University Challenge 2025 Repechage 1 - UCL v. St. Andrews

The Teams

UCL

Callum Jack

Josh Mandel

Olivia Holtermann Entwistle (capt.)

Sanjay Prabhakar

St. Andrews

Diane Buffet-Mogel

George Capell

Freddie Skerrett (capt.)

Tom Rosas

Well, here we are at the repechage stage, peeps. The repechage games don’t always go to the highest scorers I their first round matches, but for what it’s worth UCL were the highest scoring runners up in the first round.

Josh Mandel, so impressive on the buzzer in the first round, took the first starter recognising clues to the word pastoral. ‘bad’ cities – that is cities ending with – abad – brought just the one bonus. Diane Buffet-Mogel was in very quickly for the next starter on Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. A full house on flywheels brought St. Andrews an early lead. In the next starter I was pleased to see Casimir ‘Uptown’ Funk getting a namecheck, and both Josh Mandel and I thought that the question was heading in the direction of vitamins. This brought bonuses on the endings of Shakespeare plays and UCL took their own full house on these. So to the picture starter. This showed us two titles of works of fiction in French, both of which were missing their first word. Au centre de la Terre was obviously Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Voyage! said I. Voyage! said George Capell, earning St. Andrews three more of the same. They took the Spanish and German but the Russian did for them. As it happened I worked out that the top of the two Russian titles contained Ivan Denisovitch, so we were looking for day. But I didn’t have a scooby what the Russian for day was so no cigar. Sanjay Prabhakar knew the term the golden mean and this earned a set on that old favourite, fourth declension latin nouns which retain their nominative endings when used as words in English. I remember being taught about this in the comp back in the late 70s – thanks Mr. Rose. And thanks to UC too for it’s the first place I ever heard of a golgi apparatus, many series ago. The answers proved to be easier than the question and UCL took a full house. As we closed in on the ten-minute mark UCL led by 65 to 40.

I don’t know Car Dyke, but it soon became clear that it is in the Fens, and Josh Mandel buzzed first for that starter. – isation terms named after places proved a tricky set. I guessed Finlandisation UCL took the other two. Nobody knew the answer about the two SI base units named after scientists. Diane Buffet-Mogel knew a building in Rockefeller Plaza New York is in Art Deco style. New York, which I visited in August, is a candidate for the city I’ve most enjoyed visiting, but that’s by the by. Gawd knows what the maths bonuses that followed were all about – well, they were about Maths, but you know what I mean – but they brought two correct answers. This was followed by the music starter. Josh Mandel was in very quickly to recognise a little bit of Holst. Three more pieces of music also performed at both of the last two coronations brought a quick full house. Freddie Skerrett knows his Mexican cookery terms and was in very quickly with mole for the next starter. Mythological women in the paintings of Evelyn de Morgan brought St. Andrews two correct answers and narrowed the gap between the teams. Nobody could get the word trapezium for the next starter. Olivia Holtermann Entwistle knew about the Met Gala for the next starter. Noun suffixes in English, for example – ship - were a rather lovely UC special set of bonuses which UCL were perfectly happy to knock over the boundary rope for a full house. Fair play to Josh Mandel. He knew that any question containing the words “English novel of 1871” is going to have the title ‘Middlemarch’ in the answer. Richard Hoggart once told me that Middlemarch was the perfect Victorian novel. I’ll not see days like that again. Diets of the Holy Roman Empire did not include the Scarsdale or the F Plan, so I was lucky to get one for Worms. UCL took two, and had the added bonus of witnessing Amol offer encouragement to St. Andrews. It didn’t stop the UCL onslaught, as Josh Mandel recognised the treaty that saw the creation of the modern state of Indonesia. This earned two hard and one not so hard question on dinosaurs. They took the not so hard one. Thus at the 20 minute mark UCL led by 170 to 75 and had one foot in the second round.

For the second picture starter Olivia Holtermann Entwistle was first to buzz in to identify the work of Edgar ‘turn up’ Degas. More works showing similar subjects brought just one bonus. Now, after identifying Hydragyrum as mercury I set off around the sofa on my lap of honour. Hg, you see. The irrepressible buzzing of Josh Mandel claimed that for UCL. Films that have won the BAFTA for best casting brought two bonuses and took UCL through the 200 points barrier. Freddie Skerrett fell foul of this week’s harsh but fair adjudication when he was disallowed panther for panthera. He got sympathy and explanation from Amol anyway. Tom Rosas took a small bite out of the lead by guessing that Bhutan was the country with the tiny population and the huge mountains. Places in England described in the 1876 Popular Encyclopaedia (an oxymoron, surely) brought St. Andrews two correct answers. Freddie Skerrett took the next starter with meiosis. Two bonuses on bacteriophages were taken. After a bit of thought Josh Mandel guessed that the play which Tennessee Williams flipped over was The Seagull. There was no time for bonuses, and the contest ended with UCL winning comfortably with 215 to 105.

St. Andrews had a BCR of 72, a figure that shows they were beaten on the buzzer. UCL for their part had a BCR of 68. They will not be an easy proposition for whoever thy face in round two.

Amol Watch

“Yugoslavisation? That’s a bit of a reach, isn’t it?” Bit mean there, Amol. Or should I say, mole?

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

Sorry – lots of things I didn’t know, but none quite blew my socks off.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Give (don’t look at him!) Give each word from the definition. Forst an algebraic expression that gives information about the number and type of solutions of an equation. An example is the expression b squared minus 4ac, which gives information about the roots of the quadratic equation ax squared plus bx plus c equals zero.  – I do accept that there are people to whom this means something, I just don’t understand how. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.