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.