The Cup - Sutton Church House

The first round of the Cup we played at the Sutton Church house, despite Nick sending out a note to the team that we would be playing at The Lamb - fortunately this was spotted in time (although Wendy had to get out of the bath to answer the urgent phone call!). The regular team is shown on their home turf.

The Church House is a very pleasant pub with 3 mainstream real ales, and the home team a very jolly lot.

The Wonderers got off to a very slow start, principally because the questions were badly balanced, but made up ground as the questions veered erratically with bias towards one team then the other (see the link at right). The questions were quite good but there were some pretty obvious ones (Northern Rock!). The eventual score was 96 to the Wonderers and 74 to the Church House.

The pleasant evening was rounded off with a good selection of sandwiches and chips.

20th November- Home to The Lamb

The lamb is a familiar team that we have played before, under their old guise The Sutton Club - they have crossed the road to The Lamb.

There was some anxiety that we would not have a full team and would need to play a beer mat (since ashtrays are no longer acceptable) but the vagaries of terms of employment for the Council meant Steve was able to cover for Wendy despite the original bleak forecast.

We started the evening in the rather surprising position of second in the League with a game in hand but did not allow ourselves to fall into a false sense of security.

This was fortunate as it was a very low-scoring game, with a lot of criticism of both sets of questions - as if the guiding principle had been "They won't get this one". They can be viewed from the link at right.

However, we did manage to finish in front with a final score of 125 to 99. Individual scores were Bob 6/6, Tomo 15/12, Nick 3/9 and Steve 9/24 - all below average scores. We also managed to scrape up 16 conferrred and 25 passovers.

Steve played a great game as reserve, but we're a bit worried about Tomo - his in-depth knowledge of daytime TV and board games suggest that he should get out more - but if he did we wouldn't win so often.

The brightest spot of the evening was a wonderful tray of sausages and onions with chips and bread and butter - grateful thanks to Brian and Tracey.

The Wonderers also felt that a reminder is due to the questionmasters about the time allowed to answer.

The Three Crowns

For the second game of the season we went to the Holt's pub The Three Crowns where we played familiar faces in an unfamiliar setting - the team recently moved from the St Dunstan.

The questions, set by the New Castle, were rather different and had some quite original rounds in the Specialist subjects. Both teams gave good marks for content and balance. See the link on the right.

The Wonderers managed to maintain their 100% record despite the liability of Nick's memory (among other things he could not remember the name Stephen King!!) - a fact reflected in the scores:

Bob 30, Wendy 24, Nick 18 (!!) and Tomo a very creditable 33. Points from passovers were 5 and 15 for the two rounds, and conferred points (mainly from Nick) 10 and 18. The final score was 153 to 114.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening played with humour and good spirit and rounded off with a fine selection of sandwiches.

6th November Questionmasters

The second week of the season and the Wonderers are sitting proudly at the top of the B League - but not for long. This week they were the questionmasters for the B League team and set the specialist questions; General Knowledge questions were set by the Puss Artists. This was particularly difficult with only 2 weeks notice but heroic efforts by Tomo meant we met the deadline and the questions were delivered on time in neatly sealed envelopes. Fortunately Bob and Wendy had transport and were able to venture out into the wilds of Cheshire and cover the distant pubs in Gawsworth (the unforgettable Harrington Arms) and Sutton (The Lamb - a new venue for the Sutton Social Club team). In fact both sets of questions were very well received and got favourable marks by the teams. They can be viewed by clicking on the link at right.

Well, we now have a game in hand that will mask positions until the half-way mark.

October 30th - 1st Game of the Season

At last the season starts - and the first game is against the George & Dragon - a team that over the years the Wonderers have come to regard as their bete noir.

Steve had managed to rearrange his shifts and covered for Nick with Bob, Wendy and Tomo.

They had obviously recovered from losing the Plate Final as they stormed out from the beginning and ended with a remarkable win of 167 to 145 - all four members of the team scoring 30 or over (Steve 39, Wendy 36, Bob 33 and Tomo 30). And the George and Dragon scored highly too.

The questions were very highly rated and the Wonderers look forward to this season with confidence.

The questions can be viewed by following the link on the right.