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

There are always painfully stupid answers. They often, in my mind, do not coincide with what Paxman claims to be stupid.

the lady who knew too much

like, seriously, i kinda wanna give up *life* right now

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=51660053364&topic=7572

^^^77 invites for these guys

good christ

this ain't no unrequited telly-crush thing that's weighing on my mind, it's purely and simply a furious and uncontrollable envy that someone can know so much stuff

mind you, i'm well acquainted with (and sometimes meet) the winning captain from last year's series, and it'll at least be good to point out to him that he is no longer british studenthood's #1 repository of knowledge

basically, the year I was in the Peterhouse team, we narrowly failed to qualify

still hurts, man

My failure to qualify for University Challenge, now somewhat over ten years ago, still niggles at me too.

I felt sorry for Manchester last night - they seemed to have hit on a fairly good anti-Corpus Christi strategy and it worked for most of the match.

rah rah rah

Beeb pretty much gave away the result by having the brainy girl on the evening news

Bitches I like 'em brainless
Guns I like 'em stainless

... that Jeremy Paxman goes too far at times

they should ban postgrads from the regular show. it's not on.

― banriquit, Monday, March 31, 2008 3:01 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ still how i basically break it down. one of the teams last week was ALL phd candidates, which is bullshit. that or i should get on next season's show, ccoz tbh id rock the shit.

Of course, the DailyMail has it "how come brainy girl gets villified, and Jade, um, you know"

(See, they can't even bring themselves to criticise Jade at the moment)

.. because The Sun asked Brainygirl 10 question of the "Who won celeb Big brother/Name of the lad who fathered/Chelsea's manager" and 7 others, and she got none right...

In the interests of fairneess, should really have asked Jade 10 questions from UnivChallenge, see how she got on

Jade in "that's the freezing point of Liquid Nitrogen, innit?" Slumdog Millionaire follow-up!

Did a double-take when I saw the 'Trimble turns down Nuts magazine' headline in the Guardian this morning before I realised what it was about.

.. because The Sun asked Brainygirl 10 question of the "Who won celeb Big brother/Name of the lad who fathered/Chelsea's manager" and 7 others, and she got none right...

Sometimes I wish I didn't know any of these things too.

Name of the lad who fathered Chelsea's manager

Don't know this one

You could probably have a guess.

lol call me tuomas but idk who won celeb big brother.

Ulrika.

Yes, what now, Archimedes?

i thought/hoped i didn't before i realised i actually did.

but i also got the one question they played from last night's final on the radio this morning.

so colour me... y'know, something.

"What Now, Archimedes?" - this has a pleasing ring to it

^^^ Sitcom set in ancient Greece starring Dean Gaffney as overworked manservant

A bit Up Pompeii?

Reason for victory was the weight of classics and literature questions towards the end. MANCHESTER WOZ ROBBED!!!

she didn't know thomas love peacock though, i trumped on that in front of my family and everything

*trumped her

you the man

Trimble Trumped Claims Frogman

She came through like a train at the end - in the last 5 minutes I don't think anyone else answered a question.

I don't see why anyone would object to her, for doing her best on a quiz show.

I don't really see why anyone would be erotically excited about her either, unless they find her knowledge and intelligence attractive.

Not objecting to her, just saying that the questions fell nicely towards the end there.

but at the start... they didn't

The order of the questions is random and is not produced to favour one team or another.

Not saying it was, nor am I suggesting any kind of conspiracy. On another day Manchester might have won is all.

Reason for victory was the weight of classics and literature questions towards the end.

Not enough classics and literature in the rest of the show!

Yeah probably. Sour grapes from a Manchester fan!

Manchester, so much to, errrrr, answer, errrrr...

I don't see why anyone would object to her, for doing her best on a quiz show.

Because of the air of smugness which hung around her like a thick cloud throughout the competition, particularly after she was promoted to captain.

We were amused when she ignored a team-member's suggestion on one question and went with her own, which was wrong. Although to be honest I can't remember whether her team-member was right or not.

some say she's arrogant/can yall blame her?

Are there always this many Classics questions or have I only noticed this year because of Trimble? It's not just the straight-up Classics ones - it's the questions about prefixes, scientific terms, etymology, etc, where a knowledge of Greek and Latin is bound to give you an advantage. But then this series has also had a disproportionate number of questions about US politics, state capitals, etc, which suits me fine so maybe every series bends somewhat to the pet subjects of the question-setters.

Also, slight annoyance that when the final stages loom the pop questions always get shelved for classical ones as if they're too frivolous for the serious rounds, when, on the contrary, they would probably be more challenging to the kind of people who know their violin concertos and Greek tragedies by rote but have only a glancing interest in popular culture. And by popular culture I don't mean Celebrity Big Brother.

You're an original Big Brother purist then.

I guess at some level there's going to be a bias towards "questions the production team find hard" at the later stages, which isn't going to be the same thing as "questions a Latin Literature DPhil student is going to find hard"

x-post And lame zings aside, I agree. There did seem to be fewer science questions this series (though this could just be my perception), the kind of ones about the spins of electrons for example, which could only be answered by a specialist. It's that balance between questions that could be considered general knowledge and those that definitely aren't that make it so interesting I think.

I forget sometimes that it's about student knowledge rather than general knowledge. Hence teams getting most of the Shakespeare questions right, yet getting stumped by a fairly easy Lolita one last night - I guess Lolita isn't a set text in a lot of places. I just wonder if too many Classics-biased questions excessively favour a certain kind of educational background.

Undoubtedly

I get annoyed by easy questions I know, I like the hard ones

There was one that had a pic of Oscar Wilde and the question was "Who's this?"

Much scratching of heads.

ehhh if you want to win, get 1x rounded team who can do all the science bs as well as the classics. or, you know, go on telly addicts.