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

Seriously. Poor Sally Lindsay. She is not a natural at this.

I didn't realise Osman was leaving so it was a complete surprise to me. That one was really bad, but it seems like they're cycling through guest co-hosts for the time being? I shall miss the big ol' centrist melt.

That one was really bad, but it seems like they're cycling through guest co-hosts for the time being?

I really hope not. Guest co-hosts work for no-mark celeb panel shows like Have I Got News for You, but Pointless needs someone who knows what they're doing. Osman's left big shoes to fill.

Yeah, sadly they are. Ed Gamble was on something recently and he said he had recorded his week in the chair. I'm hoping that now they're actually airing them, the producers will realize it's not a great idea and sort out a proper replacement.

Anyway, I got 25 in this week's UC - one up on last week, if it carries on like this I'll have a full house by season end, heh heh.

Brazil, Kings Cross, Humber Bridge, phlogistron, spontaneous generation, Breath of the Wild, Amsterdam, DH Lawrence, Erasmus, Weber, Gray, melon, Godzilla, Slovenia, coup, impressionism, naked mole rat, cassowary, honey badger, cat, Kissinger, Kurosawa, genetic, hardness, Copernicus.

Fair play to Coventry's Harrod for her name 'that tune in three' schtick to get Ariane Grande. All that music was far too modern for me. I may have got Billie Eilish if I'd heard more of it.

Also that UC proved I know *nothing at all* about the Incas!

was half watching and didn't keep notes but the things i did get that aren't in your list were the genre film questions Them, William castle, Godzilla although i did give the third answer the moment i heard him say 1954 during the first question. oh, and the Nintendo question about the instrument.

did enjoy the way the two girls were freezing out the boys on anything that wasn't history or science

Other Pointless hosts yet to have a go are Alex Brooker, Ed Gamble, Stephen Mangan, Konnie Huq and Lauren Laverne.

Every one of those people sounds a better option than Sally who just doesn't seem comfortable in the role at all.

She was Warwick Davies' stand-in on "Tenable", not great at first but got better.

I thought she was officially an alternate presenter in her own right rather than a stand-in. Not that this makes her any better at Pointless which is very much its own thing.

I really hate Richard Osman. Soz, that's the post

I don't straight up hate him but there's def a strong disconnect between his talents and the absurd amount of celebrity he holds.

he's been behind the scenes creating household name programmes for years though. and now his books are so popular that they couldn't print enough of them last Christmas. he does seem to be everywhere at times, but he's not like, say, romesh

His two books are actually okay! The second one is better -- which shows some sense that he's interested in improving as a writer rather than just coldly cashing in (although that, too). It's all a bit (consciously) sub-Kate Atkinson, readymade for BBC at 8pm, but I've read worse, and there are good jokes.

33 on UC this week - might be a PB!

Crete, insulin, pulsars, cross, Descartes, Oklahoma, Washington & Idaho, Marie Curie, turtle, snapping turtles, Stockton to Darlington, percolator, Greek, anion and cation, Nauru, phosphate, Magritte, epoch, Holocene, sloth, Clarksville, Georgia, Chattanooga, The Haunting of Hill House, Borgen, The Killing, The Bridge, The Brothers Karamazov, uranium, bassoon, trombone, frog, Georgia.

... It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Great job, think I got 24 or 25.

"The only thing I know is that the kimberley plain is in western australia" - well that is pretty useful if the question is what australian state is kimberley in.

got nowhere near 30, or even 20 (again, only half watching) but i did get the lottery and oboe which are missing from that list

23 this week.

Beautiful, Corazon Aquino, Indira Gandhi, Leeds Castle, Boticelli, grenadine, Kiribati, Dominica, Uganda, MASH, Wolf Hall, Valentina Tereshkova, Paint Your Wagon, Oklahoma, jaguar, Catherine the Great, Crimea, orchid, Do The Right Thing, Selma, Dr Mabuse, Moebius strip, craters

20.5 (the half being the first name of octogenarian astronaut), only 6 of which match the above list.

26 Beautiful golda meier corizon acquino indira gandhi knitting juneteenth mash joan didion mushroom snowdonia wolf hall cae tereshkova toucan jack catherine the great crimean orchid gorgonzola do the right thing black panther bus moebius strip han ginsberg craters

Interesting to see the ledge's answers as there were several he got right where I vacillated between two or more possible answers and went the wrong way, or I hesitated, i.e.

considered Meier, but went for Ben Gurion. Went for Lake District instead of Snowdonia, forgetting Snowdon was taller than Scafell, would have got toucan and gorgonzola but hesitated and couldn't quite recall what Black Panther was called.

Dream team for UC The Professionals: Me, ledge, Ailsa (team captain) and koogs. PF as sub.

i did write them down, in red on a busy TV listings magazine, whether i can read them now is another question

beautiful, knitting, June teenth, mash, snowdon, wolf hall, wally (funk), annie get your gun, 1812, toucan, jack, catherine, crimea, clara bow, orchid, gorgon-zola, do the right thing, persia, selma, moebius

not including perhaps a couple that i think i would have got eventually but which were spoiled by them answering too quickly. Valentina for instance, panther.

my favourite was the long winded question about the year which i had no clue about until he mentioned it was also the year Dickens was born...

to much overlap with ledge's for me to contribute much

to much overlap with ledge's for me to contribute much

*this* time. Plus every little counts...

I think I said 1821 for the year and it was 1812. Maybe I was just transposing the numbers in my head. Probably would've still won it if it had been on Richard Osman's House of Games.

We were a bit freaked out by the familiar faces on OC, but I was pleased with myself for the two "hard" ones I did get, especially the one involving Brad Pitt.

(my list is only 19.5, i didn't write down the German film gambler / strictly dancer)

I think I knew that one coz it is the name of an ace track by the band Propaganda!

I'll try and remember and count/write down next week.

I think I've known people on every episode of Only Connect this series, which makes showing off about getting the ones they didn't really hard to do on social media

i have that propaganda single and the comic book adaptation of the film (by Fritz Lang). lovely painted art by john muth iirc, square bound, published by epic.

think i need to focus on the stuff ledge doesn't like. horror films and, er...

not epic, eclipse

think i need to focus on the stuff ledge doesn't like. horror films and, er...

classical music, musicals, music since ooooh 2010 at most, royalty, most geography, I'm not great at dates...

OC was surprisingly easy for me also, because I'm normally way worse than the teams. I got the M_______ P___ one on the second clue when none of them got it with all the clues.

how is mangan on pointless? i like him on * artist of the year on sky arts but i guess that's an entirely different thing

He's much more at ease in the role than Sally Lindsay was.

I'm loving Stephen Mangan's mock disdain of the format. "If you want to spoil a date, you can bring that fact out."

10 is pretty poor for first round 8(

wordle, devine, hairspray, median, Epstein Barr, chicken pox, tarkovsky, vermeer, howler, fr(omage)

should've got more of the art. did spot that he was 1000x out because tonnes and pico-grammes but... there were too many of those maths questions.

thing i also need to do - memorise atomic numbers

was amazed that none of them got Tom Wolfe, maybe another one for the "authors nobody reads anymore" list?

I forgot to count my own score but man those mathsy questions were dull.

Today’s “either I am too old or they are too dumb” moments:

— The contestants who thought John Waters directed Footloose
— “Hunter S. Davies”

As soon as Paxo said the round was going to be about John Waters I was like "these nerds are toast".

The Divine question was so easy Paxo might as well have said “Please repeat after me, the word divine“ but I guess people’s mileage doth vary

I only just realised they were getting the names Hunter S. Thompson and Hunter Davies confused! I'd be surprised if today's students are really aware of Hunter Davies, unless they are Spurs fans and have read his book about the club, or indeed his Beatles biography.

My mother with a big fan of his column Father's Day in Punch.

Anyway, I got 24 this week I think,but am on a bus to London and my list of answers is at home, so my comparison with the rest of youse will have to wait.

* was a big fan,I should say.

I'd be surprised if today's students are really aware of Hunter Davies,

tbf the guy who mixed those up looked to be in his 50's

Fair enough. I find it hard to concentrate on which people said what *and* answer the questions myself. Multitasking doesn't work, people.

Hunter Davies still writes a regular column in the Sunday Times - usually trolling inter-generational fairness and talking about how much tax he has paid.

22 this week. Nail-biting tie-breaker!

Isabella, Poland, Benz, Crab Nebula, New York City, malaria, lute & dilute, duck-billed platypus, zero, Pueblo, New Mexico, hermetic, N-U-N, hawk, Chagos Islands, Ottoman Empire, Ealing, Bill Bryson, volte face, lead, lithium, Nice.

Kicking myself @ not getting Bletchley Park. So obvious in retrospect.

First mother & son combo on the same team. I noticed they were sat as far from each other as possible.

slipped a day this week because of the sport.

i haven't watched last week's UC yet.

LL on pointless. i only saw the one but she looked quite comfortable.

Was this on over the last couple of weeks.
I checked to see if my video box thing had space to record last night then checked the tv guide and found it replaced by sport. Didn't fully check channel for rest of bight.
Checked if it had recorded previous week and nothing there.
I'm doing an irish class at the time now. But do enjoy UC.

was on last Monday, but not yesterday (rugby)

I'm wondering now whether there was a schedule change last week as well because of the political mess. i haven't actual checked the recording... yep, it's there

OC - I don't think the Road Runners actually got that second question (West and Exotic etc)