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In a 'points-fest' evening the
Prods/Albert match clocks up a record-breaking 100 point aggregate;
History Men leapfrog Albert into second place; CKC and Ethel move up |
Prodigals beat Albert
Electric Pigs lost to CKC
Bards lost to History Men
Charabancs lost to Ethel Rodin
Latest WithQuiz League Table |
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Prodigals beat Albert
100 point aggregate barrier is broken in a
fierce battle between the top two
 Michael
tells how Acton ruined a perfect evening for Richard
A remarkably high-scoring match at the club
as we notched up 100 points between us; surely a
league record?
There
was only one unanswered (Ain’t She Sweet) and
only one steal (Thelonius Monk) as everybody piled
in with their share of twos. Nobody was
better, however, than Richard. A perfect
record through to Round 7 was kept alive by a
miraculous guess that Shredded Wheat could have
defeated a black hole - truly the worst question of
the week - only for the London suburb of Acton to
elude him. Still, a marvellous performance.
Oddly, for such a high-scoring quiz, this felt like
a bit of a slog at times, and certainly it took us
longer than expected. Still, 100 points … can’t
complain about that!
Weill's muse
(R6/Q1)
Bards lost to History Men
History Men move up to second place with a tense
one-point victory
 Ivor
comes out as unashamedly working class
Our
first game of 2026 was the Parrswood derby.
Both sides seem to have weathered the Christmas/New
Year celebrations though some of us might have put
on a little extra weight. It is in our
mammalian nature to eat when available - and it does
not help to have stocked up with at least two
Christmas cakes and a quarter of Scotland’s
shortbread output. So Dry January or Sober
Eating January remains unrealistic. Not much
evidence either of any New Year’s resolutions in our
team regarding behaviour, tolerance of our team
members’ blurts, or observations on questions that
might be perceived as smut.
a
Kiwi Oscar
(R3/Q8)
So it
was a typical Bards v Historymen match and another
exciting finish. The Bards had a two point
lead after Round 1 but after that there was never
more than a point between the teams. We were a
point behind going into the last round.
Fortunately QM Kate spelled out 'Cynophile' which
allowed Anne to score a crucial two points whereas
on sound alone we might have been looking for non
existent Chinese London boroughs. The
Historymen are now second in the table, our highest
position for years. It will not last. We
face the Prodigals next week. We had thought
our combined score of 79 was pretty good and it is
humbling to find it was the worst (by some way) of
all the matches played.
The Cream of Cremonese
(R6/Q5)
Did
we enjoy the evening? Of course we did, and
what would the evening be without some vituperation.
I had my first blurt of the year in Round 3 when I
confidently said “The Jarrow Crusade” for the 1926
event. Only ten years out and 200 people
rather than 1.7 million. Anne said it was
because I was not working class enough to remember
that event (compared to herself and HH Judge Tony,
both from mining stock). Coming from
generations of small Ulster farmers my families did
do some work. Of course these days we are all
workers to earn a crust (bar the Royals and the
young Beckhams). Unlike Michael Meacher I will
not resort to the law courts for satisfaction (he
lost his libel case against a journalist who doubted
his working classness).
A line to God
(R2/Q7)
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Who knows?
(R1/Q2)
Electric Pigs lost to CKC
Good start to the new year for CKC who continue
their journey up the table
 Kieran
rejoices as CKC put their early season woes behind
them
Three
weeks ago when I last wrote one of these there was a
glimmer that we were recovering from our car crash
start to the season. 10,000 miles away, on the
other side of the world, England were being
embarrassingly useless in Adelaide. Tonight we
confirmed that we are at least functioning again as
a competent quiz team and England have discovered
that Jacob Bethell can bat. McCullum will
coach that out of him soon enough but I'm hopeful
that CKC can continue our form (four wins and a draw
from the last five following five straight defeats)
into the Spring. The league table is very
tightly bunched with only three points between third
and eighth so top four could still be on. All
that is for the future, for now we're just enjoying
the feeling of winning regularly again.
Ancient power
(R5/Sp1)
Noises off from the United (or Burnley) fans were
hugely entertaining: "No urgency", "Get in" and
"F***ing hell" repeated with varying levels of
exasperation reminded Andrew Pig of one of the more
fraught council meetings.
Next
week we're back in the Griffin against tonight's
setters and we'll be hoping to keep our good form
going. We'll be without Bob who is somewhere
at sea doing who knows what. Bob is often at sea -
except when he's being our superb QM of course - but
rumours that yesterday he could be found somewhere
off the north west coast of Scotland heading towards
Iceland are just .... rumours. Before he left
he did mention that he was supplementing his pension
by dabbling in the oil business so I hope he'll
still have time to occupy his rightful place on quiz
evenings later in the season.
The
Albert's Jeremy has kindly offered to ask the
questions and maintain some semblance of order.
Looking forward to it.
Sutton who?
(R1/Q5)
Charabancs lost to Ethel Rodin
A
thumping victory for Ethel moves them up to 4th in
the table
 Damian
brings on the sub at half-time - but to no avail
A profusion of Charas (is that the most appropriate
collective name for us?) turned up this week due to
a miscommunication so giving us the option to swap
two of the squad at half time. In spite (or
maybe because) of this we started off the new year
with the mother of all hangovers. Losing the
toss and going second did us no favours as we lagged
behind our opponents in all but two of the rounds.
Our recent happy run of coming from behind in the
last round came back to haunt us with a vengeance as
we scored just one point at that stage with Ethel
picking up eight. They led in all the usual
stats with sixteen twos versus twelve and
ungenerously grabbed eight of the nine steals on
offer thus walloping us good and proper. The
unanswereds split evenly at three apiece.
Looking at the scores for everyone else we can only
feel grateful to the Pigs for saving us from being
awarded wooden spoon of the evening.
This lopsided outcome came as an unwelcome surprise
since we normally look forward to Opsimath papers
and do very well on them. Alas not so on this
occasion. Oh well, there's always next week!
Ken's pied-a-terre
(R8/Q8)
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Quiz paper set by...
... The Opsimaths
Average Aggregate score 87.0
The
Opsis have been good at giving away points all
season and this week was no exception as the points
racked up. I think the Opsis now have the
honour (?) of setting the paper that led to the
first ever aggregate score to top the 100 points
mark (the Prods v Albert match at the Albert Club).
Having been one of the setters (Rounds 6 and 8 as it
happens) I'll leave it to others to pass verdict.
Monastic tinkler
(R3/Q5)
...
so what were Damian's views ...
There was the usual variety of subject matter with
accessible themes but, in our view, a lot of
stinkers which did not at all play to our strengths.
There seemed to be an unhealthy obsession with
railways and women whose sole claim to fame was
marrying Simon Le Bon (remember him?) some four
decades ago, culminating in a round on London
suburbs which is no fun for those of us who are not
that well acquainted with the British capital.
However we did enjoy the history questions (well I
did anyway) and the round on departed celebrities of
2025. Given an overall score of 85, which is
well above the seasonal average, we can only fairly
conclude that this was a rewarding quiz for most of
the teams tonight including for our esteemed
opponents, but just not for us on this occasion.
Enduring Gun
(R5/Q5)
...
and Kieran was pretty happy ...
A right on the money Opsis points fest was enjoyed
by all. Maybe there was some advantage in
going second because at half time we led by five and
ended up winning by twenty. Points were spread
evenly throughout the mutt line up and we had no
unanswereds to five on the Pigs side.
...
finally Ivor really enjoyed this paper ...
Another excellent quiz with all the formats we
enjoy. The Obituary Round was very teasing and
being a Bingo round could end well or not.
Tony was somewhat amused to see that seven of the
twelve deceased were younger than him. Tony,
however, was quick to spot the Round 6 hidden theme,
which none of we Historymen could. He must be
Wigan’s greatest Francophile. The homage round
to Greg Spiller was well executed. Usually we
falter at Far South questions but we had heard of
all of those London districts and the punning had
the right teasing amount of difficulty.
Corfu zookeeper
(R1/Q1)
Question of the Week
This week Anne-Marie votes for Round 5 (the Vroom!
Vroom! round) Question 5 ...
Between "9" and "6", what phrase is missing from this NASA
commentary:
“20 seconds and counting;
T-15 seconds; guidance is internal; 12, 11, 10, 9, ????, 6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero; all engines running; LIFTOFF; we have a
liftoff; 32 minutes past the hour; liftoff on Apollo 11.”?
For the answer to this and all the week's other
questions click
here.
Keep well clear!
(R5/Q2)
... and also ...
Topsimath!
Opsimath Charlotte and her Worker Bees took part in
a fantastic edition of Only Connect last week
(Monday, December 29th) which delivered great
quizzing, plenty of enjoyable chat and - most
importantly - a victory for the Bees who go through
to the semi-finals.
... and this week James Haughton former WithQuizzer
with the Shrimps sailed through to Only Connect's
final with the 5Ks. Both matches are on the
iPlayer.
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