University Challenge

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?

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!'.

Did I miss an explanation as to why she suddenly put her specs on .

sad to see Parkinson go. She's probably my favourite contestant this year.

13 this week - Pretoria, Don Quixote, Stanford, apples, The Cob, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, electron and positron, hadron, Scylla & Charybdis, Wensleydale, volcanic eruptions, Eisenhower.

"Please men, explain to me" is genuinely the funniest aside from a #UniversityChallenge captain to her all male teammates that I have ever heard as she tries to remember the name of the author of 'Men Explain Things to Me.'
I doff my cap to Durham, Parkinson. pic.twitter.com/LmR61phkdt

— Charles Dundas (@cdundas) February 22, 2021

i got 63 (333 in base 4, which is (16+4+1)*3) and harmonics and mode. basically all the maths questions.

and french lieutenant's woman too, from the movie posters.

12 total.

first time i've seen two complete wall fails in OC.

Thought they were very tough walls but i never, never crack the first one so...?

I would blitz the final round unchallenged tho

We pause the wall (I think I've said this before) so we can have a go at it before the teams distract us. We did a lot better than they did last night, in that I think we put together at least two groups on each wall.

yeah, but it's hard to emulate the actual walls because you don't get to cycle through options and eliminate stuff.

they gave up on the helicopters (maybe more) too easily.

Yeah, that was just weird. They just seemed to panic.

yeah, but it's hard to emulate the actual walls because you don't get to cycle through options and eliminate stuff.

I mean, we rarely nail them all, but we are usually happy enough to have identified the four groups, even if (as you say) we have no mechanism for ensuring we've put everything in the right group.

i got 63

Thought at first you meant you got 63 questions correct! Was thinking "wow, koogs is a quiz monster!"

Agree they moved on from promising groupings quite impatiently

Their salmon (of) knowledge was also woeful.

right?! that's probably the first time I've yelled at the t.v. about sockeye salmon

> 333 in base 4, which is (16+4+1)*3

have just realised that this is simpler in binary

11|11|11, or 1 less than 2^6

Welsh please be quiet

...whereas Mutio was on mute.

one of my better performances - 22:

invisibility, ether, transformation, Crick & Watson, Panama & Costa Rica, kingfisher, kookaburra, Jack London, Ford, Shepherd's Bush, Jump, Шостако́вич, cyclops, Iolanthe & Tabasco, Suomi & Cronos, duckbilled platypus, Vanuatu, red deer, George Formby, Cathy Come Home, Wind that Shakes the Barley, Tamar.

still too much French :-(

Is that last week or last night?

Ha! just realised I accidentally watched an old episode coz the one that appeared largest on iplayer wasn't the most recent one! hmmm.

now watching last night's....

Was imo a tough one vs recent months

was tough, yes! The ones with the books, authors and chemical symbols did my head in, I mean, sure, I worked out Sense & Sensibil1ity was Austen and Au = gold, but not in the time available.

got 12 - Robespierre, Ace of spades, Colombia Brazil & Argentina, Serbia Romania Hungary & Slovakia, Rafa Nadal, germanium, gallium, St Pancras, Neneh Cherry, Iggy Pop, Colin Dexter, Val McDermid.

Heh yeah, the kind of questions where if you sent me home with them and the necessary reference material id be quite satisfied to come back in the morning with the right answers tbh

i also got 12, including the one at the buzzer. orson welles, trotsky, schiele (because of the spanish flu part of clue), somerville(sp), horseshoe, edo... too much tennis! too much geography!

(robespierre probably getable with time, the authors / elements one also)

but would probably do better watching this a second time ;)

Jesus, that tennis question seemed to go on FOREVER.

Maybe I just don't like University Challenge.

Meanwhile, on Only Connect, the husband got a five-pointer: the one about hominids. Very impressed with himself, especially since the teams didn't get it at all.

I got that one too. And I was probably as smug.

I scored about 22 on UC. I liked the tennis questions, and pointed them out to ILX poster Michael Jones, who naturally knew all of them.

The questions re the stranglers "no more heroes" obv

And the music round "Red hot and blue", including the last one before the question was asked

Was there an anniversary for taht Red Hot & Blue recently or something, Had the Iggy Pop/Debbie Harry pairing pop up elsewhere after not thinking about it for ages. I think even a few different times so not sure if that was all a coincidence or tied in with a date.

September 1990. I think I heard the songs a few months later.