The Lemmings ventured over the border into Staffordshire for the first game of the second half of the League. The Royal Oak has seen some difficult times fairly recently when owned by Marstons but the community and some businesses set up a cooperative and purchased it. It is now a very friendly community pub where dogs and muddy boots are welcome, with an extensive menu and a lively local life – indeed when the Lemmings walked in they came across another quiz taking place! Very friendly staff, decent beers and a warm welcome have completely turned around the fortunes of this real local pub – well done the landlord and the village.
It seems that vetting the questions was something of a problem particularly the specialist rounds where one challenge was rebuffed with the statement that it was not going to change by 
executive decision, a phrase probably unknown in the Quiz League before!! Once again despite repeated requests the lazy collective noun question raised its head, this time for crocodiles; and a question about braille was simply wrong and the Lemmings were the wrong team to ask (see blog below for 12th December) – all six dots represent the group for.
At the end of the Specialist the Lemmings had crept ahead with a slender lead of 50 to 47 and were feeling fairly buoyant – but it was misplaced and the home team beat the Lemmings with 80 to 74 taking the game with three points 127 to 124. So unlike Charles II There was no escape for the Lemmngs.
Individual scores were Bob 9/9, Sunil 6/12, Nick 6/12 and Tomo once again breaking the 30 barrier with 9/24; conferred points were 14/10 with 6/7 pass-overs whilst the home team collected 6/13 pass-overs.
It was a most enjoyable evening with Dave the question master controlling proceedings with a light touch rounded off with a fine selection of sandwiches and salad. Many thanks to the home team, to Dave and with very best wishes to the landlord and his team.
The Lemmings now have no game for two weeks that will be spent in silent contemplation and introspection before appearing like Athene fully armed from the head of the god of quizzing (whoever he might be!!!!)
6 comments:
Another very narrow loss for my Weaver team, this time away at the Flag by three points making it the fourth time this season we’ve lost by a one-question margin!
The cause this time was a disastrous performance on the Specialists, meaning that we went into the interval over 20 points behind! These questions were unanimously felt to be very poor. Dull, overly difficult, error-strewn and perceived to be considerably unbalanced in favour of the team going second (the last 2 questions in the creatures round a case in point!).
Round 2 Q4 (should have been Newfoundland) and Round 5 Q1 (should have been Petra) had simply wrong answers, and Round 8 Q4 erroneously described Anna Pavlova as an Australian ballerina. Also, the wording of Round 1 Q2 was questionable at best. Were these questions vetted at all?
Finally, my Armadillo nomination (I’ll restrict myself to one) goes to Round 2 Q5. I guess if this were the Worcester quiz league it would be an OK question, but as it is not one of 8 A-League players had heard of the Salwarpe.
It's not that the questions were vetted, but whether the setter acted on that vetting.
Maybe future vetters should take the questions, edit them, and present them directly, like an editor does with submitted copy, rather than merely making suggestions for improvements that can be ignored by the originator.
We're not writing gospel here, folks. The more eyeballs on the copy the earlier on in the process, the better the end result. In fact, if question setters could have the names of the vetters at the start of the season, the two teams could bat their sets back and forth several times and get them right by the time they're asked.
I maintain that the setter should be allowed the final word on question sets. The vetter should not be allowed absolute authority over the questions.
Good to see a discussion opening up on a big question - will need revision at the AGM probably
Is there any way to stop anonymous comments? Surely, if it is worth making a comment, it is worth putting a name to it.
Brian from Wharfies
Thanks Brian - have made some changes to permissions - hope they work!!
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