Merseyside Quiz Leagues

The seventh MQL Jubilee Buzzer Tournament took place on Saturday 21 February at The Parade in Hoylake.  25 teams from Merseyside and from all across the UK played in an all day competition based upon TV's University Challenge.  Players included Chasers, Eggheads, former Brains of Britain and the current BBC Mastermind. 

Congratulations to Yorkshire (David Stainer, Danny Lardner, Gary Morewood and Lewis Jones) who beat Chaos (Paul Sinha, Oliver Levy, Isabelle Heward and Michael McPartland) in a very close Final match (video above) read by Alexia Jarvis and scored by Nathan Pace. 

The Plate was won by Misfits (Marianne Fairthorne, Max Espensen, Scott Dawson and Richard Aubrey) when they defeated Plate holders Warrington Vikings (Alan Gibbs, Jamie Hall, Derek Moody, Colin Foster, Katie Stoyle and Oli Hanson). 

Derbyshire (Iwan Thomas, Brendan Dawson, Steve Hatcher, Gordon Taylor and David Edwards) retained the Bowl, which they won last year.

Many thanks to our team of readers who asked over 900 questions during the day and our team of writers who composed them.  A special thank you to our hosts at The Parade in Hoylake for welcoming us back once again.

Congratulations too to Jon Stitcher who administers the whole event and to Dan Lawson our question editor.

A final thank you to the teams, many of whom travelled a long way to be with us for a long but hopefully enjoyable day of quizzing.

Further images here.  Full results and statistics can be downloaded here.

Many congratulations to Joan Peacock and Graham Barker of Liverpool QL who are the 2025 Jubilee Pairs Champions.  The competition had been held over from last September.  Joan and Graham defeated Roy Smith (War) and Rob Cruise (Liv) and Karen Leahy (Liv) and Neil Wright (Wir) in the Final.  David Smith (War) and Sam Roberts (Wir) were the winners of the Plate.  A total of 26 players took part at the Burtonwood Community Centre.  Full Results here.

Congratulations to the Liverpool 2A team of Joan Peacock, Frank McHugh, Rob Cruise and John Coventry on winning this season's President's Shield.  Having completed all their games they have an unassailable lead in the competition.

It is with great sadness that we learned of the recent death of Sarah Trevarthen.  Sarah was a very talented quizzer and a familiar face around the UK quiz circuit.  She began playing in the MQL in 2021 where she played for Ringers in the Warrington Quiz League.  Sarah had success individually, reaching the Mastermind Final in 2022 the same year in which she won BBC Radio 4's Brain of Britain.  In March she became the Counterpoint champion.  With her husband Noel, Sarah appeared and won an episode of TV show Pointless.  In June of this year they both attended the Quiz League of London's Open Festival, where Sarah was part of the MQL team who won the Don Bissett Plate.
All at MQL offer our condolences to Noel and the family at this very sad time.

Two teams representing MQL took part in the Don Bissett Cup held at the annual Quiz League of London Open Festival on Saturday 21 June.  The Don Bissett Cup was originally a challenge match between the MQL and the QLL but today is an eight team competition.  On this occasion both MQL teams were defeated in their opening matches but the team of Dag Griffiths, Jim Eccleson, Sarah Trevarthen and Pat Gibson went on to win the Plate competition.  The other MQL team consisted of Dan Lawson, Neil Macaskill and Brian Thompson together with honorary Merseysiders Isabelle Hewerd and Oliver Church.

Many thanks to James Devine-Stoneman and the QLL for organising the event.