The Teams
Durham
Joe Ancell
Emilia Brookfield -Pertusini
Jake Roberts (capt.)
Luke Nash
SOAS
Janet Delves
Ella Dorn
Tom Hasler (capt.)
Cameron Lambert
I couldn’t call how this one would go. Mind you, that’s not
uncommon for me. So, as soon as the first starter mentioned a monumental
tapestry of Christ I shouted Coventry Cathedral. A TV documentary about the
building a few years ago made me want to visit and I’m really glad I did. The
sheer monumental scale of the tapestry is absolutely breathtaking. I do like
Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of St. Michael vanquishing the Devil too. Janet
Delves was first in with the answer. Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
brought just one bonus. Luke Nash buzzed early for the next starter on
pheromones. Which reminds me of a particularly funny episode of ‘Bottom’. But
then that’s my problem. Towns or cities lying almost precisely on the Greenwich
meridian did not include Greenwich but still brought a brace of correct
answers. Tom Hasler knew that Canada has 10 provinces for the next starter. For
the bonuses on probability distribution captain Tom used the time-honoured technique
of giving the same answer to each bonus until it was the right one. So to the
picture starter. We saw the name of a vegetable given in Spanish, French,
German and Japanese. Sadly not English. I knew it wasn’t carrot since they are
rather splendidly called zanahorias in Spanish. I’ll be honest, I have never
had occasion to use the word navet, or turnip in French, but at least I know now.
Nobody had that. Nobody knew Oscar Wilde’s ‘Salome’ either. The next question
about Bennu suddenly launched a buzzer race when it became clear that Bennu was
an Ancient Egyptian deity (as opposed to Richie Bennu, who was an Australian
one.)
Jake Roberts won the race to answer that. This took us back
to the picture bonuses. Only one more edible root was correctly identified. An
early buzz from Luke Nash identified parts of the early telephone. Free time
brought a timely full house. This meant that Durham led by 55 to 25 at a tad
past ten minutes.
Cameron Lambert knew that Cannakale in Turkey is home to a
statue of the Wooden Horse of Troy. Mythological figures in Botticelli’s
Primavera yielded just the one bonus. Tom Hasler was in very quickly with the
phrase Manifest Destiny for the next starter. Evolutionary biology brought two
bonuses, and the lead to SOAS. So to the music starter and Emilia Brookfield
-Pertusini was in very quickly to recognise a piece of music used as a theme to
Peep Show. The bonuses – songs also used in Peep Show at times brought just one
correct answer. This was turning into a bit of a grim old arm wrestle. Jake
Roberts knew that element 116 was named Livermorium. Durham’s bonuses on
Mexican president Benito Jarez provided two correct answers. Nobody knew Lake
Volta for the next starter. The clue was in the question with the next stater.
The August prize for literature, we were told, took its name from one of that
country’s best known literary figures. August Strindberg, thought I, hence
Sweden. Ella Dorn probably worked it out in the same way. Tolkien’s Lord of the
Rings turned out to be meat and drink to Cameron Lambert and he handed SOAS a
rare full house. I’ll be honest, whenever you’re asked for an opera by Donizetti,
if you say ‘Lucia di Lammermoor” you’ll be right more often than you’re wrong. Ella
Dorn took her second consecutive starter with this. Plants and folk medicine
did not exactly seem full of eastern promise but to be fair we both had ginseng
and St. John’s Wort. This was enough to ensure that as we closed in on the twenty
minute mark SOAS were now leading by 105 to 85.
The last lap began with the second picture starter. We were
shown a well-known cover of a well-known novel. Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini
knew it was Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. More of the same followed. The only one
Durham didn’t have a scooby about was the only one I knew – Vernon God Little
by DBC Pierre. The time I spent reading that should best be described as hours of
my life that I will never get back. Neither team knew about strangeness for the
next starter. They should have tried teaching some of my old pupils, then they’d
have been intimately acquainted with this particular concept. Ella Dorn knew
Makaton – wasn’t he one of the Decepticons? – to keep SOAS edging towards round
two. Two bonuses meant that Durham would need at least two visits to the table
to take the lead. They didn’t get one from the next starter. Cameron Lambert
recognised that the pirate Henry Avery – as featured on Doctor Who (played by Hugh
Bonneville) – gained fame from attacking a convoy belonging to the Mughal
Empire. Three questions on suspension bridges followed. Yum yum, thought I, but
only had 2 of them. 2 more than SOAS managed – tricky set. A lovely UC special
set gave stars in flags, and led Tom Hasler to work out that if you aligned the
colours of the stars vertically you’d end up with the flag of Germany. They could really have done with a nice easy
set of bonuses at this point, but instead got a set on Hilma af Klint. They
were pretty close to the first. They discarded the correct answer for the
second, then took the third. Amol told us that there were only two minutes left
and SOAS led by fifty. I didn’t get the next question but Luke Nash did. Two
correct answers on Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism helped but Durham still needed
two visits to the table. Jake Roberts earned one visit through recognising
words from Shakespeare’s Richard II. Shorter wors that can be made with any
letters from the word solstice brought a very useful full house. Now Durham
trailed by just 10. Captain Marvel, Jake Roberts equalled the scores by
answering scattering for the next starter. There was only time for one wrong answer
on the bonuses.
We don’t often see tie breaks on UC. Amol asks a starter.
If you interrupt and get it right, you win. If you interrupt and get it wrong,
you lose. If you let the question be completed, then answer correctly you win.
If neither of you do, then we have another starter. And so on. Neither team got
the first. The second asked - the
guanaco was the ancestor of which domestic animal? Cameron Lambert went for it before the
question was finished. All or nothing. ’Alpaca?’ he answered. It was Llama.
Heartbreak for SOAS, relief for Durham, who now automatically won.
With SOAS slightly better on the buzzer it came down to the
bonuses. SOAS had a BCR of 48, while Durham’s was 60. It was that BCR which enabled
them to reel in SOAS over the last frantic couple of minutes. Well played both
teams – this was a match high on excitement at least.
Amol Watch
Amol does enjoy listening to the teams’ deliberations, and
he told off the rest of SOAS for telling skipper Hasler ‘it’s all on you.’ In
case we should forget Amol also used the opportunity to remind us that Bertrand
Russell is his hero.
Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week
The word pheromone is ultimately derived from the Greek for
‘to carry’.
Baby Elephant Walk Moment
What probability distribution is the continuous analogue of
the geometric distribution? It has a particular memoryless property, such that
the time for an event to occur is not conditional on any time that has already
passed.
Huh?
Dum de dumdum dum
dum dum dum dumdum.
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