The Results & The Paper

Down at the foot of the table Opsimaths and X-Pats slugged it out for an honourable and fairly low-scoring tie.

Albert kept up their winning run beating an Ivorless History Men - this now takes some pressure off the Fingers. 

Meanwhile Fifth Finger themselves squeaked home by 2 points at the Griffin against Albert Park and went back to the top - the Fingers' games against FCEK (March 2nd) and St Caths (March 16th) could well determine this season's crown.

Ethel Rodin went down to the improving St. Caths who now stand a good chance of finishing in the top 3 after a fairly mediocre pre-Christmas campaign.

FCEK had a comfortable win over the Electric Pigs at the White Swan and also look good for a top 3 finish.

This week Snoopy's Friends set the paper.  There were quite a number of groans, I have to say, as well as a few "not too bads".  Too many topical news questions, as well as a whole round on the dates of births and deaths, were sources of upset. 

Questions which could reasonably be answered correctly in more than one way also picked up flak.  Nelson Mandela has been in the papers most days for the last few years so picking the correct answer to this one (Round 1 Question 6) proved a bit of a lottery.  In our game at the Albert Club John Brennand, who is the most even-tempered of quizzers, was sorely tempted by the news question about the number 50 (Round 1 Question 3).  Was it the  number of years since Chelsea last won the league, the number of goals Roy Keane had scored for United, or some celebrity's 50th birthday?  He plumped in the end for Chelsea and we got the bonus by going for Roy Keane.  Unfair but the unfairnesses probably evened themselves up over the whole paper.

However the question that really raised the temperature was the trick question asking for the official position of Robert Kilroy-Silk in his new Veritas party (Round 4 Question 7).  Nothing gets angry correspondence like trick questions and this was no exception.  Setters should always resist them however tempting.

To end on an upbeat note though - it seems the fate of watching England's 0 - 0 draw was deemed a considerably worse way to spend the evening than being Snoopied!!

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

This week I picked the QotW myself and went for Round 2 Question 2:

Which North American country ceased to be independent in 1949?

Click here to see the answers to this and the rest of the week's questions and answers.

Eggheads

Both of our teams took part in auditions last Sunday at the BBC on Oxford Road.  The point seemed to be to familiarise competitors with the format of the quiz and the standard of questions, whilst providing an opportunity for the Beeb to see what they were letting themselves in for.

There were friendly competitions between auditioning teams but I guess the main challenge was to pass muster with the researchers and producers when they reviewed the tapes on Monday morning.  Hopefully both teams will be invited down to London some time over the next month or so to take part in the programme recording sessions.

Watch this space!!