

(R1/Q1) 


KFD beat Opsimaths

KFD mopped up with their usual aplomb over their out-of-touch opponents

Mike would've cocked a snook at that pesky KFD lot...

...if he'd been able to remember who that avian Notts Forest forward was.  On the tip of his tongue - but sadly that's where it stayed.

In truth I was hopeless and my fellow Opsis weren't much better.  KFD were sympathetic but nevertheless rammed home their advantage scoring freely - whether on obscure American films starring actors that the Opsis hadn't heard of, or hopeless quotes from American basketball players.  Come to think of it what is it about the US that appeals to the Charas so much?

My only moment of (very slight) redemption came through knowing that Gustav Holst had taught at St Paul's school.

Better shut up and let Kieran do his lap of honour...


...a small South American jaguar

(R2/Q6) 


Kieran basks...

Well that's not supposed to happen, certainly not twice in the same season.  What was once WithQuiz's version of El Classico has delivered two pretty straightforward wins in three months for the slightly younger of the two bands of old farts. 


He believed in America a lot but sadly America didn't reciprocate

(R8/Q1)


Pre-match Martin and I worried that this could be our last appearance for quite some time.  You see we both live in Edgeley, on Petersburg Road and have to drive past Moscow Road to get anywhere out of our enclave.  So given the current situation regarding borders, isolation, sanctions and so on we're expecting a cordon sanitaire to be in place on Edgeley Road any day and we'll be corralled without access to Morrisons never mind the pubs of South Manchester for the duration.  When the picture questions of the Russian stamps turned up (which Mike has promised will be redacted when the question paper is published) our sense of paranoia only increased.

All was friendly enough once the parties had gathered and the pre-match chit chat started.  The Opsis and ex El Presidente Bob discussed the management of the Mersey in Didsbury and Northenden and the flooding at Bob's one-time fiefdom of Withington Golf Club.  Bob's been an ex El Presidente since he was deposed in a covert CIA operation a couple of years back and an American backed puppet now occupies his former treasured parking space and locker room seat.

There was still a pall hanging over KFD though.  I'm not sure any one of us could claim ownership of the team, it's more an anarchic collective (if that's possible) but with Roman forced into a fire sale in SW6 at least two of us - the residents of the enclave - may have  to divest in the next few days.  Any proceeds will likely be offered to Joseph Holt's over the bar at our former home. 


Symbol of a NI past that we hope never returns

(R2/Q5) 


What?  Oh the quiz?  Suited us and didn't suit the Opsimaths.  The margin of our 21 point victory came from three rounds; the 'who starred in these films', the 'music run ons' and the final 'guess the idiot behind the quote' round.  Unanswereds broke 4-3 against the Opsis but our emphatic win suggests that if entire rounds are set on a single subject and that subject is something of which one team knows little, then an even distribution of unanswereds might not be the best measure of the fairness of the paper.  

Speaking of guess the idiot, our 'twitcher-in-chief Barry was all primed for a two on his first question of the Egrets round but then couldn't remember the name of the vice-buffoon (1989 - 1993).  After we gave the answer for a conferred point, Bob asked "Dan Quayle, who could ever forget him?"  "Well Barry just did," chorused the other seven of us. 

Semi-serious adult in the room Mike expressed the thought that the best way to resolve the current crisis (not City's plodding build up, nor the Prodigals impeccable form, but you know, the real one) would be for someone in the Kremlin to take out Roman's former (up to last week) bezzie.  Three-quarter seriously I suggested that a deal whereby the FSB did that and the FBI performed the same service regarding the orange horror currently skulking in Florida would suit everyone.  Life really could be that simple if only WithQuizzers were running things rather than the inadequates who are currently bent on ruining our lives.

Enough of depressing world affairs, I can get quite depressed enough looking at the league table and seeing the Prodigals maintaining their lead with games running out.  If we're Chelsea I just hope they're City, then I'll have one thing to celebrate come May.


Quiz paper set by...

...The Charabancs of Fire

Average Aggregate score 75.8


Not a popular paper with the Opsimaths, it has to be said.  But then it's not reasonable to expect setters to theme their output in order to cover areas of knowledge known to be the speciality of particular teams.  However a whole round dominated by recent American movies in which you were asked to nominate an unknown actor who had jumped from playing a supporting role in one film on Hollywood lot A, to playing another role on Hollywood lot B just didn't seem to me to fit the 'General Knowledge' label.

How apt then that we ended the evening with Donald Rumsfeld's quote about knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.   


Acting royalty

(R3/Sp1)


James was characteristically blunt...

What happened to science, geography, history and reasonable general knowledge in this quiz?

And that question about Atlas?  What’s the point asking a very, very long question allegedly about some alternative form of love and then the answer being the bloke who carries the world on his shoulders?


Clough's Cologne Cult Clogger

(R6/Q6) 


Mike H, was more appreciative...

It was an entertaining quiz.

The picture questions were perhaps easier than intended since the answers were actually shown on the stamps.

The first spare in Round 6 used a rather clever play on words and for that reason it earns my Question of the Week nomination.

The last round was fun, though I thought not really suitable for a point-scoring quiz - too much guesswork required.  It would have been more appropriate as an extra fun round after the quiz was complete.


The Arrow of Indecision

(R6/Sp2) 


and Jimmy has a gripe...

The error on R3 Q2 was spotted by our excellent QM Anne-Marie who also picked up on the book year typo in R7 Q7.  It's always worth someone in the setting team giving the question paper another 'good coat of looking at' as my old boss used to say.

As for QotW - well Round 4 Q4 got our vote.  We had to drag the answer from our collective consciousness but luckily it was buried in there somewhere.


Cumbria's non-Lake District peak

(R5/Q7)


whereas Ivor's view...

We always enjoy a Chara quiz and apart from the fact that we lost we cannot complain about the variety and themes tonight.  Only five unanswereds (with Albert getting four of them).  Only 13 twos in total which might suggest a harder quiz (needing quite a few conferrals) or a loss of confidence amongst the quizzers in going for a solo answer (not that that stopped blurts).


Timeless beauty:

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21

(R4/Q4) 


Question of the Week

This week Jimmy and the Prodigals have chosen Round 4 Question 4...

The second movement of  Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major was used as the theme music to this 1967 Swedish film about a female circus performer who had fallen in love with a Swedish nobleman and committed suicide with him after their love affair caused a public scandal.  What was her name - which is also the title of the film, and now also the popular name for the Mozart piece used in the film?

(both names required)

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


Dunno Dunno

(R8/Q8)


.