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Historymen
beat Compulsory Meat Raffle. Ivor writes:
"Another happy night at the
Red Lion, the spiritual home of the league. Tonight we
brought along the Plate (we're the holders) freshly polished
- so much so that if there was any silver on the surface to
start with (which I doubt) it is probably now gone. Of
course this was not a Plate game but rather a Cup game and
it is the Historymen who progress to the semi-finals for the
first time since....well....ever and it is the CMR who must
await the results to see if they have qualified for the
Plate semis. Our QM tonight was Peter’s wife Liz who
also provides a link with the past as she was a stalwart of
the league for some decades and played with the late Val
Draper after whom the Cup is named."
TMTCH drew against SPW then drew again on the Spares finally going out on
the drawing of lots. What a thriller!! Kieran sums
up the action:
"The quiz: TMTCH 36 SPW (Deceased) 36; The spares: TMTCH 4
SPW (Deceased) 4; The Ramsbottom solution (drawing lots).....our
luck was in and undeservedly TMTCH headed for the tunnel first.
Wow that was good. We started 12 points down and gnawed
away at The Men's lead until we levelled by the end of round 6.
By the end of round 7 we led by two, only to be tied once more
by big Dave's 2 for Macavity on the night's final question.
What to do now? Some brief discussion ensued and we
decided to play the spares as team questions with written
answers. The first team to answer wrongly (provided the
other side were correct) would lose. Who would be John
Terry and who Imogen Thomas's bit on the side? Well no one
as it turned out. Four of the five questions were answered
correctly by both sides and we both failed on the Hill Street
Blues actor. The only way of resolving the deadlock
was to draw lots (well if it's good enough to decide Bury
council.......). I 'm known as Nasser by my team for my uncanny
ability to lose the toss every week so I was having nothing to
do with it. David, feeling lucky on the back of last
night's triumph by City and the prospect of Club Wembley seats
for Saturday accepted the responsibility and guessed right.
Great night, superb opponents who bore their unlucky exit
with tremendous grace, and a total triumph for the handicap
system. You must feel so vindicated! (Ed: Actually, by a
quirk of fate, it was TMTCH's Dave himself who prompted me to go
for a handicap system in the Cup this year).
.....and another perspective on the Parrswood thriller from chief
question-setter Graham:
"Subbing
as QM for The Men They Couldn't Hang I accepted as an honour,
although no-one could have predicted the 'Thriller in Manila'
style finish. With TMTCH receiving a 12 point start SPW
were really up against it, but tugging on their bootstraps and
David's love of Veronica Hamel (or was it Kieran's?) they
managed to achieve a 36-36 tie. After five tie
breakers/spares honours were still even and so the result had to
be decided by me with two rolled up pieces of paper with X on
one and O on the other. Has there ever been a more
thrilling quiz moment than this - apart from the Opsimaths
winning the league, of course?"
Opsimaths lost to Albert
in a good-natured contest at the Albert Club. Albert had
replaced Mike ("had enough of quizzes this year") O'Brien with
Ashton and he was the vital ingredient Mary, Evelyn and Nick
needed to tackle the various Pussycat pop trivia questions and
swing the contest their way.
Ethel Rodin lost to Charabancs in the Stadium of Murk. Damian our
trusty man on the spot reports in:
"Not an
especially high scoring affair but not especially low either.
Labouring under the yoke of our 2 point handicap, the Charas
struggled to keep pace with Ethel for the first half finishing 4
points behind at the end of Round 5. Then the tide turned
in our favour and we scored 15 points to Ethel's 5. Thank
goodness for pop music and cats! Such was the tension at
one point that we invited Sean the Barsteward, who was certain
he could identify the building in Father M's photo question, to
take his place on the team whilst Father minded the bar for a
few minutes - but fully aware of what happened last time Meggers
was let loose with the Robbies, he declined!"
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This week's paper was set by
Calluna Pussycats. Quite a tough paper but with
plenty of amusement along the way to keep us all engaged.
Questionable pairing in some cases (I was the lucky soul who got
the Spock question so I shouldn't complain too much) but the
feedback and the results (especially the one at the Parrswood)
indicate a job well done by Graham and his gang. Ivor
comments from the Red:
"It was not a quiz for the
young (and CMR are young - even our boy wonder, David, is old
enough to have fathered them all). (Ed: Are you sure
this doesn't offend any super-injunctions?) Indeed
the 70’s police series would tax the middle-aged (and did).
However it was a quiz with good themes and lots of interesting
and amusing questions which is just the thing we like. The
CMR going first did have a very bad run of 10 consecutive
questions without scoring a point but then rallied to a
respectable score in what was a moderately difficult quiz (19
unanswerables).
QotW? CMR liked the
Stephen King theme and the Weird Al Yankovic parody question.
To break ranks my favourite answer was the actor Taurean Blacque
(who I have never heard of) - it must be the strangest name
we've had since Declan Kidney the rugby coach."
.....and Damian from the White Swan:
"A
reasonably enjoyable paper from the Pussies. Our only quibble
being the quality of some of the pairing (which is usually the
target for most criticism). For instance, in the Startrek
themed round none of us had ever heard of a character called Chapel
but we all roared out the answer in unison to the Benjamin Spock
question. Other than that, a pretty good effort."
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