Withington Pub Quiz League
Home	Fixtures & Question papers	Results	League table	Teams & Contact details	Last season	Earlier	Contact us

Quiz Biz (29/04)

The Results

• In keeping with their end of season league position St Caths beat Snoopy's Friends

• Ex-Opsimath, John Dennison, inspired the Brains of Oak to a narrow victory at the Albert Club over the Opsimaths

• The Pigs just edged past Ethel Rodin in a thriller at the Red - at the end of the 8th round scores were level, but after playing the spares as a tie-break round the Pigs just snatched victory 

(This match does raise the question of how to resolve a tied Cup/Plate game.  Playing the spares seems the most obvious way but I believe some feel that the team with the most 2s after the normal 8 rounds should be declared winners)

• Stumped were bowled over by the History Men at the Cricket Club

• Albert cruised to a comfortable victory over Albert Park

What this all means for the next round of cup matches is shown on the fixtures page.

The Paper

This week's setters were Fifth Finger.  They warned us of some hidden themes without revealing which rounds contained them, or, indeed, what the themes were.  As it turned out there were 3 themed rounds -  Round 3 (names of musicals), Round 6 (colours of the rainbow) and Round 7 (football team names).  The football team and musical themes seemed fine, but to me the rainbow one was flawed.  It was executed through the first letter of each of answers 2 to 8 starting with the first letter of a colour of the rainbow (R-O-Y-G-B-I-V), whilst the answer to question 1 was the word 'rainbow' itself.  However one of the answers actually had the name of one of the colours in it (Violet Carson) whilst another had the Greek word for rainbow in it (Iridium).  All in all this left much confusion.  On the whole a few themed rounds seem a welcome addition to an evening's paper but they do have to be woven into the quiz carefully with appropriate instructions clearly given.  On reflection, I think the minimum requirement is a warning at the start of a round in which there is a theme contained in the answers.  Whether the theme is revealed in the warning or not, is up to the judgement of the setters - but the aim should be to enhance the quality of the round by giving extra hints to the teams rather than giving the setters a bit of fun.  Care also needs to be taken over the first question in a themed round where the person asked the question does not have the extra advantage of having the theme (possibly) revealed, unlike his paired opponent and the other members of both teams.

Having said all this I did find this week's questions up to the Finger's usual high standard with some excellent pictures to boot.  The picture of the bittern seemed to illustrate admirably the reason for its apparent rarity - nobody can see the bloody thing!!  Also a special word of praise for Kieran's humility in setting a question to which the answer was Ricky Villa, scorer of the winning goal of the 1981 Cup Final for Spurs against some local team or other.

Finally a real personal gripe.  Round 1 Q7 asked which English city was known as Ratae during Roman times.  It came to me and after much deliberation I said Leicester (which subsequent research tells me was indeed the correct answer).  The answer given on the paper was Lincoln (although I have changed this to Leicester on the website question page).  We only lost narrowly and had I got my just reward of 2 points for this answer we would have tied, or possibly won, rather than losing.  A bit harsh.  Antony - beware the Ides of May!! There is an Opsimath behind every column!!

Since first publishing the above comments on the paper, Kieran has written this amusing and interesting response:

"My sincere apologies for the Leicester/Lincoln fiasco. As a City fan I know

just how much a dodgy decision can hurt or cost over the course of a season! 

I have severely reprimanded Antony and prescribed extra Virgil and Homer as a penance (come to think of it he'll love that, better make it pop music and American politics instead).  In our defence I would say that factual lash ups in answers are about as rare from us as are goals from Trevor Sinclair, I can say no more. 

With regard to the paper, I tend to agree about the rainbow round, but I don't think we do the themes for our own amusement. The intention is to give an extra chance of getting the correct answer if you can deduce what else is going on. You're quite right about the first question in such a round and I think we've always tried to make that one reasonably easy, or at least gettable without knowing the theme. 

The ideal is that the questions themselves get harder as the round progresses but the deduction of the theme gives the people answering later in the round more of a chance.  Witness the impossible quotes in the round of se7en, the answer Cabaret in last night's musical round or, indeed, Internationale in the football clubs (you know you've all sung it sometime).

As I said we won't continue with hidden themes forever, much less make an entire quiz out of them, there may indeed be none in our next paper.  I'll give serious thought to what you say about identifying such rounds if we set another one but I don't think we ever would disclose the theme because as I've said before it then just becomes a matter of picking from a list of, say, US presidents.

 

Whatever we do I think it most unlikely we'd go back to a straight 32 pairs with no bells and whistles, if only because the first question would undoubtedly be "What is the capital of Albania?"

Take comfort in the fact that we won't be setting again until next season. "  

For a change my selection this week for 'Question of the Week' goes to the excellent maths question (Round 5 Q4):

What is the sum of the first 100 integers?

(to see the answer to this and all the other questions click here.)

The Stats

The average aggregate score this week was 74.2.  Actual aggregates around the games varied from 67 (Opsimaths/Brains) to 83 (Pigs/Ethel).

Thursdays?

You may recall that we had a vote at the end of last season on changing from Wednesday to Thursday evenings as our regular match day.  It was a close run thing but Wednesdays just won the vote.  Chatting to the teams at the Oak a few weeks ago there was a feeling that the groundswell for Thursdays has increased and that we need to have another vote.  Can we please use the website as a sounding board for this issue?  I'll publish any feedback I get.

Feedback 1:

St Caths and X-Pats discussed this issue after their recent match and were firmly in favour of sticking to Wednesdays.

Feedback 2:

Copland has come back saying that Stumped also vote strongly against switching to Thursdays.

Feedback 3:

Mary O'Brien (Albert) favours keeping to Wednesday - at least until we've had a chance to debate the issue again at this season's gala night.

Feedback 4:

Ethel Rodin are finding Wednesdays at the Red Lion almost impossible to negotiate, what with wide- screens and football at every turn.  They would favour moving to Thursdays.

Feedback 5:

On balance the Fingers wish to stick with Wednesdays.