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

i had a ridiculous haircut (black/white striped) at the time, which loads of people seem to remember when i mention it ("ohmygodyouwerethatfreakonuniveristychallengewiththeweirdhair!!" etc).

She had an Italian name, but I have forgotten it, so no stalking for me.

-- toby (toby_ge...), January 8th, 2002.

My mate David was on it the year Durham won it - he was UCL, who were you with toby?

As part of the Lancaster team we made it to the final round of auditions two years ago. They actually interview you as if you're going onto an actual game show ("What books have you been reading recently?"), which I found vaguely disconcerting, but answers to the questions on the test we sat included "Tony Hawkes" and "Sixpence None The Richer". So that's alright then.

OK, that may be just me.

1. Stream of Consciousness

2. Greil Marcus's Mystery Train

3. something else interesting - what was it?

I thought he did well.

1970s video games? paxman was aghast that people knew all these, i thought they were piss-easy. (pong, tetris, asteroids, snake)

Perhaps we should not be surprised that you thought they were easy?

I'd like to see how many questions he was actually asked as compared to the others.

Uni Chal Mastermind and Buzzocks makes Monday night the best BBC2 line up all week.

"what's 'amped' mean then?"

I found it strange that they didn't know what COBOL or SQL were yet got the (IMO) more obscure Ada question right.

University Challenge makes me realise how much stuff there is that I don't know. I'm usually chuffed to bits if I get a run of Starter + 3 Bonuses correct.

Discovered a fairly good quiz show called Eggheads yesterday while I was off work. A team of "boffins" (I think most of them are former champions of 15-to-1 or similar) is challenged by a different team of plebs every episode. Plebs can win £20000, boffins just get to be smug about being clever. Plebs won yesterday for the first time in umpteen episodes.

UC was good, I knew more answers than usual (ie, about 5). The Greil Marcus question reminded me of RJG. I liked the set of questions where they had to say who ruled in a X-ocracy, and one of the words sounded very much like phallocracy, and they dithered and snickered and then it was something not rude at all.

I like Eggheads too.

That was because it's named after Ada Lovelace innit. I didn't know the others but I know who the daughter of George Gordon, Lord Byron was. Hung out with Babbage, nice one.

(still, not as bad as the cow-orker who pronounces "spamhaus" "spamhorse")

My old drama teacher got to the semis on MM in '86 or so.

Didn't he get a wee bit more time than the others - Humphrys explained something by way of explanation about the lipreading thing but I was in the other room so missed most of what he was saying.

I wondered about the cane too.

Was the other interesting thing the karaoke backing tracks of cheesy ballads (all of which I recognised, much to the amusement of my husband and parents)? Wasn't there a Smiths lyrics question too, or was that last week?

yeah i felt there was about ten gettable questions (i did not get ten questions)

Quite a few gimmes I thought, I got about 20 which is better than I've been averaging recently.

Kevin’s best score (10) and my worst score (6).

Seemed like Kim must have read a lot of geography or maps and not heard place names. Scilly Isles and Cavan and I think a couple of others.
I mean good going but it did strike me at the time.

19 for me this week. Didn't know any of the music.

The ones I got were marble, biscuit, cod, ria, haptic, haploid, Pennine Way, Lake Baikal, Mary Rose, interrobang, Coriolis, Wuthering Heights, Lyme disease, encephalitis, Iran, Ronald Reagan, histology, mynah & magnolia, moorhen & iris.

I've known that biscuit since I was a small kid I think so it felt a bit weird to see them not get it. Its like it says it on the tin or in the construction of the word.

Had also just read Zami which must be an advantage when it came to that one. Would hope it would be widely known cos it was a good book.

bis-cuit.
Zami Audre Lorde
Skilly isles
and fun things like that.

A close but also not too exciting UC match this week. The questions were pretty tough but it's still hard to imagine that winner putting up a serious challenge in the semifinals. I think the top 2 teams have clearly separated themselves.

The 90s drum n bass and Bill & Ted specialist rounds in Mastermind this week were fun.

that flags round on UC was absolutely brutal

a bad round i thought, too complex and it killed the momentum dead

I don't remember, in years gone by, UC becoming so much harder in later rounds.

But it's certainly done that now.

I'm used to knowing maybe 15+. Tonight I managed 4: Charlier Parker, Alice James, Potemkin, Perestroika.

It can't ever be easy being on these quizzes, even in early rounds, but the obscurity of expertise being shown by winning teams at this stage is another class.

11-1 to me tonight, but he’s got a stinking cold and I’ve got a German degree. Knew it would come in handy eventually.

Definitely harder but though I got less than 10 last week I wasn't completely adrift this time and got 12: white, gestalt, palpitation & palpation, revenant & ant man, miyamoto, gentileschi, 33, alice james, titian, potemkin, perestroika, kale.

This is a radio ting but I heard a contestant on Counterpoint earlier that knew nothing about the most famous Woody Guthrie or Talking Heads songs. Couldn't tell the difference between Public Enemy and NWA. Didn't recognise a Communards song. Knew nothing about the Rock Against Racism movement in the 70's. I just wouldn't show up if I was so fucking clueless. And they didn't sound young either.

Didn't recognise a Communards song.

GASP

if only Jimmy Somerville had a more distinctive voice

i knew the miyamoto mushashi question because the book always turns up in the amazon search results when i'm looking for the mizoguchi dvd

lots of maths guesses tonight, none of them correct (and some oddness with the buzzer the one time, did i imagine that, someone buzzed but was ignored and didn't get penalised)

titian is always worth a punt. that or velasquez.

I wasn't really listening, and in any case only heard from halfway through the jazz music round.

But yeah, later rounds have always been harder than earlier, certainly during the Paxo era

Oh God, we were pitiful on the jazz round; I got Coleman, but we were kicking ourselves on all the others.

i got dizzy with a half-educated guess but for the others i was just blurting out names

I managed a "Don't say Duke Ellington, that's not a piano" but that's all.

I got Thelonious Monk, think I got Ornette but somehow didn't get Yardbird.
Did strike me again that early Ornette sounds a lot like a continuation of Bird.
Oh yeah got Dizz too.

I could watch Zeng answer geography questions for hours. What a maniac.

Got 22 this week, or 21 if you don't count my final answer which was after the gong!

Amen, Georgia, Armenian, Minotaur, tesselation, chromosome, Egypt, Norfolk & Suffolk, non-sequitur, titanium, Boyne, Belfast, Shannon, verdigris, penalty, Paris Texas, Southwark, Lisbon, New York City, William S. Burroughs, accretion, Populus.

18 for me, Midnight cowboy, Armenian, Beatrice, minotaur, cellular automata, tessellation, lamina, chromosome, Norfolk Suffolk, non sequitur, memento mori, verdigris, penalty kick, dashiel hammett, Paris texas, NYC, Burroughs, accretion

Oh no spoilers

11 for me this week, same as last week.

I got Times Square then blanked on The Deuce while saying I watched that through & loved it. Tooth was paining quite badly & I was watching the show a day after i recorded it.
THink I did get a few others .

I could watch Zeng answer geography questions for hours. What a maniac.

King

I've noticed that they've really stepped up the difficulty of the pop music questions + bonuses of late.

I got Madonna but only because of the voice, I've never heard it before. Didn't get John Zorn so perhaps my lol at their guess of Eno was somewhat hypocritical.

They weren't really paying attention to the "New York" portion of that question, I think. They kept throwing out British names, which is normally a good instinct on UC. It was impressive to watch Hutchinson (I think that's his name) pull things out of his memory, and actually bounce ideas off the rest of the team to come up with the right answer. Good captaining.

Having thought that the series was getting harder and harder and becoming impossible, I knew ... 12 correct answers last night in the SF !!

One was Buck Mulligan.

Also Madonna: I think I shared in others' feeling of "that sounds like Madonna, but I don't think I know the song, maybe it's the very early Madonna that people associate with a cool NYC".

Madonna I got because of the Ciccone Youth cover.

I nearly outguessed myself on the John Zorn question.

Ah, I had the subtitles on and was in the kitchen when "Burning Up" came on, and yeah got that one no bother.

The music round (for me) easier than usual, didn't get John Zorn but the rest.

Had a lol at "Thompson Twins" for Kid Creole & the coconuts, but hey if you don't know then guess by all means...

Apart from that, yeah Reading in the final then. Average age is uh??

38

Hutchinson is good but he's a hard man to warm to

There is a bit of “let us pause while I consult the mind palace” about him. Don’t think I’ve heard a correct answer from the non-Hutchinson or Ounsley members of the team. I wonder if he gets a lot of INXS jokes from people who can’t remember Michael Hutchence’s name properly.

I need to check out this John Zorn fellow. Hadn't heard of him!

16 this week for me...
Dodie, Indo-European, Przewalski's horse, encephelization quotient, Cassini-Huygens, Voyager 2, Chatsworth, Madonna, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Laurie Anderson, hip, hoatzin, ostrich, Samuel Beckett, deuterium*, votes for women in Kuwait.
* answer given & accepted Hydrogen 2, but same thing.
.

Looking forward to the final.

I always find the maths questions impossible by the way!

If you answer 2 to the maths questions usually get them right about 1 in 4 times.

Yeah, I go for 0, 1 or 2

FWIW I agree with Number None and Chuck Tatum about that player. I didn't like him.

Player? I suppose the word is Contestant.

I was quite impressed when he retrieved "anderson" to go with "laurie" when he didn't immediately know it but also agree about his "mind palace" vibe

OTOH I like that Hutchinson is undefensively consultative with his team (or with Ounsley at least). I don't like captains that grandstand at their team's expense.

Hutchinson is good but he's a hard man to warm to

I just can't agree with this. His genuine delight when the picture round about absurdist theatre came up was lovely.

He's quite good value on Twitter as well.

yay

I wasn't sure who I wanted to win tonight.
So good game. Funny last minute developments.
But cool .
Glad it was so close