Ethel win to go level on points at the top

The anatomy of a painful minute or so diagnosed by Dr James ...

A well constructed quiz that kept both teams in the game until the end.  Ethel’s seat change strategy continues to pay dividends.  A shout out for John standing in for an unwell Geoff tonight. 

Charabancs were good value and will surely win games this season - Damian in particular had a very strong match.  I’m sure he’ll have told you of his frustrations around whether a siege was a battle (ED: No actually he's surprisingly reticent on the matter judging by his report below).  A better phrased question would have led to him getting a two for Vienna instead of Ethel getting the steal.  Thankfully for everyone, the winning margin was just enough to mean that this wasn’t crucial in the end.  In team discussion before it came over, we wondered whether the question paired with the Quasi-Chancellor PhD one would be another incompetent Tory.  Something of a tough pairing in the end, but John dredged it from somewhere.  

A few really good conferred answers from Ethel - where nobody knew the answer on their own but individuals all  gave small amounts of information that allowed us to get there in the end.  It almost worked for The Battle of The Silver Spurs too, but unfortunately the alliteration round was later on.

No team discussion about the  female author question, but sometimes silence and the speed of everyone else’s hand reaction tell you a lot.  Literature is a part of my knowledge base that is considerably lacking.  I haven’t had time to read many of the classics, (or any Booker Prize winners).  I refuse to learn lists in lieu of experiential learning opportunities.  So, the question about the 1882-born author of Mrs Dalloway came to me.  I’d not heard of it, nor the one about the Lighthouse.  All three of my team mates clearly have done, and thrust out their hands, all 15 fingers on display, in such a way as to give the message “how the **** don’t you know this?!?!”.  So no pressure... it was a close game.  We needed the points.  We certainly didn’t need a blurt.  It was worth thinking for a while.  There’s a US State involved.

(R7/Q3)

I start on the West coast. This does not help.  The state is going to be the first name, surely?  The flyover states are similarly unhelpful.  Dakota Fanning’s name enters my consciousness taking me even further away.  Then the East coast.  Starting at the bottom.  No Floridas.  Georgia O’Keeffe - but surely she’s an artist.  Carolina!  That’ll be it.  Maybe James Taylor was singing about someone called Carolina and not about his childhood home.  I now had to get Carolina out of My Mind - because even if there was an author here, she probably wasn’t going to be a North or a South.  Nor an East or a West.

But hang on! There isn’t an East Virginia, it’s just Virginia.  Virginia Plain?  Virginia Wade?  Virginia Woolf!  I’ve heard of her.  She was in that pretentious group in Bloomsbury, who always seemed to just be famous for being the Bloomsbury Group.  

The 15 fingers have by now become 35 fingers as all members of the other team clearly all know this too.  So I have a person who fits the bill.  An author with a state name, probably from about the right period.  But I literally do not know whether it’s correct - and right until the moment I say it, I’m still in fear that this is going to turn out to be a blurt of Ivoresque proportions.  But two points it was and I was saved the blushes and the indignity of Roddy’s scorn.  Adrenaline, relief… such is the enjoyment and appeal of our great WithQuiz tradition.  

And so, finally, this gives an opportunity for a shout out and a tribute to Barry Whitehead for his work in helping put all this mad nonsense together all those years ago. 

Damian keeps plugging those philosophers ...

The words of Samuel Beckett continue to inspire us as we go into our third week of the season without a win.  'Ever tried.  Ever failed.   No matter.  Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better'.  So we failed better this week than we did in the previous two weeks by scoring more points.  Hopefully we will soon fail better enough that we will achieve a victory.  So Sam B remains our guide and inspiration!  Yet again it was not a bad effort from us.  We all scored twos; just not quite as many as our opponents.  And how do you get steals when Greg from Ethel knows pretty much EVERYTHING.  After thinking long and hard,  and giving us false hope, he still always manages to come out with the right answer.