Thursday, November 30, 2017

28th November–Home to the Harrington Academicals


Image result for cold windOn a bitterly cold night with a biting wind the Lemmings prepared to meet the Gawsworth visitors – but the weather was the least of their problems. With Sunil and Becky alternating (Becky’s shift pattern) the Lemmings have been able to put up a team of four so far this season but disaster struck this time; For family reasons Bob was unable to play and the home team had to provide the question master leaving a team of two!! Despite desperate efforts Nick had failed to attract reserves to play but through Mark’s sterling efforts John Knight very kindly agreed to act as the question master; Becky too agreed to play but would be unable to attend until 9PM or thereabouts – at least a viable team.

Both sets of questions had been set by the Sutton Club and we found them to be well balanced and interesting with a round on writers known by three names (all of which were required). One contentious question was what is the common name for the scapula – the visitors said shoulderblade but the question master’s answer sheet was collar bone – the Lemmings thought the Academicals were right and after checking with Wikipedia (contentious!!) they were given the points.

The questions are now available on line here. (I am struggling to put a link on the right – will persevere.)

At the end of the Specialists the Lemmings were trailing by just 5 points with 45 to the visitors’ 50 – the large number of conferred points mainly due to playing with three. General Knowledge is usually the Lemmings’ strong point so they entered those questions with some optimism, especially as Becky would be arriving shortly. But it was not to be – no complaints about the questions but the visitors won by over 30 points with 99 to 66!! Final score was 149 to 111.

Individual scores were Becky 0/3, Sunil 6/9, Nick 6/15 Tomo 15/15 with conferred points 16/18 and pass-overs 2/6. The Harrington collected 4/12 pass-overs. Had it not been for Tomo it would have been an even greater defeat.

The meal ended with a splendid beef stew and french bread – many thanks to Steve (Brian on holiday), to John the QM ad the Academicals for a very pleasant evening.

2 comments:

Dave P said...

The Academicals were sorry to miss Bob, and send their best wishes

We felt sorry for Becky, who came off shift to arrive a third of the way through the specialists, then got 3 sport questions.

It was comforting to discover that Chlorophyll is still green, but surprising to find the scapula had moved. Humerus rectum joke inevitable

As ever the beers were excellent, the company convivial

Thanks to all for an decent set of questions and John for turning out at short notice to make the fixture possible

MW said...

I would agree with Dave above, a very convivial evening at the Dolphin was had by us - as always.

We resolved the scapula / shoulder-blade question too by entirely agreeing among ourselves that the answer on the page was in error. A lot of things have changed in the world in the last year or two, and not for the better, but hopefully human biology hasn’t altered that much!

These things happen though, let those of us without sin, as they say...

The Dolphin won the toss and went “first first” and I think we had the better of the Specialists by having Qs 2, 4, 6 and 8. It is always hard to know if that was down to the questions or was it just that we knew more of the answers to ours than our opponents did to theirs. We won the Specialist by a reasonable margin but the GK was almost exactly level.

A very entertaining evening and great food at the Dolphin too.