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

Seriously pissed off that I didn't get that one in time.

Also, Paxo gave Manchester way too many benefits of the doubt.

he has his favourites

On Challenge +1 you have just missed Zaphod Beeblebrox guy giving 'jizz' as an answer on a repeat of Pointless.

just caught the last seconds of that episode yesterday. I hate him so.

he's just this guy, y'know?

I've noticed they seem to have totally done away with the popular music questions on UC which is quite vexing. Hasn't been one in ages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxA0a5G6ccg

Jamie Karran @cee_eph

i can't believe i saluted at the end of that #universitychallenge i can see why people think i am a huge twat :P

^ Zaphod Beeblebrox dude on twitter. He seems quite alright, actually.

Manchester's captain is actively ruining the show for me now

wasn't paying attention tbh

It's the same deal as UCL. They have these jokey conferring sessions that last forever (which get worse the further ahead they get) and Paxman totally indulges them.

it's hard to judge how bad it is with quiz shows because those gaps are edited to suit the show pacing

it's his face too tbh

and his voice

I do sympathise w/ Jamie Karran, it's not that 'it's harder when you are up here' as most quizmasters say, but the temptation to get silly/daft can be huge...

he actually wasn't as bad compared to this dude. Still no pop music round as well

well, tbf, most of the time he had more of a clue than the two on his right. The older dude on his left just about paid his way too.

oh he knows his stuff, not denying that. No need to turn it into a performance though

I'm so glad to be back home and able to watch this again. Something very comforting about it. My version of UC is to guess the subject of each student before they're introduced - I'm getting shit hot at this. The girls are always English or Classics except for the really obviously Maths ones (I say this with love). Team captains are slightly "trendy" or at least far too confident compared to the others and usually studying Politics.
Despite not knowing 75%+ of the answers and being extremely impressed when the students do, I count it as a victory over all of them (like conkers) if I get ones they don't - which weirdly are often the only ones I know (they don't). E.g. dressmaking or Japanese food or popular music (if it's an opera one it's game over for me).

ha, that game is fun, yes. such pride when you boldly go all out guessing a very specific subject and get it right.

one time we were watching Mastermind and as the show started i remarked that it was weird someone hadn't done The Wire as a specialist subject yet. As they were announcing the contestants the camera settled on a youngish vaguely trendy type, before John Humphrys could say anything i announced in solemn tones: "The television series The Wire" only to be echoed seconds later by the man himself. I felt like a god.

haha!

The girls are always English or Classics except for the really obviously Maths ones (I say this with love)

I don't know whether to be angry with you about this, or angry at the world. I'm thinking you, seeing as I watch this programme all the time, and this definitely doesn't seem to be right.

Really? I have watched it very rarely in the past three or so years but I used to call it as a joke and then it very often seemed to be true. I say this as a woman with a science / maths background whose female friends are mostly engineers, which is why I found it noticeable that this is rarely reflected in u.c.

Papaphilippopoulos Vs Tsczuczuk-Smith

FIGHT!!!!

except they were on the same (winning) team...

those songwriting teams were too easy

and they still didn't get them

idiots

it seems my only field of excellence is in food-related questions

Lolled at them thinking Harold Pinter and someone equally unlikely (Tom Stoppard?) was a contemporary of Inigo Jones.

kids don't even know their Oasis b-sides these days...

or their SF Masterworks. smh

ever since ukn0v@ went down I haven't been able to watch this anymore. bummed.

expatshield + iplayer and bob's your uncle

windows :(

One of the more memorable blokes of recent years, a mumbly sciencey guy called Grinyer, was on Mastermind on Friday. He didn't do terribly well.

love Grinyer. He looks like he's about to have a nervous breakdown each time he answers a question.

ever since ukn0v@ went down I haven't been able to watch this anymore

th3b0x d0t bz

tbf to the studes, in the SF Masterworks round, the covers for Left Hand of Darkness and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep were not nearly so 'obvious' as the cover for Dune (which they mis-identified as Lovecraft's Necronomicon!)

I guessed Lovecraft, and I did think I should have guessed DADOES.

Mind you, The Invisible Man was an easy.

And the team did get all the other b-sides right, so hey ya.

A few months ago, Amber walked in during the picture round, and I answered "Bacon".

BACON? she laughed, as if I'd just said "Sausages" to be funny.

Eventually, Paxo says, "Well, I'll tell you it was Bacon!" at which point Amber was helpless.

Eventually, I explained about Francis Bacon, etc.

Mark's story reminds me that last week or the week before, there was an anatomy question about the urethra and various other related tract type things. We had to pause the telly for about five minutes because they were conferring on what the correct answer was and I shouted, not entirely incorrectly, "pissflaps!" at the telly. I would totally have said pissflaps had I been a contestant too*.

* might not be true

nearly so 'obvious' as the cover for Dune (which they mis-identified as Lovecraft's Necronomicon!)

I guessed "The Kraken Wakes"! I wish one of the teams had.

Dune was the only one I got apart from The Invisible Man - I knew the Ursula Le Guin one was Ursula Le Guin but couldn't have told you which book.

I got that one right, sort of..

I said "I have no idea", and I was right.

<i>We had to pause the telly for about five minutes because they were conferring on what the correct answer was</i>

what does this mean

yes yes it means I didn't do the formatting thing properly

We had to pause the telly because while they were conferring I said something amusing and we couldn't stop giggling. I forgot to say that was *why* we had to pause it. It was a shit anecdote anyway.