Admitting you're a Mensan

I hope that I haven’t given the impression that I’m doubting the intelligence of any of the players in Destination X, because I’m not. Geographical knowledge, well, that’s maybe a different matter, but knowledge and intelligence are by no means the same thing. Now, episode 4’s ejected player, Chloe-Ann, revealed that she was a member of Mensa. During the show many of the other players singled Chloe out for her intelligence, which the editors gleefully used to heighten the shock when she was out.

Incidentally, I stopped paying the fees and let my Mensa membership lapse. This is not the reason for that, but personally, I never found that anyone who learned that I was in Mensa was very impressed to find it out. In fact, it was while this was passing through my mind watching the show on Thursday that it brought to mind probably the most ignorant comment ever made about Mensa to me. This was about five years ago An acquaintance I’d only met a few times got onto the subject of quizzing. “Well,” he asked at one point, “never mind pub quizzes and leagues, what have you won?” Well, I have done well in lots of things but haven’t won a lot of biggies, so I replied, “Mastermind and Brain of Mensa”. His brow furrowed. “Mensa?”  Then it darkened. “Jimmy Savile was in Mensa.”

In all honesty I couldn’t think of anything to say. Had I possessed any wit at all I might have said, “Yes he was. And you know, Adolf Hitler was in the Mothers Union and Jack the Ripper was in the Salvation Army as well?” But then, they weren’t, to the best of my knowledge while Savile was definitely in Mensa.

On reflection, I think that my actual reply which came after a few moments of silence was ‘Yes, I believe he was. I never met him.’ And I don’t know that anything other than that reply, and walking away after saying it would frankly have had the slightest effect.

Destination X - 3 and 4 - Spoilers

Well, being as I don’t have a Mastermind preview to post today – last week’s still stands – I thought I’d give you an update on Destination X. Yeah, I’m still with it, although not necessarily for the reasons the producers might hope.

Well, in this week’s two episodes we did get to see, I suppose, some of the treachery we’d been promised. Although I will have something to say about that. In episode 3 the first stop was a railway station, presumably in the middle of nowhere. The players were split into two teams and then given three challenges. Now, every member of both teams got to see several clues, one of which was a ticket to the Oktoberfest. There were others, but that was the most glaringly obvious clue seen by everyone. The team that completed the challenge got the other glaringly obvious clue – a magazine with an article about Harry Kane.

Now the three players who won this final clue, Nuclear Judith, Marketing Saskia and pilot Josh (my nicknames, no offense intended) decided to use a bit of disinformation and told the others they had seen people dressed in Borussia Dortmund kit. Before the map room there was a distraction when the three original dumped players returned, to face a challenge with the others or a place on the bus. Judith, Josh and Saskia as challenge winners were all exempt, and could pick one other player to go through. Liverpool James, who had an alliance with marketing Saskia, confidently stood in anticipation he’d be the one thus pardoned but Pilot Josh was having none of it and burst out with Taxi Daren’s name. (I was tempted to call him Jackie P’s husband, but I do find his constant references to her as Jackie P rather endearing). Saskia protested but to no avail.

Now, the challenge saw the three newbies each teamed with one of the old hands. The challenge actually required knowledge of places, or sheer luck. Liverpool James gulped apprehensively, and rightly so. Two by two the others claimed their places on the bus until only he and Economics Ashvin remained. In the short time he’s been with us Ash has seemed pretty much on a par with James as regards Euro cluelessness, but he won the challenge anyway.

So on to the destination and the map room. The three newbies were safe for now, while the others had to digest the fact that all the clues everyone has seen that they have been able to decipher point directly to Munich. Only Josh and Saskia now claim to have seen anything relating to Dortmund. Marathon Nick goes correctly with the body of evidence. Surf School Ben in his own words ‘ignores his gut feeling’ and goes for Dortmund. Ben is forced to leave the bus but at least gets to join in with some Bavarian dancing, and the majority of the audience at home are left to ask – how the hell did he not know it was Munich? Well, I have an idea about that which I will come to.

So to episode four. Now, it’s not clear whether Taxi Daren had also gone for Dortmund – but it looks likely. Still, he pushes the idea that the old hands must stay together and work against the three newbies. Challenges make it crystal clear that the destination is connected heavily with the film The Sound of Music. History Chloe-Ann doesn’t know where it was filmed. Taxi Daren strongly suggests they’re going to Vienna. No, says Sergeant Claire, it was filmed in Salzburg. Once in the map room, it looks as if Economics Ash is plumping for Vienna. However History Chloe-Ann definitely does, and she is the furthest away. Like Ben before her she laments not going with her gut.

Okay, observations. On the Traitors, when a majority of the remaining players decide to get you out there is nothing you can do. On Destination X, unless there’s some new rule or rule change that we haven’t foreseen in a upcoming show, nobody forces you to make the specific location choices that decide whether you stay or go. Let’s be clear on that. Thus far your fate has been in your own hands, and no amount of ‘treachery’ can change that.

So far, the destinations have been pretty clear if you ignore all of the white noise and concentrate only on the clues you yourself have seen or heard. Alright, we don’t all have the same amount of Geographical knowledge, to be fair. But if we take Ben’s case, he said he should have gone with his gut. I take a little issue with it. You see, all the knowledge he had, all of the primary evidence he’d seen told him it was Munich. I’d argue that it was his ‘gut’ that told him to go for Dortmund. Likewise, all the clues in episode four didn’t just point to The Sound of Music, they screamed it out in capital letters. Sergeant Claire even told Chloe-Ann it was filmed in Salzburg. Alright, maybe Chloe-Ann has never seen the film. Well, neither have I. But come on – the hills are alive with the sound of Music. Well, there ain’t many hills that are alive with the sound of music in Vienna. But Chloe-Ann still went for Vienna. She claimed she should have gone with her gut. Again, I think she did go with her gut – her gut feeling that Daren, with whom she had shared the prize for winning the first challenge, was telling her the truth, the gut feeling that made her ignore the facts as they were. I suppose you could claim that this is a form of confirmation bias.

So I shall watch the show again this coming week. Not for Rob Bryden, although he does his job perfectly well. Not for the challenges, although these are proving to be quite fun. Not for the minuscule amount of scenery we get shown. Not for the players being sneaky to each other. No, I am primarily interested, I will admit, in just how obvious the destinations will continue to be and just how players continue to convince themselves to plump for the wrong one. Which I suppose is schadenfreude. Well, I don’t have to like myself for watching it.

University Challenge 2026 Round 1 heat four - Newcastle v. Edinburgh

The Teams

Newcastle

Anna McCully Stewart

Alice Groth

Laurie Guard (Capt.)

Dan Hill

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alice Leonard (Capt.)

Rayhana Amjad

Well, at least we were allowed to watch OC and UC last night, which is something.

A first starter on films with the word ‘All’ in the title allowed Anna McCully Stewart to open the Newcastle account with an early buzz. I really liked the bonus set on books read by the Monster in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” – I always thought that the Monster was more of a ‘Titbits’ sort of guy. (Ask your grandparents). Two bonuses were taken. Poor Alice Groth fell right into the trap with the next question. Ullrich Salchow and Alois Lutz identified the sport in question, but she answered with ice skating – while Amol had asked for the correct specific term. Parthav Easwar went the wrong way, trying his luck with ice dancing, while figure skating was the answer required. For the next starter Rayhana Amjad began Edinburgh’s run for home by recogising Simone de Beauvoir’s “Must we burn De Sade?” World capitals and languages brought us both a full house. The next starter asked for the three letters ending a series of words to which we were given the definitions. Newcastle skipper Laurie Guard came in too early with -asm and for the second consecutive starter Newcastle lost five. I’ll talk more about that later. Johnny Richards waited to hear the full question then gave the correct answer of mma. The French actor Vincent ‘Qui?’ Cassel brought two bonuses and the picture starter. Lovely one this. I have never seen the flag of the Russia oblast Volgograd before. But I have seen photos of the Mother Russia statue featured on it, and I knew it is in Volgograd. Nobody had it although Dan Hill came close with Volga. Parthav Easwar knew that La Malinche helped the conquistadores to overthrow the Aztec Empire. This earned the picture bonuses on further flags of Russian oblasts and they didn’t do badly at all with them, scoring a full house. Parthav Easwar knew that pistachios are used in baklava (not only that but they were my least favourite flavour of ice cream available in the sadly missed Rossi’s ice cream parlour in West Ealing.) The human digestive system brought two bonuses. This meant that after Newcastle’s positive start Edinburgh seemed to have the whip hand, leading 90 – 10.

The next starter gave me this week’s baby elephant moment, but also a lap of honour. When it eventually mentioned human papillomavirus – HPV – and smear test the disorder in question had to be cervical cancer. Laurie Guard had that to set Newcastle moving again. A full house on Caspar David Friedrich – been a while since he was namechecked on UC – was swiftly taken. The clues were all there that the next starter was referring to Yeats (W.B. and not Eddie) and Rayhana Amjad gave the answer. Fast growing cities in Africa brought two correct answers. Rayhana Amjad seemed delighted to hear Amol announce that the music round was on Jazz. Nonetheless Dan Hill very nearly beat him to it. Sadly, he gave Art Brubeck as the answer, allowing Rayhana Amjad in with Dave Brubeck. I wonder – if Dan Hill had just said Brubeck, would Amol have accepted it? On balance I think he might well have. More tracks with titles referring to their time signature – look, just go with it, ok? – yielded nothing for their pains. I’ve never heard of tropicalia as referenced in the next starter but I still said Brazil. So did Johnny Richards, correctly. Dynasties of Roman Emperors proved tricky for Edinburgh and they only managed the Julio-Claudians. Newcastle’s bad luck on the buzzer continued when Dan Hill guessed that Jupiter was the second densest planet in the Solar System. Give that it also has the smallest radius Rayhana Amjad knew it had to be Mercury. French mathematician Sophie Germain promised me nowt, but, like Edinburgh I took one on Fermat’s last Theorem. You had to wait and wait with the next starter but as soon as Amol mentioned the Blue Rider Alice Groth was in with Kandinsky. Mythological depictions of scorpions brought a full house and made things look slightly better for Newcastle who now lagged by 55 to Edinburgh’s 145 at the 20 minute mark.

Both teams sat on their buzzers a little for the next starter but Rayhana Amjad worked out that if it’s in ACT it must be Canberra. Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi were not members of Steps, apparently, but architects who brought no more points to Edinburgh. So to the picture starter, and nobody recognised the Rokeby Venus of Velasquez – one of the most famous bottoms in the Art World (Venus’, that is, not Velasquez’s). Alice Groth knew the writer Alice Munro which won the picture bonuses. Other paintings that had, like the Rokeby Venus, been targeted by climate activists brought just one correct answer. Amazingly I got the next Science starter on things linked by the number three. I guessed the cusps mentioned belonged to the tri rather than the bi. Laurie Guard had that one. Endonyms brought us both two correct answers. I believe that having those two penalties early doors in the match had made Newcastle withdraw into their collective shell. Now they seemed to have surmounted that mental hurdle. Time, though, was not on their side. I think that Johnny Richards got the word young (youth) from the reference to the German word jugendstihl for the next starter– that’s where I got it from.’Not even wrong’ brought only one bonus, but Edinburgh were well over the event horizon by now. Dan Hill knew that the bloke in the Wilton Diptych was Richard II. The legacy of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” brought Newcastle a triple figure score at least. Several clues to the word bubble brought Rayhana Amjad another starter. Tuna in Japanese cuisine brought a full house. Nobody knew Bone mineral density for the next starter. There was just time enough for Alice Leonard to give weaving terms warp and weft to take her team to 200, against Newcastle’s 105 at the gong.

When they took starters Newcastle did not do badly with them achieving a good BCR of 67, noticeably better than Edinburgh’s 55. If you can’t at least achieve parity on the buzzer, though, you are always likely to struggle. Hard lines, and congratulations to Edinburgh.

Amol Watch

“Bad luck Dan,” said Amol in response to the Art Brubeck answer – “Them’s the breaks. Quite so.

Amol was pushing it when he said “plenty of time, Newcastle” just past 17 minutes.  

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

Shaming as it is to admit it, I was not previously aware that Dar Es Salaam means abode of peace.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

A test for which specific disorder was developed in the 1920s by the physician Georgios Papanikolaou? (who was surely a character in the League of Gentlemen. Hello Dave.) The test involves the collection of squamous and glandular cells, which are observed for abnormalities such as the presence of koilocytes, a hallmark of infection by the human papillomavirus and the test is often known - (here there was an incorrect buzz from Parthav Easwar) – by an abbreviation of Papanikolau’s name as a pap test or pap smear.

Need I say more? Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Off piste on the Butter Mountain

You must forgive me for going off-piste again with this post. Blame it on me being piste off that there's no Mastermind tonight

In the building where I work there is a ban on putting used Dolce Gusto/Nespresso coffee pods in the bins. And the thing is that I do like a Dolce Gusto when I sit down at my desk in the morning to find out how many calls to the DAP have come in overnight. Normally the empties are taken and disposed of by one of my colleagues. However, she was on leave all last week and part of the previous so on Thursday I took a carrier bag into work in which to carry away the empties and dispose of them elsewhere.

Come the end of the day, as I was taking my empties-filled bag to my car, my boss asked me what I was going to do with them. To which I replied that my plan was to add them to the EU’s empty coffee pod mountain. At this point it’s probably a good idea to tell you that my manager is still in her mid 20s. She looked at me askance. “You know,” I continued, “like the EU butter mountain?” No, of course she didn’t know. Total incomprehension. For one thing, we haven’t even been part of the EU for a good few years (sadly in my opinion, but feel free to disagree.) For another thing, according to my perfunctory research there hasn’t even been an EU butter mountain since about 2017.

I mean, it’s not that I’m nostalgic about the European butter mountain, you understand. I’m only nostalgic about the mental picture it conjured up the first time that I heard the phrase. When I was a kid it conjured up images of various woolly hatted continental types skiing down an unusually yellow and slippery mountain somewhere outside Strasbourg. I suppose I felt it belonged in the same category as Max Boyce’s outside-half factory and Ken Dodd’s jam butty mines. Somehow I can’t see the Destination X team visiting any of those destinations. Well, not in the first series anyway.

It's sodding started early this year.

It’s sodding started, hasn’t it. Look, I get it that the ending of the England v. India 5^th test was a big sporting occasion. Not of that much interest to me if truth be told, but I get it. But come on, don’t take Mastermind off to make room for it. Or if it HAS to be one of the Quizzy Monday trio, then take it in turns. This time Only Connect, next time UC and then Mastermind after that. Not gonna happen. What makes it worse is that I didn’t know Mastermind had been taken off until I actually tuned in for it.

Destination X Review (Spoilers)

Should we talk about the BBC’s Destination X? Of course we should. But it’s not a quiz? So what, it’s my ball and we play by my rules.

Okay, so it’s been inaccurately described as The Traitors v. Race Across the World. I will come to what’s so inaccurate about this a bit later. Now, I love both of these shows and if you’re familiar with both of them you’ll be aware that these are very different shows. Now, the danger of trying of combine the appeal of two very different shows is that you end up falling between two stools and when you fall between two stools you often just fall.

To briefly summarise what the show seems to be about, 13 contestants met in what looked to be a very small and rather fake departure lounge in Baden Baden airport. This was narrowed down to 10 contestants, who were helicoptered away to where 2 buses with windows (temporarily) blacked out– one for the day and one for the night awaited. On each show they were taken to a well-known European destination. On the way there were stops for clues. At the climax of each show, each remaining contestant had to put their x on a high-tech interactive map to mark where they believed they were. The one who was furthest away was unceremoniously ejected.

Does that sound in any way similar to The Traitors to you? There’s no voting, for one thing. Yes, the contestants don’t all get all of the clues, and so they can be sneaky about what they reveal to each other, but it’s all very tame considering how much the promotion for the show has been pushing this angle. As for Race Across the World? Well, both shows see people travelling a lot. That’s about it. In Race Around the World we do at least get a glimpse of the life and culture of the places being visited. There are chances for us to vicariously stop and smell the roses a little. Alright, to be fair we did get to see a little more scenery in episode 2, but there’s only so much they can show you without losing the play along at homeability. And in Race Across the World, an integral factor is players negotiating hurdles with transport. In Destination X, the transport is all laid on.

So, if you choose to watch because you’ve bought the hype about its similarity to those shows you may well be disappointed. Watch it with an open mind and judge it on its own merits and you may find, as I did, that you give it a cautious approval. The first two episodes did enough to make we want to watch episode 3 this coming week. You know me, I’m a bit of a misanthrope but for all that I do find some of the personalities on board to be quite interesting. Having said that, I could do without Nick – the one who has run a marathon in every country on Earth – continually being dragged into the diary room to tell us he is prepared to be ruthless when it is necessary.  Rob Brydon is a good old Baglan (area of Port Talbot) boy, so he will get no criticism from me and he does the job of presenting the show perfectly well. I think he realises that this is not The Rob Brydon show and that a relatively understated approach works.

It all comes down to the game play, though, and I felt that episode 2 did this better than episode 1. The destination of Episode 1 was Paris. I was pretty much certain it would be so after Mr. Brydon said that the destination was one of the first cities in Europe to be electrically lit. Then he gave us a list of European cities with copies of the Statue of Liberty and didn’t mention Paris. Admittedly there was a strange interlude in Alsace Lorraine, where, amongst some red herrings the contestants were given some clues that belonged in Sybil Fawlty’s Mastermind round on the Bleedin’ Obvious while others would not have been out of place amongst the prize clues in 3-2-1 (ask your grandparents).

I enjoyed the second episode more especially the set piece where the contestants were separated into two teams, put in cable cars which stopped at the same point, high above the ground, and then told to carry out activities to earn a clue. That was fun. Mind you, the big clue that the winning team earned couldn’t have made it a lot more obvious that we were going to the Matterhorn. I mean, it wasn’t quite the full Alpen box, but even so. Mind you, only Marathon Nick seemed to understand it.

Well, as I said there was enough to make me want to give it another go for episode 3. I have to say, though, normally when I like a reality game show, I’d like to play in it myself. In the last 9 years or so I’ve visited over 20 European countries. I love travel, and the idea of travelling all around Europe – and never seeing hardly ANY of it! – is something which just seems wrong.

Mastermind Heat Four subjects

Good morning all. I’ve just had a glance at tomorrow night’s specialist subjects on the Mastermind website. They are – the playing career of Sunil Gavaskar, The Hunger Games, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and Edvard Munch. I’ll be honest, it’s a case of - pools dividend forecast poor - for me. Cricket is not my favourite sport (unlike several relatives. Both my first cousin and my daughter’s soon to be father-in-law work in cricket in the South East.) I’ve only seen the first film of The Hunger Games series and never read any of the books. I know very little about Leonard Bernstein and as regards Edvard Munch, I’ve seen one version of the Scream in Oslo, but that’s about the length of it. I hope there will be some pieces of low hanging fruit in at least a couple of these rounds, because if I get any points, that will be where they’re most likely to come from.

We got a lot of points in Thursday night’s quiz, but typically it was one of the points we didn’t get that I remember most. Thursday night’s question master, whom I like a great deal as a person, is the same one who has been nicknamed Captain Slapdash by my team. It’s a nickname he’s earned, I’m afraid, by giving some answers that he could have found were just plain wrong by the simplest google search. Well, he was going great guns on Thursday until we got to round 7 out of 8. “Sport.” He announced. “Who was the only British swimmer to win a gold medal in the 1980 Summer Olympics, and you can have a bonus if you give me the event.” – Easy – said I – Duncan Goodhew, 100m breaststroke.- The answer the Captain gave ? Sharron Davies – 400m individual medley.- I couldn’t stop myself from protesting but it did no good.

Being the kind of person I am I thought – well, Duncan definitely won gold, and Sharron definitely got silver on the podium, but in light of revelations about the East German doping programme, and Gold medal recipient Petra Schneider’s subsequent admission that she was doped, has Sharron Davies, I wondered – been retrospectively awarded gold? Apparently not, which is a bit of a scandal if you want my opinion. It’s not even as if she was the only silver, either. Phil Hubble – who I think was swimming for Hounslow at the time - won silver in the 200m butterfly.

Is it some comfort that at least the East German cheating was eventually revealed to the world, even though Sharron Davies has yet to receive the gold medal that her performance deserved? You’d have to ask her that. She’s been quite open about the fact that everyone in the sport knew the East Germans were at it at the time.

Still, it is interesting to speculate how many cheats who won Olympic titles who have never been conclusively revealed as such. The first three Olympic Marathons have all had the finger of suspicion pointed in their direction. First across the line in 1904, Fred Lorz, was definitely cheating, and found out too. He said he had caught a lift after dropping out, and ran into the stadium after being dropped off a mile or so away as a prank. In 1900 baker’s roundsman Michel Theato has been accused of using his local knowledge to take shortcuts enabling him to win. A similar accusation has been levelled at the inaugural 1896 winner, Greek shepherd Spiridon Louis. Host nation Greece were without a win going into the final event, and to an outpouring of national joy the first three men to finish the race were Greek. However, 4^th placed runner Gyula Kellner from Hungary reported that the third placed man had boarded a carriage for at least part of the journey. Kellner was awarded third while the hapless cheat had the athletics vest stripped from his back in front of the stadium. The speculation goes that Louis, the winner, may have cheated in a similar way. I suppose you have to say, though, that considering any Greek winner had been promised free haircuts for life, you can understand the temptations.

Probably the most famous case of a disqualification in an Olympic Marathon, in 1908, wasn’t a case of conscious cheating at all. Dorando Pietri entered the White City stadium comfortably ahead of the field. However he was in a bad way. A group of officials kind of gathered him up and ushered him over the line, by the Royal Box. When the second person over the line was an America athlete called Johnny Hayes the US officials protested and Pietri was disqualified. Urban myth has it that one of the officials in the photograph taken as Pietri was bundled over the line was Sir Arthur Coan Doyle. I suppose there is a vague resemblance, but it has been proven that it wasn’t.

Dorando’s is not quite as sad a story as it may sound, since there was a huge outpouring of sympathy for him and he was presented with an inscribed silver cup by Queen Alexandra. This cup is still in existence and is currently kept in the vault of the Unicorp branch in Carpi in the province of Modena in Italy. For the centenary of the Dorando Marathon, it was displayed in London during the London Marathon.