Thursday, November 12, 2015

10th November Home to the Robin Hood

Once again the Lemmings were crossing swords with the Robin Hood who had beaten the Lemmings into second place in last season’s B League and the two teams had progressed to the A League together. No hard feelings of course …. In fact Bob has known one of their team for over 20 years dating back to the old CAP team of fond memory.

The Lemmings sister team the Rams had set all the questions that produced some odd results. Tomo seemed to be heading for a full house of 24 points in the Specialist rounds but the last two questions eluded him - he still got a remarkable 18. On the other hand Nick’s questions just did not fall for him and he struggled along with just 3. Nevertheless they were highly marked as they were not the run of the mill quiz-book type but were still gettable although rather hard.  There has been a suggestion that the final question of the General Knowledge be nominated for the Nine banded armadillo trophy –  would it have been commented on a lot at the time so not so obscure?  Let’s see what others think. On  the other hand, Q6 in Geography is about a language spoken only in one country and is so little known that we all thought it was Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Individual scores were Bob 9/12, Wendy 12/15, Nick 3/15, Tomo 18/15 conferred points 11/19 with pass-overs 4/6; the visitors picked up 2/4 pass-overs. The large number of conferred points and low number of pass-overs tells its own story.

Thanks to the question master who raced through the questions the quiz was over quite early and the evening was rounded off with an outstanding supper of sausages and onion gravy with bread rolls. Thank you Brian, the Robin Hood and the question master for an enjoyable evening

6 comments:

Alan a'Dale said...

Moving swiftly past the result.....

Alan found himself tackling this quiz from the position where he usually puts in his best performances - the living room chair with Mrs AAD on Quizmaster duties - given that the Robin boasts the largest active squad in the league (just like Chelsea...) and rotation was in effect (although in fairness, selection on merit would have done the same after last time).

....A few observations.
Specialists - the Robin didn't enjoy them and much preferred the GKs - I didn't enjoy the opening round at all (I seemed to be simultaneously much too old and too young for the Entertainment) - but after that things seemed to settle down. My scoring patterns echoed Nick and Tomo very closely.

GKs seemed fine. What is particularly good is that (if I'm a halfway representative sample) my highest score from any position on either side was only 9 pts above my lowest (specialists and GK cancelled themselves out) - although I did manage to beat myself playing first-first by 12. I would have been happy to award high marks to the quiz overall - I was suckered into the "Kent can't possibly be the answer to two consecutive questions trap" and relocated Dungeness to the other side of the Medway. Can't make my mind up whether this question paring was sneaky or a valuable lesson.

The two Rams who I encountered in the Tavern after the quiz (I was following a medically recommended post-run diet of Whim Flower-Power Ale) denied any input into the questions and placed all responsibility at the door of a single player, mentioned by name in one of my previous posts this season. Said player knows most things about most things, but I wonder if he is aware of the Primacy and Recency Effects in the Psychology of Memory? It boils down to "people remember what happens at the start and the end and forget what happens in the middle". This leads me to two possible conclusions a) He is unaware b) He is acutely aware and was engaging in some wilful armadillo hunting and sacrificing a few Question Setters League points in his mission.

Sadly, cannot post an image, but the link to the cartoon below should send a message.

http://www.dmacdigest.com/images/web%20images/leprosy/armadillo96-320h-518w.jpg

Unknown said...

The final question was utterly ridiculous. Did anyone in the entire quiz league get it? Something that someone has read somewhere and thought interesting (Heaven knows why) and decided to include in the quiz. Coming as last question of the night and with the outcome of close games possibly depending on it being answered it was an ill-considered inclusion, especially as there was no similarly daft one for the other team.

AAD said...

I had thought of saying similar to the real Alan above - even from the position of a non-combatant it seemed obvious that the final question had the potential to end a tight contest in an unsatisfactory manner. Even had it been paired with a similar one, this would have been the equivalent of cricket umpires withdrawing players for bad light with two balls to go and four needed for victory. Somewhere, some poor sod has probably had to ask the question in tight circumstances. (that they may have played no role in setting/vetting if it has been done by other team members.)

Armadillo etiquette #1 - if you are disposed to include a couple - get them out of the way early.

Alice said...

Agree with both Alans. Perfect armadillo candidate in that you can't imagine how anyone would be expected to know it.

Nick said...

Then it goes in the mix

MW said...

We very much enjoyed the quiz overall last week although your score probably did depend in which seat you sat - rather like it does for 18 weeks of League games, I fancy!

To answer Alan L's question, no one did get the last question for a 3 in any of the games. Did anyone get a "conferred" point anywhere, I wonder?

In our game (where that question went to our opponents), the QM thought it was a bit too tricky before he asked it and used his ultimate authority to ask a supplementary, which is always a solution. A 3 was scored for that question by the player concerned.

If both sides think a question is a bit beyond the pale, asking a supplementary is always a way out to consider.