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

I feel Stephen Fry has to talk a lot to explain every single answer to the Tipping Point timeslot audience. It seems unnecessary, but I guess he's both Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong here.

I think it's a shame if it doesn't survive because there aren't enough high standard quiz shows with decent prize money. I think if they gave it the Chase slot when the Chase isn't working it could hold its own there.

V interesting points! I hadn't thought about the money part at all.

Which reminds me, need to get an application in for the 1% Club before they ditch that as well.

"when the Chase isn't airing", that should be

Oh, the 1% club, we enjoy it at home but I do have to be mindful about looking too much of a smartarse on things I alone get right...

You'd do well on 1% I reckon, unless it's the one about putting a phone in your jeans pocket and turning it inside out.

(ailsa)

Cheers. I need to practice my wacky quiz personality before applying for stuff that isn't tedious and worthy though.

joe muggs has a quietus thinkpiece on the jungle vs drum&bass issue, complete with a mean sideswipe at the borads lol

ha, just coming here to share it

As the 21st century rolled in, journalistic tendency that you might call the Continuity Melody Maker Faction, which created an echo chamber for itself in overwhelmingly white male pseudo-academic online spaces like Dissensus and ILX, perpetuated proprietary categories that cemented the authenticity myths

i mean that seems like a bad description of us but i wasn't really paying attention in the relevant threads and it's not like the rest of you aren't #RONG #ALLTHETIME abt stuff :)

I started a rolling D&B/Jungle thread a few years ago and it's now still around in it's second or third iteration but afaict it's just sharing tunes. May have been some threads in the 2000s he's thinking of?

Article is very "This is a dumb thing to talk about and here's 2000 words about why".

Talking of dumb articles, Hitchens is back on his annual "why must woke UC ask questions about women and science rather than boring shit I like" tip. It's pretty much a retread of his last go at it

What's lost in the jungle/drum&bass thing is that after that they were asked a question about the creator of House music and deliberated whether it was The Prodigy or Fatboy Slim.

that was a lol for sure

The P Hitchens article is hilarious, how can anyone be so lacking in self-awareness?

in summary: shameful these young people aren't aware of the recent events of 60 years ago, too busy listening to slob music.

(archive link if anyone wants to annoy themselves without giving the dm clicks: https://archive.is/lxs4m )

if he'd stuck to "questions too woke" then it would be a standard anti-BBC mail article, but nooo he has to go for the "I don't understand this question and now everything seems unsettling" - truly the one true tory beliver in a world of cynical grifters

He wrote an almost identical one when Paxman left, with the same whining about how asking questions about Artemisia Gentileschi is pandering to the woke lefties.

i got a five-pointer on OC last week but can't remember which.

Internal angles 55.9°, 63.1°, 62.6°

also something on UC which neither of the teams knew, but can't remember what.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

OC was characteristics of the Bermuda Triangle

I got it at the same point because the sum of the angles is >180 suggesting most likely it's on a sphere (or oblate spheroid).

i didn't even add it up, it was the first triangle with a name i could think of

I made it as far as looking at Hitchens's face before I bailed from that article. Dear fucking christ.

they were asked a question about the creator of House music

kinda intrigued by who University Challenge thinks is the creator of house music tbh

Frankie Knuckles. There may well have been some hedging in the "often refered to as one of the originators of house" mold mind, tho they do state pretty categorically that the term comes from the Warehouse iirc.

At least we can all agree that Fatboy Slim was indeed the wrong answer to that question

hard questions and two very good teams tonight i thought

Don't know if there's room on this thread for Pointless chat, but I think Sally Phillips has been my favourite replacement Richard that I've caught so far. She has a lovely easy wit.

I thought I'd discussed it here, but perhaps somewhere else. I like her too. I also liked Alex Brooker, Stephen Mangan and Andi Oliver. All naturally engaging folk.

Thought I'd seen it being talked about somewhere, took a punt on this thread!

Andi Oliver was good, agreed. Not sure I saw any of Brooker. I find Mangan off-puttingly smarmy.

ucl very impressive

pointless answers for 'actors in the last episode of cheers' included Norm and Cliff and Carla. all members of the main cast for as long as it aired.

(um, maybe spoilers)

I liked mangan even though I don't think I knew him from anything else. I was just glad to see Giles go. I hate that man almost as much as I hate j Lithgow.

Wait, none of those are actors

sally phillips has been on my strong strong crush list for about twenty years

mangan has been on my shitlist since he made an ass of himself on camera walking about abandoned pigsheds in north mayo and saying shit like "gord imagine my mamma was raised in a hovel like this" u buffoon

Also he’s a Spurs supporter

"I have a weird set of loyalties, following England in football and Ireland in rugby"

"Kylie, you are AMAZING!!!"

Look, if these are the worst things that can be said about him, I'll take them. Considering what craven, creepy weirdos most people in British entertainment seem to turn out to be, like.

<quietly>i don't like House of Games</quietly>

Mangan is good on (Portrait|Landscape) Artist of the Year on Sky Arts. but whether he's better than Frank Skinner (who did the early series) is another question.

House of Games very much relies on the personalities of the contestants. If the people are too stupid and/or annoying, we only watch the rounds we really like -- Distinctly Average, Where is Kazakhstan, I'm Terrible at Dating, the music intros round -- and skip the rest. Even if the guests are good, there's a couple of rounds we usually skip. That said, I usually skip the final round on Pointless too, unless it's a category I care about.

Mastermind got weird yesterday. Not seen that happen before. It was all above board wasn't it.

How do you mean?

Everybody tying, the person with the weakest first round winning. I suppose it is possible to have much better general knowledge than for the subject one has crammed for. no closing comment from the winner though maybe having to go for a tie breaker question swallowed that time.
Certainly don't remember seeing the 4 way tie at least numerically
spoilers

Oh, ok, that didn't seem suspicious at all to me.

It's gonna happen at some point, it's been going a long time

almost seemed like she ground to a halt when she hit the score. but maybe she had just revised her subject and left her general knowledge though not sure how you revise that.

If she was able to keep track of her score as she's playing then she's already not paying enough attention to the questions. I've seen people lose from better positions than that through just not having a wide enough general knowledge. Or through nerves. Or all manner of other reasons. You wouldn't even believe the reason I basically bottled it and looked an absolute idiot on telly with the final in my grasp, but it was absolutely above board.