Withington Pub Quiz League

Albert just held on to win against the Bards and secure the runners up slot while CKC kept their advance going to secure the third place position;

at the foot the Pigs beat the Opsis to avoid the wooden spoon

(N.B. There's a personal statement from me - Mike Bath - at the foot of this page)

Opsimaths lost to Electric Pigs

Bards lost to Albert

Charabancs lost to CKC

Ethel Rodin beat History Men

Latest WithQuiz League Table

2025/26 League season summary

No getting away from it, for the past two seasons now the Prodigals have been the outstanding team of our league. Anne-Marie and your lads take a bow! The Prods could be beaten with a basinful of luck by some of their pursuers as long as they were on top form - but over 16 matches the Prods were peerless.

The battle for second place is where most of the competitive interest has lain over the past few weeks and by a short nose Albert have secured this slot. Well done them! Runners up to the Prods is an honour in itself.

Down at the foot it was a close run thing between the Opsimaths and the Electric Pigs but after this week's final showdown, the Pigs clung on to eighth place leaving the Opsis with the wooden spoon - again.

Onwards to the various Cup battles with handicap points bound to play a significant role.

The film that broke United Artists

(R2/Q7)

Opsimaths lost to Electric Pigs

The Pigs' win sees them escape the wooden spoon - unlike their opponents

Mike QMs the first of a 2-week pair of Opsi-Pig encounters

It's always a pleasure to meet the Pigs and this week it was 'Pigs Classic' with Guy, Tom, Andrew and Dave.

With an election in the offing (in May) Andrew's focus at the start of the evening seemed to be on gathering votes rather than points - but when it transpired that none of the competitors was a Didsbury East voter he turned to taking points. Andrew is 15 years into representing Didsbury East and nowadays usually tops the poll each time he has to stand. WithQuiz is of course apolitical - but - good luck Andrew!

Unfortunately for the Opsis (Howell, Brian, Hilary and Paul) the Pigs collectively topped last night's poll in the quiz. They went ahead in Round 1 and just kept going to win by 7 points. So the Pigs finish eighth and the poor old Opsis take the wooden spoon for the second year running. As ever it was a friendly and cheerful evening amongst old mates with me playing the part of stentorian QM-in-residence.

So onwards to the Cup - and guess who we're playing in Round 1 next week? Well, of course, its the Pigs - this time at the Fletcher Moss where our net handicap advantage will be 2 points.

The film that broke Sean Connery

(R2/Q8)

Ethel Rodin beat History Men

The History Men return to losing ways to end up finishing fourth

Ivor ponders the twin challenges of hubris and nemesis

Our hopes of a minor medal were soon dashed tonight and we conclude our league season in 4th place. Of course there is nothing wrong with what has been our best performance for years. I will have to check Lord Bath’s excellent archive to see if all the final tables are easily accessible (they probably are if I knew how to press the right buttons) but I cannot recall ever having qualified for the WIST Champions Cup before. We have vague memories of finishing second twice in the 2000s before our long decline started (or perhaps other teams’ ascent began). Of course had we been offered fourth place before the season started we would have bitten Lord Bath’s hand off (metaphorically). But somehow fourth place is a sorrowful place. All that effort and no tin to show for it. How I feel for Dean Macey; two consecutive Olympic Decathlon fourth places and unremembered except as a quiz question.

Oh Dear!

(R3/Q2)

We were never ahead tonight and although going first and getting fewer unanswereds (3-5) and getting more twos (8-7), we leaked steals at a shocking rate (4-8). Some of these were the usual bad luck, or zigging instead of zagging with our rejected choice being the correct answer - and some due to us not knowing an answer at all, whereas Ethel did. Some things were just annoyances including failing to get the steal with Last Year at Marienbad (maybe our film called Last Summer at Marienbad would have been as good). This annoyed me so much that when I got my question about the US Secretary of State I miscalled her Marian instead of Madeleine. There might be a neurophysiological reason for this, or maybe Anne is correct and I am just an imbecile. No one is perfect, and no one knows why Anne decided the Czech film director with two Oscars was Ingmar Bergman. Vanessa and David rescued us on many occasions but hubris or nemesis was the order of the day for us. None of us even spotted that the AIDS poster's artist’s name was visible in the corner of the artwork!

P.S. We are setting next week for the only match in the Cup preliminary. If any other teams want to play a friendly let me know and I can arrange extra papers to be collected.

Cross Czech

(R5/Q1)

Bards lost to Albert

Albert come good at the last ensuring they finish Runners up

Mike proposes immortality

I had missed the previous two matches which we lost but attended this one which we won. It is difficult to know why this is the case; coincidence or ...? Ashton did complain about a foul miasma hovering overhead but this may have been something to do with the Psychic group meeting on the other side of the pub.

This was a hard quiz. The Albert team demonstrated this by scoring no points for Round 7 and blowing the 10 point lead we had built up in the first half of the quiz. However there were some interesting questions; who would have thought the Poles once had a female King? Our favourite was the run-on concerning the Plague.

Since Mike has rightly reminded us of how much he has contributed to the development of the Quiz League I feel we should respond in a fitting manner. The Chinese Communist Party once passed a resolution inviting Chairman Mao to live for ever and I propose we do the same for Mike. I now wait for an enthusiastic response from the rest of the League

Test by the sea

(R8/Q5)

Charabancs lost to CKC

CKC keep their table-climbing run going to finish third

Kieran charts the lows to highs of the CKC season

So we did it. Four months on from the lowest we have ever sunk in thirty five years playing in this league and we've achieved a sort of respectability. If we'd shown the form of the last eleven games over the whole season we'd have been well clear as Runners up and our match against the Prodigals a few weeks ago would have decided the title. If, I write not at all laconically, the entirely fictional Buster Merryweather had never appeared in our early season game against the Historymen it would have made no difference to us but Ethel would have nicked the fourth spot. If Greg had screwed up his courage to answer Phnom Penh five weeks ago both Ethel and the History Men would be in the top four and we'd be out in the cold.

Cream of Cremona

(R8/Q1)

We weren't exactly in an existential crisis in our deep and dark December but we did think that maybe, whatever we once were, had left us for good and our future could be just that of an also ran (or worse) with an occasional Cup run - the WithQuiz equivalent of a Fulham or Bournemouth. I think we've dealt with that one - it isn't happening. Feel free to pointedly mention hubris if we're again hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table next November.

You Nice Way, Man

(R6/Q5)

One thing that has hugely contributed to our improved form is that the conferring is working again. A lot of that is down to Thomas - yes of course I'm biased, so what? Thomas isn't a direct replacement for Barry; they played in the same team many times over the last three or four years. Barry's shoes are huge ones to fill - he is 6' 4" tall after all. I've noticed that since Christmas Thomas has been more willing to throw ideas for answers out when we have to go into the CKC huddle and to bounce off what the rest of us are suggesting. More and more this has led to that horrible management-speak word 'synergy'. In turn a quizzing virtuous circle develops and Thomas has become more confident in going for twos and less inclined to defer to the rest of us just because we've been doing it for decades. He was never inclined to defer to me obviously, but that's a different conversation and a lot of very expensive family therapy.

We usually like, and do well on, Prodigals papers and that was the case tonight. Two of the three weeks in which we have been top scorers this season have been on the champs offerings. However we did bomb in the last round but in one way that worked in our favour. We were ahead by thirteen after five rounds and it looked like we could win by twenty or so. That would have changed our handicap when we meet the Charas again in the cup from -4 to -6. The Charas took seven points out of our lead in the final round so they clearly liked it and we didn't, but it worked out OK for us in the end.

... but also an accomplished jazz pianist

(R3/Sp)

The fourth form (year 8 for my younger readers) sniggering moment of the night came from Martin in the Run-on round. After we had scored the points for 'Heated Rivalry... Reeling in the Years' he loudly stated that he'd always like a bit of Steely. Fnarr Fnarr and all that.

We've got the Cup to look forward to in three weeks time, again against the Charas. We start 4 points down but that's doable if we play well. Looking further ahead I think we may just want to give the league another go next season. To disgracefully bend the words of Hunter S Thompson to my purpose:

"The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over".

We didn't go over, we pulled back; we chose later. But the edge is still out there......

See you all in the cup, and in the Autumn.

Bad Sister giving out Shameless Sex Education

(R1/Q8)

John's hopes for doing the 'CKC double' this season were dashed

So ends this most topsy-turvy of quiz seasons. Was it possible that the Charas’ season would end victoriously as it started? Was it likely that the Charas would forget last week’s humiliation by the Opsimaths and rediscover their table topping form? Could we dream of turning over CKC for the second time this season? Not on your nelly. In the end the score was quite flattering for the Charas, CKC achieved an 11 point lead at half time and only a tremendous last round saved us from another big loss.

Once again, we can’t really fault the questions but our answers were pretty threadbare. If only we could have held our collective nerve and kept the faulty answers going in the last round we may (as Kieran happily pointed out) have improved our handicap when we meet CKC after Easter in the Cup.

1996's eleven point swing

(R2/Q5)

This week's Quiz paper set by...

... The Prodigals

Average Aggregate score 70.5

A pleasant challenging paper that ended up being a little harder than the season's norm but with plenty of interesting intellectual nooks and crannies.

Jimmy's visit to Prague had occasioned a round on Czechia (with memories of Jitka Brian loved that one) - and the opening round of the evening which celebrated our own team captains was well liked. There was a patch of the quiz when geography met sport by asking the teams to work out the furthest test match ground from the sea, the highest F1 venue and so on. These were nice brain teasers and led to some enjoyable team conferences.

Argyle's legendary left winger

(R6/Q3)

Quibbles? Well I thought the Run-on round started with the thinnest of links where a word ending 'ry' overlapped one starting 'Re'; so a two-letter sound-alike run-on. Its pair was similarly sparse with 'an' being the overlap. IMHO run-on overlaps need to be substantial with whole words or at least syllables involving a minimum of 4 letters (such as 'August' / 'Gustav' which cropped up in Question 3 of the round).

Greatest jazz pianist ever?

(R3/Q3)

In Round 6 at the Club we were totally foxed by the 'Albert Brooks' question. Nobody got it with "Mel Brooks" as the rather half-heartedly guessed answer. When we heard the actual answer we assumed the famous physicist had got involved with Hollywood work (after all he had other strings to his bow as the famous picture of him with a violin attests) and so used a different name for his film work! I now see from the internet that Mr Brooks was indeed a Hollywood director who had the misfortune (fortune?) to be born with the name of a rather well-known physicist. A relatively easy mistake to make maybe.

Finally hard luck on Guy who knew that Carol King was Neil Sedaka's girlfriend but got trapped into answering "Oh Carol" as soon as I'd said "Oh Neil" thus granting the Opsis a 'shoo-in' steal. Oh dear!

Another string to his bow

(R3/Q6)

... so what were John D's views ...

I think we have to nominate the Run-on round for special commendation, if only for the reason that we seem to do well with run-ons and the questions tonight covered interesting topics as well as amusing links.

More than meets the Pie

(R1/Q6)

... and Ivor has this to add ...

A tricky quiz in our opinion though that might be because we did not know enough answers. Occasionally questions were as elite as University Challenge questions and even QM Roddy was amused at some of what he had to read out (e.g. “the Hollywood actor, director and screenwriter we know as Albert Brooks”). The Run-on round was notably difficult and we could not help feeling that we were getting a view of the titles of Young Michael’s or Young Richard’s academic bookshelf. Nothing wrong with that and always good to be reminded that Michael Foot was not (just) a bumbling scarecrow.

"... but not necessarily in the right order"

(R3/Q4)

The most evocative question (should this be a future category?) was the comic featuring Alf Tupper. Those of us of a certain age could also relive the Second World War with its absolute certainties about the rightness of the British way with an invincible army, navy and air force. No imminent wars, no National Service, free education, free health, the economic boom, the relentless progress to the stars (literally with Dan Dare), and World Cup glory. Where did it all go wrong?

... and Kieran's view ...

Our only gripe would be Round 8 which seemed to be a retread of the History Men's 'guess a weird location of the winter Olympics' round from mid February.

Cinema's New Wave Czech Spa

(R5/Q5)

Question of the Week

This week I've chosen a question that offered a weird fact that confused the hell out of the Pigs and the Opsis. It was Round 6 Question 6 ...

What was the birth name of the Hollywood actor, director and screenwriter we know as Albert Brooks?

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

"So I'm telling you e=mc²"

(R6/Q6)