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?

That was Dave off of my Only Connect team on Mastermind, aye.

Getting all the plaudits despite scoring one less than I did on general knowledge at the same stage two years ago :-)

VCM doesn't get music questions. There's an entire generation of folk who will recognise Carlisle, Dublin and then mentally go "Dundee, Humberside". She did that whole "there's so much to get, that's brilliant, how do you do that" when I recognised the singing career of various EastEnders cast members last year. Whereas I'm all "why *wouldn't* I get that?".

Those missing vowel anagrams were an insane trick to pull at this stage of the competition.

Yeah I've seen way more esoteric clues on OC
and yeah missing vowels is usually *~my time to shine~* but I did poorly :(

I was screaming MEL GIBSON AND BIG MELONS, but other than that... sheesh.

To which my partner said,”Is that true, then? Does she have big...”

“Darling, Mel Gibson is a man.”

“Oh yeah.”

> Getting all the plaudits despite scoring one less than I did on general knowledge at the same stage two years ago :-)

ha ha. i literally saw just the MM score reveal at the start of my recording of OC and it probably looked more impressive because of the lower scores of the others.

didn't get the smiths question but did get 100:100 without knowing the exact reason why (but they were obviously converging). also: big melons.

(the % of % thing is also just square numbers. 98 squared is 9604...)

ha ha, was just reading the Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here thread and the post under the fold, from 2 months ago, was talking about the silk screen that was an answer on UC last night. and the phrase baader meinhof popped into my head. and that was also an answer.

you'll be seeing it everywhere now

lol, bobby seagull

also, there is a 0th law of robotics (so 4 in total) from one of the later books - "must not harm humanity" trumps "must not harm a human"

wow at the commodore 64 question

this week's lol, u r old question was the culture novels of iain m banks.

fuckin state of yerman in his dungarees, delighted they got a thumping tbh

Bet that lad didn't sleep that night

brutal

Such a shame for him. Saying that, Jones has been really good, and probably overshadowed by the comedy TV stylings of Brandon and Wang over the piece, so I'm glad her team are through.

And speaking of brutal: that second connecting wall, oof. Total game changer.

Today I discovered that both me and Mr kinder have the Eldorado theme tune seared into our brains despite never knowingly watching it

Lol I knew it was a soap theme, can't remember what I thought it was

Made up for by the time excitement of the Elder Scrolls music on UC afterwards

confession: I only watch OC now and not UC

I haven't watched either for ages, kinda got back into them the last month or so

shocking lack of sang froid from this lad on Mastermind

limmys nephew

really or just joshing?

soz

That's alright, it seemed possible, it's not like I got all excited. Anyway, shame on him

From a convo with a friend the other day:

i think it's structured terribly. the walls aren't much fun to play at home because the contestants give you hints before you've had time to think, the whole show often comes down to that last round which really isn't true to the spirit of the main idea, and the longer it's gone on the stupider some of those missing vowels have got

the contestants give you hints before you've had time to think

that's what the mute button is for.

Good idea! But, y'know, being arsed

none of Oxford can say their own names

but they're good

haigh and prance are sheer league of gentlemen

Both teams good in patches, both a bit nervy I think

Kraftwerk/ Aphex Twin / Burial / Massive Attack was good

The Sony movie channel was showing Marie Antoinette earlier in the evening and that also featured aphex twin ("July 14").

And that bbc4 Art Of The Image thing which was on later mentioned the female collage artist that was another answer, Hannah Hoch.

Is the competition done and they're just showing them now, or will it get shut down?

xp really enjoying the art of the image

University Challenge?

I'm pretty sure it was all filmed months ago, like Summer 2019.

Kraftwerk/ Aphex Twin / Burial / Massive Attack was good

― Neil S, Monday, 16 March 2020 22:24 (yesterday)

Lol at the girl all pumped for the electronic music round then not knowing her Aphexes from her Mobys.

the contestants give you hints before you've had time to think

We pause it as soon as it comes on the screen and give ourselves three minutes to see what we can do before they start.

You used to be able to play the wall yourself online which was good.

I guess the fact that I don't wanna go out of my way to interrupt the flow of just watching the show says I'm not that bothered. I have always thought that the show's poorly structured in terms of rounds/points tho, and crush on Victoria or not the whole arch style is just - not very good - tbh.

I don't know, I find OC pretty good in terms of flow, from my point of view. Taking Pointless as the low point of final rounds (I often skip the final round altogether, especially if they choose sports).

UC was filmed a while ago, yeah, you'll get the whole of this series. Though the next series of Only Connect was due to start recording this weekend, so suspect that may be canned.

Speaking of bobby seagull... He was on radio 4 talking about books, specifically Johnathon Livingstone Seagull, after which he is named. His dad read it and was impressed enough to give 2 of his 4 kids the surname Seagull (the mother wasn't too pleased, apparently, and the other two escaped with Seagull as a middle name)

Just got the South Park bit of the wall and gave a happy lol

ha

got the live aid connection after 2 - had (and have) the book with numerous photos in chronological order - still didn't get the last one.

OC questions I got right that the teams didn't: Sonny & Cher (I Got You Babe going backwards); spotted the South Park characters in the wall

I was surprised they missed the football scores question

Counting the vowels is such an obvious OC question but I missed that one

yeah i saw football teams and tuned out!