This game marked the half-way point in the season and brought together the two teams from the Waters Green Tavern. The Rams had again to draw on their rich pool of reserves to make up the team.
Interestingly the same evening saw a team from the Bull’s Head at Broken Cross defeat the Eggheads and the previous week (episode 28) a team from the Bollington Brass Band took them to a close run sudden death although they lost. And yet not one of either team looked the slightest bit familiar.
Both teams felt that the Specialist questions relied more on trivia than knowledge and this is reflected in the individual scores. No questions however qualified for the Nine Banded Armadillo award. Nevertheless the Rams took the honours with 50 points to the Lemmings’ 38. Mike Vickerstaff patiently suffered as question master and deserves a special mention.
The general knowledge were more serious and the Rams thrashed the Lemmings with 108 to 87 leaving a final score of 158 to 124.
Individual scores were Bob 9/15, Matt 9/24, Nick 0/9 and Tomo 6/18; conferred points were 10/11 with 4/10 pass-overs while the Rams collected 6/10 pass-overs.
Brian then provided an excellent cheese board while the Lemmings licked their wounds – many thanks to Brian, to QM Dave, and to the Rams for a thrashing. On to the next half!!
21 comments:
I pride myself on fair-mindedness and the ability to recognise positives when they are there, so let’s start with some of those: 1) the beer and cheese (and, so I’m told, the Polish meats were excellent), 2) The opponents were deserved winners by an entirely reasonable margin and, with the team they put out last night, need to be promoted for the sake of all parties 3) The GKs were perfectly respectable in a run-of-the mill-with-an-occasional-blip kind of way 4) I didn’t feel any imbalance at any point – the pain was spread evenly.
Having been the author of a very unpopular set of specialists last year, I may not be in the best place to pass judgment, but if I am still producing that kind of stuff after twenty years, then that would be a sign of something seriously awry. Last year the Brewers produced two very reasonable GK rounds but some of my more seasoned colleagues found themselves quickly harking back to the “Red Dwarf era”. By half time our opponent who started out top of the A League individual rankings would have scored 0, had it not been for a gentle sup played because of the two-part gospel question; the generally formidable Scott Dawson had only scored 12. Heaven help the mortals. Yes, there was a festive theme, but (without invoking Cliff Richard and/or the surprise short-term break donated to the Ceausescus by their citizens in 1989) it is hard to suggest less pleasant ways to mark Christmas, though members of the S&M scene may wish to differ. In the spirit of Round 8, several questions could be described an abomination unto quizzing in the book of Levitticus (in reference to a correspondent late of this parish whose thoughts on this would have been most interesting). One of our opponents suggested that themed rounds often run out of steam after 6-7 questions, these were on a fast-track.
My crime sheet runs (in descending order of irritation) as follows:
1. Highly precise date questions. I have no problem with testing knowledge of history/culture by asking “a year in the life” questions, but having to guess the year of the No 1/toy craze with no leeway was a seriously invalid test of knowledge. So many questions would have been fine if they had been turned around and we had been left to work out the identity from the date (and other info).
2. Sport – as a whole the two teams mustered three single points – at least last week’s was quick and painless! I thought we had the Christmas Day football match down in the armadillo stakes – if not, it should be.
3. “Science” – species names offered little – “name a Christmas root vegetable/animal” would have achieved the same (correct) responses in our game.
4. Questions with two separate answers (qv).
5. Missing questions.
6. Supps that were OK in a “here’s what you could have won” taunting sort of way.
After a gentle gripe at the GKs last week, this felt much, much worse leaving us to speculate as to the balance of negligence/mischief in the construction process. Our QM had clearly played no part in any vetting but, thanks to his team and their questions, something like a normal quiz did eventually break out.
Very glad to see the Cock A2 and the Park Timers as the next setters, I’m sure Glyn & co. will have something more meticulously constructed and accessible up their sleeves.
Yes that Christmas Day football question does qualify for the armadillo award - think I must have dropped off when that was discussed
Surely everyone knows the carol.
Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of steven
Saw Blackburn and Blackpool scarfs about
From a game that wasn't that even.
I'd bet good money that by 9pm on Tuesday the number of phone calls to the Samaritans had doubled following the Specialist Rounds.
I was lucky to be in a single-story pub with a roof so low it wasn’t worth jumping off.
Teams have plenty of to slowly assemble a set of interesting and entertaining specialist questions, including this team. With the possible exception of geography, The Brewers seem instead to have decided to leave it until the last minute and then just work through the first lists with a seasonal twist that came to mind. Answering them was a turgid affair at best.
Peter McB said...
There's not much to add to Matt R's comments, but I would maintain that all date questions are poor, even lazy, questions, including year in the life Qs. If an event or person is sufficiently interesting or significant to justify a Q, then ask something about the event or person - the date is the least interesting aspect. (Though of course dates in the Q, rather than the answer, can be a great help). Whole rounds on one particular genre of music are inevitably unbalanced in favour of teams whose members are interested in, e.g., the pop charts (many of us aren't).
The last Christmas day football match was undoubtedly a corker; but how many people answered the Q in the generals about the first sport to be broadcast on the radio? Please, setters, give us a chance; by the end of our Specialists most of us had lost the will to live!
I suspect we all took a guess at the radio broadcast and someone struck it lucky. Playing "guess the team, neither of which are/were notable" was a tougher task. Neither were sensible qs.
What happened to the vetting process?
Well, Mr/Ms Anonymous, you have hit the nail on the head. According to our QM, this week's questions were not submitted to the Weaver, the A League team not playing this week. Why not? I don't know whether the setters vetted each other's but you have to assume they did not. I am genuinely interested to know the reason why some teams believe that the vetting process does not apply to them. Is it just because they are not sufficiently organised to be able to email the questions out a few days in advance? Or do they think that their questions are already perfect? Please advise.
Well, I never thought those questions could make me laugh, but this comment (especially the second bit), did
They were certainly incapable of letting me have an electronic copy of the questions for the blog - but in that it was par for the course
The Brewers does this every year, and it's becoming tedious now. For example:
2015: "The scores in the Specialist were generally very low, and Nick began to explain that although the Lemmings had vetted the questions (he was interrupted at this stage by the Plough asking who did the vetting? The dog??) the Brewers had not taken much notice."
Speed Skating invented in Scotland? I thought they gave up after porridge...
This was what I said last time:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=27404598&postID=6864827834185593794&bpli=1
And yes, I did check those are NOT this time's questions!
Rest assured we're at stage 4 and will be handing ours over for vetting in the next week.
Hard to quibble with the accuracy of the comments above, especially since I didn't play last week, but since it's the season of goodwill I think it's also worth remembering Magnus Magnusson's advice: "Remember, it's only a bloody game!"
Obscure = I don't know the answer. This quiz snobbery is really starting to grind If these questions were set by A league team nothing would be said. The week before a team didn't even give sports round and put them into the GK but that's ok By the way Nick who sends you the questions for the blog I didn't when I set the GK last season Who sent them to you The Phantom Quiz emailer from beyond. It's a game not life or death.
...sorry meant to say it's not a game of life or death 💀 but most of you don't no the difference
As I said last night look at all the other comments above, and also the Cars and Vans 4 U scores - that's not snobbery that's objectivity. The previous week's sports round was not distributed due to a printing error but had been prepared as you can see from the link to the questions. I always ask the lead contact for an electronic copy of the questions - I sent two emails to Andy but got no reply - The Brewers hardly ever do reply. Nor were the questions vetted. I've not seen how other teams marked your questions, in particular the C League, but would it still be snobbery if they all marked the questions down?
Snobbery? As it's Christmas, let me share a story...
I've been perusing the correspondence between myself and Andy R from back in Feb 2015 when we vetted a previous set of specialist questions from The Brewers. If my counting is right, then I queried a full THIRTY of them (out of 80), overwhelmingly for obscurity. Obscurity in this context simply means that hardly anyone will know the answer, as opposed to "I" will not know the answer.
I warned that people would meet many of the questions with "groans or blank looks", and strongly urged Andy to revisit the ones I'd highlighted. I also warned about the reactions he'd otherwise garner from this very blog!
I think we can all agree that the function of vetting is to help create a set of well-rounded, fair questions. I cannot find the finished set in Nick's question archive, but history records that our vetting effort was largely ignored:
"The scores in the Specialist were generally very low, and Nick began to explain that although the Lemmings had vetted the questions (he was interrupted at this stage by the Plough asking who did the vetting? The dog??) the Brewers had not taken much notice."
It seems to me that the reactions being reaped here are yet again simply the result of honest, objective vetting advice being wilfully ignored. If any of these reactions come across as "snobbery" then I'm sorry but, in all honesty, they're your own fault.
To answer earlraul above, as Nick didn’t get the questions electronically last week for his blog (which now has over 10 years’ worth of questions, incredibly), the way round it was to simply scan in a “hard copy” of the questions, do a bit of re-formatting and there you go. Very much 20th century technology these days, but it works.
The questions were tough last week. As we’ve said before, there are only two types of question – those you know the answer to and those you don’t – but there were a few too many in the latter category all round last time out, I think. The more time you can spend on the questions and the more vetting you can get done is always time well spent.
I haven’t processed the scores yet due to Christmas mither, but I will try and do so ASAP. I don’t think the scores either team-wise or individually will set any records though from a quick glance at the sheets.
In the game I played in, we got clonked by the Ox-fford ‘C’ by over 30 points (not helped in any way by me contributing my worst score of the season) although the ‘C’ are as near to unbeatable as you get at present.
Alice Walker got 42 in that game, as also did Scott Dawson for the WG Rams. They were far away the best two scores in any of the matches with anything in the early 30s being the best efforts otherwise.
Nick wondered above how the questions might have been marked and I have done the calculation for the “Cars and Vans 4U Entertainment” scores and the Specialist from last week are currently 18th out of 18 thus far. The questions got the worst scores of the season so far from the A and B League and the second worst score of the season from the C League. The GK are 15th out of 18 currently.
It will be interesting to see how Haydn’s spreadsheet alters things once difficulty and balance are taken into account and I’ll send him all the data as soon as it is finalised.
Given that in world-wide terms 2016 has set the “bollocksometer” ringing at record levels for all sorts of reasons, never having heard of Teddy Ruxpin or having forgotten when the Nintendo Game Boy came out (if we ever knew) won’t be the worst thing that happens to any of us this year or as time passes.
As Glyn says, it is Christmas, and what we do on a Tuesday night certainly isn’t a matter of life or death – death being something we’ve had quite enough of this year in our small circle.
Let’s hope for a bit more life in 2017!
earlraul's response inspires very little optimism. The general vibe of this blog (this season particularly) has been appreciative of the considerable efforts made by teams to provide an enjoyable evening - from which we all benefit. These teams have come from all reaches of all three divisions.
The content of the Brewers' specialists was often less of a problem than the way the questions were asked. Which handheld device was the bestselling toy of 1989? = fine by me. In which year was the Nintendo Game Boy bestselling toy? = much, much more difficult. I am quite comfortable with the fact that I will not know the answer to about half of my questions - what is concerning is when a) I get questions about things I am keenly interested in (eg football) and can't even begin to hazard a reasonable guess and b) when I am sat opposite extremely able quizzers, one of whom can lay reasonable claim to being the strongest in the league and they are looking bewildered over and over again. If there are people out there learning the precise dates of various pop culture events, then I'm not sure that we are doing them a service by indulging them. I'm sure most of us (sort of) enjoy questions which make us think "why didn't we know that?" or ones that are pertinent enough to make us remember if they come round again.
Two years ago, a team set a fiendishly difficult and obscure set of questions and got savaged on here (they were in the A league). They reflected, responded and now hold the Setters' Trophy. Please consider.....
Peter McB
Not a lot more to be said, but let's please scotch the annual nonsense about a question being easy if you know it and hard if you don't. A Q is easy if lots of people know it, and hard if very few can answer it. If a Q set on quiz night gets a 3 for 11 players but the 12th can't answer it does it change from being an easy Q in 11 matches to a hard one in 12th? Obviously not. An obscure Q is one that very few people can answer and which it's not reasonable to expect people to know.
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