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

Yeah, Rajan seems a lot less awful than I expected him to be.

They're doing quite a good job of cutting away from Rajan's Serato Face wherever possible - but once you've spotted it, you can't un-spot it.

VC was WAY too harsh on the UC lyrical sequences round; a rare occasion when I thought I'd got it on the first clue, but my answer would have been disallowed for the same spurious reason.

OC was quite a drubbing despite a couple of schoolgirl errors (forgetting to press button on very first question, completing the 3rd part of wall giving themselves no time to work out link for 4th line)

(Ack, I meant OC not UC of course.)

Wow, that first match was a banger. I don't know Rajan but I like him as host quite a bit so far.

steward's enquiry for last week's OC. the one with plumbob and sword of damocles, the team's answer was suspended things but the actual answer was things above someone's head. victoria was clearly confused and gave them the point - then they won by one point!

a whole round on takeshi shimura on UC last night (with perhaps the 3 most famous japanese films ever as answers)

got the 0: points of view and the picture of a tablet both on the second clue last night on OC, but nothing more of note

I got one (on UC) that Keskin got wrong so that proves I'm cleverer than all of them.

(he was scarily fast)
(it was Chartreuse)

(idly wondering if i can grab the uc subtitles files and if they'll be in a format where it's easy to scrape all the answers)

as usual the last one i watched started well but then had a swathe of nothing in the middle. but i didn't write them down and am a couple of episodes behind.

I got 16 last night. My wife was impressed by my knowledge of Guy Debord, I knew reading Greil Marcus would come in useful.

I wondered what the maximum amount of points scorable was. I was thinking that most times I've seen a team get 200++ points the other team has done pretty poorly. It was good to see Open do reasonably well.
& I know not every answer given was right so there were more points that could potentially have been got.

Also am I right in thinking that they have changed the rules about who gets to return. Like with Paxman unless one did spectacularly badly one was going to get a chance against another team which seems to have been stopped. Or has it.

Just was thinking if 1 team got >200 seemed like other team was getting <100 but could just be confirmation bias with my head full of flu.

First time I'd seen Rajan and he seemed very poor. Just blinking into his screen most of the time (why have they changed from cards to screen?). Very little charisma, very little interaction with the contestants.

I did notice he seemed to look at his lectern a lot more than Paxman did. Not sure what kind of screen Paxman had seemed to be a lot less conspicuous.
But may be a knack one develops over time and he may reduce how much he leans on it if he gets to stay with the show.

Paxman read the questions off cards IIRC.

My friend Ann was the captain of Open University last night and I did a little cheer when the music round was punk women because I knew she'd be all over that. Keskin was really good though, a very enjoyable match all round.

I'm absolutely fine with Rajan by the way, he doesn't have to be Paxo and it's still early days. He's clear and concise and doesn't faff and that's pretty much all I want off my UC host.

it's nice to have someone more enthusiastic about the pop music rounds.

Oh, we loved Ann! We also think Rajan is settling in very well, unavoidable "Serato face" notwithstanding. Found it hard to make out what Keskin was saying a lot of the time, but he was phenomenal.

Keskin was good because though brilliant he wasn't an infallible machine, he got a fair few wrong including some incorrect interruptions

> (idly wondering if i can grab the uc subtitles files and if they'll be in a format where it's easy to scrape all the answers)

yes, the fabled ubuttd files are right there. here's a part

     <p begin="00:03:12.680" end="00:03:15.240" region="agr_0_20_39.5_4_after" style="S2" xml:id="C69_1">
        <span style="S3">Also known for the development</span>
        <br/>
        <span style="S3">of the lambda calculus,</span>
      </p>
      <p begin="00:03:15.240" end="00:03:19.720" region="agr_0_20_39_4_after" style="S2" xml:id="C70_1">
        <span style="S3">which US mathematician is named</span>
        <br/>
        <span style="S3">along with Alan Turing...</span>
      </p>
      <p begin="00:03:19.720" end="00:03:20.760" region="R4" style="S2" xml:id="C71">
        <span style="S4">Church.</span>
      </p>
      <p begin="00:03:20.760" end="00:03:23.120" region="R4" style="S2" xml:id="C72">
        <span style="S3">It is Alonzo Church, yes.</span>
      </p>

it's 2800 lines 8(

s.replace('</p>', '\n').replace(/<[^>]*>/, '')

forgot the global flag -

/<[^>]*>/g

awesome, Ann was great, and finally a decent music round!

Looking back overf the scores in the last few series listed in wikipedia it does look like it is a lot more common for the score to go as I had thought earlier. If one team gets much over 200 the other team seems to be struggling which may also be part of the cause. I was thinking with time constraints etc if one team does get onto a major winning curve it reduces the other teams opportunity to also be on one. Like only one team is getting all the starter questions and then the subsequent follow up round. I did see a couple of spots where a losing tema was getting 100 points plus but seems to be the alternative is more frequent.
Was just wondering what kind of scores could be got by each team if there was a more egalitarian alternating of starter question being got right by each tema and if that did mean you would have them closer and both below 200 which it appeared there were a couple of cases of.
Probably makes for a less interesting show though.

& have the rules of the set up been changed with teh new presenter or are they going to be having most teams coming back for a second chance. Not sure hwo long taht had been going on with the Paxman set up. I don't remember how long a season was when I was growing up etc.
I could see costs of extended rounds being higher and prohibitive but I assume there is a fixed audience plus for this now. Or is taht tentative with new presenter.,

It's the 8 highest scoring teams who get a second chance - sorry repechage - isn't it? Or some number n - I don't think this has changed although I obviously haven't paid enough attention to be sure what n is.

ooh, lots of food, pop culture and an easy last few, so I did ok this week.

although I thought Amol was saying "lounge" not language for the start of the SA one

Briefly:

Sheffield : -5
Loughborough : 0
Me: 10

Why was VC wearing the mask? We've taken to skipping the initial bantz.

Same here

I only watched the second half because you can't rewind live tv with the chromecast. I'll watch the first half later and report back.

absolutely no explanation.

Working on her "murder mystery" book? Hence the masquerade thing.

Maybe, she only talked about poisoned asthma inhalers and motorway service stations. I think she just does it so mooks like us will talk about it.

another good UC for me

Working on her "murder mystery" book? Hence the masquerade thing.

Ugh. This is exactly why I skip the bantz at the beginning.

huge discrepancy in the length of the names last week - an vs akarapongpisakdi

UC was incredibly literature-heavy today. not complaining but by this point it's usually very dry

Yeah, I struggle with hard science and dull history and there didn't seem as much of it as usual.

Yer Scottish lad on Open is definitely one of this year's MVPs (possibly because his literature game is strong and there was quite a lot of it)

I notice Amol is better on literature too.

He’s become a good host, I think. I don’t need to watch with the subtitles - he’s quick but clear. He doesn’t have the Pac-Man gravitas but the warmer approach seems to fit.

Autocorrect but I stand by Pac-Man

Andi Oliver is good on Pointless, I think.

Not seen her. Of the faux-Richards I've seen, I like Alex Brooker and Stephen Mangan the best.

I like Stephen Mangan the best too. I suppose I had lower expectations of Andi Oliver, but she genuinely seemed to be enjoying herself, and she was sometimes able to come up with stuff to say that she didn't have to read off the screen.

We are aware of a number of inaccurate claims being made online in relation to last night’s episode of University Challenge and we utterly condemn the abuse that has been posted and shared.

For the avoidance of doubt, this episode was filmed in March. The mascot is one of many…

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) November 21, 2023

I'm so glad it's not Giles on pointless anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9x8rBUHes0

I never thought a cuddly mascot on UC could be so deeply sinister, jfc

Adorable! As a Jew I would gladly be subjugated by this cutester

that this cuddly adorapus had the rabid racist, Baroness Foster, calling for the expulsion and arrest of the Asian student is completely evil and insane behaviour. I feel sorry for the student having to put up with this shit.

even by the standards of the mad Islamophobes and right-wing nutcases on the web this was all a bit much. At least Gary Lineker is used to being monstered by spittle-flecked bigots, he probably has a social media team to take the flak anyway. Increasingly it seems like the media and political classes think it's okay to take random members of the public (and especially if they happen to be people of colour, young and/or women) to task from perceived "crimes" like this, with who knows what consequences for the unlucky victims?