Channel Hopping

This is not about quizzes. Or maybe it is just a little bit, but only tangentially so. I don’t know if you know The Contestant Hub on Facebook. If you don’t then it’s something you should definitely check out. If you like LAM then it’s probably your kind of thing. I was on there the other day, and saw that the BBC are reviving Gladiators and Survivor.

Now, I’m not surprised that someone might want to roll the dice with these two shows, make a new version, throw ‘em at the wall and see if anything sticks. After all, there’s nothing new under the sun, and hey, these things worked once so maybe they’re less of a gamble than a totally new concept. What I am surprised at is that it’s the BBC who are doing it. Because, and I don’t mean this in a perjorative way, but because these are not typical BBC shows.

Gladiators, as more senior readers may recall, was the archetypal big, brash ITV Saturday evening show of the 90s. And I do mean brash. It was in some ways a little like the illegitimate child resulting from a one night stand between the assault course from The Krypton Factor, and WWF (as it was called at the time) American wrestling. For much of the 90s it ruled the Saturday evening roost, although by the end it was tired and becoming a caricature of itself – just my opinion and feel free to disagree.

Survivor is a show that has been a hit in many, many countries, but although ITV made two series in the early noughties it never really took off here. Which is a little bit of a surprise considering that in many ways that hardy perennial ratings winner “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” uses many of the same or similar elements . The biggest difference is the lack of celebrities, of course, and the team against team element. You can argue about why it didn’t come off in the UK, but it’s a little immaterial, because the fact is that the viewing public weren’t buying it and that’s that. A more pertinent question is why the BBC are bringing it back.

There’s always been some kind of channel hopping between BBC and ITV, but I tend to think that in the fifties, right through the sixties and seventies it was individual performers who did it rather than whole productions. After all, the BBC were not going to sell shows to ITV, and they weren’t going to buy shows from independent production companies. So while Morecambe and Wise, say, got big on ITV, then hopped and got bigger on BBC, then hopped back to ITV until Eric Morecambe passed away, you didn’t get whole shows being transferred.

I’m not saying for one minute that this is the first ever example of a whole show hopping between BBC and ITV, but the first one that I can clearly remember was the curious case of the Goodies. If you don’t know about the Goodies there’s probably a good reason namely, that the BBC didn’t seem to want to know about the Goodies after they hopped off to ITV. The Goodies themselves were the late Tim Brooke-Taylor, Dr. Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie. The three of them all met in Cambridge University in the same Footlights gang as John Cleese, Graham Chapmen and Eric Idle. In 1970 they started “The Goodies” on BBC2. It differed from Monty Python in as much as each show was a consistent narrative rather than individual sketches, and the three men played the same characters in each show  a fictionalised version of themselves. The idea behind the series was this group of three men who would do Anything, Anytime, Anywhere – although this concept receded in later series. The shows relied heavily on special effects to achieve its live action cartoon quality. In 1980, the Beeb blew the Light Entertainment special effects budget on the TV version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and the Goodies, who amazingly had no formal contract with the BBC, upped sticks and went to London Weekend Television. One Christmas special and one short series later, ITV pulled the plug.

Now, I did say the ‘curious case’ of The Goodies. You see, compared with similarly successful comedy shows from the 70s, the BBC hardly ever repeated any of the shows, and showed no interest in putting them out on VHS or DVD. So much so that the Goodies themselves had to do a deal with an independent company to get a Best Of collection released in the early noughties. The inescapable conclusion was that the BBC never forgave them for ‘defecting’.

All of which is interesting to an old codger like me who loved The Goodies, but barely relevant to the topic in hand.

Neither Survivor or Gladiators strike me as particularly BBC shows. Which is where the very tenuous link to quizzes comes in. You see, I could understand the BBC reviving the formerly ITV show University Challenge in 1994. It may be possible to think of a more ‘BBC-type’ show that was actually on ITV, but I can’t. Not off the top of my head. Square peg put into square hole – result = 28 years of excellence and still going strong.

But Gladiators and Survivor? Well, let’s play Devil’s advocate for a moment. Why shouldn’t the BBC put out shows that don’t conform to  their own traditional image? We’ve seen surveys in the last few years that suggest the viewing habits of younger people (and when you get to my age that includes a hell of a lot of the population) have greatly changed since Gladiators first went off our screens – or even since the short lived noughties revival. Netflix now has something like an 8 percent share of all TV viewing in the UK. Yes, that’s a long way behind BBC and ITV, but it’s more than Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. It’s just one streaming platform as well. I suspect that if you took old crusties who were already adults when there were still just 3 channels out of the equation then their audience share would be quite a bit higher.

And there’s the rub. Because shows like Gladiators and Survivor are exactly the sort of things that would be popular on a streaming platform. I make no bones about it – I watched a recent series of Australian Survivor on Netflix (and bloody enjoyed it too.).

I’ve realised that I’m not really trying to make a point here. I think that it’s odd for the BBC to do this, but hey, why shouldn’t they if they think that it’s what viewers want?

Which brings me to The Traitors. Now, BBC’s new show, fronted by Claudia Winkelman is not Netflix’s “The Mole”. But it is a show that says to it’s audience – ‘you like stuff like ‘The Mole’? Then you’ll love this. Won’t you? Please?’ See what you think.

Both shows have a group of individuals who have to work together to build up a prize pot of money. In “The Mole”, one person is the eponymous Mole. The Mole’s job is to try to sabotage the group’s efforts, reduce the amount in the prize pot and not get caught. If they are not caught by the end of the final show, they get the moolah. In “The Traitors” three people are the eponymous traitors. They do not sabotage the team. However, they get to ‘murder’ one of the others – called the Faithful – each night. The eliminations in the two shows are different, but similar. In “The Mole” each elimination challenge sees the contestants facing an online quiz about who they think is the mole. The one with the fewest correct answers is eliminated. So, the Mole is definitely there until the last show. In the last show the three remaining people have to vote out the mole – and one of them is the Mole. If the other two vote the mole out, they share the cash. If not, it goes in the mole’s back pocket. In The Traitors, the contestants gather round the Round Table every evening, accuse each other, and then vote out one of their number whom the majority feel is a traitor. Then later that night, the traitors 'murder' one of the faithful and put him/her out of contention. If the faithful suss out the traitors by the end of the last show, happy days and the remaining contestants share the wedge. Any traitors left and they share the wedge instead.

Often, when the BBC try to do a show which is, shall we say, in a similar style to a popular show on a commercial, satellite or streamed channel, then it doesn’t tend to quite come off. But judging from the first three episodes of "The Traitors" on the iplayer, I’d say that being halfhearted and not having the courage of its convictions is not a criticism I’d lay at “The Traitors” door. The first inkling I had that this might be the case was when the 22 contestants arrived outside of Balmoral Castle where the action happens. (Okay, I admit it’s probably NOT Balmoral, but it looked a bit like it.) Claudia ordered them to line up in the order in which they though their chances of winning were - most confident of winning at one end, least confident of winning at the other. The two who self-effacingly took the last 2 positions (who surely didn’t really think their chances were that bad) were then told they were out. Just like that. Okay, it would be a twist to bring them back, but it hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look very likely now.

I watched a whole series of The Mole on Netflix a while ago, and I think that The Traitors holds up well against it. I felt that the Mole’s computerised test elimination process is weak, and The Traitors’ double pronged elimination – ‘murder’ and round table vote – is far more dramatic and interesting. However I would say that I’m not sure that revealing the identity of the traitors as soon as they have been selected is the best idea either. In The Mole you don’t learn the identity of the mole until the end, so at least you get the pleasure of working it out for yourself. I’d be interested to see how The Traitors played if we didn’t know their identities but had to work it out for ourselves, like the contestants.

I don’t kid myself that I’m part of the BBC’s target audience for this show, but I have to say that I’m often a sucker for this sort of thing. It’s not my stated aim in the blog to say much about non-quiz shows, but what the hell. I shall be watching the next episode.  

University Challenge 2023: First Round: Robert Gordon University v. University of Roehampton

The Teams

Robert Gordon University

Samuel Fregene

Donald Anderson

Emily Cullen (Capt)

Faye Cooke

University of Roehampton

Katherine Birditt

Jay Patel

Odhran O’Donoghue

Victoria Holt

Well, hasn’t the first round gone quickly, dearly beloved? Here we are, the last heat, and having watched this now, we know that somewhere along the line we have seen this year’s winners. As for this final heat, both teams knew that whatever the outcome a score of 13 would guarantee them another bite of the cherry.

For the first starter a nice UC special saw Emily Cullen buzz in early to identify the word ‘now’. I had it from the reference to the opening line of Richard III and maybe this gave it to the Robert Gordon skipper too. Bonuses on astronomical symbols were a really interesting set that I don’t remember coming up before. RG managed 1, but really misunderstood the Pluto question. I did know Percival Lowell, but let the otherwise obligatory lap of honour ride, because I’ve got a very bad chest at the moment. For the next starter Mehmet II – and – fall – and -1453 – screamed Constantinople and it must have done so to Donald Anderson as he took his first starter of the evening. It would not be his last. Members of the Gourd family yielded another bonus. Various definitions gave Virginia Holt the word pitch to open the scoring for Roehampton. They were offered bonuses in various wavelength thingies. Had I not already eschewed the lap of honour I might have taken one for knowing the symbol for Bluetooth – which really isn’t bad going for an aged luddite such as myself. So to the picture starter. This showed a stretch of railway line on a map of China. Asked to name the two cities at either end I went for the obvious with Beijing and Shanghai. So did Donald Anderson and we were both right to do so. That exhausted pretty much my knowledge of Chinese cities, but shown more railway lines RG managed 2 bonuses. The French chemist Grignard, or Monsieur Qui? comme il s’appelle chez Lam – gave Emily Cullen the next starter which earned the team a set of bonuses on Shinto Deities in video games. I was slightly hampered in this set by two facts – I haven’t played any video game more recent than Sonic the Hedgehog (original version) and I don’t know any Shinto Deities. So since Dr. Robotnik/Eggman turned out not to be a Shinto deity, these passed me by. RG managed the 1 they needed to take their lead to 65 – 20 as we approached 11 minutes.

The next starter it became obvious was referencing William Shatner. (He is too easy a target for. . .  snarky . . . comments . . . soletthisone. . . go.) Donald Anderson was not the kind of person to let low hanging fruit like this one go begging and thus snapped up his third starter. The art patron Sir George Beaumont, yet another member of the ubiquitous Who? family, provided a single bonus. In this stage of the competition RG were winning the buzzer race hands down, yet the bonus sets were making it heavy going for them to extend their lead as much as their superior buzzing might have merited. When it’s not your night sometimes it never rains but it pours. For the next starter Victoria Holt came in early and paid the penalty, allowing Faye Cooke in with the manifesto of the Futurist art movement. Bonuses on the film director Jane Campion steadfastly refused to ask about the only one of her films I’m very familiar with – the Piano. That’s why I didn’t get any and may be why RG didn’t either. All of which led us to the music starter. I’m sorry, but I’ve never really learned to appreciate hip hop, so the starter did nothing for me. Faye Cooke took her second starter in a row with Eric B and Rakim, Rakim being the required element of the answer. Three more remixed tracks that charted higher than the originals brought one bonus and saw RG miss the Cornershop bonus by giving the remix rather than the original. This showed us just a little flash of the old Paxman when he said ‘no, it was the Cornershop . . . which you had.” Speaking of the old JP, I was wondering if the never-popular ‘plenty of time for you to get started’ kiss of death was about to be heading in Roehampton’s direction, now that RG were in triple figures. I’ve never read any of the three novels referenced in the next starter but I knew that two of them at least had Moon in the title. (Tiger and The – is a harsh mistress.)Faye Cooke completed her hattrick of consecutive starters with this one. RG managed just the one on a decidedly gettable set of bonuses on the Congress of Vienna. For the next starter on the periodic table, if its named after an Italian American physicist it’s got to be Fermium, hasn’t it? I thought so, Donald Anderson thought so, and that’s because it was. British birds provided Emily Cullen the opportunity to say ‘tit’ to JP, but she didn’t give it the gusto which would have made it really funny. It wasn’ the right answer anyway. RG managed just the one bonus. That was it, time for JP’s words of encouragement. Oh dear, it’s bad enough misfiring on your buzzer without having JP's call to arms piling Pelion upon Ossa. It didn’t work immediately either. Donald Anderson took the next starter, recognising references to my stand in, former Poet Laureate Andrew ‘Loco’ Motion. (I was asked to present the trophy to the Mastermind winner in 2009, Nancy Dickman, but my school wouldn’t let me have the time off to do it. So they got Andrew Motion to do it instead. True story.) Operas with single word titles brought two bonuses. So just a wee bit short of the 20-minute mark the score stood at 150 – 15 in favour of Robert Gordon, and poor old Roehampton had just suffered a very long shut out.

For the picture starter we were shown a youthful Dexter Fletcher in Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio. Victoria Holt took that, and Roehampton were at last extricated from the metaphorical mud in which they had been stuck for so long. More Derek Jarman films provided the bonus they needed to double their score. Even if you didn’t know that IBM built the supercomputer Deep Blue, it would have been a percentage guess, but since nobody else was buzzer slinging this fell to RG’s very own snapper up of unconsidered trifles, Donald Anderson. A set on US presidents finally saw RG take a full house. Not that they needed it. The heat, as a contest, had ended quite some minutes earlier, and they were well and truly beyond the event horizon. Kudos to Katherine Birditt, who worked out a fractions into percentage sum very quickly for the next starter. Winners of the EGOT – Emmy – Grammy – Oscary – Tony (none of the winners have yet added a Lammy to their collection, though) – brought two more bonuses. Emily Cullen knew that Xanadu links Kublai Khan and Citizen Kane. This earned them a good UC set on words that can be made up of the letters of Wordle. RG really probably should have done better than the one correct answer that they managed. Now that Roehampton had started throwing caution to the wind, skipper Ordhan O’Donoghue buzzed early with supernova for the next starter and was rewarded for doing so. Bonuses on coastal Geography brought another ten points. Donald Anderson came in very early for the next starter, he had seven in total, which is a great haul – with saxophone. This put RG through the 200 point barrier. Kellers and Literature brought RG. . . yes, just one bonus. Having already discovered the benefits of buzzing early, Ordhan O’Donoghue did it again with Lake Titicaca, and was again rewarded. Two bonuses on South American football followed, and so did the gong. The final score was 210 to 90 to Robert Gordon.

Let’s not be too critical of Roehampton. They were making their debut in UC. Their last few minutes showed them shoot up to a respectable score, which left a feeling of what might have been had they thrown caution to the winds earlier.

As for Robert Gordon – well done! It’s a fine score, although it’s difficult to judge just how well they might do against a team who are sharper on the buzzer. Their bonus conversion rate is difficult to make hard and fast judgements about. Granted, it’s below fifty percent, but I personally did think that for at least the first half of the show the bonus sets were not easy at all.

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

The English name of a cantaloupe is taken from a former papal residence near Rome.

Mastermind 2023: First Round Heat 11

What a show this was!

There was little hint of the pyrotechnics we were in store for as first contender Lee Ansett settled down for his specialist round. Lee was answering on the travel documentaries of Michael Palin. I have to say that Lee must be a man after my own heart in choosing this subject, and it provided me with my best specialist round of the night. Which wasn’t as good as Lee’s. Lee showed admirable recall of the details as he reeled off 12 correct answers. That’s how you do it.

I have to admit that I was hoping that second contender, James Devine-Stoneman would do well. James, I recalled from his 2017 exploits on University Challenge, is from Southall in the London Borough of Ealing. So being an Ealing boy myself I lumbered him with the curse of the Clark support. He still did pretty well despite this. 10 points on Lady Gaga showed that he had prepared pretty well. Gawd knows how but I also took 3 points on this round myself to take the aggregate to 8 from 2.

I can imagine that the production team were pretty much salivating when they saw Jane Mackey’s application form stating her occupation as a retired goat farmer. That’s the sort of occupation which is gold dust on an application form and guaranteed to get you noticed at the very least. Not that goats had anything to do with Jane’s specialist subject of Emily Dickinson. Considering that Jane had a very long pause followed by a pass on one of her first few questions Jane did brilliantly to recover and take her score to 10. The 2 I managed put me on a double figure aggregate for the first time in yonks, with one round still to go.

Which actually turned out to be the best specialist of all of them. Katie Bamber gave us an extremely good round on the BBC sitcom Mum. Which I’ve never watched so I suppose my 1 point was more than I had any right to expect. Katie just kept on answering all the questions that were asked, in the end amassing a superb 14.

So, kudos to all of the contenders for getting double figure scores. As an old contender myself who spent absolute hours preparing all of my specialists it does my heart good to see people who have obviously gone the whole hog themselves.

First to return to the chair then was James. What happened next was a truly excellent GK round. James’ UC background certainly hinted that he’d do well at the GK, but this was the sort of thing I like to describe as a round straight out of the top drawer. James added an excellent 16 to his specialist score, setting the bar at 26. Not only was he putting all three of the others in the corridor of doubt, but he was ensuring that this would be a bloody long corridor as well.

Jane had a go, fair play to her. In order to match James she really couldn’t afford to miss much, and I’d say that she was too far behind the clock at halfway through the round. She kept on going though, and in the end she added 11 to her own score. 21, her final score, is highly respectable.

Lee Ansett, it turned out, was never going to settle for mere respectability. He never quite seemed to be going as fast as James, and yet this was not the case, since he too just kept powering through, finding correct answer after correct answer. Yes, he scored 16, just the same as James had done. But having started 2 points to the good, Lee finished with 28 and the lead.

Well, I wasn’t counting out anything as possible after what we’d just seen. Katie Bamber wasn’t doing badly either. But even though she was two points better off than Lee had been at the start of her round, that still meant she needed a formidable 15 to win outright. She was a little way short of that performance, although still managing a double figure round.

Well played all four of you. That was quality.  Especially hard lines to James, who sadly falls through the net because there are no repechage places. But as for Lee – well there’s a many a slip between cup and lip, but with a following wind, sir, your ambition of reaching the final is certainly not unrealistic. Best of luck to you, Very well done.

 The Details

Lee Ansett	Michael Palin’s Travel Documentaries	12	1	16	0	28	1
James Devine-Stoneman	Lady Gaga	10	1	16	1	26	2
Jane Mackey	Emily Dickinson	10	1	11	0	21	0
Katie Bamber	BBC Sitcom Mum	14	0	10	0	24	0

On Impending Quiz Redundancy

Have you been waiting for me to update you one the quiz last Thursday? No, didn’t think so. Well, let’s begin with other matters. I mentioned last week that I had produced 11 hand drawn Christmas cards to give out this year. I’m up to 25 now. I’d like to think that the people I give them to appreciate the effort and the thought, but even without that just making them is something that brings me a lot of pleasure. Still, let’s get onto the quiz shall we?

How do you know when a quiz that you’ve compiled is going down well? No, seriously, how do YOU know? I ask because I think it’s probably easier to be able to tell when a quiz isn’t going well. All or any of the following are tell tale signs.

- People ask for a lot of repeats. That is, they ask you to say the question again. This might be because you haven’t written it very well, and so it’s not clear what the question is actually asking. Or maybe you just haven’t engaged their interest enough to get them listening to it in the first place. Which brings me to:-

- People ignore you when you’re asking the questions. Yes, I know it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to listen in perfect silence when you’re asking the questions (although, in my teacher’s heart, I can’t help thinking that it would be nice.) I’ve been to quizzes where the conversation on the table is a hell of a lot more interesting than the stuff being asked. Hell, I’ve probably written quizzes like that.

The scores are low. The only quiz I ever set questions for now is the social quiz in the rugby club now and again. While it would be perfectly possible to set a quiz where the scores were really low, it would be pointless, and no, that’s not meant to be a pun. Ideally you want to ask people a set of questions where they are surprised by how much they know, not how little.

So yes, there’s usually pretty good indicators which show you when a quiz isn’t going down too well. So is it fair to say that your quiz has gone down well if you haven’t seen any of these indicators? Maybe, but then again, maybe it doesn’t necessarily go to show that you’ve produced a good quiz, merely that you haven’t produced a bad one. Well, there we are – good and bad are subjective concepts anyway. What I like in a quiz you might not and vice versa.

For all of that though I did feel that Thursday’s quiz seemed to go quite well, and I enjoyed being question master more than I think I’ve enjoyed it since the 2022 New Year’s quiz. This was probably because it was more exciting than most. Okay, this next bit is going to sound smug, arrogant and boastful, but it is true. Since September 2021 when I started going back to the quiz every quiz I’ve played in has seen us win, and only a very small number have been at all close. By close, I mean that the winning margin has been less than five points between first and second. On Thursday evening we had four teams playing, and all of them scored well. So well in fact that only 3 points separated all four teams by the end of the quiz.

On a personal note, I was also delighted for my team. No, they didn’t win, but were so close that I’m convinced that they are going to win one of my quizzes soon. Or should I say, another of my quizzes soon, since they are the reigning quiz of the year winners. Considering that the heart of the team – Dan, Jess and Adam are all decades younger than the average of other players in other teams and that nothing is tailored specifically for them – well, the opposite, if I’m honest – well, they’ll be winning the weekly quiz without me very soon.

Hang about.

That will make me redundant!

University Challenge - First Round - Newnham, Cambridge v. Courtauld Institute of Art

The Teams

Newnham, Cambridge

Bethan Holloway-Strong

Hannah Bowen

Roma Ellis (Capt)

Chen Zhou

Courtauld Institute of Art

Oliver White

Alice Dodds

Ryan McMeekin (Capt.)

Lizzie Mackarel

Hello, and welcome to the review of the first Monday UC for some time. Getting serious now folks – JP made a point of telling both teams that 135 was the magic number to guarantee a repechage slot. Mind you, it always makes more sense to win the show if you can.

The first question asked which queen is commemorated by statues, and gave two locations. Colchester screamed out Boudicca to me, and to Lizzie Mackarel as well. I’m pretty sure that Lizzie is a Masterminder, having played in a first round heat which screened as recently as February of this year. Bonuses on the Voyager 1 spacecraft brought 2 correct answers. I did consider taking a lap of honour for knowing Carl Sagan but decided to let it ride. The next starter was about one of my favourite TV shows of last year – Squid Game. Ryan McMeekin took that one. Places associated with Catherine of Aragon yielded just the one correct answer on what was a pretty gettable set. Various clues pointed captain Roma Ellis to the word neutral for the next starter. This earned a good UC special set of pairs of words whereby adding a letter c to the first gave you the second. Newnham managed an ouple - sorry, a couple – again I thought they might have had all three of them. The picture starter showed a national flag of the only country whose name can be answered with ‘it’s up the stairs and second on the left’. Tuvalu? Ouch. Even the late Ted Rodgers would have given that one a wide berth. Ryan McMeekin recognised that one. Now, I usually likes me flag bonuses, but I’m better on countries than subnational entities, so I only managed the Isle of Wight, as did Courtauld. Roma Ellis won the buzzer race to say that James Lind used oranges and lemons to prevent scurvy. Science bonuses brought 1 correct answer to Newnham, and a lap of honour for me. I knew that Avogadro’s Constant – which I have only ever heard of on this very show – would come in handy one of these days. So after a pretty bright and brisk opening 10 minutes, the score stood at 35 -50.

Another flags starter saw Bethan Holloway-Strong identify the eagle as the creature featured on given flags. Bonuses on paintings featuring children brought 10 more points and the lead to Newnham. So, following bonuses on paintings on painters we had a starter on a painter. Hmm – that’s a bit of a coincidence bearing in mind that the Courtauld were one of the teams, don’tcha think? Alice Dodds recognised a reference to Camille Pissaro. This won a set of bonuses on US first ladiy Eleanor Roosevelt.For the next starter Alice Dodds knew that the Communist Manifesto was published in the 1840s. Films by the studio Cartoon Saloon brought 10 points and meant that Courtauld were a starter away from triple figures. Once again Alice Dodds struck for the next starter, recognising a definition of the word warp. Common wildflowers which have names containing the names of animals brought a further ten points, and at the very least Courtauld looked highly likely to get a repechage place score. Bethan Holloway-Strong was in very early to identify Twelfth Night as the other play apart from the Tempest where a character called Sebastian survives a shipwreck. The Nobel Prize for Literature only yielded the one bonus, but at least the scoreline was moving again for Newnham. So, to the Music starter, and Alice Dodds took a very fast buzz to identify a song from the Baz Luhrman film version of Moulin Rouge. Original versions of songs used in the movie brought two correct answers and meant that Courtauld were only five points adrift of a guaranteed reappearance. Captain Roma Ellis insured that Newnham were still in a chance by recognising the names of two BMX racers from team GB in the Tokyo Olympics. A full house on Philosophy proved most timely and put Newnham just five points from their own triple figure score. Bethan Holloway-Strong got her Ophelias mixed up with her Ladies of Shallot for the next starter, allowing Alice Dodds to take another starter. Medical terms beginning with M yielded a brace of bonuses. For the next starter Lizzie Mackarel identified a description of the poster for the film Belfast. The theatre in 1921 yielded nowt, but nonetheless Courtauld led by 160 – 90 on the 20-minute mark.

Like me, Bethan Holloway-Strong probably linked the musical term arco to archery and came up with played by a bow and was right to do so. Science bonuses yielded just the one correct answer. The next starter saw probably the most ironic wrong answer of the night, as Lizie Mackarel identified Frances Shand-Kydd as the mother of the now Queen Consort Camilla. Understandable bearing in mind that Camilla’s maiden name was Shand. It’s ironic because she was actually the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales. Roma Ellis knocked that one into the wide-open goal. Provinces and Territories of Canada yielded just the one correct answer. Nonetheless, Newnham were drawing inexorably closer to Courtauld. I don’t know the TV drama Pose, but Alice Dodds did. She was having a most successful evening, with 6 starters. 2 more of the same took Courtauld to the lofty heights of a score of 175. Yet still Newnham weren’t done. Roma Ellis knew Mauritius for the next starter, and two bonuses on fictional newspapers guaranteed Newnham a repechage slot at least. But a win would be better. . . Chen Zhou worked out that the answer to the sum asked in the starter would have 3 digits. Bonuses on tautological place names put them a mere full house behind. Throwing caution to the wind now, Hannah Bowen buzzed early identifying films based on the novels of Jane Austen. Three bonuses, and the best comeback since Lazarus would be complete. Only if the answers were correct, though. Sadly, they only took the one. Still, if there was time for one more starter- well there was, but Chen Zhou accidentally set her buzzer off and lost five points. That was it. The contest was gonged, with Courtauld winning by 175 – 160.

This was a terrific contest, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Both teams had the same number of bonuses to answer, and Courtauld did slightly better, which is why they won. You have to fancy Newnham’s chances in their repechage, especially if they start the contest buzzing like they ended this one. Yet the spoils go to Courtauld, who won’t be easily beaten whoever they face in round two.

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

Carl Sagan’s sequel to his superb ‘Cosmos’ was called “Pale Blue Dot”

Mastermind 2023 First Round Heat 10

 Somehow it seems like a very long time since we actually had Quizzy Mondays on a Monday, rather than just the few weeks that it’s actually been. Here we are again, though.

First out of the traps then was Alison Rose. Alison was offering us the Life of Anne Lister. If that name doesn’t really ring a bell, then maybe the nickname Gentleman Jack might jog your memory. For this is that same Anne Lister upon whose diaries the drama series of the same name was based. Alison’s round was an object lesson in how to deal with a specialist round. She snapped out the answers quickly, and I was certain she had prepared thoroughly. I was right too, as she revealed she’d made five hundred and ninety seven flashcards for her revision, which is something I can run up the flagpole and salute.

It would be very wicked of me to ask how many flashcards Alan McLarty had used in his preparation for his round on the show Dear Evan Hansen. After all, flashcards are not the only way to prepare, they just happened to be one that I found effective. I’m not very familiar with this show myself. Alan, a fellow teacher, started really well, but I think he was stymied a little by some of the questions that concentrated more on the production details rather than the plot details. Interesting that this happened with a stage show, while TV show rounds are almost entirely about plot details nowadays. Well, leaving that to one side, the curse of support from the Clark sofa struck again as Alan scored five.

So to our third contender, Sangeetha Navaratnam-Blair. Sangeetha was answering on Elizabeth Ist. This actually was my own best round of the night. Not that my score approached Sangeetha’s. Unlike me, she scored a respectable 8. It was a decent performance, but you couldn’t help thinking that she’d have her work cut out in the general knowledge round being four points off the lead.

Finishing off the round for us was Harry Hodson. Harry was answering on the Feature Films of David Lynch. I will confess that I’d forgotten that David Lynch made the first ever feature film version of one of my all-time favourite novels, Dune. It’s a funny thing that two of my favourite novels are practically unfilmable. Vanity Fair is the other, in case you were wondering. And David Lynch’s film of Dune certainly proved that Dune is. Coming back to Harry’s round, it was one of those where, after a bright start, no matter how hard he tried Harry was treading water for much of it. Like Alan, he ended with five.

With Alison Rose having a four point lead you could have probably named your own odds on any of the other three contenders winning. Nevertheless, even when the result looks to be a foregone conclusion there’s always still plenty to enjoy in a general knowledge round. Alan returned to the chair first. His score of 9 was respectable, and he was not far short of a double figure score either. Of course, this only raised the combined score target to fourteen, but at least it meant that he got to sample the flavour of being in the lead for a while.

To me Harry Hodson had looked uncomfortable for at least the last minute of his specialist round, and I’m afraid that he looked uncomfortable all the way through his general knowledge round. Harry looked to me to be one of this year’s younger contenders, and so maybe this was just too early in his quiz career to be having a bite at this particular cherry. He scored 6 to take his total to 11.

Sangeetha faced two tasks in her own GK round. Firstly she needed to get 7 correct answers in order to take the outright lead from Alan. The second task was to pile on as many correct answers after this to put as much pressure as possible on Alison. Well, she achieved the first, but only managed to take another correct answer to raise the bar to 16. She had the satisfaction of scoring a respectable 8, of taking the lead, and of knowing that she would not finish lower than second. With the best will in the world, mind you, his was never going to be enough for a win.

Nor was it, either. For a while Alison was a little becalmed in her round on 16 points, but once she cleared the log jam she piled on another 6 points for a final total of 22. I mentioned her use of flashcards for preparation, which she mentioned in her winner’s piece to camera at the end. It’s a method I’ve always found effective, and it’s nice to see successful contenders who’ve found the same for themselves. Well done Alison, best of luck in the semi-finals.

The Details

Alison Rose	The Life of Anne Lister	12	0	10	0	22	0
Alan McLarty	Dear Evan Hansen	5	1	9	0	14	1
Sangeetha Navaratnam-Blair	Elizabeth Ist	8	0	8	2	16	2
Harry Hodson	The Feature Films of David Lynch	5	1	6	2	11	3

 

"Why do they apply?" asked a colleague.

Well, this is a nice position to be in. It’s Sunday morning, and I’ve just finished compiling Thursday evening’s quiz for the rugby club. I also set myself the target of having made 10 hand drawn Christmas cards by the end of the weekend, and I’ve just drawn the 11^th. I usually make them in November, so that I have time to make more if I suddenly find I need them.

So this morning I’d like to reflect on a conversation I had with another member of staff at work during the week just gone. I don’t often find myself talking about quiz shows in general or Mastermind in particular at work because the subject just doesn’t tend to come up very often. But on Wednesday a colleague mentioned that she’d watched last week’s Mastermind and she passed comment upon a couple of the low scores on that particular show. One of the contenders had a low score on Specialist and another one had a low score on General Knowledge. Her point was that she didn’t understand why anyone would apply to go on the show if they weren’t prepared to learn their specialist subject or they didn’t have much general knowledge.

Can open. Worms all over the floor.

I could have just left it, made some sort of non-committal response and walked away. But, being the way that I am, I couldn’t really do that. So I pointed out that the two rounds are actually pretty different, and the range of reasons why you might not do very well in one are not necessarily applicable to the other. Then I explained my view that not learning your subject is only one reason why you might have a low score on specialist. As I see it these are others. Apologies that this may well be old ground to regular readers. I will try to be a bit succinct :-

·       A mismatch between the contender’s understanding of the parameters of the subject and the question setter’s. For example, in the last couple of series there’s been little or no point in learning huge swathes of facts about production details of TV series when the questions have largely concentrated on events of the shows. So let’s say that the setters suddenly went back to focusing several of the questions on production details. You’d be stuffed if you had only learned events, however hard you worked on them.

·       The ‘black chair’ effect. I was lucky. For most of the time I was in the chair I was able to keep my head, despite one shaky moment in Champ of Champs. But you cannot know how you are going to react until you do it. By which time it is too late. Just one wrong answer can send your mind into a tailspin. However hard you’ve worked on your subject.

·       You can work really hard on learning your subject. You can put hours and hours into it. However this doesn’t actually mean that it is going to result in a good score – not unless you have really thought carefully about HOW you are going to learn for your subject and HOW you are going to do so in a way which helps you sharpen the way that you recall and respond as quickly as you can.

As regards General Knowledge, well, that’s a bit different. The great triple champion (Mastermind 2006, Brain of Britain and Counterpoint) Geoff Thomas said that you can revise and learn for General Knowledge. He’s right, of course. However I would contend that you can’t really do it effectively over a matter of a few short weeks when you’re trying to learn a specialist subject at the same time. You either need to have at least a decent general knowledge before you apply, or should spend a year working on it before you apply.

So why do people who don’t have a good general knowledge apply to the show then? Well, first of all, I don’t think that people who have a low score in a General Knowledge round do naturally have a poor general knowledge. It doesn’t automatically follow.

Let me give you an example. In the 2022 series, Sirin Kamalvand scored four in her GK round in heat 22. A few days later she had an excellent article about her appearance published in the Guardian. In the very first paragraph she explained that she thought she was good at quizzes and was a ruthless team captain whose team nearly always took first prize in their local quiz. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if many people who’ve had disappointing scores in GK could tell a similar story. Why should they rule themselves out of applying for the show when they DON’T have a weak general knowledge? Yes, just because you regularly win your local pub quiz it doesn’t mean that you’re going to become a Mastermind champion, but it’s decent grounds for thinking you’ll be able to give the GK round a go.

Conversely, if you really do have a weak general knowledge, well how would you know that? If you didn’t regularly play in quizzes, and if you didn’t regularly play along at home with quiz shows, how would you know? Quite possibly because you know all you need to know for your general life, you might well believe that your GK is perfectly adequate, because in most situations relevant to your own life, it is. (Such people do sometimes get on these shows. My friend Rob Merrill who was a runner up to Ray Ward in Brain of Britain explained how, in his first round heat, he was consoling one of his runners up. She had scored poorly, and was close to tears. It turned out that she didn’t normally listen to the show or watch any quiz shows on TV. Her daughter had made the application for her and she’d thought she had an adequate General Knowledge and that it might be fun.)

Certainly in the Original Series up to 1997 applicants to be contenders had to do well enough in a General Knowledge test in their audition. I’m sure it was the same for Radio Four Mastermind, and wouldn’t be surprised if it worked that way with Discovery Mastermind too. I know for a fact that it was part of the auditions for Mastermind: The Next Generation from 2003 up to my time, and doubtless afterwards, probably up to the present time, unless anyone can tell me different. Now I’ve heard conflicting stories about where the threshold was set, or how many points you needed out of 20, but it does at least show that there has always been a commitment to saving contenders who will really struggle with general knowledge from themselves. Yeah, okay, I know I had an issue with the last year or two that it was produced in house by the BBC, where it seemed to me that too many low scoring GK contenders were getting through to the show. What can I say? This was genuinely how I felt at the time, and I was on the slide into depression, or actually in it at the time.

So, if the contenders on the show or at least the vast majority of them do have a claim to having at least a pretty decent general knowledge, why do some of them end up with low scores? Well, this is by no means an exhaustive list of reasons, just what I think. In no particular order:-

·       It’s just not your night. General knowledge is by definition extremely wide. No one knows everything. There may be only 12 questions asked in all four GK rounds that you don’t know the answer to, but if they’re all asked in YOUR round, then you’re sunk. Not your night.

·       The black chair effect. Especially if things didn’t go your way in the specialist round and that’s still playing on your mind.

·       Extraneous factors. For example, you’re under the weather, with an illness coming on.

So, this is how I summed it all up to my colleague. You know what? It is possible that some people don’t learn their subject. I think it’s a very silly approach and not really playing fair by the show or the audience, but maybe some people don’t. Maybe some people do apply knowing that they don’t have a very good general knowledge, and maybe some of these slip through the net onto the show. But this is by no means the only explanation and I reckon in many cases it isn’t the correct one. So let’s not be too harsh or critical about it.

University Challenge 2023: First Round heat: Bangor v. Nottingham

The Teams

Bangor

Gus Bastiani

Ethan Silcocks

Laura Lloyd-Williams (Capt)

Ro Pounder

Nottingham

Karen Moran

Will Noble

Robert Allen (Capt)

James Hadland

Eyes down for a full house then, and away we go with the twelfth first round heat of this season’s University Challenge. A miniscule knowledge of Greek was enough to make me think that the person whose name means ‘famous in her father’ might well be Cleopatra. Ro Pounder took a little more of the same question and came up with the same answer and we were both right. Bonuses on scientific awards were not exactly full of Eastern promise for me, yet my correct guess of enzymes for the first set me off on a very early lap of honour. Get it while you can, that’s my philosophy. Bangor managed that and one other. Nice to see them having a Ddraig Goch as their mascot too. Ethan Silcocks knew that circular argument is a type of fallacy for the next starter. The bonuses were on the Great Gatsby. Confession time. The Great Gatsby was the favourite novel of my girlfriend at Uni prior to me meeting Mrs. Londinius, but I never really thought that much of it myself. Hence me only getting 2 of them. ”Holtzman drives – “ began the next starter and I yelled “IT’S DUNE!” Sorry. I first read it when I bought a paperback copy in Shepherd’s Bush Market when I’d just turned 16 and I’ve loved the book ever since. The sequels? Meh, not so much. Robert Allen took his team’s first points with that one. Tripoints in Australia sounded a wee bit tricky, but bearing in mind there aren’t that many states or territories it proved surprisingly easy to pick up a full house. Nottingham managed two. So to the picture starter, and a picture that none of us managed to identify as a lenticular galaxy. Gesundheit. This was followed by the good old chestnut about Baily’s Beads and Robert Allen took his second starter knowing it occurs either side of a total solar eclipse. Galaxy photo bonuses followed, of which Nottingham identified 2. Essential oil – toothache – and – dried bud gave me cloves and it did the same for Gus Bastiani as well. Pairs of people sharing a given name yielded just a single bonus. So at just after the 10 minute mark, after a brisk opening the score stood at 45 – 40 to Bangor.

Noe, I will be honest. With the next starter I leapt in far too early when asked for a temple complex, zigging with Angkor Wat. Only to hear JP add that it was on a small island. Oops. Nobody knew that this was Borobudur. Now if it’s a question about a poet and he was mates with Coleridge, chance your arm with Wordsworth and you’ll be right more often than not. Ethan Silcocks certainly did. Sidney Poitier is a subject I must know more about than I thought I did, since I full-housed, but Bangor were unable to take any of the set. The term lagomorph escaped both teams for the next starter. Will Noble knew that the Emperor Meiji was the great, great grandfather of Naruhito. One bonus on medicine levelled the scores. Soon as the next starter mentioned a mountain in the Karakorum I went for K2 – (which was named after the 7x great grandfather of Doctor Who’s dog) Ethan Silcock won the buzzer race once the answer became obvious. Books by the journalist Peter Who? – or Peter Oborne as he is more politely known – saw another bonus set go begging. A lonely harmonica lament came over the airwaves for the music starter. None of us recognised the theme from Once Upon A Time In The West. Glory be, I got a Maths starter right! I worked out that the sum of the two lowest three digit primes is 204. So did Bangor skipper Laura Lloyd-Williams. Three bonuses on other film themes with harmonica suggested  Midnight Cowboy might feature and indeed it was first, swiftly followed by Jean de Toilette as I once heard it called, then Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Bangor – once again, nul points. Ro Pounder impressed by giving the full name of Lord Salisbury when the next starter asked who was the Prime Minister at the start of the 20^th century. Bob’s your uncle. US TV shows set in Philadelphia finally brought Bangor a couple of bonuses. The Nottingham skipper struck back with the next starter knowing that the name linking a cycle race and a US president was Keirin – just checking you’re awake still. No, it was of course Madison. Bonuses on glucose brought just the one correct answer. Still, it meant that for all their superiority on the buzzer, Bangor only led by 95 – 70 at twenty minutes.

A gorgeous starter saw Karen Moran identify that DIX is 509 in roman numerals or 10 in French. South East Asia provided Nottingham with 2 bonuses. When asked which British reformer, named after the city of her birth – I came in with Florence Nightingale. You see, hardly anyone in the UK was named Florence until she became famous. My grandmother’s aunt was named Florence after her, and my grandmother was named Florence after her auntie. Laura Lloyd-Williams had that one. A fine UC special set on contronyms provided a fairly easy full house, which gave Bangor the benefit of a 30 point lead which Nottingham would need two visits to the table to overturn. For the second picture starter the Bangor skipper correctly identified a photograph of Bath. Other real locations mentioned in the works of Jane Austen only yielded one bonus, but the clock was running down, and the smart money was on Bangor to cross the line first. Will Noble knew that the kitchen on an airplane is a galley. Novels from the early noughties did nothing to help the Nottingham cause. Nobody knew the anopheles mosquito. Robert Allen worked out that giga x milli = mega. Not arguing with that – couldn’t if I tried. John William Waterhouse, the artist, only provided one bonus, but if Nottingham managed a full house on the next set, then it could give them the lead. Well, Robert Allen did the first part of the necessary by correctly answering Einstein for the next starter, but Nottingham failed to get any of the bonuses on Olympic Mascots. That looked like the game to me, especially when neither team managed the next starter. That was it. The contest was gonged with the score at 135 to 125.

It was an exciting show – well done to both teams on that. However, the bonus conversion rate was low for both teams – Bangor will want to do a lot better than that in the second round in order to have a chance of making it to the quarter-finals.

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

Anopheles – as in the anopheles mosquito, comes from the Greek for useless.

Mastermind 2023: First Round heat 9

Well, after the Lord Mayor’s show. . . Is that a bit mean? Sorry if it comes across that way.

So let’s get down to brass tacks. Ben Farren kicked us off with the late journalist and columnist Christopher Hitchens. I have to say that I tended to go along with Christopher Hitchens’ views on the Elgin Marbles/Parthenon Frieze so I was glad to see that this was the basis of one of the questions. And yes, Ben is a teacher, and you know my views on providing support for my brethren and sistren. Thankfully, though the support from the Clark sofa didn’t seem to do him any harm, and he posted a highly competitive 12 points to set the standard.

Raminda Kaur was offering us the subject that I thought offered me the best chance of success tonight, the racing driver, the great Ayrton Senna. As it happened I did less well with this round than I did with Christopher Hitchens. Did that mean it was a particularly hard round? Maybe. I don’t claim to be enough of an expert on Senna’s life to really comment. Raminda herself managed 6. It’s by no means a disastrous score, but it did mean that to all intents and purposes she was not going to be challenging for the win in the GK round.

Our next round was another of those trickier – than – they – seem popular entertainment rounds. Quinn Holmes answered questions on the TV series Killing Eve. I’ve never watched the show myself and so in all honesty I couldn’t possibly say whether this was another difficult, fair or relatively easy set. Sadly Quinn didn’t score very highly on this set, ending with a total of 3.

Richard Holmes, then, brought the specialist round to a conclusion. Of all the specialist subjects tonight, Richard offered us the most traditional Mastermind subject in the shape of Field Marshal Montgomery. He did pretty well with it too. You couldn’t have blamed him for being a little daunted following what had happened to the two previous contenders, but he powered on, and for much of the round it looked as if he would achieve double figures. Well, he didn’t quite do that, but he managed 9 by the end of the round.

It cannot possibly be easy, to walk out to the chair again after you’ve had a disappointing specialist round. So I was pleased for Quinn Holmes that she managed to put that behind her, and posted a respectable 8 in order to take her total score to 11.Sadly this wasn’t quite enough to put her into the lead.

It’s maybe a little dangerous to speculate what exactly causes a particular round to go off the rails, but when it comes to Raminda’s GK round, it looked to me that one question early doors really tripped her up, and after this she fell into a spiral of wrong answers and passes from which she never really recovered. All I can say is that sitting in that chair can do funny things to you, and there but for the grace of God might have gone any of us. Raminda ended with a total of 10 points.

At the business end of the competition, Richard returned to the chair needing a high score in order to force Ben to walk through the corridor of doubt. As with his specialist round, Richard produced a perfectly respectable 9. Perfectly respectable, but not, I felt, really enough to give him a realistic chance of winning the show.

Nothing is certain in life – other than death or taxes, anyway – but you could probably have named your own odds if you wanted to bet against Ben achieving the 7 points that he needed in order to win outright. There were times during the round when he looked a little uncertain, but his score just kept mounting. In the same way that Ben clearly won the specialist round, he also was comfortably the best performer in the General Knowledge round. He added 13 points to take his total to 25. No, not the best we’ve seen all series, but certainly a competitive total. Well done to you sir, and best of luck for the semi-finals.

The Details

Ben Farren	Christopher Hitchens	12	0	13	0	25	0
Raminda Kaur	Ayrton Senna	6	0	4	3	10	3
Quinn Holmes	Killing Eve	3	4	8	2	11	6
Richard Taylor	Field Marshal Montgomery	9	1	9	3	18	4