News

It was cold but not too cold but we decided to play Bingo boules a) because people like it and b) because it was actually quite cold. So we did.

An amazing 20 people turned up and we played 5 rounds rather quickly  and at the conclusion of this we all had a mug of soup while the scores were being added up to find the winners.

 

Prepared in the Greetland soup co-operative it was butternut squash, sweet potato, carrot and parsnip flavour. Additional ingredients included garam masala, cinnamon, pepper, salt and paprika plus a large tub of double cream. It went down well and we had many volunteers to cook for our other soup melees throughout the winter.

The games. It was a triumph for the Livesey family taking 3rd place with Sandra and first place with Martin with 3 ten pointers out of 5 games. Paul was second.

Terrain inspection today at 1530 showed more than 50% of the terrain covered in puddles some over an inch deep. Normally with 16 hours to dry out overnight it would be OK for play tomorrow morning but the forecast is for 16 hours of continuous heavy rain.

Some cancellations already received and some worried texts from teams planning to drive a long way so it’s best if we cancel it now. Roy is emailing players and updating Northern Petanque website.

Tuesday 10th November was our first Bingo boules of the autumn. The game was invented in Heckmondwike for cold days when you don’t want to stand around waiting for your next game while a slow game grinds to a conclusion. When one team shouts bingo it means they’ve reached 10 points. At this moment every game stops and scores are recorded. Then we redraw and start again quickly.

It’s quite a fast format. We proved this by playing 5 games in 70 minutes. The original version also counted ends played and gave players a point for each end plus the normal points. This version still exists in some rural areas of Liversedge.

Winner was Rita W who had 33 points including 2 tens. Second was Phil (1 ten and 29 points. Third equal Sandie & Rita S with 27 each. Scores went down to 8. 17 people played and seemed to enjoy it. We’re waiting for a really cold afternoon to play it again.

34 turned up – a new record. We thought it was 36 but 2 names hd been duplicated on the sheet. Despite that we played on for nearly 3 hours and 7 players won all 3 games.

Well done to Yvonne, Paul, Pauline, Rita S, Robin, Marie and Kevin. The best points difference was Kevin with +20, Rita and Yvonne were just one behind on +19.

New table on the Winners page. It took a long time to make sure it was right. Apologies for the delay. Next Monthly melee is December 6th. Sunset will be 1548 (Today was 1635) so we may have to shorten the games to 10 or 11 points to avoid playing in the dark.

Friday 30th was our first Quiz night. Marsh Conservative Club was the venue and 24 members turned up to drink beer and wine, eat pie & peas and try their hand at some quizzes. The idea was to have a few small quizzes rather than a big one and thus have more people winning something. Read on.

We started with  Rules of Petanque quiz (available for your petanque club quiz night here). Roy was the question master and a prepared sheet of 10 multiple choice questions was circulated but the total number of correct answers was 13. After 15 minutes and a drink or two and an argument or three The winners were The Marshians which was Brendan’s team (which happened to have three quarters off Marsh Liberal Club quiz league team in it).

Next was a version of Countdown. We had 7 teams, Rock & Roll, Sumo, 3 Scottish fillies, GD, Livesey Family, Dolphins and Marshians so we played 7 rounds of word games and tried 2 numbers games. The game was dependent on an online connection which was a bit slow and seemed to disappear when we tried the numbers games but each team chose their vowels and consonants and a countdown timer played while people worked out their best words (and sometimes afterwards as well).

Notable successes were Barry getting 712 right on the button on his own in a Numbers round and The Livesey family nearly spelling Pharaoh correctly. Some sets of letters were hard. In the end Livesey family were on 37 points, Marshians were on 31 but the counundrum round NSOMREWEC was guessed correctly by Marshians at 29 seconds on the clock. They jumped to 41 points and won the event. Next stop Pie & Peas and Dingbats. We looked at Dingbats as we ate all the pies.

Scores were low but Rock ‘n’ Roll were winners with 7. A good clear copy is available for anyone who wants to try it. My favourite was No. 6 – Love, Honour and Obey. Even when you know the answer you wonder why.

Finally after a raffle we set about the 10 question but 100 answer quiz.  This proved tough and scores were lower than anticipated but  Dolphins (Pauline, David, Christine & Michael) won with a score of 58/100 just ahead of Marshians on 57/100. Dolphins also managed to remember the 10 events of the decathlon to score a maximum in one round.

By 1030 it was winding down and people were going home. The club made a good amount for Club funds and most people said they enjoyed it. The pies being voted the best part of the evening. We’ll do it again next year. New quizmasters actively encouraged.

The answer is NEWCOMERS.