Opsimaths lost to Ethel Rodin

Ethel inflict another thumping defeat on the Opsis

Mike was on the bench to observe

Ethel are fast becoming our bogey team.  Although we quite often lose these days, when it's Ethel the losses seem to be particularly painful.  This week was no exception.  Neck to neck for most of the first half the home team rapidly slipped behind in the second half as Greg, Rob, James and Michael powered on to open up a 19 point gap.  The home side of Emma, Tehmeena, Charlotte and Howell just had no answer to this surge.

I felt sorry in particular for Tehmeena who seemed to get more than her fair share of questions that a relative newcomer to the UK could hardly be expected to know (e.g. counties with newly appointed cities).

I also sympathised with Charlotte who now lives in Ramsbottom  having recently moved away from Didsbury and has a 40 minute drive home on Wednesdays only to be up at 6am on Thursdays to get to her teaching job.  Having Brian and myself as spectators drinking and mumbling merrily just behind her right ear didn't help.  Sorry!

400 year old slowcoach

(R1/Q4)

For the second season in a row, ER ran away with a KFD-set quiz against the Opsimaths; one short of the half century this time.  I suspect this says more about KFD quizzes playing to our strengths than it does about the Opsis.  

Rob, in his second game for Ethel has now settled in brilliantly, and he delivered a number of superb answers last night.  It takes some courage (or perhaps naïveté) to be heard in a team of quite strong personalities… and we listened…!  Next week, as Michael will be playing cards in Vegas, Rob gets to meet Rod. 

Ethel have lost 5 tosses in a row.  I think last night was probably a good toss to lose.  We fell into the trap in the colours/not colours themed round and, although the dates had not matched and Greg knowing it was wrong, we went for Earl Grey as the PM.  I suspect that trap was deliberate!  The African countries round was nicely done; next time we should expect Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Burkina Faso to appear as run-throughs or soundalikes.  Is Tuner’s Ear a medical condition?  Kenya do that KFD?  Rob knew the emancipation proclamation, and indeed, ‘deshitification’.  Apparently - and ironically - he follows the creator on social media.  

Others will have their say about the 'Gaelic Sports' questions.  Whether intentionally or not, the answer to the second one appeared to have already been given in the first.  Still, it had been an unanswered question and that made up for the fact it was a tougher question than naming Olympic Stadii.  

The Cathedral Cities question was flawed.  An internet search of this proves that, rather like religion itself, it is a question with many different interpretations, and several different wrong and right answers.  'Cathedra' is Latin for ‘Bishop’s seat’, so essentially the question is also about dioceses.  Some are no longer dioceses and others have consolidated, such that several ‘cathedrals’ are no longer real cathedrals.  As a native of Birmingham, I know from actual, not internet, life experience that St Chad’s is the Catholic Cathedral, and St Philip’s Cathedral Church (with Burne-Jones windows) is CoE.  I drew both as a child for a school project - it was a copy of an etching by someone my dad knew in the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, and by 1982 most of the foreground had become the inner ring road (see pictures below).

St Chad’s Cathedral - actual and as drawn in 1982 by a 9 year old James!

But some lists count both, some either, and some neither.  The same applies to several other towns and cities; Southwark has two cathedrals but isn’t a city or a town; Westminster has a cathedral and an abbey (collegiate church); Newcastle has two, but the catholic diocese is called Hexham and Newcastle… I could go on….

Electric Pigs lost to Bards

The Bards get the better of a fairly low-scoring match at the Fletcher Moss