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

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.

who would have thought that a programme called UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE would favour certain eduicational backgrounds, the elitist fucks.

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

It wasn't quite that simple: it was a picture of Oscar Wilde next to a picture of HMP Reading; the question was something like: "on your screens is a picture of someone and the place they lived from (date) to (date), name both".

Still: I was rather amazed that nobody got it.

sorry, question was a bit easier than I made it out to be.

I don't remember anyone not getting that.

I don't remember a Lolita question last night either.

I probably can't concentrate enough to be really good at this programme.

The easiest ones last night were re presidential approval ratings, etc - almost embarrassing.

have to agree with meme economist, on this thread, I think

xpost:

It was still pretty damn easy, I thought. Then again, we did "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" in our GCSE English.

The presidential approval ratings were very easy, too, if you can remember the dates of 20th-C US presidents.

My kids were "Ooh, look there's Reading Gaol"

OK, so we live in Reading. Still..

And they didn't know who Oscar Wilde was? Not-like-in-my-day why-oh-why hell-in-a-handcart etc

Well, either that, or they didn't feel like saying "That's Oscar Wilde and (a randomly-guessed prison)"

Is it Norman Stanley Fletcher?

Johnny Cash, San Quentin.

they were probably trying to remember which prison stephen fry went to.

Whichever team got the next question right did get most of the similar supplementaries, I think, apart from Rudolph Hess (and the Tower of London).

xpost: HMP Ashfield, according to Wikipedia.

the wilde and lolita qs were last week. i think they were given wilde's name, just had to guess the gaol.

An open gaol really, sorry, an open goal

"who would have thought that a programme called UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE would favour certain eduicational backgrounds, the elitist fucks."

I don't mean universities. I mean schools which teach Latin. I don't think the questions should be easier but I did think too many this series favoured a certain area of knowledge. But I guess part of University Challenge's job is to reassure viewers that there are still young people out there who spent their teens revising their Latin declensions rather than hosting Facebook parties.

And yeah, I watched the last three episodes back to back on Sky + so forgot that the Lolita question was in the semis. It asked which book Clare Quilty appeared in and nobody got it.

i reckon it evens out. i got the lolita q, never get any science or classics qs. obviously a 'classical education' is mostly the preserve of the privately educated. one of the most knowledgable classicists i've known was a comp-educated autodidact -- doesn't prove anything, of course, but just sayin. the show is inherently 'elitist' and would be pointless otherwise.

I don't think there is much Latin, in general, on this programme.

Really? OK then. It just seemed that way to me. I suspect Meme is right that it evens out. Perhaps I just took an unusual dislike to Trimble's mannerisms and therefore noticed the Classics questions more than I otherwise would have. That's the problem with trying to square objective analysis with visceral dislike.

i found her steez hilarious, seemingly deliberately overdoing middle-class swot mannerisms, the whole hairflick thing. so grating but i kind of feel, 'own it'.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00492/Gail-Trimble_492179a.jpg http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~tlarson1/mkg2.jpg

I was taught Latin (for a year, but some people did take it to O grade level and beyond) in my high school, which was generally acknowledged to be one the three worst schools in Fife.

I did latin at school- grammar school though so probably usual in the 1970s? It was all about some family living in Pompeii and going to the taverna. It didn't end well.

you were either in horto with Caecilius, or you weren't cool

I did my year of latin in 87/88, left school in 92.

treefell: My university gf, who went to Dunfermline High School and left in '96, did Latin at school too.

I did latin at school- grammar school though so probably usual in the 1970s? It was all about some family living in Pompeii and going to the taverna. It didn't end well.

― Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, February 24, 2009 3:08 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol, they were still doing these books in the 90s. i was in the last year in my private school that did mandatory latin, in '96. got a c at gcse.

still doing them in the 00's

and I did Latin right the way through until university finals, go me

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1154145/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-What-mob-really-hates-Gail-Trimble-glowing-self-confidence.html

never did latin until a mandatory half-unit in first year english degree, state school innit

I've never studied Latin in my life, now never will. I've always liked UC though. There is very little Latin on it. Like Meme thingy I find the science just as hard as the Latin, harder in fact.

Melanie Phillips appears to be insane

No "appears" about it.

Do you think an example of "baying brutishness" might be calling Jade Goody a "stupid gobby chav"?

Jesus, that Melanie Phillips piece. A classic example of vaguely citing blogs as an indicator of public opinion. After the Observer piece on Sunday I quickly googled for evidence of this "hate mob" and found just a couple of posts, both of which ended up playing pivotal roles in the Observer and Mail pieces. I hate that lazy habit of citing a handful of blogs - or sometimes just comments on blogs - as if they were the tip of an iceberg when in fact they're the whole, rather tiny iceberg.

I notice the Mail have rather unkindly included a poll - would you rather be clever or beautiful? - next to a picture of Trimble. That will make her feel good about herself.

Truly never heard any hype about this Trimble chick, pro or anti, until today. Maybe the hype and bile is mostly imaginary.

oddly I think my limited (and really pretty good) range of blog experience has left me much more favourable to idea of blogs than most people are.

I notice the Mail have rather unkindly included a poll - would you rather be clever or beautiful? - next to a picture of Trimble. That will make her feel good about herself.

The Mail demonstrated clearly where they stood by having the poll read "Would you rather be clever or beautiful? Yes or No" when I looked at it earlier.

Mail frowns on encouraging hatred and lynchmob mentality, everyone knows that

Thing is, to have an opinion on Trimble you have to watch University Challenge, which suggests you're not averse to middle-class swots per se - in fact you may well be a middle-class swot. But there's no joy in picking apart the lunatic logic of Melanie Phillips.

xpost. I like blogs just fine, but they're a flimsy basis for an article unless you're talking about one of the big, influential ones.