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Opsimaths lost to KFD
A handsome victory for the visitors, keeping them in second place
 Kieran
tells us how he managed to seek 'em out
Not
quite the first cuckoo of Spring but a visit to Doctor Opsimaths saw
us rise from the sickbed where we have languished for the last three
weeks and put in something like the performance of which we know we
are capable. See Pep, it CAN be done, though maybe the
Bernabéu is a slightly more intimidating venue than the Albert
Club. Speaking of intimidating venues, I hope the absent Howell
enjoyed the last Merseyside derby at Goodison, especially the
magnificent ruck at the end as the champions elect completely lost
their sh*t and showed their true colours in scenes that no one
EVERY football fan wants LOVES to see. There's no way
our WithQuiz champions elect would ever behave in such a ridiculous
and childish fashion even should they drop a point or more in any of
their remaining games.
Someone to look up to?
(R3/Q3)
We
won the toss and, ignoring Einstein's caution about repeating the
same thing over and over again, chose to go first. That has
caused us no end of grief in the last month but tonight it was the
Opsis who got the very rough end of the deal as they copped for an
extraordinary 11 (eleven) unanswereds to our 6. Mike and co.
didn't score any points on Hilary's first 5 questions (in seat 2) -
and we only picked up one bonus from that carnage. If that
doesn't make Hilary question her decision to brave the cold air of a
mid February night for so little reward I'd be astonished.
Even before the imbalance in the questions became clear it was
obvious it was going to be our evening when I knew Barry's first
question about Roman emperors and he didn't. I have to
acknowledge Siân Phillips' recent primer/idiot's guide to the first
five Emperors for that but hey, we have to try to replace the
Suffolk Suetonius somehow and that's as good a place to start as
any.
We
had a splendid team goal for 'cecum/Secombe', a brief throwback to a
time when we were good (Pep it CAN be done) and all despite, or
maybe becau se of, my idea that the Bradford born Ade Edmondson was
a son of Swansea; sometimes the KFD magic still sparks into life. I
also started the cabinet ministers round by asking my team "Is there
a minister called Powell?" er, oops, sorry.
Pears Soap's Lady de Bathe
(R1/Q3)
 Mike
wishes matches didn't have to have second halves
The Opsimaths are a
team in transition this season (as any self-respecting Premiership
manager would say) and this week we welcomed new player Paul Donohue
(Paul did play a taster half match before Christmas, but had been
unavailable since). This week he had a good run out with 2
twos and plenty of helpful input to our conferences - he'll be a
valuable asset. The rest of us were in patchy form: Hilary had
an horrendous run of unanswerables, Charlotte had a wretched cold,
and I kept plumping for the wrong option (Beijing instead of
Pyongyang, etc.). Clearly the Opsis are missing Nick this
season - and our star captain, Howell, has been more often than
usually pulled away to Goodison by an excess of Wednesday evening
matches - this week being no exception.
Nonetheless things
were going pretty well up to half time with scores almost level
(19-18 to KFD). After the break, however, everything fell
apart with Greg's 'Funny Punny' round going to KFD 9-1 and James'
(?) 'Election Fever' round to our opponents 7-1. Game over!
Thanks to Emma for
QMing in a fair but firm way, tirelessly repeating question text in
the face of some noisy football fans in the main bar area.
KFD this week was 'KFD
Classic' with Kieran, Martin, David and Barry in the driving seats
(as has been the case most Wednesdays for a good many years).
They won handsomely but I wouldn't mind betting they would have
notched a few more points on this paper back in their heyday.
Sadly it might well be the last time we play a league match against
Barry as he's planning to retire to Norfolk soon. I, for one,
will miss his regular company and friendship on a winter Wednesday.
He's been the most generous of opponents (and points-wise, one of
the most feared). He's always stayed for a chat - and to me
personally he's been most helpful in shaping and appreciating my
25-year labour of love, the WithQuiz website. Thanks, Barry.
Cr ème
de la crème de la crème
(R4/Q3)
Charabancs lost to Prodigals
Another crunching win for the 100% Prods
 Damian
asks Richard to take a bow
Well, it was always going to be a tall order playing against the
only unbeaten team of the season but we had hoped it wouldn't have
been so humiliatingly lopsided. As it was we finished up with
a score even lower than our last effort (24 as opposed to 25
points) whilst our opponents scored what seems like their seasonal
average.
Losing the toss and going second didn't seem to turn out a good idea
as frequently endured our usual predicament of being able to answer
our opponents' questions whilst being unable to answer our own.
Our seating arrangements didn't seem to help as almost all our
points were the outcome of confers. Still the stats don't lie
as the Prodigals scored 13 twos to our 4 and grabbed 8 steals to our
2. I counted eight unanswereds which again broke favourably
for the Prodigals (3-5). When you're up against a team that
can field quizzers that know practically everything from sixteenth
century Italian mannerist painters to the alter ego of Catwoman then
we can only hold up our hands in respectful awe! Take another bow,
Richard! Our star player of the evening turned to be new boy
Alan (substituting for the absent Bernard) who, despite muttering
that he didn't realise it was going to as hard as this, scored a
full half of our admittedly meagre quantity of twos. Please
come again Alan!
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Mates rates
(R6/Q1)
Electric Pigs lost to Albert
Albert are poised comfortably in 4th place after a convincing win
at the FM
 Ashton
reports that Eveline kept her concealed weapon hidden
A
game that looked like it would go to the wire turned into a
comfortable victory for the Albert, mainly due to our success in the
puns and monsters rounds. Clearly we share a fondness for Tim
Vine-esque humour with Greg that the Pigs don't, and as a team we
are fully cognisant of fearful bad-tempered beasts with nasty sharp
pointy teeth, even if skipper Mike was absent last night.
There was a brief interruption to proceedings when the roar from the
main room of the Fletcher Moss alerted us to the dramatic ending at
Goodison and Andrew and I decamped to watch the outcome of the VAR
review. I'm pleased to report that the unsavoury scenes on
Merseyside at the final whistle were not replicated in M20, despite
the fact that our two teams used to contest the FM derby. Obviously
it helped that we won - Eveline can be as sore a loser as Curtis
Jones, and her penchant for hardback detective novels means she
always carries a concealed weapon.
Mexico's First Woman
(R7/Q7)
History Men lost to Bards
The Bards are looking good for 3rd spot after a close run win
 Ivor
tells how a Professor of Palaeontology rescues the Bards
A series of unlikely results has seen us rise from the depths to
being tantalisingly close to a Champion’s League spot next year.
Echoes of David Steele’s “go back to your constituencies and prepare
for government” and, alas, a fall was bound to result from such
hubris. Getting a team together was our first challenge as
Anne and Guy were away on holiday and Alison was at Goodison for the
last Derby (she has been at most of them since the early 70’s).
So Steve was recalled from the bench and Ethel’s James kindly agreed
to be QM. In a first for us he read the questions from his
smart phone - not to demonstrate the impingement of the modern world
into our quiz lives but because there was a mix-up on who had agreed
to collect the paper copy.
The Bards were back to full strength with the return of Tony, as
competitive as ever despite a plaster cast. He did think
Kieran’s kind words in the match report two weeks ago sounded a bit
like an obituary but they were greatly appreciated nonetheless. The
quiz world is like that; we play hard and fight hard but in the end
we are all friends. A bit like Premiership football
players...
The game was close all the way through and we were three points
ahead at half time. Sadly Round 6 went 8-2 to the Bards
so that they then took a three point lead. Although we started
the final round only one point behind, we were sunk by our lack of
knowledge of extinct animals. There was no such lack of
knowledge from the Bards whose player Robin happens to be a newly
appointed Professor of Palaeontology. Robin was their star
player this week with 5 twos and several steals. The
Historymen were not that bad either and outscored the Bards 13-9 in
twos, but conceded steals 6-3 and got 5 of the 8 unanswereds.
Vanessa was our star this week, a worthy Elisha inheriting Elijah’s
mantle from her aunt.
Leading the beat
(R3/Q1)
Tony adds this rebuke aimed at
Ivor's report above
In
self defence I must add that when I translated "tuquoque" I was
simply saying "you too" - I did not realise I was answering a Pop
Question or anything about Gary Powers' airplane. Ivor should
apologise for seeking to ruin my unblemished record on Pop
Questions.
The Brisbane Dragon
(R8/Q3)
 Finally
QM James adds his take on the evening at the Parrswood
'Team
of Dinosaurs beaten by Palaeontologist'
I had the absolute
delight of QMing the closest match of the night (by some distance)
between the Historymen and the Bards. It was another night
where the entire quartet of WithQuiz matches could have been played
in complete isolation in The Parrswood barn without risk of mutual
disturbance (I cannot see how this pub can possibly remain viable
in the medium to long term …).
A ding dong game
throughout - as I am sure has been related by Ivor and others.
A draw would have been fair - however, there can be few WithQuizzes
that have landed in someone’s ’sweet spot’ more accurately than
tonight’s quiz landed for The Bards’ Robin. Not only is he a
palaeontologist with a friend who had been the first to describe the
Titanaboa, but he had also been part of a team who had defined a
species of bandicoot. (Robin was also single-handedly
responsible for deducing at least another half dozen questions - as
well as scoring 5 twos on his own).
Sorry Historypeople - we
didn’t know Robin’s vocation in advance - and it really had not been
our intention to kill off your challenge like that - and especially
not in the final round when all was still to play for. To be
fair, the 'coin' question and the 'comic culture' questions had
landed with David, himself a coin and comic collector - and several
of the literary questions went to Vanessa.
The dinosaurs were to an
extent balanced out by the fact that, having chosen to sit in Seat
1, Bards’ team patriarch Tony copped for three 20th century popular
music questions.
Let's just wait and see
(Round 3)
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Quiz paper set by...
...
Ethel Rodin
Average Aggregate score
70.8
A tad on the hard
side with an average aggregate 4 points below par for the season.
There were some
interesting subjects (e.g. most at the Club relished the 'Fantastic
Beasts' Round 8 - though for me this is a subject of utter tedium).
Someone from KFD (I think it was Barry) pointed out that both
Williamson adults had made an appearance with Cozy Powell and local
pop megastars, James, rocking up in the answers.
Main criticism in our
contest, however, was the high 'unanswerable count' with Team 2 Seat
2 (Hilary in our case) clocking 4 in a row. The balance of
hardness also seemed a little off a bit too often.
Finally the 'furthest
apart of bordering country capitals' question (R4/Q8) ... surely
(via French Department, French Guiana) Paris and Brasilia at 5418
miles is the correct answer?
Is it over?
(R7/Q2)
...
and what was Damian's verdict ...
I
shall be considerably more charitable about tonight's setters than
they were about us when we set two weeks ago. We found it a
bit hard - especially in the second half with some of Greg's
connections going clean over our heads, but we did appreciate the
thought that went into constructing them.
There was plenty of variety on show with mercifully no sport (apart
from a few tennis questions, much to the delight of tennis
enthusiasts Anne-Marie and myself). The themes were mostly
guessable and helpful, although there is such an enormous variety of
bands out there - with all sorts of names - that it didn't help us
modern pop numpties much in that particular round. The 'Fantastic
Beasts' round was, however, just up our street and for me it was the
best round of the night.
...
and this was Kieran's feedback ...
Not
up to the excellent standard of Ethel's first paper of the season;
much too wordy and too big an advantage for the team going first
first. But it gave us our first win in four, even if a huge
slice of luck was involved, so thanks to the Rodinistas for that.
At
the end of the evening the nine assembled smart arses/pedants came
up with a different answer to the furthest apart capitals in
bordering states (R4/Q8) but I'll leave it to Mike to tell you about
that (see above).
...
Ashton's verdict was ...
Greg QM-ed for us last night and was keen to impress upon us that
this was more than just 'a paper of paired rounds'. Not sure
who he was having a dig at there, but it was a nicely crafted set
and Jeremy in particular has a fondness for the punning questions.
As such, we vote for 'The Magnificent Severn' as our favourite
question of the week, and maybe even the season so far.
Mondale's Mate
(R7/Q4)
...
finally Ivor sums up ...
We enjoyed tonight’s quiz and the tropes we expect ('On This Day',
and 'Funny Punny' questions) from Ethel were not disappointing.
Even the theme rounds (announced or otherwise) had the right degree
of quirkiness (a radio quiz as well as TV ones). The zig-zag
questions were nicely plausible (Dame Maggie or Dame Judi; Annette
Crosbie or Geraldine McEwan; Montevideo-Buenos Aires or
Vienna-Bratislava, or neither).
The cabinet members proved as obscure to us as the shadow cabinet
members (Mrs Williamson excepted of course). Tony was not
caught out by Tu Quoque (the benefits of an Oxford education).
He did note however, that he got three pop questions (not his forte)
tonight - but I have no sympathy as he was sitting in seat 1 instead
of seat 4. What is the quizzing world coming to? At one
time it was more likely that a planet would deviate from its orbit
than Eveline, Kieran, Tony or me would vacate Seat 4. Perhaps,
as that great philosopher (George Harrison) once noted: "All Things
Come To Pass".
QotW: the Historymen failed on the bird with bowed legs and the
punning marsupials but the Bards didn't. And as runner up the
Meissen men pleased us all.
Question of the Week This week
Albert (and in particular, Jeremy) took a real fancy to the 'Punny
Old World' Round 5 Question 5 ...
1960 film with an Oscar-nominated score by Elmer Bernstein
&
The amazing 220 miles from Plynlimon to
Sudbrook could be described thus.
For the answer to this and all the week's other
questions click
here.
A greengrocer for all seasons
(R6/Q8)
... and also
At the Club this week there was a bit of a debate about the vexed
question of 'Bingo-style' rounds. Some love them and some
definitely don't.
Kieran's written me
these thoughts. What do you think?
"Since you mentioned jeopardy in relation to bingo rounds last night
here's an idea.
A
Bingo round is any round in which the players have to select which
questions to answer rather than the questions just being asked 1 to
8 as drafted by the setters. So for any Bingo round the
setters should be obliged to set 12 questions (or 18 if the Bingo
format is to cover two rounds as sometimes happens).
The
setters must scrupulously divide the questions into equal numbers (4
or 6) of 'easy', 'medium' and 'hard' questions as judged by them.
The degree of difficulty is shown on the Bingo selection sheet
handed out to the teams, or announced at the start of the round if
there isn't a bingo sheet.
'Easy questions' score one point, so presumably they'd always be
conferred since there's no downside. 'Medium questions' score two as
now and 'Hard questions' score three. Questions can still be
conferred or passed over for one point.
As
well as hopefully evening up imbalances (since there would be an
equal number of each type of question) this would also introduce a
refinement to the decision as to whether to go for a solo answer or
to confer. Teams that were behind and needed points might well
go for the 'Hard questions' to try to make up ground, as well as
making it more difficult for the opposition to score a bonus and
extend their lead. Teams reasonably comfortably in front might
well play it safe with the easy option but knowing that they could
be giving away an easy pass over. Might need a little tweaking
but worth a thought?"
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