Only Connect ( Sorry for the delay)

Only Connect – Quarter Final Match ¼ - The Archers Admirers v. The Exeter Alumni

Titans of the first round, the Archers Admirers strode into battle once more to pit themselves against The Exeter Alumni. The Exeter Alumni, in case you’ve forgotten are Ian Pithouse, Ben Howarth and Captain Sam Charman. They beat the Gourmands by 23 points to 20 in one of the finest matches of the first round, which they put down to good conferring and random guesses. Hey, if it works for you, don’t knock it. As for the Archers Admirers, regular LAM readers Paul Peters and Andrew Bull flanked captain Min Lacey. They won the first match of the series, a fantastic and high scoring match which saw them beat fancied runners the Music Lovers by 35 points to 24. Min Lacey wins my favourite quote of the week as she explained that in their first round they weren’t proud of “The fact that we froze in front of the grid like cornered baboons for more than a minute “. Well, what she didn’t say is that they solved that wall well in the end. Lets get on with the show.

Round One – What’s The Connection ?

On their first set, the Alumni talked their way all around the correct answer without managing quite to get it spot on. South Korea = W , Thailand = B gave them the won and the baht, but L for Great Britain foxed them . Their answer – French names for currency was close but earned no metaphorical cigar. The Archers had it with symbols for currency. Yes, that’s right, the £ sign is just a glorified letter L. They failed on their own set, the pictures, the (Superbowl ? ) Gatorade shower, the Chancellor’s Budget day tie, the Queen’s hat for Ascot, and a roulette wheel. Neither team saw that you can all bet on the colour of these things, and neither did I. Well, they promised it would be harder for the quarter finals. The Alumni’s next set was a good old quizzer’s set. Barbarella’s enemy gave us Duran Duran. Bobby Kennedy’s assassin gave us Sirhan Sirhan. Got it yet ? The Alumni did, but they took Gary and Phil Neville’s father, Neville Neville to be sure. The Archers took the sound question. They made short work of Beethoven’s 7th and a song from the film Snow white and the 7 Dwarves, to see that the link was 7. 3 points in the bag and a slight lead, thank you very much.The Alumni’s third question was, I think, possibly my finest hour of the whole show. Castor and Pollux, Brahma, Yoshi and Orville the Duck stumped both teams. All were born from an egg. I knew that Castor and Pollux were, and the presence of a bird and a reptile in the list gave me the answer – I didn’t know that Brahma was too. Enough boasting. I said things were getting more difficult in the quarters and the Archers found this with their next set – March – The Penelopiad – Wide Sargasso Sea – and Wicked. They knew that they were continuations of books by other authors, and when given a second bite offered prequels, but Victoria needed that they were rewritten from another character’s point of view. This was what the Alumni offered, to take the final score for the round to 4 to the Archers and 3 to the Alumni.

Round Two – What Comes Fourth ?

Weatherfield – McLibel – NatWest – what comes next ? The Alumni got as far as court cases, but no further. The Archers though correctly predicted Guildford, as in Weatherfield 1, McLibel 2 etc. Great shout. Theirs was Memorial – Independence – Labor Both teams were correct to identify US public holidays, but both Veterans and Thanksgiving were wrong, and Columbus was right. The Alumni were offered Central = 1 Circle=2 District =3. They offered Metropolitan, correctly seeing that London Tube lines were involved. But it wasn’t the right one. The Archers guessed Bakerloo correctly, without realising that the colours of the lines on the map represented their value as balls in snooker – red for Central being worth 1 etc. Lovely, intricate connection . Difficult to get until its pointed out, but a little beauty for a quarter final, I thought. Considering the intricacy of this connection, I thought that the Archers’ cervical – thoracic – lumbar was rather straightforward, wanting sacral as the next section of the vertical column. Altogether now everyone , its just the luck of the draw. The pictures foxed the Alumni, while the Archers saw Utah, Omaha ( card game ) Gold as the D-day beaches from the west to east, but zigged with sword when they should have zagged with Juno. On only 2 clues the Archers worked out that the word one would be spelt out 663 with predictive texting. Puzzlers supreme, the Archers had stretched their lead , as the score at the end of the round was 11 – 3.

Round Three – The Connecting Walls

If you’re a regular you’ll know that I’m an Ealing boy, so I salute whoever set Ealing films as one of the sets . The Archers, now with the bit firmly between the teeth, polished off this set, and sets of famous riots, ends in UK test cricket grounds, and constellations, in double quick time. This was a highly impressive way to earn full marks. So the Alumni had some serious work to do with theirs. Cricket commentators fell to them in no time. A set of words or phrases which follow ‘on your ‘ was next, and more than a minute remained. Three incorrect guesses later the wall froze. So no full marks, and they failed to identify a set of words originating from Irish, or a set of words which, if the last letter is moved to the start form an entirely new word, eg- angled and dangle. So the lead was beginning to look a winning won, as the Archers led by 21 - 7

Round One – Missing Vowels

Set one , shrubs, fell heavily to the Archers, with only Mock Orange escaping their greedy grasp. 3 – 0 to the Archers. The second category, Famous Photographers, saw the Alumni score 1, but the lead still increased. So far in this round LAM regular Andrew Bull was playing an absolute blinder. Third category, parts of a sailing ship saw the Archers showing that they were at least a little human, dropping a point on leeboard. They got all three of the other answers though. Mnemonics followed. 3 – 1 to the Archers. Time was drawing close as Victoria announced Instrumental Tracks that were UK number 1s. Only time for two, and both fell to the Archers. In the end , they ran out very comfortable winners by 33 to 9.

What a fine performance in a quarter final ! Rightly did Victoria call it astonishing. Can anyone bea. . . no, there’ll be time for that later.

Two words to finish on. Andrew of The Archers has very kindly offered to share his account of their appearances on the series with us, so I will be posting them in the near future. Something for us all to look forward to.

As for Victoria – I did think that leopard print was supposed to be rather unsophisticated, but I thought she looked fabulous in this show.