News and Views: 2022–3 Season – Week 5 – 13 December 2022

Results

We had our first draw of the season this week, with the Harrington Academicals and Nags Head scoring 160 each. Of the other six games, four were won by the teams that went "first first" and two by those that went second. There was one other close game, as the Sutton Club beat the Park Taverners by 134 points to 130.

Tables

No change at the top of the A League, where the Poachers retained their 100% record. The Nags Head 'B' remain in second place despite not playing, mainly because (as mentioned above) the Academicals dropped a point.

The Queens climbed two places with a victory over the Dolphin, and the Nags Head lifted themselves off the bottom of the table by virtue of the point they took off the Academicals (and the Diamonds not playing).

In the B League the Dolphin Hammers are still the only undefeated team; the only change is that the Park Taverners and the Plough Horntails (previously second and third respectively) swapped places after the aforementioned narrow defeat for the Taverners.

Individual

Top scorer this week was Alice Walker with 51. Ed Baron scored 48, while Dave Partington, Alan Hodgson and Ian Musgrave scored 45 each.

Alice, Ed and Dave were all in Seat 1 (going first on the teams that went "first first"). Alan was on the other side, as was Ian.

There were 11 personal bests this week. Five of them were in the drawn match between the Nags Head and the Academicals – three to the Nags, who went "second first", and two to the Accies. None of them were in the next closest game, between the Park Taverners and the Sutton Club – where all four players on the winning team (the Sutton Club) scored the same. This does not happen often!

Questions

The Harrington Diamonds' questions scored quite well all round: pretty much average difficulty, and quite well balanced (according to the spreadsheet). The Entertainment marks were respectable, although the General Knowledge went down better in the A League than in the B. More details at the end of this page.

A couple of controversies have been mentioned on the Forum. The question about the Rue Morgue Murders seems to have flummoxed everybody, with no trace being found on subsequent searches of Agatha Christie ever mentioning those particular (fictional) events; and several people commented that if anything, "padre" would have been a better answer than "chaplain" for the one about the clergyman who ministers to a military body.

A League

Results

Table

Individual Top Ten

B League

Results

Table

Individual Top Ten

Cars & Van 4U Question Setters' Trophy

Last year it was a case of "a game of two halves" for the Harrington Diamonds' questions, with the Specialists scoring 23.04 while the General knowledge only managed 14.09. This season, both sets came down squarely in the middle of those figures, with a difference of only 0.07 in their total scores.

Both sets scored quite well all round. Teams scored on average 99% of their average scores, meaning that these were of almost exactly average difficulty. They were also pretty well balanced, with just a slight bias towards the teams that went "first first" – who scored 101%, compared with 97% for their opponents.

The difference was pretty much the same in both sets, with figures of 98% to 95% in the Specialists and 103% to 99% in the General Knowledge.

On an average team score of 140, this may have made a difference of five or six points. There were a couple of matches where the difference between the teams fell within this range (including one draw), but as this may come down to no more than two questions it would be unfair to speculate as to whether the apparent bias may have made a difference.

For the full spreadsheet, please click here.

© Macclesfield Quiz League 2022