Neil's Weekly Question Round-Up - Week 11

The feedback from the scoresheets for WEEK 11 was as follows:

SCORES:

Winners:

8: Carleton Grangers, Lofthouse Lions, The Vic

7: Flanagan’s Army, Golden Lion Dudes

6: King’s Arms

Non-winners:

9: Olde Taverners

7: Featherstone Phoenix, Kippax Legionnaires, Olde Tavern Allsorts, The Other Team

6: Kippax British Legion

It may be noted that every team gave a score this week.

COMMENTS:

Carleton Grangers: Mixed questions. Fairly evenly set. Good + v close game.

Olde Taverners: Interesting varied rounds, evenly balanced. Another good quiz.

[Carleton won 82-81.]

Golden Lion Dudes: Not too bad.

Featherstone Phoenix (who played BA): Some very hard Qs + unbalanced A v B.

[This match was 5-7 in the below analysis, though swapping at half-time turned that into 6-6.]

The Vic: Good balance. Really tight game against a good side.

[The Vic beat Olde Tavern Allsorts 79-78.]

King’s Arms (who played A): Question balance poor.

[This match was 5-7 in the below analysis.]

The Other Team (who played BA): Biased towards A.

[This match was 6-10 in the below analysis, thus bearing out that comment. Swapping at half-time was probably a good tactic for them as it resulted in a 9 (AB) 7 (BA) balance, i.e. the imbalance against B was slightly worse in the second half.]

STATISTICS:

The numbers of questions remaining unanswered (by either team) in rounds 1/2/4/7/9/10 were as follows (in the 6 matches, expressed as A-B):

4-0

4-4

6-4

5-7

5-7

6-10

30-32 (Total)

There was both praise and criticism of the balance in the comments. It looks very good here, with four close totals and two that are less so but (strangely) the opposite way round from each other.

Split by rounds instead of matches, the same unanswered questions break down as:

5-4 (Australia)

6-0 (Oscar winners)

4-11 (The 19th century)

0-0 (The Letter ‘L’)

7-6 (Birds)

8-11 (French art)

Here too, there is a mix of close and divergent totals. The 0-0 total for the letter ‘L’ confirms the general impression that rounds with a clue to the answers such as this (all begin with ‘L’) tend to be easier than the setter might have expected (it was probably designed as a variant on the General Knowledge subject we sometimes get). In fact, every match was 10-10 apart from one, with only the missing by one team of Liberia (in a Michael Jackson song) preventing complete FTQL perfection in that round.

There were no answers not got by anyone in the FTQL on the night. Here instead are the details of two questions that were each only answered in one match and that match wasn’t Kippax Legionnaires/Lofthouse Lions:

You Must Love Me (Madonna song written for ‘Evita’ film – answered by Golden Lion Dudes)

Gulls (Laridae family of birds – answered by Olde Tavern Allsorts)