University Challenge 2026 Quarter Final - UCL v. Merton, Oxford

The Teams

UCL

Zak Lakota-Baldwin

Alice Lee

Michael Doherty (Capt)

Manny Campion-Dye

Merton, Oxford

Ciaran Duncan

Eveline Ong

Elliot Cosnett

Verity Fleetwood-Law

Off we go then, with neither team to be given their bus fare home at the end of this match, since it’s the quarters. Ciaran Duncan came in too early for the first starter allowing Alice Lee to identify Anthony and Cleopatra for the first starter. Bonuses on films whose titles contain a chemical element (the Unsinkable Molybdenum Brown?) brought them the best possible start with a full house. Alice Lee zigged with Dekker for the next starter when she should’ve zagged with Desmond allowing Elliot Cosnett to put his team into a positive score. Bonuses on John Marston’s The Malcontent  brought their own full house to level the scores. Eveline Ong recognised references to Gericault for the next starter and Hollywood film legends yielded the third consecutive full house of the show. None of us recognised Blackburn for the picture starter. I didn’t get the next starter about molecular modelling but Eveline Ong knew the answer was methane. I often find that. Bonus photographs of towns with Cathedrals but lacking city status – I thought they might show Guildford but didn’t – brought no points. Manny Campion-Dye came in remarkably early for the next starter to identify the words of Kant. Veterinary medicine brought a single bonus and this meant that UCL trailed at just after 10 minutes as Merton led 55-35.

For the next starter Michael Doherty was first to realise that South American country – and – ask permission from Amsterdam must mean Suriname. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (I preferred Blondie’s) brought UCL the two bonuses they needed to draw level. Eveline Ong was very quick to recognise a description of the opera Elektra. Three plays with the word God in the title brought both of us just the one correct answer. Nobody knew the document legitimizing the rule of Richard III. Zak Lakota-Baldwin took his first starter recognising a description of viruses. Women honoured in the Pantheon in Paris brought a single bonus. It was back to opera and back to Eveline Ong for the music starter. She recognised Delibes’ Lakme. Other musical works with lyrics by Gille brought a single bonus. The match had developed into a bit of a dour old slugfest at this midway point. Now, I did know that Hans Christian Anderson was born in Odense and so did Alice Lee. Statistical mechanics announced Amol. No thanks, I replied, but he carried on anyway. UCL were quite happy about it and took a full house. Ciaran Duncan knew y-u-g-a (it’s fun to stay at the y-u-g-a) for the next starter. Poems of Shakespeare brought two bonuses. Manny Campion-Dye had a great early buzz to identify T.S.Eliot’s description of Tiresias. Japanese authors whose names included Kawa or Gawa brought nowt to any of us. Still, UCL had a narrow lead of 105-95 at just after 20 minutes.

Who wanted it more? Well, Elliot Cosnett was first to buzz for what was surely the work of Durer. So it was. More etchings brought us both just the one bonus. Michael Doherty won the buzzer race to identify a minority language in Portugal. The ceremonial county of South Yorkshire brought just one bonus. Individual bonuses looked as if they would be crucial to the result in this match. Nobody knew about the FBI approach to offender profiling. Nope, me neither. Elliot Cosnett knew the Federalist Papers for the next starter. Baked goods made from choux pastry brought just a single bonus. Nothing to choose between the teams at this point. Elliot Cosnett took a flyer on the next starter and fortune favoured the brave as he identified rivers forming the border between China and North Korea. European history yielded a full house – was this going to be the decisive moment that separated the teams? No, for Michael Doherty knew that the first head of CERN was called Bloch. So a Bloch-head, in fact. Well, please yourselves. Zora Neale Hurston brought just the one bonus. Zak Lakota-Baldwin knew the Coltranes (Robbie and Roscoe?) for the next starter. Disguises in opera brought them the one bonus they needed to tie the score. Surely the next starter would win. The answer was Fleurs – as in du Mal – and it was given by Elliot Cosnett. GONG! Merton had won by 160-150.

Both teams managed the same number of starters. UCL managed a BCR of 48% while Merton managed 55.5%. That’s the tale of the tape, folks, it all came down to just two bonuses. A great match.

Amol Watch

I felt Amol was just a little arsey in this show. ‘Chester is absolutely nowhere near there!” he sniffed on the picture starter. After the picture bonuses he added ‘you’re quite right, your Geography is terrible’ and without a chuckle in his voice either. Amol, mate, you don’t need to try to be Jeremy Paxman.

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

The name Desmond is derived from words meaning from South Munster

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In thermodynamics the words ‘canonical’ or ‘grand canonical’ may precede what 8 letter word to refer to a collection of many sets of particles that each represent a possible state of a physical system?  - it’s not the longest dumdum we’ve ever had, but flippin’ ‘eck! Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

3 more Sleb Masterminds to go

 It is with a heavy heart that I noticed we still have 3 Celebrity Masterminds to go in the current series. There is no date on the BBC Mastermind website for the real show to start again. I hope that it will be in a fortnight, since the last sleb show is due to be shown on Wednesday 28th January. 

BBC did a similar thing with last year's series and I'm afraid that it pretty much killed the rest of round one for me. It didn't help that with one exception the scores were unremarkable. I mean, not as low as the celebrity scores but not high enough to get the juices flowing as it were. 

Well, there we are. Grin and bear it and hurry back the real show.

Yob Hone Men

Just because you know what you mean, it can be dangerous to assume that everyone, or even anyone else does. When I was a young child in the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s, we had a real life Steptoe and Son style rag and bone man who’d drive his horse and cart down our street once a week. Periodically he would cry out what I think must have been ‘Any Old Bone?”. But that’s not what I heard. No, the way that he shouted it sounded to me like “Yob hone!” So to me he became ‘the yob hone man’. I distinctly remember when my mum said something or other was knackered and needed to be thrown out I told my mother – you can give it to the yob hone man. After some discussion she worked out what I was talking about and put me right.

Well, one of my pet peeves in a quiz is where a question master asks a question in such a way that you have to try to work out exactly what he’s talking about before you answer it. For example, on Thursday night our question master asked – name all of the English managers in the Premier League When he read out the answers he did not include Liam Rosenior. When we protested he replied – Well, he wasn’t Chelsea’s manager when I wrote the quiz! How the hell were we supposed to know he meant name all the English managers in the Premier league up to 31^st December 2025, when he didn’t actually say so?

Two other questions on Thursday night brought out the pedant in me. How about this one? The Treaty that ended World War 1 was named after which French Palace? Now, you know that he meant Versailles, and so did we and that’s what we wrote down. But it’s annoying because that was only the treaty with Germany. The treaty with Austria was named after the Chateau de St. Germain en Laye. The Treaty with Hungary was named after the Trianon Chateau. And so it goes. Would it have hurt to specify the treaty with Germany? When I was handing out the LAMMY awards in December I said that I would like to give one to question masters who aren’t in my team, but they don’t deserve it. This sort of thing is one of the reasons why.

In the same quiz the question master asked “Who was the key figure behind the Russian Revolution?” Now again, you know he meant Lenin, and we wrote down Lenin. But really! For one thing there were two Russian Revolutions of 1917, and Lenin wasn’t even in Russia when it started, and knew bugger all about it before it did. It’s just a needlessly messy question, which betrays the question master’s lack of thoroughness in preparing his questions. Even if you do prepare carefully, now and again mistakes are going to creep in. But if you don’t prepare carefully I’d say it’s pretty much guaranteed.  

University Challenge 2026 Round 2 Manchester v Edinburgh

The Teams

Manchester

Ray Power

Kirsty Dickson

Kai Madgwick (Capt)

Rob Faulkner

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alicia Leonard (Capt)

Rayhana Amjad

Rayhana Amjad set the tone for the contest with a fast buzz to identify that various theories were all connected with Truth. Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth. Well, that might be all Keats knew, but to be fair he did die very young. Funnily enough Keats featured in two of the bonuses on Coleridge that followed, of which Edinburgh managed 1. Johnny Richards recognised allusions to Jean Cocteau for the next starter. 2 bonuses were taken on the First International. A starter on human neurones brought my baby elephant walk moment but not a lot else as nobody had all or nothing. Maybe they should have mentioned the Small Faces. Rayhana Amjad won the buzzer race to identify Polari for the Polari Award. Fantasy literature and the Fallout series of video games brought one more bonus. The Edinburgh surge continued when Johnny Richards identified the Royal Academy in the next starter.French philosopher Nicholas ‘Qui?’ Malebranche brought a brace of bonuses. So to the picture starter. We’ve had something very similar to this a few years ago, as Kai Madgwick opened his team’s account by identifying the flag of the British East India Company. Flags of other colonial or neo colonial companies brought a full house of  bonuses. So as we approached the 10 minute mark, despite having answered all bar one of the starters Edinburgh only led by 70 – 25.

As did I, Rayhana Amjad leapt into action when the name Robert Jordan was mentioned in the next starter and answered The Wheel of Time. Doubly eponymous experiments in Science saw me earn a lap of honour by the simple expedient of answering Michelson-Morley to all three until it was right. Edinburgh had that one as well. I’ll be honest, as soon as I heard a culinary word taken from Malay I said ketchup, pretty much at the same time that Johnny Richards did too. Shakespeare’s Henry VIII yielded just the one bonus. Now, I’m sorry, but if you’re going to use the word nucleotide in a starter, I ain’t going to be answering it. Whatever it was on about Johnny Richards had it with Methionine. Gesundheit. Fabrics named after cities and towns brought one bonus. Amol encouraged Manchester at this point but all it served to do was to make Kai Madgwick gamble and lose five on Hector’s wife. (Not Kiki the Cat or Zaza the Frog. Ask your grandparents.) Nobody knew this was Andromache.A wonderful quote about Indians being cursed with anthropologists remained untouched on the table. Johnny Richards knew about a world heritage site in Turin for the next starter. The Irish Defence Forces brought just one bonus, but what the hell. Edinburgh’s dominance on the buzzer at this stage of the contest meant this was like shooting fish in a barrel. At last Kai Madgwick’s theatrical buzzing style bore fruit as he buzzed very early recognising the work of Shostakovitch for the music starter. 3 pieces of jazz brought one bonus. Nobody knew Robert K. Merton for the next starter, but I used to enjoy his wife’s chat show on telly. Kai Madgwick knew Simpson’s Rule for the next starter. D’oh! Otto Preminger brought one bonus.But Kai Madgwick had found his range and took his third consecutive starter with American Prairie style. Mary-Anthony Turnage brought one bonus. This meant that Edinburgh led by 135 – 65 at 20 minutes.

Nobody knew about a painting by Veronese for the next starter. Right, a small digression. Dr. Andrea Clough, one of my lecturers at Uni, once told us, when encountering a reference to Jonah in a medieval work of literature – you think you know the story of Jonah but you don’t. Read the whole Book then come back to me. She was right, but that’s the reason I knew all about the gourd for the next starter. So did Rayhana Amjad. He wasn’t born when I was at Uni, so fair play to him for knowing it. Women depicted in paintings by Waterhouse saw Edinburgh take a rare full house. For the second picture starter Johnny Richards won the buzzer race to identify a famous statue of Laocoon and his sons. Other works of art in which this famous sculpture is depicted or referenced brought a single bonus, but when you’re 100 points in the lead, that’s not a huge concern to you. Nobody knew about the River Lagan for the next starter. Johnny Richards knew that there’s apricot jam in a sachertorte. Drought tolerant plants for UK gardens brought nowt for any of us. Kai Madgwick knew about the Amistad for the next starter – even though he seemed disbelieving that his answer was correct. Historic figures whose hearts are buried in a separate location from their bodies made me think of Chopin – I’ve been in the Warsaw Church where he left his heart. He was the third answer. Manchester had him and Livingston but missed out on Robert the Bruce. Rayhana Amjad knew George Saunders wrote Lincoln in the Bardo. I read it after the last time it featured in UC. Weird but good. (That’s Lincoln in the Bardo, not Rayhana Amjad.) Malory’s Morte d’Arthur provided no points. That was that , there was not time to complete the next starter. Edinburgh won comfortably by 195 - 80

For the record Manchester’s BCR was 53.3% while Edinburgh’s was 41.6%. An interesting statistic which proves that on this show it was bonuses for show, but starters for dough. Only Kai Madgwick was buzzing for Manchester, and he was being beaten in too many buzzer races. That’s how it goes.

Amol Watch

It was on 13 minutes and 30 seconds that Amol encouraged Manchester. Do you remember when Amol seemed to have Jedi like powers and his encouragement really galvanised teams? Seems like a long time ago now.

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

The Residences of the Royal House of Savoy is a UNESCO world heritage site in Turin.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

What three word term is used to describe the principle that an action potential will only be fired if a certain threshold level of polarisation is achieved ? The action potential produced will be the same size each time the potential is met, regardless of the intensity of the stimulus. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Interesting Fact

I was reading Bill Bryson’s excellent “Made in America” again this morning. All of Bill Bryson’s writing is excellent = I used to use extracts from Notes a Small Country when I was teaching English to demonstrate how to construct beautiful prose. Now, I have read this before, but I was struck by a fact he mentions that I just had not noticed before. Namely, that Colonel Harlan “Kentucky Fried Chicken” Sanders was not originally from Kentucky. He was from Indiana. Which is interesting in itself since (fictional) Indiana Jones (probably ) wasn’t from Indiana. Indiana is a nickname he took from the family dog. For that matter, Tennessee Williams wasn’t born in Tennessee. He was born in Mississippi.

Now with respect to the Colonel, if challenged on this I guess he would have said, “Ah say boy, ah never said ah was from Kentucky, ah say, ah say. Ah said that the chickens was!” I mean, I guess this because he passed away in 1980 so I can’t ask him. Well, only through a medium, anyway. I always imagine him having a Foghorn Leghorn voice like that, probably because of the image he adopted which was used so successfully in the branding of his company and its products. I guess that he took off the white suit when he went to bed, but he certainly seemed to be wearing it every time he was photographed.

Interestingly he was a genuine Kentucky Colonel. Being made a Kentucky Colonel doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the military. Essentially it is one of the highest honours that can be bestowed on an individual by the state of Kentucky. So while there are military colonels in Kentucky, Colonel Sanders did not hold that rank in the army. He was briefly a member of the other ranks in his teens in Cuba. Amazingly he lied about his age, served as a waggoner for a few months between he was found out and given an honourable discharge. There you go.So I guess, whatever else you might have said about him, you have to admit that he certainly wasn’t chicken.

I’m here all week, ladies and gents.

University Challenge 2026 - Round 2 - Churchill, Cambridge v Merton, Oxford

The Teams

Churchill College Cambridge

Ella McGovern

Matt Hasler

Sam Webber (Capt)

Shiv Seshan

Merton College Oxford

Ciaran Duncan

Evelyn Ong

Elliot Cosnett (Capt)

Verity Fleetwood-Law

I’ll be honest, I don’t really mind UC at Christmas, not like I’m really going off Sleb Mastermind. Part of that is because it doesn’t outstay its welcome, at least. Mastermind, take note.

So here we go then. With the first starter, I’ll be honest, when I heard it was Jean Paul Sartre describing a sculptor I thought Rodin. But when Amol started going on about elongated figures it had to be Giacometti. Nobody got it but Merton lost five. If you knew that William of Orange landed in Brixham then the first four letters were the answer to the next starter. Ella McGovern buzzed in and took first blood for Darwin. Now I take pride for knowing that the Barrons created electronic music for one of my favourite films, Forbidden Planet, which Churchill didn’t, and we both knew Stanley Kubrick for the last of the set on electronic film music. Elliot Cosnett took his first starter recognising a Tolkien quote about Beowulf. Philosopher/mathematician Putnam (David? Surely not.) brought two correct answers. Elliot Cosnett knew that there have been more popes called Pius since the reign of Napoleon I than you can shake a stick at for the next starter. Trust me, shaking a stick at a pope is a greatly overrated hobby. A full house on Thomas Middleton’s ever popular blockbuster A Game of Chess pushed Merton ahead. For the picture starter Ciaran Duncan recognised the work of George ‘Spotty’ Herbert. Other examples of concrete poetry (google it) provided nowt. If you came in too early on the next starter chances are you would lose five like Churchill. But Merton, hearing the name Sarajevo could be very certain the conflict described was the Bosnian War. Locations in some video game or other surprisingly gave me a full house. Merton managed one, and this meant that as the 10 minute mark loomed large in our collective windscreen they led by 65 – 10.

Elliot Cosnett knew Stephen Jay Gould’s The Hedgehog and the Fox for the next starter. Owen ‘Who’ Jones, architect and designer, brought two bonuses and Merton marched onwards. Siv Seshan stopped the rot for Churchill, winning the buzzer race to identify Crispin as one of two saints name checked in a famous speech in Henry V. Photographer and activist Nan Goldin brought a welcome brace of bonuses, at a time when Churchill were in danger of being muscled out of the match. Siv Seshan took his double with the next starter on the original kilogram. Pasta dishes whose names begin and end with the same letter  - al fabetti spaghetta, anyone? – yielded one correct answer. Nobody recognised a wee bit of Liszt for the music starter. Ciaran Duncan was in very quickly in for the next starter – he only needed one Pauline (probably Kael). Music bonuses on classical works written in memory of cultural figures brought one bonus. Elliot Cosnett knew that Hermes killed a tortoise (and a cow) in order to make the world’s first lyre. Those Greek gods, eh? The moon Europa brought two bonuses, and even the one they didn’t get was mentioned. Elliot Cosnett knew the two Erskines – Caldwell and Childers for the next starter. The German noble house of Thurn and Taxis (far more noble and more expensive than Thurn und Minicabs) brought another 2 bonuses. Again Siv Seshan buzzed to pull his team back from the brink with Active Galactic Nucleus (a support act for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in their 1981 tour, surely). 2 correct answers on the Chinese monk Faxian brought the score to 145 – to 65 to Merton just before the 20 minute mark.

Matt Hasler knew that the only team from a landlocked country to win the America’s Cup came from Geneva. Fossils discovered by Mary Anning brought two bonuses. I didn’t get the Buckland one either – I thought it might have been someone like Gideon Mantell. For the second picture starter Verity Fleetwood-Law correctly identified a painting by Hans Holbein. When Amol announced the bonuses would all be portraits of Doctors by other artists, Dr. Gachet sprang irresistibly to mind. Indeed, that was the only one either of us identified. A series of clues pointing to Charles I saw the splendid Merton skipper add another starter to his collection. Usage of the Hangul alphabet in languages other than Korean promised but little yet Merton again took a brace, and let’s be honest, it ended any real doubt that we might have had about the outcome of the match. Nobody knew Chanakya for the next starter. Nobody knew Oswald Avery (Tex’s brother?) for the next starter. For that matter nobody recognised a couple of lines from Keats’ Ode to Psyche for the next starter either. At last Ciaran Duncan took the next starter recognising the Concrete Jungle as the first example of the Heist movie. I do like a heist movie, me. Yom Tov, 6 major festival dates in the Jewish calendar, brought nowt. Siv Seshan knew that the second hand on an analogue clock passes through 6 degrees every second. I liked that question. One bonus was taken from a gettable set on Cicero. Fair play to Siv Seshan, he was still bussing away gamely at this point and took the next starter recognising that two Scottish 13^th century kings and two successive 19^th century Tsars were all called Alexander. Sarah Siddons added just one bonus to their score. That was that. Merton won by 180 to 115.

For the record Churchill achieved a BCR of 48% while Merton’s was 52%. Fairly even there, but there just wasn’t enough buzzing throughout the Churchill team to munt a realistic challenge.

Amol Watch

Nothing to see here. Go on with your lives, citizens.

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

The original kilogram was made from platinum and iridium

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Nope, noting bored the pants off me this week. Don’t worry. There will be another soporific science question along shortly

Happy New Year - but what about 2025?

Well, we all know what the 8^th January is, don’t we? Apart from my son Mike’s 38^th birthday, that is. First Thursday of the New Year? No? Alright, I’ll tell you. First Thursday night quiz in January is my quiz of the evets of the previous year.

Some years there’s so much has happened that the quiz practically writes itself and you’re beating off the good questions with a stick. Others, like 2025, are a little less productive. Still, even thought I can’t go giving away all the contents of the quiz, I will share with you possibly my favourite –

Anthony Coulson, general manager at the McVitie's chocolate refinery and bakery in Stockport – made what revelation in 2025?

The answer?

Well, he revealed that the side of the chocolate digestive with the chocolate is actually meant to be the bottom of the biscuit.