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

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.

Or a piss one, whatever.

Was a couple episodes ago, but one of the team captains gave a "funny" answer of Paul O'Grady, and Paxman's expression of complete, galactic contempt was incredible.

Ha yeah, that was WITHERING

Was it as good as the (not very) suppressed giggles on Pointless yesterday when someone thought Bob Dylan was the Scottish artist who recorded My Old Man's A Dustman? Or that Turner-Prize-nominated artist Richard Hamilton had a wee sideline presenting Top Gear?

Richard Hamilton was a bit tragic.

I wd've been 19 grand better off if i'd played tonight's.

Me too (McManus, Dailly and Malpas would've been my three guesses). And I'd have given Richard major grief over 'Paul McStay of Chelsea' an'all.

Dune seemed obvious to me but on the other hand I'd never heard of Ursula Le Guin.

"named after a toy, which word refers to someone who logs onto a message board under an assumed name?"

That's the second time i've heard Paxman butcher the pronunciation of Cúchulainn. Thinking of writing a letter

Coquelin

Coughcoughlan

Is the correct pronunciation (or Anglo approximation thereof) "coo-cullen"? That's how I learned to say it from the second Pogues LP, and surely there can be no more reliable guide? Not that I can remember ever saying the word out loud.

Setanta

coo-cullen or coo-hullen, depending where you're from. Paxo opts for coosha-lane

paxman is a retard tho

FFS nakh.

See, I hear coohoolen from the Pogues, so that's what I'd go with.

coo-ch-ullen where the ch is hard

smh at Durham thinking Kate Bush was Bjork.

Found it heartwarming that indie students today can't identify the Futureheads.