Thursday, October 27, 2016

25th October Cup/Plate home to the Nags Nead

 

 

Once again Matt has stepped in with a very thorough report – and well done the Lemmings with special thanks to Wendy

Half-term week meant a shift in attention to the Cup, although one factor that wasn't going to change much was the opposition.  The Nags Head were making the second of three consecutive visits to the Tavern (Rams last week, Lemmings in the league next) and may find their autopilot from the Waters Green car park awry when next at home.  With Nick still abroad, Wendy continued to deputise and we expected a close contest against a team that seems to have finally settled (after much traversing through all 3 divisions) into the upper half of the B League.

Questions came from the Weaver and the Royal Oak and the quiz progressed at sharp pace thanks to the efficiency of the Royal Oak QM and timekeeper (neither of whom play regularly in the league, so thanks to them for helping out) and the accessibility of the Weaver questions.  These could have probably been asked in a league match without too much pain and the opening two rounds went 17-18 (Nags first) and 19-21 with only one question getting past both sides.  The last bit of round 3 was much tougher, as if to set the scene for the Oak and the Lemmings edged that one 14-16.  After half time the Oak took the "Cup approach" to questions - remembering that only one person per team would ever "need" to know the answer and the Nags shaded round 4 11-10, with the Lemmings gaining the 5th 11-9 (in this section a run of 8 questions saw 7 stump both teams).  The final round was a "downhill finish", a little easier and this was 15-14 to the Lemmings.  So, 6 very tightly fought rounds, but the Lemmings shaded five of them to win out 91-84 and march onwards to, what will in all likelihood be, evisceration by an A league giant soon.  There were no complaints with questions, both setters had taken a legitimate, albeit different approach.  A couple of sandwiches later it was time for a swift journey back up the hill (or a not so swift journey for the back-to-fitness Andy Johnson) and we will all try again next week.

1 comment:

MW said...

Another interesting week with good questions of variable difficulty.

As Matt says, we also thought the second lot of 60 questions were harder than the first 60. A rough calculation of all the match scores shows that points scored in the second half were at least 25% down on the first half, and much more in some games.

The crucial thing (at least according to the entirely unscientific survey amongst those playing in our game) was that they were fair to both sides and it mattered not whether you went first or second. That is the real test of question setting in this forum and well done to the Weaver and Royal Oak on that most crucial of fronts!