University Challenge (also featuring Only Connect and other BBC quiz shows)

is UC more complicated this year? Teams having to come back twice and win etc. If so is this a Covid-related change?

Those country border triple points were hard! Only managed one (Bulgaria/Romania/Serbia).

Generally last night's was good for me. Scored 22 - the above plus Dalmatia, Venice, English Channel, Boston, in silico, Golgi, or & argent, South Africa, Trinidad & Tobago, WZ, Ionian, fennec fox, Monkey, Tang Dynasty, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Monet, myelin sheath, The Tin Drum, Tipperary, Tromsø, Bergen.

Not surprising no modern day students have seen the Japanese TV show "Monkey" but still amusing seeing Rout fromm Warwick work the Journet to the West q. out "The main character's a monkey, so..."

Those country border triple points were hard! Only managed one (Bulgaria/Romania/Serbia).

I managed to get two out of three countries for all four of those questions :-/

There are about a million refilmings of Journey to the West since the Japanese TV show tbf

Also I don't enjoy watching Rout or Warwick do anything

Quarter final rules have been like this for years now = more eps per season

I have also been on a TV quiz, and have been a guest of someone else who was on a TV quiz, and it is fun and exciting. I suppose it kind of has to be: you're not getting paid, so they better at least give you some nice sandwiches and a mug and take some souvenir photos and be nice to you.

I had a good OC but a terrible UC last night. I tend to phase out early when they start with the maths and physics questions, and then I can't get back into it.

It's unfortunate for Rout that his "shake it off and move on" gestures look so like "who gives a shit about this trivial subject" gestures.

> in silico

the question gave two 'in...' examples and yet the first answer was something entirely unconnected (and wrong)

surely no one wants to meet John Humphrys

You don't really get to. He doesn't sully himself with contestant interaction. Other hosts I've met nor heard tale of will have a bit of icebreakery chat before and after and between rounds and stuff. Not him.

TV quiz auditions are weird. I've given up on them.

I did an online audition for Mastermind a couple years ago, and got through one round but not the second.

I also had a few conversations with a researcher about specialist subject ideas. Oddly enough my chosen subject - Penelope Fitzgerald novels - ended up being another contestant’s specialist subject that year. World’s least essential conspiracy.

Most of mine got laughed at, all but one of them have been done since.

Yeah, times have changed...

There's a new production team, but same old Humphrys and his interference with question process, so I won't be going back any time soon.

The quiz shows wot I have done, all the hosts were reasonably friendly and chatty afterwards (beyond the perfunctory, anyway).

The 'audition' I related above, the host wasn't involved obviously. I wasn't bothered about meeting RKS, to say the least.

That new one with Zoe Lyons is a bit odd. I like the questions, but I'm not sure about the whole lightning conceit, and I wish ZL would relax a little and be more like herself.

I quite like it despite thick contestants and they do get eliminated quickly. I think Zoe will eventually get more comfortable in her role. It is very similar to weakest link though.

It is similar to Weakest Link and what's with the stupid games they get the contestants to play? Definitely a quiz show designed by committee.

Zoe's sparkly suit is nice though, a nod to shows past.

It's an excellent suit, for sure.

I also quite like the final round. It reminds me of Trivial Pursuit, with a little bit of being your own chaser thrown in. But the insistence on being able to spell is, frankly, ableist as well as being unnecessarily convoluted.

Fuck me not these dark enlightenment cunts again what have I done to deserve this?

Humphreys is gone...who will be next??? Nobody will beat Magnussson's stint anyways.

Somehow I missed that Clive Anderson and Peter Snow had ever presented MM. I am beginning to think I was asleep through most of the Nineties.

Anyway, UC I got 16 tonight.
Invisibilty, ether, Crick & Watson, El Salvador & Honduras, kingfisher, kookaburra, Jack London, Jump, cyclops, Cooperative Society, Suomi & Kronos, duckbilled platypus, Vanuatu, Mary Quant, Cathy Come Home, Tamar

The French round killed me. In common with Fairfax & Carstairs, I don't speak a word of the language.

i got invisibility, tesseract, lulu, kookaburra, jack london, shepherd's bush (represent!), jump, cyclops, quant and cathy come home for 10. would've probably guessed coop and platypus but they answered before i could think.

You'd never get tired of smacking Rout

There's a new production team, but same old Humphrys and his interference with question process, so I won't be going back any time soon

A week's a long time in quiz shows.

Second thoughts on this, Ailsa?

Depends who it is :-)

Living for kohn interrupting an increasingly unpleasant paxman

Also kohns kindly but impatient handling of rahmans windiness while answering

Think the gambling commission needs to take a look at Triggs

wondering if Imperial needed quite so many points which must have occured to them at the end there so they started giving them away like

Managed 12 last night - D'Artagnan, oyster, beefsteak, Richard II/second city derby, Titian, 2nd Amendment, Beaverbrook, Goliath, Rotterdam, Felixstowe, orbit, Cossacks

Living for kohn interrupting an increasingly unpleasant paxman

I was the opposite. How can I answer the question if you've answered it before it's finished? There should be an interruption penalty on all questions. That'd settle Kohn's hash for him.

too clever by half

As evidenced by thread i do tend to have a low threshold of annoyance for precocious uc captains but what can i say, the more prickish paxman gets the more a direct challenger is to be welcomed maybe

I don't have time to figure out if I concede fictional points due to contestants' interruptions. In last night's episode I just found the subjects were things I didn't know much about.

i got Herschel, which they didn't (although couldn't remember her forenames) - one of the components at work is called herschel.

29 correct last night.

dang, beats my 24.

Herschel was the only one where I kicked myself afterwards.

weird to see how some of the most iconic voices of teh 20th century are slipping into obscurity or is that overkill, certainly recognised a couple of those. though whoever did get Aretha rapidly

24 / 29 is good going especially this late in the game. i was distracted last night (css formatting seneca's troades for my ereader...) and only remember a few questions. the art mirrors, johnny cash, 5+9 in binary, the le corbusier round (fail)...

Lol more like Clownedgarden

Fun Madness facts there.

Finding it v tough going tonight after doing well at mastermind and OC

Have been wondering what is up with Parkinson's eyes since the start and maybe previously. Thought it might be contact lenses now see she has glasses on.
Seemed to be popping eyes or something.

Crowther is proper brilliant

Very spooky shit getting Tristram Shandy half a dozen questions before it was asked

Yeah

Durham were just knocked out early here i dont think theyre a bad team tbh

some really confusing starter questions.

Yeah! Poorly worded or very open to interpretation

21 right tonight, best showing yet. Off to a flyer with the author of 'At Swim Two Birds'.

Durham should have done better with the location of the waterfalls, it's in their back yard.

John Husston?

Yes, Flann O'Brien as the first part of the first question was a nice gift.

22 correct answers here tonight including Padua, Don Quixote, Stanford, Solnit, T Shandy, The Colour Purple, Debussy, F L Woman, Hardy, Hoar-frost (a term from Old English poetry I've just been reading), H Tubman, Hadron, Scylla & Charybdis, Reagan, Eisenhower.

Funniest moment when the answer was Rebecca Solnit author of 'men explain things to me' and female contestant Parkinson, from the village I am currently in, wanting to know the answer, cheerfully said to the other, male contestants: 'Men, explain things to me!'.