Withington Pub Quiz League - quizbiz 23/03/22

Congratulations to the Prodigals for winning the 2021/22 WithQuiz League Shield & to KFD for coming second

Ethel Rodin beat Bards

Albert lost to Prodigals

Charabancs lost to Opsimaths

History Men beat Electric Pigs

Albert lost to Prodigals

The spirit of Dave Rainford lives on - the Prodigals clinch their second title!

Champion Jimmy reports...

Wow, that was tough! A real hard-fought quiz as you'd expect from these two teams.

The first three rounds were very tight with nothing between the teams. The quiz swung on Round 4 - the 'Watson' theme. Richard was onto the connection straightaway and that helped us race into a nine-point lead at the half way stage. The second half was a case of the Albert gradually chipping away at that lead, but we had (just) enough in reserve to keep them at bay. If there had been a ninth round it could have been very interesting.

MVP for us was John who despite a couple of out of character blurts, kept digging up the points to help us maintain our lead. Richard too, had a very good game and it's great for him to finally get his hands on the WithQuiz title after so many near misses with the Mantis Shrimps.

QM Mike O'B was in fine fettle, keeping the rabble in check with his quick wit and disapproving glances. Post-quiz we bonded with the Albert in our mutual appreciation of the works of Vincent Price and our admiration (well mine, anyway) for former Lamb's Navy Rum girl Caroline Munro who is currently presenting the Cellar Club on Talking Pictures TV. Any chance we can get her down to present the trophies at the end of season do?

"...a curved glass and steel shell...a shiny condom."

(R6/Q7)

Rabble-checker Mike O'B sees it this way...

I QMed again. How can I sum up the experience of QMing The Albert? Perhaps as Arthur Miller describes the girls in The Crucible "they would run the devil bow-legged with their wickedness".

Both teams seemed to find the quiz challenging. For me the best question was based on my favourite Cole Porter song Well Did You Evah. I was so pleased I even sang some of the other lyrics: "Have you heard about dear Blanche - she got run down by an avalanche.... She's a brave girl you know, got up and finished fourth." Strangely they were totally unimpressed by this.

Congratulations to The Prodigals - they deserved this because they have been the best team all season. Now I'm looking forward to a lucky, totally undeserved championship win by The Albert next year...

"...an irregularly shaped red brick building in the Scandinavian Modernist style."

(R6/Q8)

...and finally Kieran adds the KFD view...

Many congratulations to the Prodigals on their league win. Clearly the class of the field from the start of the season (well from week 2 at any rate) and very worthy winners of their second title in three seasons. You were just too good for us and we couldn't ever get near you but we'll do all we can to score a consolation win in our dead rubber next week.

1919 in 1932

(R1/Q6)

Ethel Rodin beat Bards

Ethel are the evening's top scorers securing a decisive home victory

James reports...

Perhaps a lower scoring quiz than we would usually expect from KFD, but most of that was due to the very low-scoring first round.

A quiz with topics that tended to favour Ethel, although we did also cop for the unanswereds 8-3.

And, many congratulations to the Prodigals on another splendid League title.

...and 1967 in 1867

(R1/Q5)

A bevy of Beryls

(R4/Q7)

Charabancs lost to Opsimaths

A long absorbing match just tips in favour of the visitors

Mike reports...

Well, it was nip and tuck all the way with the Opsimaths just nosing ahead in the last round.

We took an awfully long time on this paper finishing on the dot of 11pm. Jane was a patient and very clearly-spoken QM as ever but even she must have been getting a tad weary of the constant repetitions requested by the teams. Certainly the representative from the setters (Kieran) sat in the corner, was none too impressed at our ponderous progress. After the match he made the perfectly valid point that once the team first asked a question had had an exhaustive conflab and still failed to get the answer right the other side should have just a limited time to throw up their answer (say 30 seconds). Too often in this match the team getting a pass-over set about the whole thing as if it was a fresh question.

As for the unanswerables they split 7 all - perfectly fair but a little too many for a totally satisfactory paper. However the interest factor (for me at least) was pretty high.

So the Opsis are clawing back some positive results at last after a disastrous post-pandemic plunge. We sit proudly in the middle of the table neither one thing nor the other.

How Jacopo saw himself...

(R2/Q3)

History Men beat Electric Pigs

Home team just edge a one-point victory

Ivor is gratified...

A gratifying win after our long sequence of defeats, especially as the Pigs had given us a sound thrashing when we last played them in November. Since then the Pigs have not won any games at all but tonight they must have thought they had a chance when they were 6 points ahead at half time. Then O tempora O mores! it is the Historymen that find the Deus ex machina to win by a nose.

The quiz was very much a game of two halves (Round 4 was 7-1 for the Pigs; whilst Round 7 went 1-6 for us) but as usual everything evens out in the end. Everyone got at least one two (except 'Confer') and Pig Dave got 5 twos despite arriving late (traffic jam).

As always with our games against the Pigs there was a sense of calm in the battle no doubt helped by the absence of our cheerleader-in-chief Anne who was on holiday. Of course 'battle', 'crushing defeats' and 'licking one's wounds' are rather OTT metaphors for the quizzing world when you look at what's going on in the real world. It makes one appreciate the normality of a pint in the quietude of the Parrswood. Mike H was also hors de combat with a cold, so Seat 1 was occupied by our most reliable player, 'Confer', the one who never blurts or over-rules a correct team discussion.

Young David (aka David) was in his element with map outlines, and he is also our new resident 'twitcher' since the passing of Peter Morgan and Tim Dunningham. Unfortunately his elemental knowledge was so extensive that we suggested Darmstadt rather than Moscow as being close to Borodino.

Mathematical knowledge (or rather the lack of it) was again tested severely and despite a sprinkling of 'A' levels in Maths and Physics no one could find an answer, or for that matter even understand the question, that might well not even challenge Martin’s Year 8s. The classical music questions were more welcome but perhaps predictably we confused our Haydn and our Mozart which resulted in an unusual 'reverse pair steal' on each side.

...and how John Singer saw himself

(R8/Q1)

Quiz paper set by...

...KFD

Average Aggregate score 66.8

This was a paper packed with interesting material and - as Kieran pointed out to us at the Griffin - hardly a shred of lesser known modern pop culture. Also no quibbles about fairness as the unanswerables in our match broke evenly and the scores were very tight all the way through - if maybe a little on the low side (an average 9 points down on the season's running average).

The paper was full of questions that invited conferences and boy, did we confer! As a result we had a very late finish. Perhaps last night it would have been good to have a few more 'know it/don't know it' questions. On the other hand it is from the conferences that you get most of the added value in a quiz evening.

On a personal note I have to thank David for setting the 'highest point in Greater Manchester' question which he tells me he set specifically for me (sadly I didn't get the answer right). However to illustrate the extent to which KFD will go to research their paper here is a picture of David atop that very peak earlier this week...

(R6/Sp1)

but what did James think...

So yes, a tough quiz with not so many two-pointers, but even though it was tough, it seemed fair. Our opponents talked themselves out of more conferred answers than we did.

A few such cases were 'Jack and Jill' answers (where there were probably only two viable answers and once the wrong one had been given, it made the bonus a lot easier).

Perhaps a disproportionate amount of classical music, but over the course of the season there haven’t been that many such questions. Ethel are setting next week though 😉.

Good to see some birds cropping up - my 8 year old ornithology fanatic got both of them straight away this morning - the dipper is something of a rare bird - but short wings and being painted on a rock next to a stream were the clues there. Meanwhile though most of the bird feeders of Didsbury will be regularly visited by nuthatches - they typically feed upside down - so perhaps this was a slightly unbalanced pairing. However it was made up for with Afghanistan being a far more familiar shape than Kenya.

National Trust membership and days out with the kids in Cheshire also helped in that round - Mace is much underrated. The funny spindly looking structure is a seed covering of nutmeg but has a more subtle taste. We fought wars with the Dutch to gain control of the tiny set of islands where this grew because it was worth more than its weight in gold at a time when meat generally tasted rank without any flavouring. We eventually lost the islands but stole most of the trees and planted them elsewhere (including Grenada which has a stylised nutmeg / mace seed on its flag) and so destroyed the monopoly.

Finally here's a SHF snapped in my garden as I write this...

(R5/Sp1)

and Ivor...

It was a hard quiz with 15 unanswereds (second hardest of the season) and I note that better teams than us fared little better tonight. The subject matter was somewhat more erudite than usual - and there's nothing wrong with that as much of the subject matter was highly appreciated.

and finally Jimmy...

Some excellent questions of great merit from setters KFD.

Question of the Week

This week Mike O'Brien votes for one of his all time favourite songs as represented in Round 3 Question 2...

From which song from a 1956 film musical do the following lines come:

‘Have you heard? It’s in the stars / Next July we collide with Mars’?

For the answer to this and all the week's other questions click here.

Literary titans - Ukrainian origins

(R1/Q1&2)