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Opsimaths lost to Electric Pigs
At last a win for the Pigs - and a handsome one to boot
 Mike
rues some blurts
I must start with warm words for the
Pigs. They have had a win in the offing for a while and
were clearly the better team in this match.
We were poor and, what made it worse,
were the unfortunate blurts by some of us when we clearly knew
better. I won't mention Hilary's (oops!) but I certainly
made a pig's ear of my sporting 'BO' in Round 5. Not only did I
know it was 'Blackburn Olympic' I actually set virtually the same
question in last month's Albert Club quiz. So what did I blurt?
Bradford Olympic!. QM Jeremy (thanks, mate) almost gave me
the points so assured had my blurt been - then he paused and asked
me to repeat. Being an honest sort I repeated "Bradford" and
lost the points.
The workers claim the beautiful game
(R5/Q1)
As I rush towards 80 I am finding
that clarity of thought and power of memory (not to mention acuity
of hearing) are galloping off in one direction, whilst the subject
matter is haring off the opposite way, leaving me with plenty of
knowledge about things I love (e.g. Scotland or The Lake District)
but that rarely come up in the quiz. Perhaps I should have
spent more time learning stuff about subjects that didn't interest
me (e.g. late 20th century rock bands or Greek myths) - but I'm
afraid I never could stick that course; life's too short.
Sadly I think my days of competing need to meld into days where
QMing and website editing are my sole contribution. To be
honest the biggest buzz I get these days comes from the occasional
praise we get for our website being the best quiz website around.
I've put 25 years of hard labour into that one!
However enough of my failing powers. On
last night's plus side we have a new team
member, Paul Donohue, who joined us tonight to spectate, and when
Emma rang to say she was delayed, was drafted straight into the
firing line for the first half. Paul's from Chorlton and found
us via the website. Welcome to the squad, Paul!
The nut after the Bolt
(R1/Q3)
Ethel Rodin lost to History Men
A famous one point victory for the History Men in Ladybarn
 Ivor
has clearly been watching The Mirror and the Light
At the risk of being condemned as a Withington Grinch, but isn’t the
modern Christmas terrible for quizzers? Two weeks to go to the
big day of over-indulgence and dietary indiscretion but team members
are already heading off to works dinners in restaurants that have
had a tree up since November. Does anyone else wish for a
return to the Tudor Christmas, with one day of Christ masses
followed by light revelries - a Tudor version of Morecambe and
Wise perhaps - or jolly japes where men tried to catch the
king’s eye (to get ahead) and the women tried not to catch the
king’s eye (to keep a head)? Tonight we were missing Anne and
David but our promotions from the bench, Rupert and Ray, proved to
be labourers worthy of their salt as we secured an unlikely victory
over last season’s champions.
Tennyson's hero
(R7/Q1)
Three of the matches tonight ended with single point victories and I
am sure there will be stories from all three; triumphs and tragedies
are the bed-fellows of the quizzer. Our match played out in a
fashion rather common for us - we had a lead of six points going
into the last round and it got whittled away. Ethel are not
known for giving up, but Ray held his nerve for a two in his
run-along question so I had the luxury of being able to fail yet
again on a last question.
We enjoyed the quiz (though a winning team can always find some
redeeming feature in even the direst paper). Perhaps we were
fortunate to have won the toss as Ethel (going second) got six of
the nine unanswereds with Greg, unusually, sharing the MVP award (3
twos) whilst also being the Jonah (3 unanswereds).
Mmm! Sage and onion sounds delicious
(R3/Q2)
 James
was none too pleased with the balance of the paper
After last week’s cup triumph (who knew that Dr Zhivago was
written by Mr Parsnip?) a bump back to earth tonight.
Both teams found it a bit of a grind. No disrespect to the
Historymen who consistently came up with great answers, but we did
feel it was a bad toss to lose, and that they got the kinder
questions. Ultimately that was the difference on the night.
We don’t mind being runners up on a level pitch, but when the
question balance seems off, it is frustrating and challenges the
enjoyment factor.
That said, actual unanswereds did ultimately break 5-5, although
Ethel had a 5-2 start in that respect with 3 of those going to
Greg, traditionally our strongest player. We were 6 behind from
halftime right through until the end of Round 7. We did miss a
few sitters, either conferring and missing the two, or simply
passing it over: Ermine Street, Sting, Tim Henman, and Jemima
Puddleduck - and I should have gone for Tungsten.
N.B. Due to repeated, unjustified overexposure the answer "River
Phoenix" needs to be formally banned from WithQuiz in future, (along
with "Kent Nagano" and "Uriah Heep".)
Rob was playing instead of Roddy. Roddy was downstairs in the
bar (watching Man City fail against a team Aston Villa almost beat a
week or two back). He didn’t know any of the answers that
would have made a difference - and in fact we would probably have
scored fewer with him playing.
Teddy and Edith married in London
(R2/Q2)
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Hollywood's Ogre Mogul
(R2/Q6)
KFD lost to Prodigals
A brilliant heavyweight tussle goes to the league leaders with a
steal at the last
 Jimmy
tells how Richard stole the result
We've had some humdingers with KFD over the years but this was
probably the best. It was nip and tuck all the way, but come
the last question of the night the teams were all square. I'm
not usually a fan on run-ons in the final round as most of the time
they are fairly obvious 'gimmes'. Fair play to the Albert
setter though as this particular set were far from easy.
KFD
didn't have the answer; Richard did - and that was that. We'd
stared a close defeat in the face for the latter rounds of the quiz
mostly due to bad bingo choices and a misunderstanding on a confer.
Our hosts were exceptionally unlucky to come away empty-handed but
the quizzing gods were with the Prods tonight (eventually).
Adventurer in the East
(R3/Q6)
 A
losing Kieran waxes lyrical
"I
have some syllables which may be useful" - thus spake Pool Hall
Richard, enigmatically and, appropriately enough, in the Griffin's
totally pointless pool hall (a.k.a. the middle room without TV
screens). The syllables Richard was clutching gleefully were: 'mad',
'is' and 'on' - so he also
had them in the correct order and thereby they scored a vital point
for the Prodigals at the halfway stage of the final round putting
them one point ahead with five questions to go. We fought
back, yet again, and the scores were level with just my question
left. I was in the same agonising position Ivor found himself
in against us a few weeks back. We needed a point for the win
and we knew the opposition had the answer down cold, but for the
first time in the evening the famed KFD brains trust came up with
zilch and we handed over the question and the points with a resigned
shrug.
When we played Ethel I wrote that that game is our favourite of all
the contests we have each season, and it is, not least because each
team seems to win as often as the other. The Prodigals, on the
other hand, beat us 90% of the time, but Christ they are always
great evenings. The Prodigals are quite simply the best team we
have faced over any extended period of a couple of seasons or
longer. St Cath's, Chunky, peak Opsimaths, Bards and even the
recent iteration of Ethel have to take a back seat - there's no one
in the same class. We're almost happy that we only lost by one
point right at the death. Almost.
Nothing beats Diversity
(R1/Q8)
We had
annexed the pool hall for a more useful purpose and we had a Ganley
in the room - Len's far more accomplished and significant distant relative,
the incomparable Bob. Well it was too good an opportunity to
be passed up so check out the action photo from tonight's contest
below. In case you have any doubts here is chapter and,
literally, verse:
"Keep your arms as rigid as a juggernaut. Clench your fists.
Point your knuckles straight ahead. Do your best to look like
a teddy bear. Then try and pretend to look vertically dead.
Everybody’s doing the Len Bob Ganley Stance."
Bob
played the role perfectly. Well you know what Andy Warhol
said.....
The
Len Bob Ganley Stance
Our
man taking guard at the Gabba got a Jasprit Bumrah fizzer first ball
and completed a King Pair next round to become our man in the belly
of a whale. Some unkind soul mentioned Rory Burns. We
all shuddered - it's too soon. More of him - Baz not Burns -
next week, probably.
Richard's physical manifestation of the anguish of having an answer
just, just out of reach is one of the great WithQuiz turns.
It's even an upgrade on fellow Prodigal Mark Bassett's oft imitated,
never bettered, head smacking "Doh!" as another two goes begging.
It took me back to the title decider we played against a
Richard-toting Shrimp six years ago. By some distance the best quiz
game we've ever been privileged to play. That one turned out
somewhat better for us than tonight did.
Sampling Prokofiev
(R4/Q2)
Post match there was plenty of chat about the Faces early albums,
Rod Stewart's voice, getting thrown out of The Peveril of the Peak
on the way to a Gary Glitter concert (shhh!), the best Christmas
song (I Believe in Father Christmas by Greg Lake, apparently)
and Oldham's endearing but quite mad celebration of the tubular
bandage. And then a random punter pushed a full pint glass up
the corner where two pool hall walls joined, let go and it stayed
there! The perfect end to a great evening.
Splendid quiz, terrific opponents and even better company, fantastic
match, all presided over by 'Ballcrusher' Bob.
And
we lost.
Damn, damn, damn.
Sting sings Sting
(R4/Q4)
Bards beat Charabancs
The Bards sneak home by a single point and move up to 4th
 John
breathes a sigh of relief
A game of two halves at the Parrs Wood
tonight as the Bards came back from a 9 point deficit at the half
way mark to snatch victory on the last question!
 Damian
is advertising for virgins
We've obviously run out of willing virgins to sacrifice to the quiz
gods, so, if there are any willing virgins out there and they would
they like to apply, we would be very grateful. I don't know
what it is we did to offend those deities in the first place, but
whatever it was they are having a whale of a time punishing us for
it.
I've begun to lose count of the number of times we've been
comfortably ahead for most of the quiz only to have it cruelly
snatched away from us in the last couple of rounds. Tonight
was a classic case in point. Ahead in every single round up to
Round 6 and nine points ahead at the halfway mark and then, well you
can guess the rest. For once, we thought that losing the toss and
going second was working out well for us but then Rounds 6 and 7
came along to prove us sadly wrong yet again.
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Quiz paper set by...
...
Albert
Average Aggregate score
70.5
A bit below the
season's average of 76.3 but not too far adrift. At the Club
we felt the first half was much tougher than the second half and had
Rounds 1 to 4 had a little softening then the overall scores would
have been bang on the money.
Good variety in the
questions and types of Round with themes a-plenty to ponder.
Tim plays second fiddle
(R1/Q1)
... and
Jimmy's verdict ...
Tough, but enjoyable quiz with some imaginative ideas for rounds.
Our only gripe was with some of the random questions on the
'acrostic' round - particularly the opener (which fell to me
obviously). But overall it was a well balanced affair which
really tested both teams’ mettle.
... and
Damian's ...
Tonight's paper from the Albert seemed to suit us very well at first
and the themes weren't too hard to work out though they didn't
always help us get to the answer.
However we were not fans of the pairing in Round 6 as that was the
round that started our downfall. I counted 8 unanswered
questions which split evenly at 4 all between us. We resumed our
lead in the final round of Run-ons but it wasn't enough to hold back
the Bards' resurgence and they scraped past us by one point at the
end. Neither team scored any twos in that final round but we
were the ones that needed them the most, and they just wouldn't
come. The quiz gods must have been sniggering with glee just
like Muttley
The
final score seemed to be a tad below the season's average suggesting
a moderately hard quiz. Naturally we voted the Bingo round as
our favourite - sorry Tony!
Bay Watchers
(R6/Q4)
...
meanwhile Ivor comments ...
Plenty of interesting questions and themes. Some rather hard
questions too, but the pleasure of getting a hard question right
provides the high for a quizzer, that a sugar rush provides a child,
or a cocaine hit provides a user/ misuser/ abuser - or so I read.
We quickly spotted the water round theme and the Christmas songs and
lyrics did not faze Vanessa (primary school children have been
excited about Christmas for a month now). The 'Runner’s-Up'
Round certainly demonstrated how quickly losers can be forgotten;
likely to be the Historymen’s fate of course. The former 18th
century prime ministers theme was cracked too. Those were the
days when anyone with a title lower than an earl or an estate
smaller than Northamptonshire was probably not the right sort to
hold office. People who were better dressed and had more
properties than their colleagues; so unlike the present day!
Wrong Answer of the Week ...
We are after all pleased that the Aussies have not named their
premier journalist award "the Murdoch”.
Goodnight Vienna!
(R1/Q6)
... and James is none too gruntled ...
No doubt I'll be considered to have been quite harsh on the setters
in this review; it’s tough setting quizzes. The overwhelming
majority of the questions were completely fine, and, in fairness,
covered a good range of topics. But it only takes 3 or 4
dubious questions - or even just a couple - to swing the dynamic,
especially when the teams are very closely matched.
The main struggles we had tonight are exemplified by Round 2 which,
taking the 8 questions in order, we considered;
Medium, Hard,
Easy, Hard,
Easy, Medium,
Medium, Hard.
We went second and the Historymen won that round very easily, by
many more points than was the difference between the final scores.
Perhaps the worst of the pairs in this round was "Which group of
artists united to form a film company?" paired with a question that
was a list of random irrelevant facts about some bloke, none of
which gave any kind of clue to the answer. The whole of this
question could have been shortened to "Guess an old film company".
Similarly the acronym UAV was very easily worked out, as it was
obviously a drone, whereas ATACMS was not only much harder, but it
wasn’t even a proper acronym.
Then later in the quiz, the Historymen were asked a bog-standard
capital city question, followed by our question about gazillions.
Even if the acrostic had been deciphered by that point, it wouldn’t
have helped, as Michael had already whittled the answer down to
Quintillion or Quadrillion and then went with the wrong one.
In that same round, I doubt many across the league scored points for
the Walkley Awards - a very tough (and unanswered) question in any
context; but as the first question of a themed round, something of
an extra challenge.
"There's a moose loose aboot this hoose"
British songwriting at its best
(R7/Q7)
Meanwhile, in the same round, the last question to the Historymen
was essentially "What thing beginning with 'Z' etc., etc.?"
Really! I doubt most of us could list more than half a dozen
nouns beginning with 'Z' and at least two of those would be
zebrafish and zebra crossing. What else was it going to be?
Zucchini? Types of zip?
Round 7 on Baroque PMs was a good round, but even then, Question 1
to Greg was a stinker. The privateer Grenville was unknown to all 9
in the room (and Roddy as well). It was perhaps just about
tenable as a later question once the theme had been established, but
again, as the first question in a themed round completely
impossible. Nul points.
Round 8 offered some hope but just a little too late. We
needed 6 to tie, but it ended 8-3, so we finished one point
behind.
Ding-a-ling problems maybe
(R4/Sp1)
Question of the Week This week
with three of our four matches being clinched by one point on the
final question of the evening it has to be Round 8 (a Run-ons
round) Question 8 ...
English title of a 1997 French memoir
describing the author’s life before and after a massive stroke which
left him able to communicate only by blinking
&
Popular name
for a principle of chaos theory, that trivial events may have vastly
more significant consequences ?
For the answer to this and all the week's other
questions click
here.
You've been Warnered!
(R8/Q2)
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