New TV Quiz/Game show review - The Floor

Way back in the mists of time (last year) I wrote about Rob Brydon’s Destination X. As I recall I rather enjoyed the show, even though there really was next to no quiz content within it. A couple of weeks ago he launched the first instalment of the ITV version of a show that has been a hit stateside and in other countries. This is The Floor.

I may have elements of this wrong, so don’t take everything I say as gospel, but as I understand it, the show works like this. 81 players occupied spaces on a 9x9 grid. Each player had their own nominated specialist subject. The player who starts can choose the players in any square adjacent to theirs to play against. So if, for the sake of argument, the player chooses to play against Bob who has nominated early Etruscan Pottery as his subject, then the two square off in a head to head on Early Etruscan pottery. The head to heads are short rounds. Basically the two players are both given 60 seconds on their clocks. In turns thy are asked questions about – what did we say? Oh yes, early Etruscan Pottery. A correct answer moves the question to the other player. When the time runs out on one of the players, the other wins. Whoever wins takes over the other player’s square as well as their own, and I believe that the opponent’s specialist subject becomes their’s. Whoever loses leaves with nothing.

Now, on paper at least this format is not without interest. After all, with a little effort we can all be good on our own specialist subject. But a wide range of them? I can see strategic thinking being involved but sooner or later contestants are going to need to show decent knowledge of a potentially wide range of topics. I like that. For that matter I like Rob Brydon, one of Port Talbot’s finest. So having got all of that in its favour, I think that I should own up to a salient fact. I watched all of the first show. I haven’t watched it since. Partly this was because I forgot that it was on. But that in itself tells its own story. Because when you get right down to it a show like this should have gripped me. But it didn’t grip me enough to make an appointment with myself to watch the next show.

It’s hard to be absolutely cut and dried about why this doesn’t quite deliver for me, but I’d say it boils down to a couple of things. If you’ve been with me for a while you know that I much prefer shows where the questions – chat ratio is slanted much more towards the former. I haven’t sat down to work out just how much of the show’s length is given up to questions being asked and answered, but in all honesty it didn’t seem like a lot to me.

Also, on the show I watched it seemed to me that at least a couple of the contestants had only a brief passing acquaintance with their specialist subjects. Now I will admit that I don’t know just how the allocation of specialist subjects worked on the show – whether it was totally up to the contestants themselves, or whether they were given a selection of subjects to choose from, or whether it was dictated to them – you will do this subject. But if they had a free hand to choose their own subjects, well, some of them weren’t that impressive to be perfectly honest. As for the moolah, well it is possible to pick up £5000 bonuses as you go along. The grand prize is £50,000. Ok, that’s certainly not to be sniffed at, but it isn’t riches beyond the dreams of avarice, is it? Not when you compare it to other shows of the genre.

Well, there we are. I may watch again. But then again I may not.

Half and Half

So, the big question is – am I in a glass half full, or a glass half empty kind of mood, writing this? Let’s have a look at the glass half empty view. We got to the club on Thursday night to find that the question master was doing 8 themed rounds. Each team would have two jokers, to play before the start of whichever 2 rounds they chose, Now, this sort of thing is not my cup of tea really, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Now let’s look at the glass half full point of view. It wasn’t as bad as I feared.

So, what’s wrong with themed and/or gimmicked quizzes? Well, although it is perfectly possible to make a very good quiz that is themed and/or uses gimmicks like jokers, it is difficult. It requires skill, patience and a capacity for taking pains with it, even if it means ripping up a round and starting again because it just doesn’t quite work. In my experience it is only very good question masters ( and most of these that I have known have also been good quizzers) who can pull this off.

Now, as I have said before, on a personal level I like all of the regular quiz setters in the club. But I’m afraid that I think that, with the exception of Dan, Adam and Jess, they are none of them much better than okay. That’s harsh and it maybe sounds mean-spirited. All of us who set the quiz for the club do it for nothing more than a couple of drinks and a desire to give people an evening’s entertainment. Well, there’s a scene in the film of Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical “Biloxi Blues” where Matthew Broderick’s character - supposedly based on Simon himself – is made to read out his journal by other members of his training platoon, and he doesn’t want to read out what he has written about his friend Eugene, because he expresses the suspicion that he might be gay. (Look, the film is set during World War II) When he is reluctant to read it out, Eugene tells him, and I’m paraphrasing here – if he compromises on what he feels then he becomes a candidate for mediocrity. So, although I don’t necessarily like myself for saying it, this is really what I feel. And that is, that you should master the craft of putting together a good, basic general knowledge quiz on a regular basis before you try doing anything more complex.

Last night’s setter I have written about before. Starting with the negatives, Dan once nicknamed the setter Captain Slapdash and I can’t think of a more apt nickname. Why? Well, like me he’s been setting quizzes for the club for a long time now, and he’s been playing in the quiz for even longer than I have. So, over the years you hear certain questions again and again. You think you know what the answers are so when you use them yourself you can’t be bothered to check. In the sports round last night he asked ‘Who is the only track and field athlete to win gold medals in the same individual event in four consecutive Olympic Games? Now, you’ll probably have spotted the issue with this question. Because there are two athletes who have done this now. Yes, when I started quizzing the only one was Al Oerter who won the discus in 4 consecutive Olympic Games. But since then, Carl Lewis did the same in the Long Jump. It’s not hard to find this out but you have to check in the first place. It is not enough as a question master merely THINKING your answer is right. If you can’t, won’t or don’t accept this, then why are you making the quiz in the first place?

You know, when I started going to the quiz in the club 31 years ago, one of the things that used to really frustrate me – in fact it still does – is when a question master doesn’t pay enough attention to the phrasing of their question, and so doesn’t actually ask what they think they’re asking. Case in point – last night the second round on which we played our joker was ‘what came fourth?’. Except that it wasn’t. It was – which one is missing from this group of four? - Now, that’s okay, it’s just a small point. But one of the questions was - Which is missing from this list of America’s founding fathers? - This greatly annoys me. The Founding Fathers is, I believe a term applied to the signers of the US Declaration of Independence, and there were more than 4 of them! Now, from the list – Washington, John Adams, James Madison it was fairly clear that what he really meant was the first four US presidents, with the missing third president being Thomas Jefferson - but that isn’t what he asked for and I find it irritating

Which is a shame because with those couple of questions put to one side, he didn’t do a bad job of it at all. If you take the view that even in a themed round there should be as much variety as possible and something for everyone (and you should) then there was only one round where he fell short. This was the first one on Wales in the 21^st Century. Once what is essentially an ‘in the news’ question is more than a couple of years old you’re going to really struggle to recall the answers, and with one exception all of the teams had a low score on this round. In other rounds, though, the theme was not that much more than a rather general link which worked a lot better. For example, Wedding Anniversary Gifts was a round in which all of the answers contained a wedding anniversary gift even though that wasn’t what the question was actually about. This was nicely done – and we were kicking ourselves for not seeing that the answer to ‘what spans 9 provinces and 100 counties? – might be the Great Wall of China.

Continuing in glass half full vein, people do like ‘the captain’. He has a lot of charm as a question master and Dan has made the point that there is always a nice atmosphere at his quiz. And to be fair he did ask a number of questions that made you feel good for being able to dredge up an answer that you didn’t know if you still knew. For example, in the TV and film round all of the teams played their joker, but we were the only team to have a full house. I’m pretty sure that the question that did for the other teams was, “Who was played on TV by Mary Holland in the 50s and 60s?” It took a bit of thinking to dredge up Katie, the original Oxo Mum.

So you can’t complain too much if you end up being pleased with something you got right and something you could have got right but didn’t because you made the wrong call. And on that note it seems that the glass is definitely half full this time.

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.