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

Has Kehler heard any popular music?

I lolled that after all their wayward guesses, they thought REM were "Byrds" - which is kind of close in a way!

The finals of University Challenge has ended up being a rematch of the very first match in round 1. Symmetry.

rock lobster!

is that the trophy? it looks like a bit of corrugated tin roof. can't decide whether if it's good or bad.

Is that thing heavy, just looked like it wasn't so much presented to as picked up by the team captain. Or was that social distancing requirements.

Also the subtle way that Jeremy Paxman bowed out by saying 'I look forward to watching it with you' though maybe a big issue has been made elsewhere of him leaving .

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-new-york-times-just-invented-only-connects-connecting-wall/

I noticed they added the Countdown numbers game a while ago, but I guess that is not nerdy enough to be remarkable.

OC, UC back on Monday

too soon

Am genuinely kind of dreading post-Paxman university challenge. I’ve never not found Rajan annoying. Hopefully it’ll be fine

Amol Rajan is speaking too fast but without the enunciation of Paxo, so I can't keep up!

In a twist, Rajan is fine (if boring) but the set looks like a ghastly reject from primetime 1987 BBC1, all felt and grey and neon paste. I’ll get used to it but first episode was offputting.

The oddest design decision is the weird lines behind the players that ****don’t line up**** when you see both teams in splitscreen. It looks ugly AF.

*neon pastel

haven't watched uc yet, too busy being outraged at how the second oc wall was outrageously easier than the first.

it's an outrage I tells ya

Yeah the set is terrible, like it's floating in space like the phantom zone

oc's last word of films featuring Richard e grant is some bullshit

I didn't get it until I saw them together, but I thought it was grand as a question? But yes, the first wall was a lot easier.

I hope I'll get used to the UC set eventually, but I also didn't like it. The shape of the numbers is very offputting.

yeah the font used for the numbers is actively difficult to read!

the other board had blockbird on it. which screams 'change a letter'

lol, have just seen the tron-like UC sets

xp and their film group had more recent films (who remembers jack and sarah?) which were only missing one word (rather than only having one word) and didn't require any knowledge of the cast (who thinks of rise of skywalker as a reg film?)

amol is a bit too chummy

He was good at helping the teams to make it a contest, though, I thought, something that Paxo got worse at as it became harder for him to speed up his delivery.

I might be imagining it, but overall UC seemed more visually confusing than it used to. Are they using wider shots? Different camera angles? Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure nobody asked for it.

Agree with the “floating in space” vibe. Some lonely shots of Amol looking like Colin Baker on the stand in Trial of A Timelord.

Also seems to exarcerbate his “small boy dressed in adults clothes” vibe.

I seem to remember Paxman had a stand-in host, a female celeb, who was miffed not to get the job and might’ve been great at it - can’t remember who though

Samira Ahmed!

(am listening to her talking about the Barbie film on last night's Front Row as i type)

I believe that wasn't the first one Rajan filmed, but was clearly a humdinger of a battle worth showing first as a lead-in, so not sure it's any gauge of how he's settled in or not. Though him being impressed by people knowing things is going to get very annoying very quickly.

Can't remember if Paxo was as fast as Rajan when he took over 25 years ago before the Parkinson's and age did a turn on him but he's been slower recently so that may have exaggerated the speed with which he was rattling through (that and the excitement of the game)

i thought UC was tough for a first round game. but my reception went out just as he was asking about vermeer (which was funny because I'd just watched the bbc4 vermeer thing immediately before) and didn't come back until he was saying goodnight

It was interesting, given that it is a new start that they didn't have a new arrangement of the theme tune. The current strings-based one came in a few series in to Paxman's run, iirc? Think they used the bouncier, louder Gascoigne-era one to begin with? I may be misremembering.

Didn't the like the new opening credits, which did my head in! I agree that the mismatch in lines was irritating, tho the number font didn't bother me.

Rajan's desk console was ODD. Cash register from the Flintstones, as this Graun writer said. Think this is a fair assessment overall:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jul/17/university-challenge-review-amol-rajan-is-lighter-kinder-and-more-passionate-than-paxman

miss the days when people would say how they did question-wise. Here are my answers from Monday:

Got 20. Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, uncanny valley, Honolulu, Liechtenstein, Boris Pasternak*, Ethiopia, Magritte, Elgar, Malthus, dill, coriander, shoegaze, Vermeer, Gainsborough, formaldehyde, Bakelite, George Bernard Shaw, Ibsen**, yak.

* good to hear the contestant from Białystok putting the stress on the right syllable. he would - it's the Polish (and Russian) word for parsnip.
** guess - of course, only Norwegian playwright I know.

tie break in the first ep. Wow!

> i thought UC was tough for a first round game

forinstance, 3-word phrases with words of the same length. (from memory) i wasn't familiar with any of the concepts, including the example.

the russian questions felt like a gift to the polish guy (although i realise they weren't just the english titles in cyrillic, but the proper nouns helped)

yes, all that fancy wordplay stuff always befuddles me. I realise they put it in to make the programme less predictable and broaden the scope of the questions, but yes, whatever, I am never quick enough to get it even when I'm just sitting at home on my sofa.

It appears that Dave Garda's channel on YouTube has been deactivated? That was where I'd been able to watch University Challenge. I wonder if BBC cracked down on him or if he just quit.

Oh, there's a right good story there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UniversityChallenge/comments/14uw823/hello_this_is_the_truth_about_dave_garda/

Wow! I always feel a little bit bad about how much I love this kind of gossip from niche interest communities - I hope not too many people got too badly scammed, but the drama! The scandal!

A lot of people I know were taken in by it. I was away at an event with a ton of quizzers the weekend the story broke and it was quite the topic of conversation.

Wow, that story is insane!

That's mad, Ted. I hope people get their money back. I assume they do if the fundraiser is just taken down?

I think so, yeah

To go back to the previous issue, there is some chatter in the community about trying to re-up previous content and future shows, but with the BBC being the BBC, it might not happen, but I'll try and remember to report back if anyone finds a way of hosting it

finally saw the new uc. the set seems fine, not great, not awful, except amol looks like a dwarf hunched down in front of his weird console.

i got 26: Berkeley kafka on the shore Norwegian wood uncanny valley ten commandments haneke o'keefe pasternak jekyll & hyde malthus dill coriander shoegaze great vowel shift mean free path vermeer gentileschi wide sargasso sea formaldehyde bakelite Shaw ibsen Golding miyazaki corsair guerilla girls

there were so many complaints to the BBC about the speed of rajan’s delivery and his apparent mumbling that the complaints dept didn’t even enumerate them all in their report about it

Fast delivery ≠ mumbling. Yes, he was fast, but he didn't mumble.

I was quizzing against Darragh 'The Menace' Ennis from the Chase in the Oxfordshire league last night and overheard him telling his team about the Dave Garda scam mentioned upthread. He also told me he'd been at an ITV party the night before in London so was feeling a little tender.

for anyone outside the UK this channel is uploading the new episodes: http://www.youtube.com/@CosmicPumpkin

thanks!
btw my 8yo really likes the 1% club on ITV. Lee Mack bants with the contestants but my kid finds him hilarious. It's a good puzzle quiz because it doesn't rely on much actual knowledge, and my son now thinks everything is a trick question and gets really pedantic about it...

I've watched a few episodes and got one or two really easy 1% questions but not the others.

1% Club seems a little weird in not guaranteeing a winner but otherwise good concept

If there’s some kind of “things you don’t want to admit in public” thread, my answer would be finding Lee Mack pretty funny (not his sitcom though, god no)

I think the sitcom made me think he was awful but I don't object to him in this and WILTY. and 3 by 3...