Withington Pub Quiz League - Quizbiz 14/01/26

Victory for each home team;

Prods and History Men maintain their first/second places;

CKC and Ethel continue their upward creep while the Pigs and the Charas drop back

CKC beat Opsimaths

Prodigals beat History Men

Ethel Rodin beat Electric Pigs

Bards beat Charabancs

Latest WithQuiz League Table

CKC beat Opsimaths

CKC keep up their winning run climbing to 5th in the table

Kieran's a much happier bunny than he was last autumn

I think we can start to be optimistic about the remainder of the season. After a disastrous autumn, five wins (including WIST) and a high scoring draw with the runaway leaders have put us right in the middle of the seven teams contesting 'also-ran' status in the final table. A very promising sign for the remaining matches is that we've won the last three by a combined 31 points without the Lowestoft ~~Ben Duckett~~ (or indeed anyone who can hold a bat the right way up and has half an idea where his stumps are).

We're still in contact with Barry of course; he's offered to supply at least one round of questions when we set in a couple of weeks and, in a 'small world huh?' twist, it turns out he sold his house in Manchester to Mike Bath's daughter and son-in-law. Small world huh?

Masked cholesterol

(R7/Q7)

The Albert's Jeremy kindly agreed to attempt the impossible and substitute for Black Bob, the Norwegian Sea privateer and doyen of QMs. Jeremy did the job so well that he brought an excellent question paper to its conclusion well before 10.00pm, the mark of an elite ringmaster. Many thanks to Jeremy and next week Bob, tricorn hat worn at the perfectly rakish angle, should be back to oversee our battle for fifth place against the Bards. Last time I heard "shiver me timbers" I was headed for Belfast; it's worth keeping an eye out for any unusual goings on around Strangford Lough in the next day or two. Additionally you may have noticed that petrol has fallen in price by around four pence a litre since Bob set sail. The man has extraordinary reach, limitless influence.... just saying.

Oldman Winner

(R6/Q3)

At half time it looked like WithQuiz bunnies, the Opsimaths, were in for another epic shellacking; fourteen points down and only one maximum scored against our nine at that stage. However they can take heart from an impressive second half recovery which kept the margin of our victory more or less respectable with the outcome not certain until halfway through the final round. That also suggests that the Albert had put together a well crafted paper which was fair to both teams over its entirety.

On to the Bards next week with renewed belief and justified hope that our performances will continue to improve. Of course that's just when everything usually goes to hell; let's see how it plays out. Bring it on Tony and, if you know what's good for you, you'll stay on the right side of Black Bob!

Linked Mares

(R5/Q3)

A sadder and a wiser man Mike rose the morrow morn

Yet again the Opsis were an all male team (Howell, Brian, Paul and myself) - but yet again the Opsis were a losing team - though much less of a battering than the embarrassing defeat at the Club by CKC before Christmas. We lost it in the first half when ignorance combined with bad luck as all the shoo-ins fell to our opponents. The second half was fine and saw us claw back some of the margin - but sadly not enough. At the close Kieran informed us that we had twice as many unanswered questions as they had so maybe bad luck was a factor.

Yet again Paul proved that he reaches parts of knowledge that other Opsimaths cannot and is thus a good omen for our improving future.

Finally many thanks to Jeremy for acting as a perfect QM, now and again adding nuggets of embellishing information to the answers. By the way Jeremy has just returned from a trip to Costa Rica pursuing his photographic interests. Next time you see him ask him to show you some of the wildlife photos on his phone - they are stunning.

Lusty pair

(R3/Q6&7)

Bards beat Charabancs

Bards win a close encounter causing the Charas to slip further down the table

Confusion over the final answer led to the Chara's downfall

Despite winning the toss and choosing to go first we managed to make a wrong decision on the seating arrangements. After last week's disaster, I decided to put Bernard in first with me going second. This resulted in each of us getting the other's answers in the opening two questions thus missing out on two crucial points. After that we were forever playing catch-up, winning only one round and drawing two. The Bards scored 9 twos to our 8 and grabbed 4 of the 5 steals. The 7 unanswereds broke 4/3 to us. We could have finished on a draw with the last question but decided to take a punt on John knowing the answer as he so often does in similar situations. Unfortunately we misunderstood what was required and thought we just needed a word connecting the two clues when an actual title was required. We got the connection OK but gave an incorrect title. Oh, how such confusion can turn the outcome of a quiz! At least our defeat was more respectable than last week's.

Anyway with a combined score of 74 we just about hit the season average.

Breaking the religious mould

(R1/Q1)

81 ways to care for your parents

(R3/Q2)

Ethel Rodin beat Electric Pigs

Ethel record by some way the highest score of the evening in their win

Djames has a beef and is not keeping silent

Overall, obviously, a quiz that we enjoyed, but one that ended up with a margin of victory that was excessively flattering to us whilst unduly harsh to our opponents. It was as one-sided a match as I’ve ever seen. The Pigs got the harder set of questions, no doubt, (4 unanswered to our 1). The content of the whole quiz was very much a bull's eye to Ethel's sweet spot. Michael had his best game ever with 5 twos and contributed across the whole quiz with his knowledge of Eurovision, masked superheroes, Grease lyrics, films, royal mistresses and the rest. We didn’t have any of the ‘wrong seat’ issues that had plagued us in earlier games. No blurts, and all but one 50/50 ended up going the right way too.

Looks as though we are at risk of repeating last year’s mathematical feat of finishing mid-table but with a ridiculously positive points difference, thus being penalised in the handicap cup despite our averageness.

The round on masked individuals ended up a 10-0 whitewash to Ethel with none unanswered. Given that more that half of the round was on DC comic characters, the topic mined a particularly polarising niche of knowledge, which always risks leading to a demoralising outcome for one team; in this case the totally blindfolded Electric Pigs. On the other hand, the 'something for everyone' music round was a good way of dealing with that very problem. The silent letter theme was a good idea but too subtle for both of us. If we’d got the theme we would have plumped for Djibouti over Eritrea having ruled it out as being too small to have more than one ethnic group. Maybe the theme needed a clue in the preamble and perhaps more of the answers needed to be Knossos, Fjords and Gnomes rather than the more routine silent letters common in normal language.

We are setting next week, so it’s unlikely our third place in the table will be maintained unless we manage to engineer an extraordinary set of results.

Left foot first

(R4/Q4)

Prodigals beat History Men

The Prods score a comfortable victory over their second-placed rivals

Michael knows his superhero drivel

Another convivial evening at the Albert Club as the Prodigals somehow contrived to overcome a 7-point deficit after 3 rounds to win by 11. I think, therefore, that the score may flatter us.

In any event, Anne-Marie proved she had been playing mind games in the WhatsApp group by nabbing a good share of twos, Jimmy and John were their usual excellent selves, and a couple of rounds fell nicely my way; occasionally it helps to have written a book on US history and to be young enough to have suffered the drivel of superhero movies (younger even than Young David!).

Special thanks to Anne-Marie’s friend Richard, a retired professor of physical chemistry, who made a magnificent debut as QM.

Nebraska Sage

(R2/Q4)

Ivor talks of IKEA and defeat

A top of the table clash; it has been some time since the Historymen were involved in one of those. The Prodigals were missing their MVP from last week ('Seven twos Richard') but we were missing our former MVP ('Five twos Anne'). Tonight’s MVPs were still very good (Michael 5 twos and Vanessa 4 twos). The Historymen had a great start and were 7 points ahead after Round 3. But as Young David remarked everything can change in a blink of an eye. And so it came to pass. We chose unwisely in the Bingo presidents round conceding 3 steals to Michael’s superior US historical knowledge. Now only 2 points ahead. 3 points behind after Round 5. Could we stop the the Prodigal’s relentless progress? After all, everything can change in the blink of an eye. But not on this occasion. The final humiliation was Round 8, a round on classical and pop in the same question, where we would have thought we had all bases covered. The Prodigals all scored twos (and got a steal) to win that round 9-3 and thereby a comfortable 47-36 victory.

There were 5 unanswereds (the Prodigals got 4 of those). Anne-Marie might have worried about their small squad but they are formidable. We were outscored in steals (8-3) and in twos scored (14-10). We remain second in the league (for now that is). That might change in the blink of an eye too (and downwards rather than upwards).

As always an excellent (even convivial) evening at the Albert Club). Anne-Marie introduced us to their reserve QM playing for the first time. Richard did a sterling job getting to the end of Round 6 before falling into the usual trap for tyro QMs by blurting out an answer before passing it over, which did not matter as it was the unpronounceable goddess no one had heard of anyway. Goodness knows what he thought of our match. A debut when the Historymen are in full flow can be daunting. Perhaps it was just as well that Anne was not playing (get well soon Anne we need you).

The evening concluded in the usual fashion with plenty of ale. Amongst subjects discussed were: whether IKEA Hector bookcases are better than their Billy bookcases (one can double stack rows easily as they are deeper - though there is a risk of the floor giving way) - and how venal Maundy Gregory was selling peerages and honours. So different from our own times when Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem plutocrats are ennobled because of their great potential service to the body politic rather than their generous donations to party funds.

Quiz paper set by...

... Albert

Average Aggregate score 78.5

A 'bang on the money' average with plenty of good ideas. For my money though a whole round on masked characters was a bit much (all that DC/Marvel stuff seems banal rubbish to me) - but the others at our match were quite happy with it and even knew some of the answers. I was sitting in Seat 8 praying for The Lone Ranger/Clayton Moore to come up only to find out later that this was one of the spares. My favourite round was the one themed on silent letters.

All told another good quiz paper to feed another great night out. Many thanks Albert!

... so what were Michael's views ...

As indicated by the scoring patterns, the first and second halves may have favoured particular teams. And there was a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the silent letter theme, but we had a healthy aggregate and there was plenty of interesting stuff.

Grande O2 Sunshine

(R1/Q7)

... and Damian's ...

The Albert's paper was an interesting collection of various themes and tried and true formats. We loved the American presidents round and, as usual, the run-ons, and were amused by the one dedicated to events of 2026 given that we are only fourteen days into it; but it worked out quite well. Our only caveat was, as mentioned earlier, our confusion over what was required in the last question given that connecting words seemed to be all that was needed at the start of the round. Thus we continue to seek our first win of the year but we will never give up trying!

QotW: I particularly liked the one about which American president was the first to be born in the USA (i.e. post 1776) - and was proud to have dredged up a guess that proved to be correct. If only we could have dredged up a couple more answers like that.

... finally Ivor's verdict ...

We enjoyed the quiz despite our sometimes poor attempts at an answer. It was noted that the date at the top of the paper was 14th October 2025, but hopes that it was an old quiz to which we might have known the answers were soon dashed.

That the first round referred to events of 2026 caused a further sensation of it being in some kind of Sci-Fi time loop until it became apparent that it was referring to forthcoming events. We eventually cracked the animal lairs theme though could not get the theme link from 'Shiver Me Timbers' (was a timber a den for beavers? - no the link was 'hive' - oh, the trickery!).

Sadly the silent letter theme was missed by everybody - and all the women with an edge were certainly not shrinking violets (especially the alleged killer with an axe edge).

Distinguished WW2 Flyer

(R4/Q6)

Question of the Week

This week the teams at the Griffin enjoyed the unlikely fact given at Round 4 Question 6 ...

Which US president won the Distinguished Flying Cross?

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

Modest Spooks

(R5/Q7)

QuizWas 13/01/16

Every so often I'm going to delve back into the WithQuiz archives and resurrect some titbits from the past.

Here are a few gems from 10 years back ...

The Charas set the paper this week with the QotW coming from Fr Megson (Gerry Collins) himself:

"Father Megson recently tried to excommunicate a quiz player from the Griffin. Unfortunately he misread the instruction manual. He managed to find the two ex–Manchester City players he thought he needed for the ceremony but was unable to contact their ex–manager who had recently died in Liverpool. Which two players and manager did he mistakenly think he needed?"

~~~~~

I'd carried out an analysis of all known league matches between the 1999/2000 season and the 2014/15 season and built a 15 year composite league table. The top 4 places were:

1. CKC, averaging 1.71 pts per match

2. History Men, 1.23 ppm

3. St Catherine's, 1.22 ppm

4. Opsimaths, 1.19 ppm

~~~~~

Rachael, Compulsory Mantis Shrimp's convivial team captain and her fiancé, Adam, got married over the Christmas break. The Shrimps celebrated the fact by trouncing the Prodigals at their home base of the Turnpike (the now defunct Sam Smith's pub just next to the Red Lion). And just to bring things bang up-to-date Rachael and Adam have just celebrated the first birthday of their daughter Esme.

~~~~~

Follow the link embedded in the date at the head of this article to indulge yourself with a load more WithQuiz nostalgia from January 13th 2016.

Campus Chronicler

(R3/Sp2)

... and also ...

Bee Bronze? Shrimp Gold?

WithQuiz's interest in BBC 2's Only Connect series continues.

This coming Monday Opsi Charlotte and her Worker Bees contest the third place play off (long regarded by VCM as the premier match of the series) whilst the following Monday James Haughton (once a WithQuiz Shrimp) and his 5k team take on The Pitchers in the grand final.

"Most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood History"?

(R2/Q3)