University Challenge 2022 - Heat 8 Exeter v. Manchester

The last leg of the Beeb’s powerhouse triple whammy of the best of quizzing last night pitted the universities of Exeter and Manchester.

The Teams

Exeter

Ollie Kirwin

Jefferson Ting

Jacob Evans (capt)

TJ Alabi

Manchester

James McCafferty

Tom Stone

Alice Irving (capt)

Richard McNair

James McCafferty was fast in to take first blood, knowing that the words “Once Upon a Time” precedes the words ‘In Hollywood’ and ‘In the West’ – (and quite a few others too, although my script for Once Upon A Time in Aberavon remains, as yet, unfilmed). This brought up a set of bonuses on twin towns. Now, Hay on Wye happens to be one of my favourite towns, and I’ve asked several times in my quizzes about it being twinned with Timbuktu. This was the only one that Manchester managed. The fact that they didn’t know that Dunedin is taken from the Gaelic for Edinburgh suggested that although extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, as all contestants on the show are, the team probably didn’t possess a dedicated pub quizzer, because that is one of the nuttiest (and chestiest) of old chestnuts. A well-timed buzz saw Ollie Kirwin make an immediate response for Exeter, knowing the word flak. Which he might well have taken had he got it wrong. Flak is named after the captain of the Trumpton Fire Brigade. The University of Ingolstadt saw me take the first bonus, but there my opening burst ended at 6 on the bounce. Both Exeter and I took the first and last of the set. Nice to see the Illuminati getting a name check, though. Ollie Kirwin took his second starter on the bounce, knowing that William II was killed in the New Forest. It was the Brand New Forest then, while now it's only the Nearly New Forest. Aye thenk yow.. Self-driving cars promised little. Actually Exeter took two, but I was happy to take the money and run with Tesla. So to the picture starter. I’m lucky enough to have appeared in two TV quizzes from Glasgow, and so recognised the Armadillo and the huge dock crane which appeared in a striking picture of a city’s waterfront. Both teams were misled, I think, by the resemblance of the Clyde Arc Bridge to the ‘Eyelid’ over the Tyne. Now, for the next starter, I earned myself a lap of honour around the sofa by knowing that Descartes gave his name to a coordinate system. Tom Stone won the buzzer race for that one. This earned the picture bonuses. Not more pictures of waterfronts, but maps showing the positions of other British shipbuilding ports. I surprised myself by taking a full house. Although a couple of the right answers were on the table, Manchester showed a little profligacy with the bonuses, failing to score at this visit to the table. Exeter skipper Jacob Evans knew that the IPL began in 2008 – good shout that. Bonuses on Nobel laureates with shared surnames saw Exeter take a full house, to lead by 65 to 25 at the 10 minute mark.

When the opposition are beating you to the buzzer the best thing to do can be to hit and hope. So I don’t blame Richard McNair for buzzing early and offering Solomon for a favoured second son from the second book of Samuel. When it’s not your night, though, these ones tend to hit the wire and bounce out, and he lost five points. Given the full question, Exeter couldn’t dredge up the name of Absalom. Same dad as Solomon, but he actually was the 2nd son. Asked – when the first five numbers are written as words, how many vowels do they contain?  TJ Alabi seemed uncertain when he buzzed in to offer 9. He was right though. Bonuses on opera saw me take a rare full set, but Exeter missed out on Il Trovatore and William Tell (Rossini apparently stole the overture from the Lone Ranger TV series. The swine.) Tom Stone now tried to disrupt Exeter’s rhythm by buzzing early on a question about some kind of graph, but again failed to hit the target. The answer was hysteresis, and it’s just as well that JP knew because neither Exeter nor I did. Tom Stone persevered and took the next starter, knowing that Kate Winslet played fossil hunter Mary Anning in “Ammonite” – which can kill Superman apparently. A UC special set on character names from The Matrix provided the bonuses. Manchester managed the first, but the other two escaped them. Which all brought us to the music starter. Richard McNair took Manchester’s second in a row, recognising the work of one time Ealing resident Edward Elgar. Three more songs from song cycles followed. I resolved to answer Schumann to each bonus until it was right. It was actually the first answer. So I answered Schubert for the next two – it was the third. Sadly Manchester didn’t nail down any of the answers. At least Manchester’s tactic of slinging buzzer and throwing caution to the wind had slowed Exeter down, but it didn’t work with the next starter as Tom Stone interrupted incorrectly. It was Jefferson Ting who knew that the Fed Cup in tennis was renamed after Billie Jean King. Self portraits brought me one, and Exeter none of the bonuses. Richard McNair knew that Galileo was born in Pisa for the next starter. Apparently his surname was Galilei, although I always thought it was Figaro. Bonuses on the naturalist Georg Steller passed them by. So on the cusp of the 20 minute mark, Exeter still led by 90 to 45. Manchester had answered more starters in the last ten minutes, but this had come at the cost of several point deductions for interruptions, and their inability to convert bonuses had cost them.

A good interruption saw TJ Alabi recognising that the next starter was working its way towards an answer of the poet Shelley. Bonuses on world leaders saw Exeter take another ten points, and if they’d realised that all 3 answers began with the same letter, they might well have had a full house. Jacob Evans recognised Brazilian footballer Marta for the picture starter. More world female football players of the year brought another 5 points. TJ Alabi took Exeter’s third starter on the bounce, when he caught Manchester napping when the definition of the word isthmus reared its familiar head. A lovely set of bonuses on questions set in 20^th century poetry saw Exeter draw a blank. None of us knew the answer to the probability question that followed. James McCafferty took a flyer on the next but found that the answer had gone after he buzzed. None of Exeter could capitalise with the Analects of Confucius - who were a lesser known prog rock band from the early 70's, I thought. Undaunted, James McCafferty took the next starter with alt-J. Fair enough – me neither. Persian History bonuses brought me nothing but Manchester took two. Tom Stone recognised three abbreviations containing S for Space for the next starter. A tricky set on visual defects saw us both take two bonuses. Neither team quite managed to dredge up Verlaine for the next starter. The contest was gonged before the completion of the next starter, which meant that Exeter had won by 130 to 80.

JP congratulated Exeter saying that they were just about ahead for the whole contest. Hmm -sorry, but it looked a little more comfortable than that to me, Jez. Manchester were a little unlucky that they didn’t quite make it into triple figures – all they needed was one of their hail Mary buzzes to have come good and a sympathetic set of bonuses. Well that’s quizzing for you.

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

The (real) Illuminati Secret Society was formed at the University of Ingolstadt

Mastermind 2022 - Heat 2

Blimey, doesn’t Time fly? We’re already onto the second week of the 2022 Mastermind. Well, last week we were all watching intently to see what kind of job of presenting Clive Myrie could do, and for me he passed the test with flying colours. So this week was a chance to settle down to an absorbing contest.

First into the chair was actress Barbara Cunningham. Barbara was answering on “The Blandings Stories of PG Wodehouse”. Wodehouse is one of those more traditional specialist subjects, and when the subject is his oeuvre in total I can often scrounge 1 or 2 points despite never having read anything he wrote. But this one focused on a set of books where I have but one fact – the pig was called the Empress of Blandings. That didn’t get asked, so I didn’t trouble the scorers. Barbara did considerably better. She dropped the second question, and then the penultimate, but answered all the other 10 correctly. Had she been a tiny bit quicker on some of the answers she might have squeezed in one more question, but I’d say that accuracy does sometimes carry a price.

Barbara was followed by Brian Hyslop, the first teacher of this series. OK, let’s get this out of the way. I am still the last schoolteacher (as opposed to college or university lecturer) to win a series. It’s a record I’ve held since 2008 (or even longer – my final was filmed in 2007, though not shown until the next year.) 14 years is more than long enough. Could Brian be the man to take the distinction? Well, he couldn’t have done any better on the NFL team, Seattle Seahawks.  He scored a perfect 13 from 13, and kudos to the question setter because despite only having the one team to ask about this was a pretty wide ranging set, which made Brian’s achievement all the more impressive. I guessed Paul Allen to open my account, but halfway through the SS rounds this single solitary point was looking very sorry for itself.

It didn’t look like it would be getting much company from the next round, either. Laura Pierce offered us the listed buildings of Liverpool. Now, I love looking at and drawing listed buildings, and will even go out of my way to learn about them. However, I’m sorry to say that Liverpool is the greatest British city that I’ve never visited. Yet. Another wide ranging set of questions on a narrow subject saw Laura take all bar two of her questions, to end on 10. My score remained the same.

Our last contender on this second heat was Ian Wang. – 'Ullo,-thought I as he sat down in the black chair – ‘ I recognise him.’ Well, yes. For this is none other than the former skipper of the excellent Corpus Christi UC 2020 team. I couldn’t help thinking that if he did well on specialist, the others could all be playing for 2nd place on GK. So Clive announced his specialist subject – the Music of Beyonce. Oh dear. Nothing against the oeuvre of Miss Knowles, or Mrs. Z as I am sure she prefers to be known, but for me, pop music stopped just before the beginning of 1987. Ian just dropped the one point, and while it looked like he had to dredge two of them up from his boots, his 12 was still an impressive performance. Which is a lot more than can be said for my 1 point from 4 rounds, which is a record low for me since I started keeping score of my specialist round aggregate.

What a good first round, though. All contenders in double figures, and not a pass between them all. Great work.

Barbara was first to go in the GK round. Once again she was going for accuracy rather than speed and I don’t think she did at all badly either. There were some limits to her general knowledge, but even when she didn’t know the answer she offered a sensible suggestion (well, other than the Queen Mother giving birth in 2021. The smile on Barbara’s face suggested that this was a ‘yeah, so what? It’s better than a pass’ answer). A double figure GK round at least presents the other contenders a corridor of doubt through which they’ll have to walk.

This may be unfair – apologies, but I do try to call it as I see it – but it always looked like Laura was fighting her own round a little. I’m glad that she never panicked and lost it, and by the end of the round she’d added 8 hard fought points to take her total to a totally respectable 18.

So to the contender I’d tagged with the label of favourite, Ian. Now, by the halfway stage of his round Ian had added 7 points to his total and looked assured of taking the lead. Which indeed he did, although slowing slightly in the second half of his round. Ian finished with 24 points, and it has to be said that the corridor of doubt was looking considerably longer for Brian.

Brian gave it a lash, and you can’t ask a great deal more than that. Still, having started a point to the good, by the halfway point of his round he was 3 points behind where Ian had been. Brian did actually pick up speed in the second half of his round, but even so he still finished 2 points down with 22.

Well done to Ian. I liked his attitude in the post show comments. One show at a time and enjoy the journey while it lasts. A good performance, which certainly marks him out as someone to watch. After all, a young contender fresh from UC didn’t do too bad last year, did he?

I'm not happy that the show is away until the end of September now. Presumably it’s Autumnwatch. Apparently this time the BBC have sent a group of badgers to film Kate Humble 24/7.

The Details

Barbara Cunningham	The Blandings stories of PG Wodehouse	10	0	10	0	20	0
Brian Hyslop	Seattle Seahawks	13	0	9	0	22	0
Laura Pierce	Listed Buildings of Liverpool	10	0	8	0	18	0
Ian Wang	The Music of Beyonce	12	0	12	0	24	0

Coincidence?

Here’s a coincidence. Following Clive Myrie’s excellent debut on Mastermind last Monday, a couple of days ago I felt inspired to write about it on LAM, and combined this with a review of the first of the series. I enjoyed doing that, and so reviewed the latest heat of University Challenge. This led me to start thinking about how long it’s been since I actually played in a quiz, and it must be a year since I last went to the rugby club on a Thursday. Then this morning, as I was unloading Mrs. Londinius’ car after the weekly shop, one of the regular players in the rugby club passed by and asked whether I was thinking about coming back to the quiz again. Hmm, is someone trying to tell me something?

To be fair to Jan, she didn’t ask me why I stopped going. There’s a really simple answer, and a more complicated answer. The simple one is that I just didn’t feel like going any more. As for the more complicated one, well, I don’t want to bore you all over again about my clinical depression, so let’s just say that this was part of it. However, I isn’t just that. I’ve always taken quizzes too seriously, and it was getting so that I really didn’t like the person I was when I was playing in the club and other places. Sorry if that’s a bit heavy. This next bit is going to sound a little arrogant, and I apologise for that too. The finest regular question master for this quiz, my friend Brian, sadly passed away a few years ago, and some of the others who were good enough to take on a regular turn setting the quiz, well, they just weren’t my cup of tea. There were a number of reasons for this – a heavy reliance on gimmicky questions – too many questions where the answer they gave was without doubt wrong – badly phrased questions where it wasn’t clear what was actually being asked for – I’m sure you have an idea of the sort of thing I’m talking about. This made me more bolshie and argumentative, which I didn’t like about myself. Add to this the fact that I’m getting on a bit now, 57, and well into what I think of as the last lap of my teaching career. The quiz always used to start after 9 and often wouldn’t finish before 11:30. I’ve come to accept that if I’m not in bed by 10:30 on a school night, then the next day is going to be a horrible uphill struggle. Now, there’s no guarantee that the next day won’t be a struggle if I am in bed by 10:30, but at least it won’t be my own fault if I am. There are other things I love doing as well as quizzing, which I’ve done more of in the last 3 or 4 years. So I haven’t really missed it.

I did go back to the quiz when it restarted last summer after the first lockdown. It had been shifted to start an hour earlier, which was convenient, and I enjoyed it. I can’t remember why I stopped  - I think that it might have been closed one week due to covid, and I just never started again. Still, having spoken to Jan now, I’ve asked Jess, my daughter, and Dan, my son in law if they fancy it this Thursday, and so who knows – maybe we’ll give it a go. See if the spark is still there.

University Challenge 2022 - Heat 7 Durham v. Trinity Cambridge

I’ll begin by apologising to all the teams who’ve already played their first round heats in this series. I’m not going to go back and retrospectively review them, but I did watch all of them, and I did enjoy them. Hopefully that may be of some consolation. (No? Didn’t think so.)

The Teams

Durham

Jack Griffiths

Charlie Hetherington

Emily Mitchell (c)

Isaiah Silvers

Trinity, Cambridge

Hatty Innes

Navonil Neogi

Ludvig Brekke (c)

Luke Kim

The Details

Knowing that a young eel is an elver I was quickly in for the first starter, knowing that the middle letter was V. That one was taken for Trinity by Navonil Neogi. For the first bonus, if you get the words ‘calculus’ and ‘Newton’ in the question, you’ll be right more often than you’re wrong if you answer Leibniz. It was a little too early in the evening for a lap of honour around the sofa, and this was a low hanging fruit, so I could only hope there’s be another easy science one later in the show for me. We both took a full set of bonuses. In 1978 I started studying latin, and I remember that the book we used, Latin for Today, had ironically been published some 30 years earlier. The book taught Latin through short extracts on the ancient history of the republic – I still remember Mettus Curtius and Mucius Scaevola – or Tony Curtius and Lukius Scaevola as we called them at the time – and Fabius Cunctator was one of them too. Luke Kim came in early for that one. Bonuses on John Williams’ film scores for Spielberg, of which they took the first two, missing out on War of the Worlds. I was yet to drop a point. I took the next starter too – dots, artist and New York all suggested Roy Lichtenstein, and the title of some of his paintings just confirmed it. Isaiah Silvers was first in, to open Durham’s account. We both took a full set of bonuses on the Don Pacifico affair. 12 on the bounce! I don’t believe that I have ever managed this before, and amazingly it continued as the first picture starter showed a map of a proposed transcontinental highway across the length of Africa, and I identified the two cities at either end as Tripoli and Capetown. Luke Kim took his second of the contest. That was the end of my streak, as more pairs of cities on the proposed network saw Trinity take two, and me take zilch. Luke Kim took his second starter in a row with the French mathematician Cauchy. Never ‘eard of him. A set of bonuses on artists’ models saw me take a full set, but Trinity managed just the one. Nonetheless, they’d had by far the best of the first ten minutes with a score of 80 to Durham’s 25.

Excellent work from Ludvig Brekke saw him recognise that the next starter was referring to the first film adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland”. Now, a set of bonuses on scientific terms starting with the same letters saw me get barium, which was more than enough to merit a victory jog around the living room. Just as well too, because I didn’t have a scooby about the other two. Trinity picked up two bonuses here to take them to the psychologically important triple figure mark. Charlie Hetherington scored Durham’s second starter knowing that Drone is the word for amongst other things a member of a fictional gentleman’s club created by PG Wodehouse. Archaeological sites on islands in the Mediterranean did them no favours. Luke Kim was in extremely quickly to take his 4^th starter on the decade which saw the first flight of the Montgolfier brothers. Presentations of Lilith in popular culture saw Trinity draw their first blank on a bonus set. A few bars were enough for Navonil Neogi to identify La Donna E Mobile from Rigoletto for the music starter. More opera excerpts sung in German brought another two correct answers. I have such a tin ear that two of the excerpts sounded to me like the late Peter Ustinov singing about Das Heilbut, but there you go. We were into the second half of the show, and JP decided at this point to issue the kiss of death to Durham, telling them not to worry as there was plenty of time left to catch up. Alright Jez! No need for language like that on a family show! Both Ludvig Brekke and I recognised the inscription from Scott Fitzgerald’s tombstone for the next starter. Wonders of the Waterways, according to the canals and rivers trust, offered Trinity precious little and they drew a blank. This hardly seemed to matter consider the amount of buzzer firepower they were packing, as Luke Kim came in very early to correctly offer Beethoven’s 5^th and 6^th for the next starter. I was delighted to hear Navonil Neogi say that he tuned out for the next question on bilogy – welcome to my world, Neogi! Nether Trinity nor I troubled the scorer on this visit to the table. Which didn’t seem to matter since, at the 20 minute mark, Trinity seemingly had matters sown up, leading by 150 to 35.

We were this far into the competition and it was only now that we had our first incorrect interruption from Charlie Hetherington. He was very unlucky to lose 5 though, as he was just a fraction of a second too early. Trintiy couldn’t capitalise with the name of the thymus gland. Hatty Innes knew that the fil The Faourite focused on the relationship between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough. The East of Scotland football league has quite possibly never provided a set of UC bonuses before, but it was a good set and Trinity might possibly have guessed Primrose. They didn’t though and drew a blank. For the second picture starter Holly Innes recognised a picture of mistletoe, and more pictures from the same source of plants still used in modern medicine saw them add just the one correct answer. I didn’t really understand the next question, but Jack Griffiths said the answer was 2 pi and that was good enough for me, being as it was the right answer. Poetry was not to Durham’s liking and they failed to add to the score. Charlie Heherington took Durham’s second start on the bounce, knowing Io, the satellite of Jupiter. Geochronology sounded as if there wasn’t a lot of meat to be picked off those bones, but actually provided a full house. I don’t know exactly what, but something really seemed to have suddenly shook the Durham team into full attack mode, with Charlie Hetherington leading the charge as he buzzed early to identify North Korea for the next starter. US Senators and the states that they represented provided another full house in double quick time. Navonil Neogi buzzed early to identify Lucy Snowe as the protagonist of “Villette” (the best a man can get). Names in the first chapters of the Gospel according to St. Luke took us up to the gong, with Trinity winning comfortably by 190 – 90.

JP described Trinity to Durham as very, very tough opposition, and you have to say that they would have been good for a mid 200s score if they hadn’t been so profligate with the bonuses. As for Durham, I’m glad they had that late flurry to show what they could do, but it does highlight the eternal truth that you have to sling some buzzer if you want to get anywhere on UC. Yes, it’s better if you do actually know the answer, but sometimes you have to just hit and hope.

Jeremy Paxman Watch

You’re probably aware that Jeremy Paxman has been diagnosed with Parkinsons. I am not surprised that he has decided to continue broadcasting for as long as he can, but I am very happy that he has done so, and have a great deal of respect and admiration for this. In the light of this, I don’t feel comfortable commenting specifically on what he says and does in the show as I have done in the past, and so I’m afraid this section will not feature in future reviews. I hope that he will be able to continue presenting for a long time to come.

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

T Cells take their names from the first letter of the thymus gland.

Mastermind - Heat 1 - Welcome Back

 I’m sorry. No honestly, I really am. What on Earth do I think I’m doing, I ask myself, posting this, when I have no idea whether it will only prove to be another false dawn – a solitary 2021 post, which will not be followed by another one for more than 12 months? But the thing is, I can’t come up with a good enough reason for not posting now. Whether anyone will ever chance to read it, well that’s a different matter. If you do, well, please accept that I’m being sincere when I say that it means a great deal to me if you do.

So what’s prompted this, then? Well, I’ve been thinking more about quizzes than I have done in a good year or so, since Clive Myrie made his debut on Mastermind this Monday just gone. Cards on the table, I think he did well. One thing I really liked was the way that once a contender got into a rhythm giving correct answers, so did Clive, and seemed to speed up a little. The late great Magnus Magnusson himself did this, and even picked out a couple of examples of this happening in his excellent book “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish”. It’s very early days, but he certainly did well with his first show.

Earlier today I posted on Facebook about John Humphrys. I said - I always thought John Humphrys was a little bit of an enigma. In 2007 he did not enter the Green room at any time I was in there. Even for the final which was held in Glasgow Caledonian University he left immediately after filming finished - a rather sheepish production assistant told me he'd going because he was on the radio the next day from London. Fair enough, although I doubt it would have hurt that much to just pop his head round to say cheerio. However, I have to say that while our final was being filmed, he was brilliant. In the heat and the semi, filmed in Manchester, Ted Robbins had done the warm up, and he was great, and whenever there was a break in filming he and JH would have a good bit of banter going between them. With the final being filmed in Glasgow, they hadn't brought Ted, and they had some local lad on in his place. As we entered the studio he was going down like a lead balloon. For the rest of the proceedings, John ignored him, and in breaks in filming he would regale the audience with funny stories from Celebrity Mastermind. He was excellent. I would have no hesitation saying he is a fine broadcaster. As a person, no idea, because appearing in 5 shows with him didn't really seem to constitute an introduction. “

I don’t want to come across as ungracious. I can’t imagine the pressure of having to present 4 shows like this, back to back, in the same day. But Dermot Murnaghan was doing the same thing when I appeared on Eggheads and Are You An Egghead?, and he had time for every contestant.

Shall we talk about the show itself, then? The honour of kicking off the new new series fell to Tom Jewsbury, answering on the geography of Switzerland. Tom dropped a rather innocuous first question, and that’s the sort of mishap which can often be the prelude to a bit of a ‘mare. Tom managed to put it behind him and took 6 on the bounce before getting another wrong, then remaining clear until the rest of the round, finishing with 10. Which at the least suggested that overly long questions are still going to be a feature of the show this year. I managed two of these, Interlaken fitting the first question, and guessing that you’ll be in with a shout if you’re asked about a Swiss mountain and you offer the Matterhorn.

Next up was Megan Sutcliffe, answering on the family of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. ‘Hallo Dave,’ thought I (for ‘tis my name), “Nice subject. Fill yer boots, son.” Well, I didn’t exactly fill both boots, managing 6 on a subject I quite fancied. This was bettered by Megan’s 7. I did feel that quite a few of these questions were prolonged beyond their natural lifespan – after all it doesn’t matter really how much you add to the question which starts “What was the name of Nicholas II’s mother. . . “ since you’ll either know it or not after those words. Just my opinion, and as always, please feel free to disagree.

Eleanor Launchbury offered another subject with the promise of points in the shape of Sir Roger Moore. Eleanor’s round gave us the first passes of the new series, - neither of which I knew the answers to either. I managed another 6, now, to put me on 14 so far. Helluva start to the new series.

Last but not least, Ranvir Singh Kalare answered on Bruce Springsteen. Which made my heart sink just a little, since this meant my chances of getting close to 20 on the specialist scores was practically zero. I have nothing against the Boss, but have never been a great fan one way or another. Ranvir did considerably better. He took the first 6 on the bounce, and quickly, and was looking good for a highly commendable double figure score. His speedy answering ensured he was asked one more question than Tom, but another 3 wrong answers left him 1 behind on 9.

So to the General Knowledge, and first back to the chair was Megan. There were a couple of things I liked about Megan’s round. I do tend to think – despite the superb Jonathan Gibson, our 2021 champion – that younger contenders such as Megan are at something of a disadvantage, lacking the few years at the quizface which means you don’t drop much of the low hanging fruit. Despite this though, Megan kept her head, kept answering rather than passing, and a late flurry of four correct answers from the last 4 questions put her up to 17. Double figures in GK – well done.

In a mirror image of Megan’s round, Eleanor began with 4 correct answers on the bounce. Eleanor was taking her time, weighing each question for a moment or two before answering. That needs nerve, and it also means you have to be accurate. A couple of wrong answers followed, and then a pass. When you haven’t got the momentum, a wrong answer can completely take the wind out of your sails, and Eleanor found herself becalmed on 16, only managing one more before the end of the round.

In a way, Ranvir’s GK round was similar to his SS round. He started pretty well, and even the ones he didn’t know the answers to, he made sensible suggestions. Like Megan before him, he also kept his head enough to offer answers to every question. Some of his answers were enough to lead me to think that Ranvir is to some extent a quizzer – the speed with which he batted a US state capitals question to the boundary being one example. However, the gradient seemed to get just a little steeper as he pulled into the lead, and he finished with 11 for the round, for a total of 20. All 3 of this heat’s contenders so far had managed double figures on GK. If Tom could do that, without incurring passes, then the worst result he could have would be a tie break.

Well, 3 correct answers from the first 4 questions suggested he might do it with a little bit to spare. The next half dozen or more questions gave the lie to this. Tom became stuck on 14 for too long. By the time he passed, so had his opportunity. In the end he rallied enough to push up to 18, securing second. Well done to everyone, and an enjoyable start to the series. Well done to you too, Mr. Myrie, or may I call you Clive?  Keep up the good work. 

The Details

Tom Jewsbury	The Geography of Switzerland	10	0	8	1	18	1
Megan Sutcliffe	The family of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia	7	0	10	0	17	0
Eleanor Launchbury	Sir Roger Moore	7	2	10	2	17	4
Ranvir Singh Kalare	Bruce Springsteen	9	0	11	0	20	0