Only Connect – First round match 3 – Choir Boys v. Brasenose Postgrads
Match three of series 3 pitted the Choirs Boys against the Brasenose Postgrads. The Choir Boys consisted of Peter Lawson, Guy Painton, and captain Anthony Pritchard. In a quiz dedicated to connections, the connection between the three is that they are all members of the Brighton and Hove Gay Men’s Choir. Great comment from Anthony Pritchard to Victoria in the introductory spiel –
“Our music is crossover, which isn’t the way we dress, as some people thought.”
As for the Brasenose Postgrads, they are Amy Koenig, Chris Lustri, and captain Chris Tudor.A transcontinental team as it happens, since Amy Koenig is from the USA, Chris Lustri is from Australia, and Chris Tudor is from exotic Orpington.
Round One – What’s the Connection ?
Brasenose went first, and landed the dreaded music question lurking under alpha. Alas I think they were just too young to recognise songs like “Blue Eyes “ “Ebony eyes” and “Don’t it Make My Brown eyes Blue. “ So a bonus went to the Choir Boys. I thought that a tougher set went to the Choir Boys. They probably thought so too, since they didn’t get a set of military punishments. Neither did their opponents, and neither did I for that matter. Brasenose completted the double by getting the pictures on their next set. They scored their first point recognising things with French in their names. I was sorry not to see Dawn French complete the set, but that would have been frivolous, I suppose. The Choir Boys got another really hard set in the rules of conkers –with terms like windmills, stamps etc. No, never heard of them either. They got a bonus, identifying a set of supposedly cursed things. Finally the Choir Boys were asked a set of questions which ended with a character from the classic bad film “Escape to Victory”. Couple this with a french character from the film "Elizabeth", and you know that the roles mentioned in each film were all played by footballers. Unfortunately they failed to see this. So despite a failure to decipher any of their own sets, the Choir Boys led by 2 to 1 at the end of the round.
Round Two – What comes 4th in the sequence ?
Neither team spotted a great connection in the first set. We had – market – home – roast beef . You get it, the 4th would be– none . Just think little piggies, and you'll see. Again, Choir Boys got a nasty one on levels of security for British documents. I’m afraid that Brasenose fell into a trap with carat weight of gold. The 4th on the list , so the answer was actually 22ct , and not 24ct , which would have been 5th, which the Choir Boys knew. Hooray – at last the Choir Boys managed one of their own on Scottish mountains ! They were begin to take a hold on the contest, but Brasenose managed to see a list of deaths in Hamlet, and pick Hamlet correctly as the next. The Choir Boys were cooking on gas by now though. They got a beautiful connection, picking out that the last letter of the word NATO, in the NATO phonetic alphabet, would be oscar. Absolutely full marks to whoever wrote that one, its as aesthetically pleasing a connection as you will ever get. By the end of the round, the Choir Boys led by 7 points to 3.
Round Three – The Connections Wall
A tough wall flummoxed the Choir Boys. They spotted famous Gordons, but didn’t find a set of words preceded by straw. To be fair I haven’t heard of a straw mushroom either. General knowledge let them down when they failed to recognise the lateran as the name of a palace, still, when put with Lambeth et al they saw the connection, and finally failed to see Bennett, Pole, Dean and Winter as former football referees. Gotta say it – tough wall.
Brasenose Got two connections in short order. They could also see that the next connection was probably Normans, but couldn’t find them all. The grid was frozen after three tries, but at least they had found two sets, and saw three of the connections, but not a set of famous photographers. I thought it was the easier wall, but its all down to the luck of the draw. At the end, the Choir Boys still led by a reduced margin of 10 to 8.
Round Four - Missing Vowels
We’ve seen before that there are often simply oodles of points available on this round. So it was anybody’s game. Whichever team had the better wordsmiths would probably come out on top. Was it me, or did there not seem to be quite so many words this week as in the previous two weeks ? Well, anyway it was a lot closer than the previous two weeks, but you sensed that Amy Koenig and Chris Lustri were shading the buzzer war for Brasenose. Was it enough, though ? Yes it was, but only by a point, with 15 to the Choir Boys’ 14. OK, so maybe these weren’t the most impressive teams we’ve seen so far this series, but it was a good match, and an exciting show. Well done to both,.
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4 comments:
The length of the missing vowels round is determined by time rather than number of questions. It takes between 90 and 150 seconds and depends on how long the rest of the show has taken. The teams are informed of the round length during a break in recording.
Hi David
Ah, that would explain it then . There's a similar thing with Brain of britain, where the actual number of rounds played is dependent on how quickly its done.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Thanks for the kind words on the ‘Nato’ question — I'm new to question-writing, so it's really nice to get appreciation from a Mastermind champ.
Hello Smylers
You're welcome. I just thought it was a great question. First of all November isn't necessarily going to make you think of the phonteic alphanbet, although when you couple it with alpha its more likely to make you think it. But then it requires another level of thinking as well - to realise that the word will be NATO because its known as the NATO alphabet. But then you've still got to figure out that O is Oscar. Its so beautifully logical as you unlock it. Well, I thought so anyway. Keep up the good work on Only Connect - its a great show.
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