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Macclesfield Quiz League is an annual General Knowledge competition that's been held throughout the winter months in and around the market town of Macclesfield, in the English county of Cheshire, since at least 1982. On this website you can find all the latest results and League tables, a historical archive of past results and tables, and all the questions that we've set to challenge each other in the past few years (with answers, obviously).
This website replaced the Macclesfield Quiz League blog in 2017. The blog had been operational since 2007.
Graham Bailey has been a key participant in Macclesfield Quiz League from the very start. He was the first A League Individual champion that we have a record of (in 1985–6), and without his work behind the scenes it's doubtful whether the League would still be in existence today. He was still an active member of the Committee as recently as 2020, when he was responsible for publicity and procuring the myriad trophies that we award each season.
However, as regular participants know, Graham's mobility has become more and more limited in recent years, and he has now moved to live permanently in a care home in Macclesfield. Graham's daughter Lesley has recently informed the committee that her father has finally decided that the time has come for him to retire from quizzing, and sadly he will not be playing in the League again from now on.
For many years (in the days before any of us had computers in our homes, or had seen a website), Graham was responsible for compiling the results and tables, to be distributed on paper each week. It was also he that arranged the sponsorhip of the League by his employers, ICI / Zeneca / AstraZeneca. We're still using the scoresheets that he had printed many years ago, and our current Secretary, Mark Watson, still has a couple of boxes in his garage that will keep us going for some time yet!
Graham is still very sharp and will no doubt be helping the Waters Green Weavers set their questions still. Lesley is sure that he would very much appreciate visits from his quizzing friends, so if you would like to know where to find him, please speak to Lesley on a quiz night or contact a member of the Committee.
In case you missed it, you can see some newspaper cuttings from the very early days of the Quiz League – including some photos of a much younger Graham – here.
The 2024–5 season began on Tuesday 29 October. The full results are now available – thanks to everyone for sending them so promptly – and so are the questions.
Please note that Colne Valley Quiz League have decided not to use our questions, so we can publish them whenever we're ready. Please continue to send the questions to me as soon as possible after the quizzes, when it's your turn to set them.
Dave P has kicked the new season's discussions in his usual entertaining fashion. Click the link on the left to see what he has to say, and why not add your own comments?!
We now have a User Guide to the Forum. If you are having any problems with the Forum at all – registering, logging in, posting, whatever – please have a look at the User Guide. If that doesn't help, email haydn@maccql.com, or phone (someone you know will have my number!).
The User Guide is also available from the MQL Forum menu on the left hand side of this page, or from the Information Menu page.
If you have any comments on the content of this website, please contact haydn@maccql.com.
If you have any questions, or anything to say, about Macclesfield Quiz League – particularly if you'd like to take part! – please contact markw@maccql.com.
The Archive section of the website is now complete, in the sense that all the historical material we have is there. But there are gaps; if you can fill any of them in, please get in touch!
Essentially, we have a complete record from 1999 onwards (thanks to the diligent record–keeping of Mark Watson). We have a good coverage of fixtures and results from the early 90s, but there are some gaps in the latter years of that decade. We have tables (League and Individual) as far back as the mid–80s, and Question Setters' Trophy details from 1992–3.
We have very little material relating to the first four or five years of the League's history (the early–to–mid 1980s), and sadly it now seems unlikely that we will come across much more from that era. But things do come to light from time to time; the latest addition was a number of newspaper cuttings sent in by Lesley Bailey during the 2023–4 season, which included League tables from 1982–3. These are now the earliest we have – click here for a News & Views special.
At the risk of repeating myself: if you happen to come across any information – of any kind – that isn't currently on the website, please let us know!
For details of what we have and what we don't have, please refer to the Archive Summary.
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2017–24