Wednesday, March 08, 2017

7th March Away to the British Flag

 

imageThis game was played the day after team member Matt was laid to rest following an extremely well attended and deeply moving service in Rainow parish church. Representatives from the many walks of life that Matt trod came to pay their respects from football, refereeing, running, university days, Loreto School where he taught…. and of course quizzers from several teams in the Macclesfield Pub Quiz League. Touched with humour the eulogy read by Laura showed the deep love they shared from university, to marriage, to their beautiful sons in whom they have so much pride. Those of us who thought they knew him discovered unknown depths – he taught himself Greek, and was an exceptionally good cook of particularly Middle Eastern and North African food although he was himself a non-preaching vegetarian. The Loreto Girls Choir sang beautifully in a service that was truly a celebration of his life and achievements.

Afterwards the groups moved to the delightful country pub the Robin Hood where beers reImage may contain: indoorflecting Matt’s interests were displayed on the pump clips with a wide selection of refreshments including a never to be forgotten fruit cake.

Matt was able to draw together his many interests , in particular Nick remembers that once when Matt had set the questions for the quiz he first asked them of his students to ensure that balance and difficulty were right. He is sorely missed, may he rest in peace – the world is a poorer place without him.

So the Lemmings faced up to a game against the British Flag sitting at the top of the League with promotion assured. It is a very welcoming pub and the draught Bass was in good form and the home team are old friends and adversaries. The specialist questions had been set by the Nag’s Head and unfortunately did not play to the Lemmings’ strengths as they were adrift with 43 to the Flag’s 57 by the half-way mark. They began to pull back some of the lead with the General Knowledge rounds (set by The Sutton Mutton) until the final three rounds where they took a severe beating losing with 61 to the Flag’s 82 – final score 139 to 104. There were murmurings that the nominations for the Nine-Banded Armadillo were to grow this week.

Individual scores were Bob 9/12, Wendy 6/12, Nick 6/12 and Tomo 9/12 with 7/9 conferred points, 6/4 pass-overs whilst the Flag collected 7/9 pass-overs.

Thanks are due to Alasdair the question master who controlled the game with a light touch and good humour, to the Flag landlord for an excellent selection of sandwiches and of course to the Flag quiz team who will now march off to the rarer air of the A League – we wish them luck.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

not the Cock - the Sutton Muttons set those General Knowledge ones, vetted by us and the Nags Head. some of our advice was taken, but not all

Liz H

Anonymous said...

Truly awful General knowledge questions, which for some reason was obsessed with Transport.

Nick said...

Sorry Liz - now put right

John Stein said...

I asked the questions at the Harrington on Tuesday night and the scores in the GK were 77 to 66, most of the Transport questions were answered ( one must remember we spend a lot of time these days getting about) and there didn't seem to be many moans and groans.
Yes, we deed take heed of the vetters points and acted where we thought appropriate, however when the vetters comments to a question was "I don't like this question" I'm afraid I didn't find that very helpful!

Anonymous said...

I agree that isn't helpful. I tried to explain my queries (at too great a length, I sometimes felt!) I agree many of our comments were acted upon.
Question setting is difficult, but the league couldn't function without it, so three cheers for everyone who keeps us ticking over!
liz H

DaveP said...

After reading Nick's moving tribute in the blog, it is ironic to add to the comments on the questions that I had a night reminiscent of the one that inspired Matt to write his school report.

You don't, however get wit or wisdom from me - I just had the personal hell Matt described a few weeks ago, with not knowing the first few, then not being able to recall ones I knew quickly enough and finally mouth working quicker than the brain to give wrong answers to what I would have known if I'd thought a bit more.

Sitting P1, first first I got my lowest ever score, which thankfully will be dropped off. Going through the questions, I'd have got a score within my range for the season in every other position

I would commend to setters the spreadsheet devised by Liz H's husband that allows setters to analyse questions in each position by topic and provides a mechanism to swap them to correct imbalance

Jon Thompson said...

Printing the wrong questions notwithstanding, the way I generate our GKs is to think of 9 topics and collect potential questions in those categories over the year. I re-write them to try to make them more "gettable" from different angles. I then combine them as follows:

Team 1 Seat 1 - topic 1
Team 2 Seat 1 - topic 2
Team 1 Seat 2 - topic 3
Team 2 Seat 2 - topic 4
Team 1 Seat 3 - topic 5
Team 2 Seat 3 - topic 6
Team 1 Seat 4 - topic 7
Team 2 Seat 4 - topic 8

Team 1 Seat 1 - topic 9
Team 2 Seat 1 - topic 1
Team 1 Seat 2 - topic 2
Team 2 Seat 2 - topic 3
Team 1 Seat 3 - topic 4
Team 2 Seat 3 - topic 5
Team 1 Seat 4 - topic 6
Team 2 Seat 4 - topic 7

And so on...

The topics move to the next seat in turn with each round of 8, in a smooth ballet of trivia. I'm at a loss as to why some seats found them difficult, but maybe I should also randomise the question order within their topics before I assemble the final set.