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

also, the guys on OC got their asses handed to them by the gals last night so...

yeah that's a consideration but could be accommodated I think, and in any case AFAIK the only single sex colleges left are for women so in that case who would really mind?

obviously the "what about International MEN's Day?" crew would care but who cares about them?

olympics opening ceremony is a nice way of putting faces to a lot of Pointless answers.

London Business School rocking the generic postpunk band look

What did they say when the answer was the Manics? Whatever it was, it wasn't as good as renowned violinist Nicola Benedetti being recognised as a San Marinan footballer on OC.

i only know her from the sky arts British library thing, where she looked into Italian settlers in Scotland, amongst other things (Beethoven's tuning fork).

early green Day, aerosmith. stone roses, i think one of them said and then dave gardo(?) for the manics answer. he looked confused when told it was the manics

Evidently they guessed Dave Garda, which is the name of the person who uploads the University Challenge episodes on YouTube.

"You are about to hear a piece of... POPULAR music... from the 1990s..."

Me: https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltypofBBq21qzyewi.gif

The best music rounds are the ones where you correctly predict the questions, never mind the answers
Sadly they are about 1 per series for me

We were actually discussing this after, about how Nicola Benedetti is a (posh-ish, but not exclusively so) household name up here and relatively less well known outside Scotland.

Evidently they guessed Dave Garda, which is the name of the person who uploads the University Challenge episodes on YouTube.

thought I was hearing things!

don't they teach sewing in schools anymore?

'cross stitch?'. the clue is in the name.

I just got irrationally cross at those

Last week it was Drag Race, this week embroidery stitches and Elizabeth Gaskell. Things are looking up for me on University Challenge.

i bought Germinal yesterday, mainly because it sounded like a French North and South. but i missed the first q in that set.

THere's a similar story of a mining strike in kentucky called Matewan that hasa young Will Oldham in . Just to take off at a tangent.
BUt yeah got that Germinal question and a few others.
There was a French tv version of Germinal in the 90s that I caught at least part of. Think it's good though, Gerard Depardieu etc in the cast.

but i missed the first q in that set.

It was about a strike in 1936 by fruit workers in California that became a novel by a writer who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

grapes of wrath? date's about right for great depression. California is where they ended up. was some cotton picking on the book iirc.

No a different steinbeck. Not as obvious.

Yeah, Steinbeck was the correct answer. A quick google tells me that the book is In Dubious Battle, which I'd never heard of and would now like to read.

There was a French tv version of Germinal in the 90s that I caught at least part of. Think it's good though, Gerard Depardieu etc in the cast.

I read Germinal a few years ago in a book club, and it was great but extremely grim. Or maybe that should be great and extremely grim. I'm reading Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell at the moment, and it has similar bursts of angry descriptive passages highlighting the great gulf between rich and poor in 19th-century Manchester. It's tough stuff.

Did they ever teach sewing in schools?

If they did, then for most of us it's a long time ago.

I certainly couldn't have told you anything about any of those stitches.

there's a "tapestry" up at home that i made at *primary* school 45+ years ago. (all running stitch, all terrible)

but certainly we had time on sewing machines in first two years of secondary school and (probably) hand-sewing in the same lessons (given that they didn't let us loose on the machine immediately)

It's funny what's considered general knowledge and what's considered specialist knowledge. As someone who does do a bit of embroidery and did know the names of all those stitches, I thought it was a bit pathetic that the team couldn't even make a guess at them. They probably didn't learn knot-tying in school either, but I bet if they'd been presented with pictures of different knots, they could've guessed more than one type of knot. Mind you, if they'd shown different types of origami folds, for example, I would have been as lost as they were.

I couldn't guess the name of a knot either. I would say 'reef knot' a few times and hope it was right once.

I'm not proud of it, but it's a fact that many of us are very ignorant about most things.

And I don't remember anything that I learned in school.

We did do a bit of textiles in secondary school art. Sewing machine, French knots etc. I didn't get blanket stitch or satin stitch but did get the other 2.

The TV comedy ones I thought were a little harder than the usual pop culture Qs. I got them all but wouldn't be surprised if ppl didn't know Stath Lets Flats or know Steve Pemberton's name. Sad that Julia Davis was recognised mainly for Gavin & Stacey!

I got blanket stitch,, didn't get satin. Was thinking of something else like on a sewing machine.
NOt as good on hand sewing and embroider as sewing machine and noty sure how many technical names I know anyway.
Think I know how to do a lot of it.

Ah I'd have thought you'd get those for sure :D

Kinder: no, I had no idea what those comedy questions were about.

Despite all this ignorance, I was still not much worse than the actual contestants last night, who were unusually poor.

Not a fan of the team that won and their interminable havering but then if the opposition couldn't beat them then that's what they deserve

One day when I'm vaguely less tipsy I'm doing a "new woke UC is great" post but not in detail today maybe

Flagging it now so when the Telegraph hate screeds start I've called it tho

Too late, Hitchens has already done it: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9433255/PETER-HITCHENS-claims-University-Challenge-questions-dull-obscure.html

The hate screening, obvs.

Of course he has god bless the crazy little monster

Very likeable teams

Reading guess game is excellent

Drake AND Folk Horror, very ILXy today

midsomer was an answer on both OC and UC. possibly with different spellings. I've watched neither, but knew both answers.

Was Victoria inexplicably wearing sunglasses this week?

Last night's was the third UC I have watched this season. So far, my scores were 23, a miserable 10 and then 18, those being

Mexican wave, Christo, Cambrian, Hungary, Baldwin, Wilson, West End Girls, Edward VI, Guildford, Little Mermaid, Histogram, Ghent, Montessori, Calcium, Witchfinder General, integral, broch, Everton

Agree with darraghmac about the likability of the teams last night.

Reading guess game is excellent

Yes, apart from specialist knowledge, they seemed to have a good range of general knowledge and the good old quizzing standby of "here's a name I vaguely remember that might fit, let's give that a go", which is good tactics.

Those guys on OC were a TERRIBLE team. They did not listen to each other and they didn't know much more than we did in our house. It felt wrong that they almost won just by storming the missing vowels round. It doesn't seem in the spirit of the thing at all.

yeah, I was wondering whether the guy team was actually really good at missing vowels or if the other team was playing safe with such a huge lead.

i do a simiar job to them, based on their team name, and i'd also expect to catch up in the missing words round. not really different (in terms of points available) to being good at walls.

(oh, that said, you don't get docked points for getting the wall wrong. and you can stab at random things and luck upon answers. plus you get a second go at connections you didn't find. maybe it is completely different!)

I thought the team storming the mssngvwls round fell short by 1 point?

they did, but they were behind 10 points before the final round so it was close.

And I knew they were going to storm the missing vowels, too, because they were so far behind that I thought "there's no way this team should have made it past the auditions. They must be really good at the missing vowels."

LOL the folk horror segment has been doing the rounds on various interested Facebook groups that I belong to. A lot of the discussion has been about if Blood on Satan's Claw should have a definite article, as Paxman favoured.

The thing about folk horror from the 60s and 70s is, there are only about three or four movies that remotely quality as such, so you could've guessed without seeing the pics - Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man (to be fair, UC did pick a not entirely obvious - in fact slightly misleading - still from the last one).

Argument being tbf that if hadnt come up already you could safely pick is as the third option with yr eyes closed id say

(xpost true, I nearly didn't say "Wicker Man" at the end)