Wednesday, April 30, 2014

30th April–And Now The Final Curtain

 

Yes, the curtain falls on the Cup Final, the last gasp of the 2013-14 Macclesfield Pub Quiz League, a season that saw several ups and downs and was in all probability completed thanks to the National Health Service to which several of us owe a big debt of gratitude.

The finalists this year were the Dolphin Dragons,  proudly sporting their TV star Liz, old stalwarts of the A League and a serious (if friendly) force to be reckoned with.

Facing the Dragons were the new kids on the block, the Waters Green Rams who have made remarkable progress in the past couple of years and have just won promotion to the A League and pass the Lemmings on their way down.

It was a closely fought contest with a fine set of questions prepared by the Knot ‘Arf and the Weaver from questions offered by all teams in all three Leagues. The contest was overseen with a light touch by Rick Davies as questionmaster, and very few questions were not answered. Except for the last round there was very little in it, but the Rams put in a storming finish to win the game with 112 to 97.

Congratulations to the Rams for winning the double – top of the B League and Cup Champions – an excellent season. Well done!!!

A thrilling end to a season that despite ups and downs still ran like clockwork for which the committee must be congratulated.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much, Nick, for your weekly bulletin - much appreciated!

Glyn said...

Nick, would you like to start to a debate on your blog about the success or otherwise of the the extra mandatory round we had to have this last year? I don't think this was sufficiently debated last year. We have two mandatory rounds "art and culture" and "entertainment" so similar that they often blurred and I tend to think of them both as "art and entertainment". Demarcation arguments aside, I just had to look up their proper names to remind myself what the difference was supposed to be. In my view this extra art/entertainment round has made the question range that bit narrower, as art, entertainment and culture, come up often enough in the GK too. I never understood what problem this was supposed to solve. As I understood it the idea was that by prescribing specialist rounds there would be less room for people to go too far off piste and set a "bad" round. But since one of the more notorious rounds was Red Dwarf (not that my team minded it), which would have sat quite easily under Entertainment, and arguably "culture" too, I have no idea how extra art/entertainment/culture would have made that any different. In my view we should go back to a single "art and entertainment" and two free specialist rounds. We'll still get the odd "bad" round but we can at least have a bit more variety. Does anyone else agree with me?

Glyn said...

I mean going back to THREE specialist rounds of course.

Anonymous said...

I think it was felt that it covered too wide a base - some weeks went "highbrow" some "low". Painting, Sculpture, Classical music, theatre, TV radio, pop music,film, architecture, and anything I've forgotten, seem to be a very wide area to cover in one round, and I think the idea was to split it, roughly, into high and low. The general knowledge point isn't really relevant as history, geography and sport all feature strongly in the GK as well!
I don't really mind which way we do it, I just thought I'd have a go at explaining!
I'll be in Crete on Tues, so have no vote anyway!
Liz Horrocks

Anonymous said...

Also no vote as I will be on holiday but prefered things as they were. Do not think this adds anything to the previous arrangements.
Jen W

Anonymous said...

By the way, the split is in the title - Arts and Entertainment. I think the idea was to split the two!

Liz H again!

Tim Hayes said...

Glyn, can't understand your rationale on this - how many times under the old arts & entertainment round was someone asked a question on Only Fools and Horses, and the next question was about an obscure Lithuanian composer? Classical music and art in general have always been under-represented for that reason. Divorcing the entertainment element from the arts element seems eminently sensible especially from a question setters point of view.
If you really want something to chew on how about this: last season one team put three, yes three, football questions within the sports round. There are literally hundreds of sports out there, it doesn't all have to be about cricket, football and rugby. Come on people show some imagination, you should never have three questions out of eight on any one sport!

Nick said...

Personally I prefer to keep Art and Culture separate from Entertainment and think Tim puts the case well. And with much contrition I must admit to being in the team that set three football questions in the Sport round - I seem to remember it arose because some other questions were thrown out and it happened that football was the easy replacement. I think this could run and run but I don't think this blog is the best place for it as these entries will be buried beneath subsequent blogs