Alan Carr's Picture Slam

Right, I have a problem with this show. Can you guess what it is yet? That’s right. It’s about pictures. That’s not the whole problem. Many quizzes have picture rounds, even University Challenge. Only Connect makes copious and clever use of pictures. The problem with Alan Carr’s Picture Slam is that it’s only about pictures. Yes, Dave – did you not work that out from the title? Well, yes, I did, and only watched it I the interests of writing about it. But I mention all this faff just so I can say that this quiz show is based on the pub quiz round that I like the least – the picture round.

No, sorry, not finished yet. I guess that my issue with picture rounds is that I’m not very good at them. Now, if I was of a mind, I could pick on another weaker area of mine – let’s call this purely hypothetical round food and drink – and work on it, learn stuff, and make myself less weak. In fact I once did with food and drink, but let that go for a minute. Now a picture round doesn’t allow you that luxury. Quizzes call for recall, and sometimes give you the opportunity to work out an answer by using what you do know to help you work out what you don’t know. Picture rounds don’t. They are about recognition, and it pains me to say it but this is a skill I have very little of. And it wouldn’t make a difference how much I worked on it, I still would have difficulty telling my Ryan Goslings from my Ryan Reynolds and my young blond actress from any other young blond actress.

So how well does Alan Carr’s Picture Slam do something that I don’t really like? Well, look, it’s basically just about recognising pictures, right? The pictures are linked by category, so we have the flag of Chile, a bottle of Sunny Delight and various other things being connected by types of weather. You see how it works. The show moves quite quickly, which is in its favour. But then it does something a bit odd. The competition is between teams of two. However in one round the individuals within the teams face off against individuals from another team. One of them is shown the pictures and has to name them. Then the opposing player is shown exactly the same pictures. Fair on the players, yes, but not very fair on the poor viewers.

Alan Carr? Look, he’s a funny guy, but on a show like this it’s difficult to let that come out naturally, and he was a bit shouty for my liking. But then this isn’t a show for me anyway, so that doesn’t really matter. It does what it does pretty well, but . . . you know what I’m going to say, I do’t like what it does.  

Film Quiz

Look, I was just in a very grumpy mood when I wrote this yesterday. Here goes: - 

 I am currently sitting in a theatre on a school INSET day, listening to the ‘expert’ in a particular field. His first mistake was to discard the microphone he was offered. He thinks his voice is perfectly clear and carries to the middle and back of the auditorium. He is wrong. We are sitting around large round tables. I currently have 11 people around mine. He keeps stopping, and I’m guessing that he is asking us to discuss things, judging by the fact that everyone else in the group starts talking. At the same time. I hear snatches of three or four conversations each time. I feel somewhat like I am being beaten over the head with a blunt instrument today.

Which brings me to Wednesday night’s quiz. I enjoyed Wednesday night’s quiz – always do, even though I very rarely provide more than one or two answers. It’s a film quiz, you see. Wednesday night’s theme was movie villains. And we played an absolute blinder. I say we. I had a couple and that was that for me. There’s one quiz every month – with no quiz in August. Of the 8 quizzes so far this year we’ve won 6, tied for first place in another, and been second in the other. This year as well as the individual quizzes it’s being run as a league. Now, on Wednesday night we won by something like 18 points, or put it another way, we could have not played the last round and still won by 8. It’s our biggest win this year, possibly our biggest win ever.

There is a certain irony to this. There are several guys who run the quiz. Most of them we get on with fine, but there’s one of them who makes no secret of the fact that he is extremely frustrated that we win the majority of quizzes. Well, on Wednesday night, as we were in the queue for drinks, this particular guy passed us in the queue. Jess and I turned to each other and at exactly the same time said, “That’s ruined his night.”

If you play in quizzes and you win quite regularly then you’ll have experienced some unpleasantness from other teams or question masters I’m quite sure. On Thursday night Dan said he’d been told that the organisers are considering introducing a handicap system. Hmm. Personally, I would hope that if they do they will hang on until after December, and the end of the league. Changing things before the league ends, somehow that’s not quite cricket.

I have mixed feelings about handicaps. On the positive side, the more teams that take part in a quiz the better as far as the host venues are concerned, and without the venue you can’t have a quiz. I would imagine that playing in a quiz where you know you have a chance of winning is more fun than playing in a quiz where you know that you have no realistic chance of winning. Okay. On the negative side – I don’t really want to say this now, because I don’t come across very well for saying it. But what the hell? The nasty, too serious about the whole thing side of me says – handicaps reward you for not being very good at it. Handicaps remove any incentive to get better at it, and if winning matters that much to you, then you ought to be prepared to put in a bit of effort to get better at it. On a more practical note, I think it’s difficult to do handicaps fairly. Trevor Parry in Newport, who is as good a question master as you are ever going to meet, started using handicaps in his Monday quiz which I used to attend. It was a constant source of frustration to me – even as great a setter as Trevor seemed to have no discernible system of handicapping, just plucking the figures out of thin air each week. Some nights I just wanted to get up and walk out after he announced the handicaps, because we’d be starting so far off the pace there would be no chance of winning, even if we comfortably outscored everyone else.

Well, that’s just me, and I know I do take it all too seriously. If I lived closer to Newport then I’d consider going again, but I cannot in all conscience do a 40 minute journey back on a school night now, even with handicaps.

On the other hand, I would not even make a 40 second journey to a bingo quiz. Bingo quizzes are a firm fixture in the drawer I have labelled ‘NOT FOR ME’. I can’t cope with the idea that you might get all the answers in the quiz right (unlikely but not impossible) and still not win. Quizzing is a broad church, and we can’t all like the same things. If you regularly go to a bingo style quiz and you enjoy it, then good luck to you. As I say, it’s not for me.

 

The Way of the Pedant

I have tried to mellow just a little as I get older. But the fact is that when I do finally manage to wholeheartedly subscribe to the undoubtedly correct view – it’s only a game – I’ll probably have so little of my allotted three score and ten left that it won’t be log enough to make a lot of difference. I take it all too seriously, still. Not as much as I did, but that’s not saying that much when you get down to it.

Which is maybe why I let myself get worked up about 2 questions last night. The question setter last night is a regular, and someone I like very much. As a person. As a question master, well, he frustrates me. It’s not so much that he gets things wrong, although he does. It’s more that he gets things wrong which, well, for want of a better way of putting it, he gets things wrong which he really should get right and which he would get right if he wasn’t so slap-dash about it.

Now, last night’s quiz was a gimmicky thing. Each round had a theme (ugh, themed quizzes). Each team had a joker. Before the first question of each round was asked, you had the opportunity to play the joker on the round. Whatever your score, as Arthur Ellis would say ‘Played the joker, double it up to . . . “ The first question in each round was a three pointer. The last was an either/or with two answers to choose from (ugh, either/or questions). So look, he’d obviously taken some time over putting it together. But then on the transport round he comes up with this one – in 1952 where did Albert Gunton jump a double decker bus? Was it – and by this point I’d already written down Tower Bridge – 12 other double decker buses, or , London Bridge?

Now, what gets me is that when I told him of his mistake – sorry, but London Bridge is important to me. It was my specialist subject in the final of a well known TV show- when I told him of his mistake he even admitted that the right answer made more sese. Mind you he wasn’t happy that it pretty much meat he had to tell everyone the right answer then.

He’d maybe have been even more unhappy if I’d told him that he’d cocked up this question – When Josh Kerr won the men’s 800m in this year’s world athletics championship, who presented his gold medal? – Because as I am sure you and everyone else knows, Josh Kerr didn’t wi the 800m. He won the 1500m. Just lazy slapdashery.

Does it matter? That’s a tricky one. It made no material difference to he outcome. It didn’t affect the result. And let’s be hones, even if it had, would it have mattered? It certainly would not have been important. But as I’ve said before, just because something isn’t important it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter. My view is this. Everyone makes mistakes. When you set a quiz you are going to make mistakes with the best will in the world. But you don’t have to make mistakes which are simple and easy to find.

I’d like my pedantry proficiency badge and certificate back please.

University Challenge 2024: Warwick v. Wolfson, Cambridge

The Teams

Warwick

James Coe

Luke Beresford

Matthew Bliss (Capt)

Abby Akarapongpisakbi

Wolfson, Cambridge

Scott Wilson

Grace An

Rob Steel-Browne (Capt)

Patrick Pan

Anyone remember Jeremy Paxman? I only ask because It seems like Amol’s settled so well into his role that it’s like he’s been going for years. To the contest, then. Empire and Rose Chamber were enough to give me Ottoman for the first starter. Patrick Pan miscued with Russian, allowing Luke Beresford in with my answer. This brought Warwick bonuses on the name Artemisia, a well-crafted set that brought a full house. Poor Patrick Pan came in too early again for the next starter, offering Confucianism which was almost the next word in the question. This allowed in Luke Beresford for his double with Legalism. Notable authors in the Austro-Hungarian Empire announced Amol. Kafka! Shouted I. Well, he was the last of the set. He was also the only one either of us answered correctly. Abby Akarapongpisakbi knew that Bartok wrote the piano pieces known as Mikrokosmos. Works in the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris Exposition were far less obscure than you might have expected and we both had a full house. So to the picture starter, and a map with an area highlighted that was obviously the Gobi Desert. Luke Beresford took his third with that. The bonuses, other ‘cold’ deserts, were harder than this very gentle starter, and we both only managed the one. For the next starter none of us were quite up with the FORTRAN programming language. Finally Wolfson managed a starter, with captain Rob Steele-Browne knowing that Karl Rove was the presidential advisor nicknamed Bush’s Brain. Was he a particularly small man, by any chance? Bonuses on extinct Indo-European languages yielded nowt, leaving Wolfson still on a deficit budget. But they were out of the traps now, and Patrick Pan atoned for earlier miscues, knowing that Campari is a main component of a Negroni cocktail. Sounds disgusting. The letter S in biology made my brow furrow. There is NO letter S in the word biology. But Wolfson took two and I took a lap of honour for working out serine. Thanks Mr. Rose (my latin teacher). This mini revival meant that Wolfson had improved their situation although Warwick led by 80 – 15.

Patrick Pan took a second consecutive starter with a very quick buzz to identify the word spot – or do I mean to spot the word identify? No. Real life scientists and The Simpsons was a lovely set of bonuses of which Wolfson took a full set. And Wolfson struck again with the next starter, skipper Steele-Browne knowing Ngugi wa Thiongo’’s debut novel was set in Kenya. Impressive buzz, that. Works ending with ‘of the Dead’ brought two correct answers, and a total of 60, just 20 behind Warwick. Then, for the music starter Patrick Pan only needed about half a note to identify the work of Brahms (Johannes, I’m guessing, rather than Shirley). Other works written for piano with four hands brought the two correct answers that Wolfson needed to tie the scores. And you still don’t believe that Amol is a jedi? That purple patch, though, was brought to an end when the Warwick skipper recognised a series of words beginning with Ale - . Two bonuses on Bertold Brecht brought Wolfson into triple figures. Patrick Pan hit back to name Sumerian as the oldest known text written in cuneiform. Semi-precious stones did nothing to help the Wolfson cause. Now, I have always told people that if you get a question starting ‘what numerical value’ you must say 1 or zero, coz it’s often one or tother. Well, the strains of the baby elephant walk drowned out the rest of it, but I said 1, Luke Beresford said 1 and we were both right. Luke, to be fair, didn’t make a fool of himself by taking a second lap of honour around the living room, but there we are. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie isn’t a writer with whom I’m very familiar but Warwick knew enough to take a bonus. Abby Akarapongpisakbi knew that Ash Barty was the homegrown player who won the Australian Open then retired. 2 bonuses on China in the 70s followed. With the picture starter Abby Akarapongpisakbi took a double, recognising the work of David. 3 British artworks depicting poisonings saw both of us fail on the first two, but correctly identify the work of the man Oscar Wilde nicknamed Awfully Weirdly. I love Aubrey Beardsley’s work. So although the second period had proven to be more competitive than the first, Warwick very much had the whip hand by the 20 minute-mark.

Matthew Bliss knew of Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line for the next starter. Snakes on flags and anthems brought another full house. Wolfson were still within shooting distance of a repechage slot, but they really needed to get buzzing again to give themselves a realistic chance.And captain Rob Steel-Browne did just that, knowing that Sharm – El – Sheikh was the location of the COP27 conference. (Sharm – El – Sheikh, Sharm – El – Sheikh, Sheikh Your Booty). Short scientific terms ending with x – took them to 115, and they looked definitely in with a shout of reaching the repechage. Nobody knew that the great and the kori are a pair of bustards – although perhaps they’re just misunderstood. Various clues gave James Coe the word Saint for the next starter. The team missed out on the term tenebrism although they did pick up a bonus for a noted practitioner in Caravaggio. Grace An brought hope to Wolfson knowing that Victor Horta (who had a lovely daughter) was an exponent of Art Nouveau in architecture. A full house on coffee brought them to 140, tantalisingly close. Now, when the next starter mentioned Solhofen Limestone the word Archaeopteryx popped into my head. What can I say – I’m funny like that. This led me to fossils and did the same to Matthew Bliss too, since he gave the same answer. Film bonuses yielded another full house. Warwick were in no mood to ease Wolfson’s path into the repechage and were slamming the buzzer down on every starter now. Luke Beresford knew that Lake Vattern is in Sweden. The use of the drug chloral hydrate in fiction (there was none of that in Bamber’s day!) brought a couple more bonuses. Jomon pottery comes from Japan, as Luke Beresford helpfully informed us. Two bonuses on ships followed. James Coe knew that daggers were the weapons referenced in stated works, and there was time to add a further five points before the contest was gonged. Warwick won by 265 – 140.

Hard lines Wolfson. They showed in their purple patch that at least a repechage slot was not beyond them, but it didn’t work out. They had a conversion rate of 63%. As for Warwick the impressive thing about them was that although Luke Beresford top scored with 6 starters, the buzzing was spread well throughout the team. Their conversion rate was 61%. I will share some thoughts on what the bonus conversion rates this year seem to be telling us, but not until the first round is finished.

How is Amol Doing?

Goodness me, but Amol uncorked his jedi tricks early in this show. No more than 7 minutes and 18 seconds of the show had elapsed before he said “Plenty of time left Wolfson. See if you can get going with this one.” Well, to be fair, for once there really was plenty of time remaining, and the score did stand at 80 to Warwick and minus 10 to Wolfson. As often happens, it took a minute or two to work. When Wolfson did get started he felt confident enough of their revival to be a bit of a sarky devil, telling them that one of their answers was only a few thousand years out.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know of the Week

Enugu was the capital of the short lived breakaway republic of Biafra.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

“In mathematics what numerical value is both the supremum of the hyperbolic tangent function and the infimum of the hyperbolic cosine function?” That. . . ain’t . . . English! Dum de dum dum dumdum dumdum dum dum.

Mastermind 2024 - Round 1 - Heat 5

We’re whipping through the first round now, dearly beloved. Tonight’s Mastermind was that relative rarity, a show containing no passes whatsoever. This suggests a clutch of well-schooled contenders who appreciated the demands of the show. Was this what we actually found though?

First to brave the chair was student Ben Jones. Ben was answering on F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’ll be honest, I didn’t fancy this as a subject. A great many people whose opinions I highly respect love Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. This is the only one of his novels that I’ve actually read, and . . . look, it’s like this. As with Kafka, I can appreciate the achievement while just not having that emotional response to it myself. Say it quietly but I’d far rather read a John Grisham. All of which is, I suppose, a long-winded apology for getting a total of zilch on this round. Ben did better, getting 7, but it looked like he’d have some catching up to do in the GK.

Now, there’s no reason why I should get more points on our second specialist, otters, than I should have on Fitzgerald. Yet I did. I don’t know a great deal about otters, but I’ve read and seen Ring of Bright Water, and I knew about Terry Nutkins, who was also the straight man to the late great Johnny Morris on Animal Magic once Dotty the Ring-Tailed Lemur had moved on to explore other career opportunities. So I took two. Hannah Mitchell weighed in with the first double figure round of the night. 10 looked good but left a little room on top.

Michael Thompson was answering on Thomas Paine. Normally I’d think of this as a ‘scraping a couple of points if I’m lucky’ round. Well, even that made it my ‘banker round’ of this particular show. And to be fair I did equal my score of 2 from the previous round – thanks Common Sense and Marquis de Lafayette. Michael scored 7. It’s never a bad score, is seven. You can’t get it without knowing your subject. But it looks modest, and it usually leaves you adrift a half time.

Finally Simon Pinnell with The Navy Lark. Now, I know a little bit about the show, and can actually remember once or twice listening to episodes when I was little – and sadly, wondering what people were laughing at. Bu this really wasn’t enough to bring me any points – only a wild guess of Scapa Flow did that. So I finished the specialists with an aggregate of five, and frankly felt bloomin’ lucky to get that many. Simon managed to equal the best score of the night so far, taking a good ten o ensure that he would be the last to go in the GK round.

First in the GK was Michael. Michael did not answer very quickly. I always find this a little frustrating as a viewer because I want to go at 100mph to amass as good a score in my own chair as I can. However it can be an effective tactic if it means you get a higher ratio of correct answers. And let’s be fair to Mchael, he managed 10. What do we say, dearly beloved? Anything in double figures is a good score. Did he have a winning total? Well, no, I couldn’t see 17 doing it.

Ben’s first minute and a half was absolutely terrific. He was picking them off with the greatest of ease, and with time left on the clock he looked to be heading towards a score of fifteen or so. A few questions began tripping him up at this point, though, and that vital momentum was lost. This couldn’t undo the good work in the earlier part of the round though, and Ben finished with 12 for 20. It’s a funny thing, but the psychological gap between scores of 19 and 20 is a huge gulf, and it was possible that Ben might just do it.

Not before Hannah had made her run for the tape, though. She was never quite as convincing as Ben but then she didn’t really need to be. She was two points to the good at half time, and she was on nineteen as the white line of doom snaked around the score. She couldn’t find the answer that she needed, though, and remained just one short on nineteen.

Only Simon could prevent Ben from taking an unlikely win now. He didn’t start badly either. There was an admirable economy in the way he answered. Sadly, though, there just weren’t enough correct answers among the answers he gave, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to get there before the white line of doom reappeared. Simon finished with 8 for a total of 18.

Well played all. Not the highest scoring show we’ve seen, but well contested. As to Ben, best of luck in the semi final. As you so rightly said, you are now a Mastermind semi-finalist, and win, lose or draw, nobody can take that away.

The Details

Ben Jones	F. Scott Fitzgerald	8	0	12	0	20	0
Hannah Mitchell	Otters	10	0	9	0	19	0
Michael Thompson	Thomas Paine	7	0	10	0	17	0
Simon Pinnell	The Navy Lark	10	0	8	0	18	0

 

A Little Postscript

 Yes, a little postscript to the incident I wrote about in my previous post. I had a message to go to the reception during registration this morning. There was one of the boys involved, with his mother, an apology and a wee present of a coffee mug with my name on it! Knock me down with a feather. There is decency out there after all.

Awful Day - A Quiz that made me feel old.

I don’t know if I would have done it on Wednesday, had it not been the fact that I’d had such a bizarre and awful day up to that point. Awful? Well, see what you think. I do my breaktime duty once a week in the school where I teach. On Wednesday I saw two boys down the corridor knocking lumps out of each other. My colleague and I both shouted as we moved rapidly down the corridor but of course the red mist had come upon the two boys and they carried on, as a small crowd formed.

Well, what would you have done? The professional associations probably advise teachers not to risk personal injury by getting between the children fighting, but in all honesty instinct takes over. Your job is to keep the kids safe. So I put myself between the two, hoping that having to go through me would make the more aggressive one back off. Fat chance. He barreled into me, knocking me over. Now, being as it was break time I had my mug of coffee in my hand – lukewarm by this time so no danger to the kids. Still, I ended up on the floor, drenched in coffee and my knee hurting like hell. At first I thought I might have seriously hurt myself, but the pain receded. I got up, the boys had been taken away for the whole incident to be unraveled and sorted out. Adrenaline was now working its magic and I was in a sort of gung-ho, “Yes, of course I shall teach my lessons drenched in coffee, and what’s more, I shall build the school an extension in my lunch hour if you wish!” frame of mind. Thankfully wiser heads prevailed. Cover was provided for my lessons, and it was suggested that if I went home to change then I might well find it hitting me more once the adrenaline had ebbed.

Sorry to shock anyone. But I was one of the lucky ones. I don’t think that either child intended to physically hurt me. However research by my own association shows that a totally shocking and unacceptable percentage of teachers are physically attacked each year in school, and a huge majority of teachers receive verbal abuse. It’s not media hype. It really happens.

So, I got in the car to go home. At the roundabout to get onto the M4 motorway, my car's brakes seized up. By putting my foot to the floor I managed to get the car across the roundabout and park in the nearest car park. This was at about 11:30 am. The AA guy eventually managed to get the car to the garage by about 4pm.

You’ve got the point anyway. Wednesday was not a good day. So I did nearly say no when Dan and Jess invited me to go with them to a quiz in Mumbles. But when Dan said that it stared at 7:30, and we’d be probably home before 10:30 I thought again. The quiz is run by one of Dan’s colleagues at work. £2 entry and the winning team scoops the pot. You know the sort of thing. It did occur to me that there might be tears before bedtime if we won, but that was a bridge we could cross when we got there.

The quiz in Aberdare a couple of weeks ago was a good, honest pub quiz. This one, well, it wasn’t great. I mean it was okay, but had a couple of things working against it. The quiz consisted of four rounds and a handout. The handout was a number – I can’t remember exactly how many – pop and rock group band names rendered in emojis. I would imagine the vast majority of the teams had them all correct like we did. Then the other four rounds began with General Knowledge, and ended with History. In between we had rounds on video games, and then the Spice Girls. In this particular quiz the team with the lowest score chooses a theme for the one of the rounds in the next quiz. Last week two teams tied, and one of them chose video games while the other – you can work it out.

The first thing that grated on me a little bit was the rounds of play your cards right between rounds. Everyone stands up. Dealer draws a card. If you think the next will be higher, put your hands on your head. If you think it will be lower, put them on yer bum. If you’re wrong, you sit down. Last one standing wins a free drink. Okay, it’s not my cup of lapsang souchong, but I can see the appeal to the regulars. The other thing was, if someone gets caught cheating on their phone, then they have to come out and put on a dunce’s hat. This happened once. However, we marked for the cheating team and judging by three or four consecutive great answers, their cheated answers had been allowed to stand. Odd.

Well, look, the first time you go to a new quiz you’re guests and you act on your best behaviour, so we didn’t make a fuss. We still won anyway. The prize was just short of fifty quid, which wasn’t bad. We drank up, checked that the coast was clear, and made a beeline for the door. The postscript was that when Dan went into work and spoke with the question master the next day he said that there had been quite a bit of discontent with our win – who were they? – never seen them before – only came for the quiz – took the money and left straight after – you know the sort of thing. And no, I certainly shan’t be going back any time soon. I didn’t enjoy the quiz that much if truth be told. I didn’t mind that the quiz was full of twenty somethings – good luck to them, they are the future of the pub quiz. But when all is said and done it was no place for an old feller like me.

University Challenge 2024: First Round - Sheffield v. Loughborough

The Teams

Sheffield

Safia Rujack

Joseph McGough

Cameron Colclough (Capt.)

Matthew Nail

Loughborough

James Jones

Rachael Alvey

Tudor Simmons Capt)

Milan Campion

How you doing? Me? Well, I shan’t be going to Aberdare tonight, that’s for sure, no disrespect intended. But let’s get to the job in hand. The first starter asked about a word linking several things. It was obvious the second was the Giants Causeway and the third the James Dean film Giant. Well, neither team quite got it. The second starter was clearly about Around the World in Eighty Days and fell to Safia Rujak, who was to have a good night on the buzzer. Bonuses on Caribbean countries and airports brought a couple of correct answers. Captain Tudor Simmons came in too early for the Cavalier Parliament on the next starter, allowing Joseph McGough to steal. Questions on Arabic brought a bonus. Matthew Nail knew that Pac Man was released in 1980. I thought he just escaped. A nice UC set on works of art and the US president in office when they were made brought just the one bonus. Nonetheless Sheffield had established buzzer dominance and were forging ahead. The picture starter highlighted an SSSI which was clearly the Wash. This brought first points for Loughborough, and a further two bonuses. Cameron Colclough worked out that vanilla was the species of cultivated orchid referred to in the next starter. Apples in biology brought a single bonus on a gettable set. The Woodland Trust brought a correct answer to Milan Campion and a full house on football related terms that entered the OED in 2022 meant that they trailed by 65 – 40 at the ten-minute mark.

Safia Rujak new that if you put a a spoon made of gallium in a hot cup of tea it would seem to disappear. Rock and pop musicians from the Nordic countries brought a full house to Sheffield. My Goldsmiths College contemporary Damien Hirst was the answer to the next starter, provided by Joseph McGough. Classical languages of India brought another couple of bonuses. Cameron Colclough worked out that Surrey was the answer to the cricket questions that followed. A set of bonuses on film and TV adaptations brought another full house. In the space of just a few minutes the lead had almost grown to a hundred. The music starter brought an early buzz from Safia Rujak with Girl in Red. More examples of bedroom pop brought another full house. This was proving to be a real power play from Sheffield, who were swiftly heading for the event horizon. Itt was somehow inevitable that Matthew Nail would push them further by buzzing in early to identify that the people mentioned in the next starter had all been subjects of movies by Steve McQueen. Shorter words that can be formed using the letters of anticlimax were a nice UC special set. I awarded myself a lap of honour for axial – especially considering that Sheffield missed it. Joseph McGough knew that the capital of Burkina Faso begins with OU – Ouagadougou (all together now – Too shy, shy – hush, hush, eye to eye. Ask your grandparents.) Bonuses on curries saw Sheffield miss out on the old quiz chestnut dopiaza, and also the even older quiz chestnut on Balti. An unfeasibly long Science question flummoxed all of us for the next starter. Safia Rujak knew the musician Sophie for the next starter. Eve, the 2019 album by US musician Rapsody saw a welcome name check for my favourite Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut, who so rarely comes up in conversation nowadays, more’s the pity. I had a full house, while Sheffield managed the other two. Matthew Nail knew that St. Francis and two others are associated with Assisi. World heritage sites in France brought two more correct answers. This meant that Sheffield led by almost 200 points at the 20 minute mark – 230 – 35. It would need more than the Force to being Loughborough back now.

Still the onslaught continued. Safia Rujak recognised a still from ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’. They didn’t mention the less successful sequel ‘The Bleedin’ Tube was on strike and the bus was Cancelled.’3 more ‘post-horror’ films brought a full house, and the distinct possibility that Sheffield might reach the rarely achieved score of 300. Matthew Nail took another starter next to push them closer knowing Caroline of Anspach was consort to George II. Riz Ahmed brought a couple of bonuses. Sheffield were just a ful house away from 300. It was this point that Amol’s Jedi encouragement a few minutes earlier began to take effect. Milan Campion weighed in with the term ‘machine learning’. I liked the idea of aptronyms and Loughborough took two of them. Halfway through the next question captain Tudor Simmons weighed in with null hypothesis. Glass production only brought a single bonus. Milan Campion won the buzzer race to identify Brazil s the only country through which both the Equator and Tropic of Capricorn pass. Algebra questions were meat and drink to James Jones and Loughborough took a full house. And Loughborough charged onwards, with Milan Campion identifying the Zulu people for the next starter. Musical works and the decades of their composition kept the score moving along. Surely they couldn’t sneak a repechage slot at this late stage? Well, no, not when the Sheffield skipper decided enough was enough and took the next starter recognising stages in the production of paper. Literature and writing in 1522 gave just time for one correct answer before the gong struck.

Sheffield won by 290 – 115. In his comments to the team Amol kindly pointed out that Loughborough were going for the buzzer but being beaten in the race many times. Loughborough did achieve 72 percent conversion rate on their bonuses, however there weren’t a huge number of them to judge from. Sheffield’s 67 percent conversion was impressive considering just how many bonuses they answered. One to watch? Most definitely.

How is Amol Doing?

It wasn’t until just after the 15 minute mark that Jedi Amol dropped the ‘plenty of time in it’ bomb. For once there was. It didn’t seem to work, though. In fact it was not more than 4 minutes later that he redoubled his efforts with ‘see if you can get going with this.’ It did kick in a few minutes later, but too late for Loughborough. The jedi council will be looking into this, I’m sure.

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

Pac Man was released in the same year that Small Pox was announced as eradicated.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Try this one for size – “Which law of electromagnetism is mathematically expressed solely by the minus sign in Faraday’s Law of Induction? Stated qualitatively, it states that an induced current will flow in such a way that it opposes the flow that induced it.” Altogether now – dum de dumdum dumdum dumdum dum dum.

Mastermind Round 1 - Heat Four

Good evening, Dearly Beloved. Yes, I’ve pulled my finger out and finally managed to post a Mastermind review on the same evening in which it was broadcast. And a very interesting Mastermind it was.

So, let’s kick off, should you pardon the pun, with Anna Lister and Chelsea FC in the Premier League. Now I’ve never been a Chelsea fan, which is maybe surprising considering I’m a born West Londoner, but there we are. So, I was not too upset that I only managed the one point. Anna did quite a bit better, but she did seem rather nervous throughout the round. A fair number of the questions passed her by. She managed 7, and I dare say that you really needed to know your stuff to get that much on that round. However, she must have returned to her chair knowing that she would have ground to make up in the second half.

Arijit Goveas who was next into the chair was answering on one of my ‘problem’ authors, Franz Kafka. What I mean by that is Kafka’s work is something that I appreciate when I read it, and I can see why others like it, but I can’t say that I enjoy it. I’ve no doubt that Arijit enjoys it. He racked up 9 to lead at this stage by 2 points. Again, it was the kind of round where you really needed to know your stuff even to get that many points, but again, you had the feeling that there was still a little room on the top in this round.

I’d scored one on Chelsea and 2 on Kafka (imagine them reading out that score on Grandstand – Chelsea 1, Kafka 2 – away win). George Twigg, who already had appearances on Only Connect and UC under his belt, was answering on Anglo Saxon England. This was my banker for the show and for once it actually yielded me a decent crop of points – 6 to be precise. Which paled into insignificance alongside George’s perfect 13 from 13. This put him well ahead of the chasing pack with only one contender still to come.

This contender was Sharon Malley. She was answering on pop performer and actor, Harry Styles. Now, I will admit that I am really not familiar with Mr. Styles and his work. I’m more familiar with the work of Mr. Styles, the man who used to come round every week to collect  insurance payments from my Mum back in the late 60s. However I only needed 1 point to give me a double figure aggregate on specialist so I gritted my teeth and fluked a guess. I’m sure that Sharon wasn’t guessing on any of the 10 questions she answered correctly to put her into second place, albeit three points off the lead.

You’d have been forgiven for writing Anna Lister off at half time. What followed when she returned to the chair was a very interesting GK round. On the surface she seemed to be going very slowly. She was going quite slowly, but she was getting a large number of the questions right. Despite never seeming less nervous than before, she added 13 to take her score to a highly respectable 20. Good round.

If Arijit was daunted by Anna’s high scoring performance he didn’t show it. His style contrasted to Anna’s. He was answering a good deal more quickly, although not quite as accurately. The two point lead over Anna that he’d held at half time came into its own, as he managed to add 12 to his score. This raised the bar to 21.

Sharon Malley then needed a double figure score on GK to give her any chance at all. Sadly, it was not to be. Sharon had one of those rounds where the contender suddenly gets stuck in the mud in the second minute and just can’t build up any momentum. All you can do is shrug your shoulders and accept that it just ain’t your night.

So George returned to the chair, knowing that 8 and no passes would be enough. Not a massive target, no. Nonetheless, whatever the target you still have to find the answers. Which is what George did. His round was not as good as Anna’s. nor as Arijit’s either. But it didn’t need to be. He was over the line with questions to spare, and he finished with 10 points for a total of 23. Well done, sir, clearly the strongest all-round performance of the night. Best of luck in the semifinals.

The Details

Anna Lister	Chelsea FC in the Premier League	7	0	13	1	20	1
Arijit Goveas	Franz Kafka	9	0	12	1	21	1
George Twigg	Anglo Saxon England	13	0	10	0	23	0
Sharon Malley	Harry Styles	10	0	8	1	18	1

Quiz in Aberdare

What, me? No, I don’t. I’ve done it once in the last five years, and that was a couple of years ago. Hey, stop that. Wash your minds out with soap. What I mean is going to a new quiz I haven’t played in before, as a ringer.

I wasn’t planning to do so on Tuesday night, either. This is how it all came about. A few weeks ago my middle daughter Zara moved to Aberdare where she was moving in with her partner Matt. On Tuesday afternoon she rang up Jess and asked if her and Dan wanted to go to try out a quiz in Zara and Matt’s. Poor old Dan is suffering from a nasty cold at the moment, and he’s trying to make sure he is well enough to come to the quiz tonight. I hope so. It won’t be the same without him. Jess doesn’t drive, so to cut a long story short she asked if I wanted to go.

Now my answer should probably have been – lovely idea, but not on a school night. There was a time when I could get to bed as late as 11:30 on a school night and be fine for a day’s teaching afterwards. Not now. I figured out quite a few years ago now that this particular kite ain’t going to fly no more. Or to put it another way, I need to be in bed by 10:30 on a school night, and 10 pm is even better. It’s one reason why I stopped going to the rugby club. Then they moved the start earlier, and away we went.

However, it is a long time – probably a couple of years – since I played in a quiz which is completely new to me. And what can I tell you – I fancied having a go. So off we went. Now, it may be that you’re not familiar with Aberdare. With the state of the road network between Neath and Aberdare being in a bit of a state of flux at the moment, it currently takes about 40 minutes to get there from Port Talbot. It’s worth going, because the centre of Aberdare really is rather charming. (Cut the travelogue and tell us about the quiz, Dave.)

So the quiz started at 8:30 in the Bute Arms in Aberdare. Lovely pub. I think that the question master probably put it together himself. We began with 5 in the news questions, then 15 general knowledge. Then a music round of 15 questions took us to half time. I have to be honest, I thought that the QM did a good job with the music round, having pop questions a few of which went back as far as 1960, and even a couple on classical music.

By half time we had 29 out of 35. The QM announced the scores from 5^th upwards. Third place was on about 19. Then he announced the second place team were on 28. This caused them a little bit of consternation. Jess went to the bar to get a round, and one or two of them gave her a wee bit of an inquisition. Jess is a bit of an old hand at this game now, and she gave them the ‘no, we just had a couple of lucky guesses (we didn’t, there was no luck involved in them at all) we’ll probably crash and burn in the second half’ you know the sort of thing. Obviously I don’t know, but I’d guess that judging by their score they probably win every week and aren’t used to facing a real challenge.

After the break then, round four consisted of 15 on Film and TV. We took 14. Then the QM announced that this week’s ‘guest’ round was – drum roll please – food and drink. Apparently the first four rounds are always the same category but the last could be anything, it changes each time. It really isn’t our best subject, but thankfully many of them were obvious or were old quiz stagers and we took 12. Which gave us a grand total of 29 and 25 for 54.

The QM lost a little of my sympathy for drawing out the announcing of the results. After all we all knew it was a two-horse race. The third placed team’s score was announced – low 40s I think. Then in second, with 50 and a half points, the team which we had christened The Hairy Bikers. Alright, we didn’t know if they actually were bikers, but they were certainly hairy enough. So we had won. Which meant that Zara and Matt now have a tab behind the bar of £40 to spend howsoever they wish.

I can kind of see why the hairy ones were upset, which they were. After all, it’s a heady thing is being the top dog in the quiz in your own backyard, and you get used to it. When a team comes from nowhere and knocks you off your perch at the first attempt it can be hard to take, especially if you’ve already mentally spent the £40 prize. It can make you start questioning the legitimacy of the winners’ performance. Now, we were in plain sight of all the other teams and the QM for the whole quiz so they could all see that we weren’t using phones. I have to say though, the way that one of the Bikers bellowed at the QM “What was their score ? WHAT WAS THEIR SCORE ?!” was not in the best traditions of sportsmanship.

We had a brief chat with the question master before we left. He said how nice it was to have a new team come, and said he hoped we’d come again. Oh dear. There’s no way that I could do this again during term time. Honestly, I was like a dishrag all Wednesday – and not in a good way either. It was just gone 11pm when I got back, and I’ve been paying for it since. Not only that though. Even if it was an option, I know what would happen if we did start coming on a regular basis. I’m not saying that we would win every week. I think we’d probably win enough though that within a few weeks the comments about ‘only come here for the quiz’ ‘bloody quiz professionals’ and the like would start, and a really rather nasty atmosphere would develop. I’m not just saying this, it is something I’ve had too much experience of over the last few years.

So there we are. A one off it will remain. Thanks Bute Arms, but trust me, it’s better that it ends this way for both of us, in the long run.

University Challenge 2024: First Round - Balliol, Oxford v. Imperial

The Teams

Balliol, Oxford

Elise Cox

Oliver Ellingham

John Maier (Capt)

Nikita Trojanskis

Imperial

Justin Lee

Adam Jones

Suraiya Haddad (Capt)

Sourajit Debnath

Another Monday, another UC. For the first starter neither team could dredge up Starboy, an alter-ego of The Weeknd, a popular musical artiste of these strange times. Various people linked by the initials KC gave Imperial first blood through Adam Jones’ buzzer. Poems with questions for opening lines brought two correct answers for both of us. Justin Lee, who would have an excellent night on the buzzer, took his first starter knowing that Rosilia de Castro was a leading exponent of poetry in Galician. Connective tissue in human beings brought a single bonus. Me? Kleenex, every time, although other tissues are available. Balliol skipper John Maier came in too early for the next starter, allowing Justin Lee in with corals. Haitian film maker Raoul Peck brought two bonuses – Imperial could have had three apart from a slip of the tongue. We saw a quotation in its original language for the picture starter. I never studied German, but ‘Opium des volks’ screamed Karl Marx to me, so I screamed it at the telly. John Maier thought so too, and this earned Balliol their first set of bonuses. More quotes from political philosophers. We both got Cicero and Machiavelli, but missed out on Montesquieu. Not a sentence I think I’ve ever used before in any other context, that. Sourajit Debnath recognised various films whose titles contained the word Drive. Literary characters with names ending in - io brought a full house. Sadly Lurkio was not one of them. Oliver Ellingham knew that the only flower mentioned in my favourite Keats’ poem, Ode to Autumn, is the poppy. Events that only lasted 44 days – just like Liz Truss Premiership – made me certain Brian Clough at Leeds Utd. would come up. It did too, as the 3^rd question. Balliol had the other two. So as we reached the 10 minute mark the score stood at 30 – 80 to Imperial.

Nikita Trojanskis knew the answer to a Science question for which I certainly did not earn a lap of honour. Incidentally Nikita is from Riga, a really very lovely little capital city that I discovered for myself at Easter this year. Italian iced deserts – no, justonecornetto wasn’t one of them – brought a full house. Benin bronzes! I yelled in response to the next question, just before Justin Lee set Imperial moving again with the same answer. (Sorry, but as much as I love the British Museum, which I will always applaud for never charging entry during the Thatcher years, I’m very much a give-them-backer.) Later additions to classical works of sculpture followed. Then came the music starter. Adam Jones was first in to recognise the work of Rachmaninoff. Bonuses consisted of three pieces composed in or  around 1853, the year of Sergei R’s birth brought a relatively rare full house. Amol was impressed. A really simple WWI question led to a buzzer race that Justin Lee won to identify Serbia as the recipient of the ultimatum that led to the outbreak of war. History bonuses, on short words with U in the middle were a gentle set that quite rightly yielded another full house. Adam Jones had a rush of blood to the head and came in far too early on the astronomy starter that followed, losing five points for his pains. Given a full run up Oliver Ellingham gratefully snapped up that particular trifle knowing a list of names and characters from Tolkien. That’s what I’m Tolkien about. Measurement scales brought me a lap of honour. Let me tell you, I’m all over the 1954 Nobel Prize won by Linus Pauling. Then – Gawd Blimey – I got one that Balliol didn’t. What do you have to add to Kelvin to convert it centigrade? Well, come on. Kelvin starts at absolute zero, so it’s got to be 273 to the nearest whole number, hasn’t it? Well, yes, it had. Then the last bleedin’ question of the set started talking about logarithms and deltas and bravos, and the internal orchestra struck up with the Baby Elephant Walk. I think that all you had to do was work out that Db stood for decibel, but I’d switched off by then. There was a bit of a long preamble to the next question, but as soon as Ford Maddox Brown (which incidentally was the only shade that the very first Model T’s were available in. Nah – it was actually Brewster Green. ‘So long as it’s black’ came a little later.)As soon as Ford Maddox Brown was mentioned Adam Jones won the buzzer race with perennial UC favourites The Pre-Raphaelites. Questions on Cameroon brought two more correct answers, and that Imperial juggernaut was steaming on towards the event horizon. It was Adam Jones who also knew the good old quiz chestnut that URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. I was amused by the next set on people who share their names with currencies. Sadly the Russian Music Hall duo of Rouble and Kopek did not get a namecheck. Adam Jones took his hattrick recognising a description of the term hermeneutics – gesundheit. Fictional characters who share initials with their creators brought a full house in double quick time. As we passed the twenty-minute mark Imperial marched on with a lead of 21 – 75.

In simple terms, Imperial had probably won. But could Balliol reach the 155 target for any hope of a repechage slot? Amol, to be fair, had not used the magic words on them yet. So to the picture starter, and obviously the work of Egon Schiele. Suraiya Haddad had that one to add to Balliol’s woes. More paintings of artist’s families brought just one correct answer, but the answers they offered for the other two were sensible. BAM! “Plenty of time available’ offered Amol. Allowing for the forgiveable inaccuracy of the statement, he was leaving it late this week. It didn’t seem to slow Imperial this time. Justin Lee knew that Geoffrey of Monmouth thought that Britain was named after Brutus from the Popeye comic strip in TV comic. A full house on Irish history raised the distinct possibility that Imperial might just reach 300. However John Maier knew that merry, cheerful and lively are all ways of describing the musical instruction allegro. My uncle had an Allegro, and it was not cheerful, not merry and not in the least bit lively. When it actually worked, that is. Bonuses on town planning yielded just one correct answer. Justin Lee knew his onions about Quiche Alsace for the next starter. Particle accelerator bonuses did nothing for any of us. Oliver Ellingham picked out the word monsoon for the next starter. The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad of the Kill Bill movies brought us both two bonuses. Balliol were now in triple figures, but some way below the board. Oliver Ellingham knew the Christie novel The ABC Murders for the next starter. Two bonuses were taken on concerts. A full set would put Balliol onto 155 now. Sadly John Maier interrupted incorrectly on the next starter and lost five, allowing Justin Lee to identify John Roberts as the US Chief Justice. A great UC set on giga timescales yielded one bonus – the Cretaceous period was a whole gigamonth ago. John Maier wasn’t finished though. He buzzed early and buzzed well to identify Yves ‘Who?’ Klein. Languages that feature in the national anthem of South Africa brought no points. But Oliver Ellingham knew the next starter, putting vectors with scalars. Oh, but that naughty gong ended the competition, leaving Imperial with 285 to Balliol’s 145.

That was a good match, wasn’t it? Imperial impressed with strong buzzing and a bonus conversion rate of 71 percent, to Balliol’s 66 percent. Sadly, Balliol won’t be back this year, but have nothing to be ashamed of.

How is Amol Doing?

I think that Amol must have realised that people (me) are starting to suss out his status as an undercover Jedi, because he seemed to keep his powers more under wraps in this match. He left it very late to encourage Balliol. I thought that Amol’s correction of the pronunciation of Laocoon was a little unnecessary. Likewise, I think that commenting ‘Got there in the end, didn’t we’ was just a little condescending for the Tolkien question.

Interesting Fact That I didn’t Already Know of the Week

The hills and mountains on Saturn’s moon Titan have ames taken from the works of JRR Tolkein (although not from Fly Fishing.)

Baby Elephant Walk Moments

A new category for questions that set my mind wandering.

This little beauty I had to watch several times before I could even get to the end of it.

“He described his eponymous thermodynamic potential as “the greatest amount of mechanical work from a given quantity of a certain substance in a given initial state without increasing its total volume or allowing heat to pass to or from external bodies.” Dum de dumdum dumdum dumdum dum dum.

Mastermind Round 1 Heat 3

Hello, and good morning. Yes, sorry, late again. I’ll always try to post about MM on the same day, but for the second week running I was just too tired. Not an excuse, not much of an explanation for that matter, but it’s true.

Kicking us off was Peter Wilson, who was answering on Roger Federer. Running my eye quickly down the list of subjects, although there was one okay subject for me, for the most part I reckoned I’d be doing well to pick up more than a point on the other three. Double figures? Probably out of the question for me. Despite being interested in sport, and enjoying tennis, for some reason I just don’t seem to have connected with the great Swiss player’s career and managed a measly single point. Peter on the other hand put on a performance worthy of the great man and scored a round dozen, in a manoeuvre which might be called the laying of the gauntlet.

Almost as good as Peter’s was the round provided for us by Madeline Roper on the subject of Gavin and Stacey. Yes, gentle reader, this was the closest thing I had to a banker subject on this show. I’ve watched and enjoyed every episode. Nonetheless, I said the same about last week’s Royle Family round and I certainly didn’t pull up any trees on that round. Likewise last night, three points was all I could manage. Madeline on the other hand did considerably better. Her knowledge of the show seemed secure throughout the round, and she put on 11 points. She was definitely in with a shout.

Bernie Morgan was answering oon Bronislawa Nijinska. She was the sister of the more famous Nijinsky – the dancer and not the racehorse, I’m sure – and a world famous choreographer in her own right. Oh, what can I say? Bernie scored 2 points. General knowledge brought me 1 point for guessing that Diaghilev must be the impresario one question referred to. Look, I don’t know any more than you what happened in this round. There’s any number of factors which might have conspired against Bernie. All I can say with certainty is that my heart went out to her.

Following on then was the fellow teacher, Thomas Nelson. Thomas was answering on Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. I have never been a fan of westerns. My dad loved them and that was enough o put me off for life. Still, if I had to watch one I’d rather watch one starring Clint Eastwood than any other. So yes, I got my single point from this round to take me to an aggregate of 6. Thomas did pretty well, getting into double figures with 10.

Well, paraphrasing Kipling, Mastermind is often a test of whether you can treat those two imposters, success and failure just the same. So I was very heartened when Bernie returned to the chair with a smile on her face. And she went on to produce a good general knowledge round, which showed that she had earned her place on the show. It wasn’t quite a great round, as kind Clive Myrie suggested, but following on from the specialist, it was a very good performance.

Not as good, though, as Thomas Nelson’s round. Maintaining an excellent pace, Thomas ripped through his own set of questions, adding 16 correct answers to take his score to a fine 26. Now, I’m an old hand at this game and I know that nothing is certain until the winner is announced, but I’ll be honest, I was already assessing Thomas’ chances of taking my crown as the last schoolteacher to win a series. With GK like that, many things are possible.

But the show wasn’t over yet. Madeline returned to the chair, and the first minute or so of her round was a classy performance. I had her up with the clock. Sadly, though, a couple of wrong answers robbed her of momentum, and she never quite found her way in the round again. She tried, no doubt about that, but her aim was wide of the mark for a lot of the remaining questions, and in the end she had to settle with 8 for 19.

Only Peter Wilson now stood between Thomas and a place in the semis. And when the round started, he was answering with the same kind of econo9my and accuracy that Thomas had. This could be close – I said to no one in particular. Then Peter passed on one and suddenly the odds tipped slightly in Thomas’ favour. It wouldn’t be enough for Peter to score 14 for 26. He had to score 15 at least or lose on countback. Well, to cut a long story short, he did it. 12 and 15 is a fine all round performance. Peter, congratulations. You deserved your win, and I wish you well in your semi-final. Madeline, that was a great specialist performance and 19 is a good score, well done. Bernie, well, as the great Magnus Magnusson used to say, it’s only a game. Sometimes it’s not your night. Thomas, you deserved better. You are good enough to be in the semis, and I’m sure you would have been if we still had the repechage slots. Not much consolation, I know.

 The Details

Peter Wilson	Roger Federer	12	0	15	1	27	1
Madeline Roper	Gavin and Stacey	11	0	8	0	19	0
Bernie Morgan	Bronislawa Nijinska	2	0	11	0	13	0
Thomas Nelson	Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns	10	0	16	0	26	0