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

I got nearly all the ones from that list and almost nothing else.
And I got fromages! I was feeling very smug, let me tell you. I'm really enjoying the themed OCs. The teams seem to be having a lot of fun while still playing properly.

17 on UC tonight

1 strangers on a train
2 defenestration
3 bashful
4 kitchen
5 bloody mary (thanks OC)
6 0 points
7 cobol
8 gaslighting
9 doo wop
10 callow
11 prokofiev
12 girl woman other
13 all things bright and beautiful
14 the apartment
15 mansplaining
16 sportsball
17 colette

OC question writers been consulting ILX? Songs where the title is only sung once, as the last line of the song

Ooh I got the Parasite one

I've enjoyed the Christmas University Challenge episodes as the questions are easy so I can get many correct. I also enjoyed seeing a couple of people I had known on the episode 2 nights back.

re Paxman and his illness: there is plainly a case for keeping someone in post as long as they can do it, on the grounds of (neuro?)diversity, anti-discrimination, 'making disability visible', etc. Yet I wonder if there will also be a point where he, or they, or both, think he has to stop. I take no pleasure in saying that on a thread where we've been discussing his programme for almost literally 20 years.

They also had a music round on UC a couple seasons ago themed around songs where the title is only sung as the last line, with nearly the same set of songs. As soon as they started playing the end of "Just Like Heaven" I knew what that connection was going to be.

Enjoyed the Christmas UC Final last night. As usual with this short series, it was easy to score highly.

Taxi Driver has the be the easiest question yet, i think.

also knew 0xAA in decimal from my Sinclair Spectrum programming days - it's 10101010 in binary and was used for checkerboard patterns (along with 0x55, 01010101)

Stunned my wife by getting the % of Chlorine correct. Pure guess, but will take these victories when they happen.

Teams looked so young today.

THink I did ok with answers but i don't keep score.
Not very good at teh science ones cos Physics and Chemistry aren't my area. Though Dad was a Physics major i think & worked in Energy for most of his life.

Picture of Brian Eno. "... Brian Eno or something like that?"

Elvis Presley, "All Shook Up". "Is it Bobby Darin?"

I felt the general knowledge of (young?) students pulling away from mine (their more specialised knowledge is also, of course, distant from mine because better).

I realise that series are filmed at different times but I also observe: Paxman on the regular series last night seemed sharper than he did on the Christmas series 2021.

the old rock and roll round was brutal, i thought - i find that era all very identikit. but i was only half-watching by this point.

The rivers and their tributaries...arghh! Managed one (the obvious one).

I did laugh at Bicester Village.

24 this week, after my usual slow start... Mississippi, gymnosperms, cycads, gingko, Ginger Rogers, saved a penalty, Portland, Stanley Cup, double-pointed, Cotswolds, Taxi Driver, Elvis Presley - All Shook Up, Augmented reality, Prague, rickets, Tim Berners-Lee, Norman Foster, Brian Eno, Vivienne Westwood, Banbury, xenon, erratic, drumlin, moraine.

I didn't get Tim Berners-Lee as I thought paxo said 'eventer' and thought wtf who knows shit about horse riders?

Haha, I heard eventer as well and got very confused.

I did laugh at Bicester Village.

David Beasant being the first player ever to do a victory dance in an FA Cup Final was good too.

I forgot about Cider House Rules in the Irving round so did the same as the teams in shouting out Spider-man as a stupid joke guess, prob lost a bunch of points w/ how long I spent giggling about the possibilities of The Spider-man Rules.

(also love winning a point by just repeating 'Aida' for every answer in an opera round)

Think i keep getting Snow Falling on Cedars mixed up with Cider House Rules which is a bit naff. Can see what it might be over now. But do think that was what I was thinking of when the question was asked,

I've been getting Cider House Rules mixed up with Cider With Rosie for decades and I'm not about to stop now.

Wow that was a tough music round this week, especially by University Challenge pop music standards. (Though I knew 3/4 of them)

True, I managed to guess DJ Shadow

Mind you, Bob Dylan was one of the rounds on Mastermind, but the contestant got four. And they ranged from quite easy to very tough. The four she got were mostly tough ones...

xp I got 3 out of 4 but fluffed Art of Noise. Not sure it's accurate to call Shadow "sampledelia" to be honest.

well doubt paxo's an afficianado

didn't get the Hardy questions or the Dickens (at least not before they answered). doubt i could've named anyone from Madding Crowd past Bathsheba. and didn't get the Greenwood Tree question despite reading it only last year.

that was an odd piece of the art of noise, not an obvious bit. and i changed my mind from avalanches to big audio dynamite. 8(

xp yeah he was making his stupid "this is beneath me" face when reading the questions

I don't know if I've heard teh avalanches. That sounded like it used samples i recognised from elsewhere too.

Did get the Art ofNoise. & was thinking my life In the bush Of Ghosts was talking Heads & Eno. Never got into the lp and thought it sonded better done elsewhere.

Not sure what I would have called DJ Shadow but would have thought if there wasa thing called sampledelia he might fit. Is it because you want a sampler involved not a dj cutting between discs to get to the sampled sections that one would exclude him?
I have taht cd somewhere but haven't heard it in years. Might see if i can find it .

xp yeah he was making his stupid "this is beneath me" face when reading the questions

Jesus, that annoyed me so much. As does his "let's not bother reading out the rules even though I am taking just as long to talk about not reading out the rules as I would to read out the rules" shtick.

In our house we got the Art of Noise before he'd even played it. We did think there'd be Public Enemy, though, and there wasn't. I don't think we got the Byrne/Eno starter question, though, so no shame on Reading there for not getting it. I really enjoy watching the teams trying to place music that's before their time.
I got two of the three Hardy questions. Our answer to the Far From the Madding Crowd question was "Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge" which counts in our heads as half a point.
OC was very entertaining. We did very badly at it (except the wall), but learned some fun facts, which is what you want from a quiz. And the teams were great.

The Art of Noise bit seemed a fairly easy bit, the Avalanches took me a bit longer to click on hearing a recogniseable bit. The DJ Shadow one was a pure guess.

So, ymmv and all that.

Does he ever read out the rules? The "five point penalty" rule for instance - sometimes he's clearly finished the question, and sometimes the (e.g.) music is still playing when someone buzzes without pen.

there's no five point penalty in the music round.

He was reading out some starter question last night and he seemed to deliberately leave a gap for someone to interrupt, only they didn't fall for it. I can't remember what it was now.

> "Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge"

so can i get credit for terrence stamp?

there were also a couple i got immediately that they struggled with. Miro, was one of them. and some maths thing?

Oh yeah, he didn't like them missing Miro. You'd have to say Peter Finch and Terence Stamp. (I think it was Peter Finch, anyway.)

Picasso and Gaudi were both reasonable guesses I thought

Go! (was the other immediate answer, which they did get, the AI beat human player question)

I'm surprised Paxo accepted just 'Strauss' as an answer to a music q.

(a q about music, not the music round)

I thought that art round was really hard too. I'm not an expert on modern art, but I do know a decent bit; and I hadn't even heard of the first two artists in the bonuses.

I did enjoy Paxman's sneer as he gave the answer of Gaudier-Brzeska as if it were the easiest question in the world.

Youd hope that mays lad will maybe have someone have a quiet word in his ear or maybe his getting roasted on twitter tonight will serve the same function but if he were a son or brother of mine id have him smacked arse over head tonight for the way he conducted himself on national television

Tbf his teammate has already been on covering for him so ??

so nice to be so confident that you can throw away so many 5 points like you just don't care. Is that like a record, start the game getting docked 5 points and thinking it's a great habit. So sticking with it throughout the game.
Meanwhile other team seems to be getting enough points together that they may have had a few to spare. But like if they didn't want them in the first place what can you do. Come back for another couple of chances

It's really weird because the other two players he blatantly ignores seem to be much stronger players than the only one he listens to. Zeng is crazy at geography.

They have earpieces because of Covid so they can hear what their team mates are saying even if they aren't looking at them.

Why yes I am defending this behaviour because I got it full pelt on social media as well as the person most conferred with. In my case it's because I need answers dragged out of me because I've got zero confidencs.

Zeng was quite uncanny wasn't he.
I was most impressed.

He is so good. I think they were a bit lucky that there were so many geography questions (as Paxo said) but they are a very good team.
If the teams don't come across fantastically in their second or third appearance, then it's the fault of the production team and not the team themselves. These are not TV people. All it takes is one floor manager to say "maybe turn your head the other direction now and then" or something. Or say to both team captains "be sure to look at all your team members from time to time, it comes over a lot better on television". He's not the only team captain who has looked bad for this, so it's possible it's a problem with the setup rather than the people.

That said, some of the memes about it were pretty funny.