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?

Wow that was a tough music round this week, especially by University Challenge pop music standards. (Though I knew 3/4 of them)

True, I managed to guess DJ Shadow

Mind you, Bob Dylan was one of the rounds on Mastermind, but the contestant got four. And they ranged from quite easy to very tough. The four she got were mostly tough ones...

xp I got 3 out of 4 but fluffed Art of Noise. Not sure it's accurate to call Shadow "sampledelia" to be honest.

well doubt paxo's an afficianado

didn't get the Hardy questions or the Dickens (at least not before they answered). doubt i could've named anyone from Madding Crowd past Bathsheba. and didn't get the Greenwood Tree question despite reading it only last year.

that was an odd piece of the art of noise, not an obvious bit. and i changed my mind from avalanches to big audio dynamite. 8(

xp yeah he was making his stupid "this is beneath me" face when reading the questions

I don't know if I've heard teh avalanches. That sounded like it used samples i recognised from elsewhere too.

Did get the Art ofNoise. & was thinking my life In the bush Of Ghosts was talking Heads & Eno. Never got into the lp and thought it sonded better done elsewhere.

Not sure what I would have called DJ Shadow but would have thought if there wasa thing called sampledelia he might fit. Is it because you want a sampler involved not a dj cutting between discs to get to the sampled sections that one would exclude him?
I have taht cd somewhere but haven't heard it in years. Might see if i can find it .

xp yeah he was making his stupid "this is beneath me" face when reading the questions

Jesus, that annoyed me so much. As does his "let's not bother reading out the rules even though I am taking just as long to talk about not reading out the rules as I would to read out the rules" shtick.

In our house we got the Art of Noise before he'd even played it. We did think there'd be Public Enemy, though, and there wasn't. I don't think we got the Byrne/Eno starter question, though, so no shame on Reading there for not getting it. I really enjoy watching the teams trying to place music that's before their time.
I got two of the three Hardy questions. Our answer to the Far From the Madding Crowd question was "Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge" which counts in our heads as half a point.
OC was very entertaining. We did very badly at it (except the wall), but learned some fun facts, which is what you want from a quiz. And the teams were great.

The Art of Noise bit seemed a fairly easy bit, the Avalanches took me a bit longer to click on hearing a recogniseable bit. The DJ Shadow one was a pure guess.

So, ymmv and all that.

Does he ever read out the rules? The "five point penalty" rule for instance - sometimes he's clearly finished the question, and sometimes the (e.g.) music is still playing when someone buzzes without pen.

there's no five point penalty in the music round.

He was reading out some starter question last night and he seemed to deliberately leave a gap for someone to interrupt, only they didn't fall for it. I can't remember what it was now.

> "Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge"

so can i get credit for terrence stamp?

there were also a couple i got immediately that they struggled with. Miro, was one of them. and some maths thing?

Oh yeah, he didn't like them missing Miro. You'd have to say Peter Finch and Terence Stamp. (I think it was Peter Finch, anyway.)

Picasso and Gaudi were both reasonable guesses I thought

Go! (was the other immediate answer, which they did get, the AI beat human player question)

I'm surprised Paxo accepted just 'Strauss' as an answer to a music q.

(a q about music, not the music round)

I thought that art round was really hard too. I'm not an expert on modern art, but I do know a decent bit; and I hadn't even heard of the first two artists in the bonuses.

I did enjoy Paxman's sneer as he gave the answer of Gaudier-Brzeska as if it were the easiest question in the world.

Youd hope that mays lad will maybe have someone have a quiet word in his ear or maybe his getting roasted on twitter tonight will serve the same function but if he were a son or brother of mine id have him smacked arse over head tonight for the way he conducted himself on national television

Tbf his teammate has already been on covering for him so ??

so nice to be so confident that you can throw away so many 5 points like you just don't care. Is that like a record, start the game getting docked 5 points and thinking it's a great habit. So sticking with it throughout the game.
Meanwhile other team seems to be getting enough points together that they may have had a few to spare. But like if they didn't want them in the first place what can you do. Come back for another couple of chances

It's really weird because the other two players he blatantly ignores seem to be much stronger players than the only one he listens to. Zeng is crazy at geography.

They have earpieces because of Covid so they can hear what their team mates are saying even if they aren't looking at them.

Why yes I am defending this behaviour because I got it full pelt on social media as well as the person most conferred with. In my case it's because I need answers dragged out of me because I've got zero confidencs.

Zeng was quite uncanny wasn't he.
I was most impressed.

He is so good. I think they were a bit lucky that there were so many geography questions (as Paxo said) but they are a very good team.
If the teams don't come across fantastically in their second or third appearance, then it's the fault of the production team and not the team themselves. These are not TV people. All it takes is one floor manager to say "maybe turn your head the other direction now and then" or something. Or say to both team captains "be sure to look at all your team members from time to time, it comes over a lot better on television". He's not the only team captain who has looked bad for this, so it's possible it's a problem with the setup rather than the people.

That said, some of the memes about it were pretty funny.

I think I missed Mays faux pas I was talking about the other lot last night. Rachid seemed to have the 5 point reduction several times or was it other team mates.
Hate the going blank bit from long name beginning with an S cos i could very easily see that happening to me, Thinking I had the answer on teh tip of my tongue so buzzing then finding it disappeared. Seen that happen before. but Rachid seemed to be over confident on his guessing what the question was so what the answer would be. Did think that deduction thing happened more than i'd seen it before. Could see the tension of this being a quarter final or whatever and how somebody might respond to adrenalin release etc

i missed all this because i wasn't really watching, just listening (parotid, some art questions). there was a weirdly specific music round, oh, TMBG

did hear a classic '-5 for interruption' followed by it being passed over with no more actual question. how is that interrupting?

These are not TV people. All it takes is one floor manager to say "maybe turn your head the other direction now and then" or something. Or say to both team captains "be sure to look at all your team members from time to time, it comes over a lot better on television".

It wasn't UC, but the quiz/team based I was on, we didn't get any 'direction' and I'm assuming if one player was "making good telly" they'd keep on with it.

I only thought about it recently, after the Reading guy kept jumping in early and losing five points - eventually he calmed down and they did win. I did something similar, mainly because one team-mate would absolutely buzz pronto (and be right, the git) so if you didn't buzz within half a second you would not be on the show, effectively. (So, I end up buzzing in the intros round for Mud "Oh Boy" after about .2 seconds..)

I do find it disconcerting, troubling, whatever, seeing a UC captain only conferring with one colleague. It's happened before, recently, and was bad last night, and I saw the Twitter attacks too.

But I think Trish and Ailsa's comments are probably wise - the situation may not actually be as bad as it looks. Zeng, for instance, DID get every relevant question, so it's not like he was excluded in practice. I think it's possible that the team actually have an arrangement that they're happy with, even though it looks bad to us. They won by about 200 points anyway, didn't they?!

The only time I thought he could've reined it in was when he said "there's no three-word psi" or whatever his exact words were. I'd have bashed the perspex into his "I think you'll find" forehead, if it were me. But I bet he was sorry afterwards.

I've only ever been on one thing, and we were directed to within an inch of our lives so as not to waste time, because they were making three shows that day and they could NOT be arsed dealing with mistakes. Stand exactly here. When the host says this, you say this. When this happens, you step to the left. Let me see you do it so I know you're not going to make a mess of it. etc. Mind you, that was a game rather than a quiz, so you didn't have to be bright to get on it.

wonder if nerves gave Mays blinkers to his right or something. If i wanted to conjecture wildly I could see soemthing like a nervous spasm giving him a stiff neck or just having more of a bond with the guy to his left. THink I have that layout right anyway.
But yeah difficult to say what is actually going on in the guy's head or whatever.
& not seeing outside of the camera frame and so on.
They did leave with marks to spare anyway.

I guess if you got onto a team because you had a friend involved or started hanging out at practise games cos your mate did it would be something to watch out for in terms of audience gaze.
Not that people are training for best look or anything.
Like no stylists involved etc.

Love to log on after getting a terrific score only to see that my favourite people are being insulted for *checks notes* conferring on bonuses they know more about #UniversityChallenge https://t.co/7hAXV3jVa6

— Fatima (@reaffirmsfaith) January 18, 2022

They walked away with points to spare anyway. Think that's been noted.
Was just thinking about what contributes to not a good look or whatever its being looked at as.
& a lot of people will have habitual movements that look different on camera because accentuated than they are aware of.
She was pretty dynamic too.

When I was on Only Connect I got a *lot* of shit about how much Dave was conferring with me rather than his wife on the other side of him from me. Him and Lindsay need a lot less verbal communication to know when to talk, and I need to focus and concentrate (and was fecking terrified!) and both of them know that, but to outsiders me and him were having private wee chats to the exclusion of his wife who would surely rumble our affair when she clocked how obvious it looked on telly. Absolute bollocks, but really hurtful to everyone, based on how things look in a freakily unnatural environment

Christ, really? I know you mentioned something about it before but thought it was jokes.
Would hate to be on TV.

Sayin it again, so glad no social media back in 1975. Being in school was bad enough, but hey I discovered I didn't care what they thought.

Yes, was just thinking the same as Mark G: It's bizarre that performance on UC is now not merely a matter of what score you get, but how you're judged by a load of strangers who see you in an artificial environment for half an hour.

As is any tv that isnt acting, really?

Once Fatima tweeted I accept her take but otherwise there's a lot of reaching the last couple days

They (the pile-on hordes) did it last week to the Birmingham captain and I'm sure will do it again to others. And I will roundly tell them all to fuck off. Last week I was blocked for suggesting to someone that replying to the actual opinion of the supposedly-slighted team mate in order to tell her that she was wrong and her captain was ignoring her was exactly what she was accusing the captain of to start with.

A couple years ago, two UC contestants got to make one of those "go to places in the UK and point at things" type documentaries. But, they had no onscreen presence, really. Or, the subject(s) were somewhat dull.

HI, I'M ERIC MONKMAN

bobby seagull was on the christmas lectures and is slightly better (does teaching, which i guess means he has some people skills)

That was very much an attempt to create a thing out of assuming Twitter chat about contestants would translate into anyone giving a shit about them outside of University Challenge. That it didn't really work should be no surprise to anyone.

Though I did really like Answer Trap, which had Bobby as one of the brains, along with Frank Paul who was on a team that won Only Connect back in the day.