The Girls go into the Christmas break 4 points clear of the History Men after a tricky and fairly low-scoring quiz

**Please note that Albert Park have opted to play their home games from now on at the Gateway Hotel at Parrs Wood**

 (see details below on next week's WIST Champions Cup competition - please note that the WithQuiz participants are responsible for picking up the papers from the Red Lion whether they are playing at home or away)

The Results

Albert just got pipped at the post by the Charabancs of Fire - really good to see Albert back in the frame after a couple of weeks when they were forced to scratch their games

Albert Park lost by 5 points to the History Men

Napier Girls had a comfortable home victory against newcomers, The Men They Couldn't Hang

Opsimaths edged it in a close match at the Club against Ethel Rodin

Snoopy's Friends lost by a fair way to the X-Pats

The Paper***

Electric Pigs set this week.  Judging by the feedback and the scores, most teams found this paper pretty hard.  The range of the questions was impressive but the depth of the knowledge sought was demanding (hence the lowish scores).  There seemed to me to be rather a lot of the 'either know it or not' type of question with little chance of working something out from the ancillary information.  At the Club Howell counted (I think) 18 unanswered questions i.e. over 25% of those.  That is pretty high.

However there are always 2 sides to every coin.  As I had just finished writing the above a ping on my nocturnal computer indicated that Damian's results email had come through from the Charabancs/Albert match.  I quote:

"It is our contention that this was the most enjoyable quiz of the season so far with the choice of questions and the topics theme proving a real winner - despite some initial misgivings.  Bravo to the Piggies for a most exciting evening. 

We would like to nominate this quiz for 'Quiz of the pre-Christmas Season' award!"

Well you pays yer money.....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** (written on Thursday following an email from Gerry)

It appears that there was a lot more to last night's paper than met the eye - and the casual website commentator at the end of a tense evening.  I can now see why Damian made the comments he did in his email quoted above.

Down at the Stadium of Murk the Charabancs and Albert were party to an experiment in quizzing the like of which WithQuiz has not seen since the Bingo quiz technique was introduced some years back.  The eagle-eyed may have noticed that the Pigs' paper was made up of 32 quite distinct pairs - even in the themed rounds.  It is also relevant to note that Electric Pig Andrew was quite anxious to act as QM at one of the games.  Now let Gerry Collins (aka Fr Megson) take up the tale:

"Like everyone else we were treated to the Piggies' quizset.  The questions were of the high standard that we have come to expect of the Pigs.  What made our game against The Albert a bit different was that we had Piggy Andrew as QM.  He suggested at the beginning that we could play a 'normal' game or we could be revolutionary and play a different way - we could choose topics to answer.  As captains, Mike O'Brien and myself agreed to give the new format a go.  Here's how it went:

The Charabancs went first.  We chose a 'topic' from a list of 32 supplied by Andrew.  As first player to go, I chose 'historical capitals' and was asked a question on this subject.  Because I had chosen this topic my opposite number (Mike) had to answer on the same topic (in other words he was given the paired question).  Then our second player chose and the paired question went to their number 2, and so on, right through to half time.  At the turnover the choice of topics fell to the team going first in the second half.

So, same questions but it felt like a different experience.  The feedback at the end was extremely positive from both sides.  We had a really exciting tussle and only a single point separated the teams. We'd probably have had a good game anyway but I do feel the new format added to the enjoyment.

Like all innovations it was far from perfect.  Chief flaw is probably that the team going first has the advantage of picking all their favourite topics in the first half and the second team is left with the crud.  This wasn't really a problem last night - the overall excellence of the questions meant there was very little crud.  As you know yourself, Mike from your experience in setting the Albert Club monthly quizzes, all new ideas need a bit of tinkering and refinement - but I could really go for something like this on an occasional basis.  Well done Andrew, and all at the Piggery.

Some great candidates for Question of the Week.  I really liked the footballing ones; difficult but possible to work out more or less by logic.  But for me by far the best question was the one about the Old Bailey.  It was perfectly phrased to make it seem really difficult (I'd never heard of any of these artists?/performers?) but then something clicked and I realised that I was dealing with criminals, and the mental fog gradually lifted as the forbidding grandeur of the building loomed into view........... God, it was better than sex!  Might even be Question of the Season. 　

Gerry"

I have now obtained a copy of the sheet (see below) that Andrew was using to advertise the topics to the 2 teams.  The topics are shown against the position they occupied in the paper but provided both teams agreed to play the 'topic choice' style of game they could be used as dictated by the players.  As the topics were chosen and used they were crossed off the list just as we cross out the numbers on a sheet in a Bingo Quiz.

	Q1/2	Q3/4	Q5/6	Q7/8
R1	American companies	Greek mythology	politicians	buildings
R2	food	business	children’s poetry	historical capitals
R3	20th century literature	tube stations	film	pop music
R4	sport: football	TV comedy	Bible	food supplements
R5	science: human body	engineering	business	board games
R6	children’s literature	geography	sport: football	film
R7	16th century history	pop groups’ names	African geography	theatre
R8	film	food: confectionery	Shakespeare	geography

Interesting to note that the format was robust enough to allow a couple of themed rounds to be included with no damage to the flow of things.

Now tell us what you think (use the Message Board).  Should this experiment be repeated?  It would be great to get a comment from one of the Albert team.

Question of the Week

General consensus was for Round 8 Question 3:

In the UK light brown was replaced in 1988 - as was blue in 2005.  To what does this refer?

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