University Challenge 2026 Round 1 Durham v. Merton, Oxford

The Teams

Durham

Caspar Chatham

Tom Haines-Matos

Amelia Rees (Capt)

James Gowers

Merton, Oxford

Ciaran Duncan

Evelyn Ong

Elliot Cosnett (Capt)

Verity Fleetwood-Law

I will review this week’s show, probably tomorrow, but first let me tie up the loose ends with this review of last week’s match. I had the first starter from the songwriter brothers, and James Gowers took one more clue, the civil war general before he too came in with the name Sherman. Films set during World War Two provided two bonuses. Evelyn Ong recognised the Kalevala for the next starter and Merton were up and running as well. Tennis courts named after notable players made an interesting bonus set and took three bonuses for a full house and the lead. The next starter saw the rare event of me getting a maths starter right. Only on the last clue did I know it was median though. Evelyn Ong took a double with that one. Eugene ‘qui est ca?’ Boudin provided two bonuses. For the picture starter we were shown an outline of Cumbria with the locations of museums dedicated to a particular writer. Well, it could only be Wordsworth. Or Beatrix Potter. Or Alfred Wainwright. Or Napper Wainwright. It was Wordsworth as Elliot Cosnett well knew. More maps showing locations of other writers’ museums and centres passed them by. To be fair they weren’t any of them quite as easy as the starter. The next starter referenced the anti heroine of my favourite comic novel “Vanity Fair” and Tom Haines-Matos showed his mettle by giving the answer of Becky Sharp. Fish that are native to South America brought just the one bonus. So after a lively start Merton’s finer quality work with the bonuses saw them leading by 55 – 35.

For the next starter St. Augustine’s Abbey was the first big clue to Canterbury Cathedral, but both teams sat on their buzzers a bit until Verity Fleetwood-Law gave the correct answer. Thinkers associated with the Frankfurt school saw Merton give three names that, like Vienna, meant nothing to me but earned them a full house. Disco Elysium sounds like a place I once visited by mistake in 1984, but it was the answer to the next starter, snapped up quickly by Elliot Cosnett. That ever popular subject, turbans in history, brought two bonuses, but they threw away the middle one by passing after mentioning the right answer. Various Cliffs including Jimmy and Clarice were snapped up by Caspar Chatham for the next starter. Literature bonuses on perfect plots yielded nothing, I’m afraid. Neither team could answer an interminable question on selenium. Ciaran Duncan knew an Aeolian harp when he heard one being described and this meant every member of the Merton team had answered a starter. Inorganic chemistry – well actually it provided me with one correct answer and a lap of honour. Merton took a full house. For the music starter nobody recognised the music of the Happy Mondays. It took a while before Ciaran Duncan identified the adjective blithe for the next starter but it earned Merton the music bonuses. More music pieces whose titles are used for biopics about their performers provided a rare failure for Merton as they didn’t get any of them. Ciaran Duncan recognised a lovely little bit of anaphora when he heard it to take the next starter. A full house on the Long Parliament followed. James Gowers took the next starter knowing that Clive Sullivan was one of the all time  greats of Rugby League. A full house on Mediterranean cuisine helped but at the 20 minute mark Merton were still galloping away from Durham with 160 – 65.

Evelyn Ong recognised a quote from Kasimir Malevich for the next starter. Broadway shows in 2024 (presumably the one in New York and not the ones in Ealing or Fulham) proved no obstacle to Merton and they took another full house. Tom Haines-Matos recognised Marie Antoinette’s portrait for the second picture starter. More portraits by the same artist sadly yielded no further points. I knew the next starter on synovial fluid which neither team did. James Gowers guessed that the Jordan river flows through Salt Lake City to win bonuses on sand. Durham failed to answer any of them. Caspar Chatham knew the phrase Out, out precedes brief candle in a play by Shakespeare. Roman Gods brought two auick bonuses which took Durham into triple figures. They were having a good patch at this time Durham. Tom Haines-Matos took the next starter on the epithet The Conqueror. National flags are often a happy hunting ground on UC and they brought Durham 2 bonuses. If it’s a rock that makes column structures then just buzz and say basalt. Elliot Cosnett did and won the next starter. Bonuses fell so quickly to Merton I didn’t even notice what they were about before Merton had taken a full house. Elliot Cosnett came in very quickly for the next starter on the production of silk in the Byzantine Empire. Cornelius Vermuyden (you know! The Dutch Water engineer? ) only yielded the one bonus, but so what? The match was long since over as a contest. The white lion order of Czechia again saw a good interruption from the Merton skipper. The one bonus there was time for took the score to 235 – 120 at the buzzer.

For the record Durham managed a BCR of 42% to Merton’s 71%, and that basically tells you what you need to know about how the match went.

Amol Watch

Nothing in particular that I noticed, sorry.

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

Jordan River runs through Salt Lake City

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In bio chemistry what chemical element can replace sulphur in cysteine to form a distinct proteinogenic amino acid? It was discovered in 1817 by Jon Jakob Berzelius and given its name due to its similarity to the then recently discovered element tellurium itself named (incorrect buzz) after the Earth.. – Yes, that would be dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdumium

Mastermind 2026 First Round Heat 11

We will catch up on UC, I promise. For now, though, let’s concentrate on last night’s Mastermind.

I had the first of Omair Azam’s round on Frederic Chopin, as, I’m sure did everyone else. Let’s be fair, the name of Chopin is as omnipresent in Warsaw as Mozart’s in Vienna and the Beatles’ in Liverpool. I could have had another. I went in the church where Chopin’s heart is in Warsaw, but couldn’t remember what it was called. Omair did very well, I thought. Despite what anyone may think a double figure round is not easily achieved in Mastermind. Even if you prepare extremely thoroughly something can trip you up. So Omair put himself in the position in which he would be in contention come half time.

Danielle Connolly was answering n a specialist subject that may well receive some criticism from some quarters – The Simpsons (Seasons 1-10). Me? I think that 10 seasons is a huge chunk to have to prepare in detail which makes it a perfectly valid subject. Let’s be honest, I should think that The Simpsons has brought at least as much pleasure to people as Chopin (and considerably more than Samuel Beckett, but we’ll come to that.) Danielle equalled Omair’s total, and then exceeded it. I had 5 myself in my round of the night, and my grandson Ollie who is 12 had one that I didn’t with the aurora borealis. The lad will go far.

I mentioned the plays of Samuel Beckett because this was the subject offered by our third contender, Andrew McKenzie. I never studied Beckett at university and I’ve never watched or read any of his plays, not even waiting for Godot. So I had just the one point from this round. Andrew clearly knows a lot about the subject but somehow the questions were not falling for him. He ended up with a score of 6, which frankly left him a huge task in the GK round. Ah, that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Katherine Rich offered us the Life of Gloria Steinem. I will put my hands up and say that I don’t know much about the subject. My hope was that the first question, which is often the easiest, would require the answer The Playboy Club, but it was not to be and I failed to add to my aggregate of 6. Katherine did well to reach a total of 9 but it looked already as if the banker would only be paying out for double figure rounds in this particular heat.

First back, then was Andrew McKenzie. Five points in arrears at the turn around a win did not look to be a very realistic target. However he had the same realistic target to aim for the all contenders have, taking yourself to a respectable total and justifying the time and effort you have put into preparing for the show. I’d say that he did just that with 1 good round of 10 which took him to 16. Well done, sir.

Katherine didn’t manage a double figure round, not quite, but she too earned a respectable total. She added 9 to her first round total to take herself into the lead with 17. No, it wouldn’t be a winning score, but that’s not easily achieved.

So far both of our contenders in the GK round had finished their round at the top of the leaderboard. Such a fate also awaited Omair Azam. He surpassed Katherine’s round with just a bit of daylight adding two more to give him 9 for the round and a total of 19. Was this going to win? Well, it might. It all depended on how well Danielle could take to her GK round.

To use the vernacular Danielle took to her GK round like a duck to water. In fact the first half of her round was so good I predicted that she would win at a canter and set a monster score. Well, she eased up just a little as we came towards the end of the round but she had already left the others in her wake. Danielle finished with a total of 13 for the round and 24 overall. This was a really good round, as impressive for the quality of her answers as well as the volume of them. Very well done! I look forward to seeing how you do in the semis and wish you the very best of luck.

The Details

Omair Azam	Frederic Chopin	10	2	9	4	19	6
Danielle Connolly	The Simpsons (Seasons 1-10)	11	0	13	0	24	0
Andrew McKenzie	The Plays of Samuel Beckett	6	0	10	1	16	1
Katherine Rich	The Life of Gloria Steinem	8	2	9	0	17	2

University Challenge Round One - Trinity Hall, Cambridge v. London School of Economics

The Teams

Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Taymour Taj

Jake Bransgrove

Jeffrey Opreij (Capt)

Shannon Gilbert

LSE

Ryan Sharpe

Cormac Beirne

Andy Huff (Capt)

Catherine Tan

Right, let’s crack on.

Let’s go. The moment the first starter began with ‘whch figure, from an early film by Derek Jarman-“ I said St. Sebastian. And no, I haven’t seen the film. My latin was never that good. Shannon Gilbert came in early too. This earned a set for Trinity Hall on novels with single letter titles which yielded them a full house. Andy Huff knew that the Non Aligned Movement met for the first time in Belgrade. The Mayor Paris also yielded a full house and it looked as if we might be set for a high quality contest. Trinity dropped five on the next starter. Had they waited, it became flipping obvious in the last phrase and was snapped up by Andy Huff. Japanese History brought them a couple. Ryan Sharpe took the picture starter, identifying a French definition of coup d’etat. More definitions of loan words in the language from which they were borrowed brought another couple of correct answers. Shannon Gilbert was in very quickly for a Keats sonnet, and this earned Trinity Hall a set of bonuses on insects, of which they too took a couple. Neither team could take the ext starter, with a description of the Arnolfini wedding. So at just coming up to 10 minutes LSA led 60 – 45.

Taj Taymour was in extremely swiftly to take the next starter on Haitian cuisine. Economic anthropology sounded obscure, but while they might well have had the Affluent Society Trinity Hall failed to score on the set. Jake Bransgrove recognised a quote referring to Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The plays of Tom Stoppard brought 1 bonus and the lead. Gawd alone knows what the next starter was about but Taj Taymour answered proteins and that was good enough for me. It was good enough for Amol too. Concepts in physics usually represented by an uppercase H brought two points to Trinity Hall and a lap of honour for me for knowing the Henry. The music starter gave us a Stravinsky opera. We soon gave it back as none of us had a Scooby. This seemed to grind Trinity Hall’s purple patch to a halt. They lost five for the next starter. Had they waited the clue about the Portuguese revolution might well have given them carnation. Andy Huff gratefully accepted it. More pieces of music inspired by the works of Hans Christian Anderson did nowt for LSE. Ryan Sharpe impressed with his knowledge of Italian regions to take the next starter. We both took a full house on ancient Roman writers. The ever popular Frantz Fanon provided Jake Bransgrove with another starter. Sculptor Elisabeth Ney – known as ‘ney ney ney Mr. Wilkes’ to her mates if memory serves me correctly – promised but little, yet the set about her proved surprisingly gentle and yielded two to TH. Cormac Beirne won the buzzer race for the next starter to identify Abraham and Isaac. Dravidian languages brought LSA two bonuses. As we closed in on 20 minutes, LSE held a narrow lead of 115 to 95. It looked as if either team might at least get a repechage score.

Right, many years ago I heard the phrase golgi apparatus on UC and asked what it was. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really much wiser after I was told. But the word organelle stuck, and flippin ‘eck, I was so bowled over to get the next starter right that for the first time ever I took a second lap of honour. Andy Huff shared in the glory over that one. Halogens gave LSE a full house. Nobody had Joshua Reynolds as the painter of the picture in the second picture starter. Not to worry. Ryan Sharpe knew that Edward VII’s son in law was invited in 1905 to become King of Norway. Nepotism! Painting bonuses on paintings of actors brought a single bonus, but LSE looked close to breaking the elastic binding them together with Trinity Hall. Mind you the tension was slackened a little when they lost five on the next starter. Taymour Taj took full advantage and correctly named Kepler. A rather lovely UC special set on capital cities and textiles yielded a full house. The game certainly wasn’t over yet. Catherine Tan knew that Puccini’s last opera was Turandot. Nigeria and its neighbours gave a full house to LSE. Nobody knew that the last Islamic kingdom in Iberia was that of Granada. A rush of blood to the head saw Andy Huff drop five by coming in far too early on the next starter allowing the excellent Taymour Taj in with Seder. Scientific terms derived from latin brought two bonuses, edging TH towards a repechage score. Nobody took the next starter but LSE lost five. Reliable Ryan Sharpe won the next starter recognising references to Borneo – in the wilds of which one is invited to hit me with your rhythm stick. US TV series premiering in 1999 brought a couple of bonuses. To have a chance TH really needed to get the next starter. They didn’t get it. Andy Huff put the nail in their coffin with , oh, something mathematical. UK geographical extreme bonuses took them through the 200 barrier. They went firther ahead when Cormac Beirne gave the name of Whistler for another starter. That was that. LSE won by 215 to 135.

Trinity Hall returned a BCR of 62% while the LSE managed 74%. That tells its own story but up to 20 minutes it was a close, quality contest.

Amol Watch

That’s a painful miss, opined Amol when LSE zigged with Gainsborough when then shoulda zagged with Reynolds. Yeah, know what you mean.

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

The only region of Italy with neither a coastline nor a border with another country is Umbria

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

The projective transformations which leave an N-dimensional hypersphere invariant form a group named after which German mathematician? He also gives his name to a function in number theory that is defined as the sum of the primitive Nth roots of unity, as well as (buzz) as well as the simplest non-orientable surface, a so-called strip with only one side. (bloody hell! Not having understood most of the words of the questions I knew it at this point!) Still dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Sheffield	170
SOAS	170
New College Oxford	150
Lancaster	145
---------------------------------------
Trinity Hall, Cambridge	135
Grenn-Templeton, Oxford	130
Cardiff	115
Linacre, Oxford	115
Newcastle	105
Bath	70

Mastermind 2026 First Round Heat 10

I will admit that it has taken me longer to find time to catch up with the blog than I planned this week. Well, at least I’m here now and at least we can bring Mastermind up to date with episode 10’s review.

None of last Monday’s specialists looked as if it was going to be fruitful for me and I will come clean and admit that I only got one on Meg Tapp’s round on the musical ‘Evita’. Meg did pretty well herself, I thought. This was a wide ranging round that covered a lot of ground and for the most part Meg was equal to the challenge. I would stick my neck out and say that 8 and 2 was a pretty good return on this set.

Our second contender was teacher, Ben Abbott. Well, I’m now the very best kind of teacher you can be, that is, a retired one. Last year John Robinson showed that it is still possible for a teacher to win, even with the massive demands that are made on the diligent teacher’s homelife. Ben was answering on The History of Hereford Cathedral. I have seen Hereford Cathedral in the flesh, or should I say the stone, but haven’t ever been inside it. So I’m afraid that I could not add to my aggregate total. Ben whacked in a good 9 to be in the lead halfway through the first round.

Elizabeth Rounding offered us the novels of Sally Rooney. For all the good it did me she might as well have been answering on the novels of Wayne Rooney because I’ve never read any of them either. Mind you, I doubt that he’s written many either. For the third round in the row, while the contender missed 1 or 2 they still put up a good showing. You know I don’t ask a lot of a Mastermind contender. As long as they seem to have prepared for the specialist properly I’m happy. Usually. Elizabeth certainly had.

Alan McDermaid was answering on golfer, the late Severiano Ballesteros. Luckily for me, Seve’s glory years were during the time when the young me absorbed sport knowledge by osmosis so I was able to take four of these to edge my aggregate towards acceptability. It was the pick of the specialist rounds in this show and it guaranteed that the contenders would each return to the chair in the same order as they had gone for the first round. I have no idea why such things make me happy but it did.

First back was Meg and I thought she did very well. She was three off the lead at the turn around, so really and truly she looked like the outsider of the pack. As we so often say, when you’re in the position all you can do is go like the clappers and post the highest total you can. Seeing that Meg posted a double figure score I think that you can fairly say that this she managed to do, at least opening the door to the corridor of doubt for the rest of the contenders.

Ben needed his own double figure round to have any hope of taking the lead. 10 and 1 pass would give him that, 10 and 2 a potential tiebreak and more passes or fewer points would mean no cigar. Well he was on double figures going into the last question, so already in the lead and one more correct answer took him to the psychologically important 20 points. It didn’t mean that he looked like a guaranteed winner, no, but for some reason 20 seems much more of a daunting target than 19, more than the 1 point difference that it actually represents.

It proved too much for Elizabeth Rounding. In the modern era of long questions there’s nothing to be ashamed about of a score of 6. In truth it represents probably 3 wrong guesses, or questions where you zigged when you should have zagged. But it did mean that it can’t have been an easy experience and she did seem very relieved when the round came to an end. She finished with 15.

Only Alan McDermaid could snatch the win away from Ben now. He needed 9 and no passes. Well he managed the no passes which at least meant that he was the only one of the 4 contenders to go through without incurring any. He fell agonisingly short of the 9 required though. Well, that’s the way the digestive crumbles, dear reader.

Well done Ben. Best of luck in the semi finals.

The Details

Meg Tapp	The Musical ‘Evita’	8	2	11	0	19	2
Ben Abbott	The History of Hereford Cathedral	9	0	11	1	20	1
Elizabeth Rounding	The Novels of Sally Rooney	9	0	6	2	15	2
Alan McDermaid	Seve Ballesteros	11	0	8	0	19	0

Mastermind Round One Heat 9 - Monday 15th September

It works like this. I’ve been away on a sketching trip to Liverpool, which has put me behind with the reviews. Sorry about that. So I’m going to start with last week’s Mastermind and work through to catch up asap, ok?

So, the first subject was the history of Coventry. Up until the time I started researching my family history I had no idea of a family connection to Coventry. It turned out that my mother’s father’s mother, born Emily Rainbow, was born in Coventry, where she followed her father into the silk weaving industry. The two of them moved to London where she met my great grandfather. At one point the Rainbows, descendant from Huguenots, had been very successful in the silk weaving industry, and Emily’s uncle Edwin was even the Mayor of Coventry at one point. So it was nice to see one question answered by Eric Davies was actually about the ribbon industry. It has to be said tha Eric did brilliantly too. Everything was answered correctly until the very last question, so much so that it was a surprise when the final question caught him out.

I had a couple on Eric’s round but there was nothing for me in Gurpal Cheema’s round on “People Just Do Nothing”, which title could have been applied to a number of English classes that I taught over the years. Apparently it was a TV show that I never watched. Gurpal kept on answering and accumulated a good total of 11, which put him just behind Brian looking forward to the GK round.

The next round on the Emperor Nero, offered to us by Annette Fenner, was my banker subject for the evening and I was pleased to take 6 of these from a standing start. Annette did better. I know enough about the subject to know that this was a pretty testing and wide ranging round, and I felt that 9 was a good score. However it did leave Annette 3 points off the lead. It’s not an insurmountable deficit but It’s not easily bridged either.

Finally we had Nigel Haynes who was answering on the life of C.B. Fry. None of the questions concerned my favourite C.B. Fry story – apparently he was once (and only once) invited to be a pundit for a radio sporting occasion. The hapless commentator supposedly asked ‘What do you think, Charles?’ to which Fry replied ‘You do not call me Charles. To you I am Commander Fry.’ I don’t believe he was invited back after that. I took a couple of these about the great all-rounder, but nowhere near as many as Nigel. He completed our third double figure round to lie in 3^rd with 10.

So Annette was first to return to the chair. She did pretty well, too. If we remember that double figures in GK makes a pretty good round, then you can see that Annette was close to this with 9, matching her specialist score. No, 18 was very unlikely to be enough to win, but it didn’t matter so much. She had achieved respectability.

So, as I said, double figures is a mark of a good performance in the GK and that is exactly what Nigel Haynes served up in the next GK round. His score of 11 took him to a total of 21. In all honesty I wasn’t sure that this was going to be enough to win, but you never know, and nothing is certain until the white line of death has completed its circuit around your score.

Sadly, the white line of death had encircled Gurpal Cheema’s score when he had taken his total to 18. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing to be ashamed about with 7 in a GK round in the current era, but I’m sure it will have been less than Gurpal was aiming for. Ah, them’ the breaks. Sometimes the questions fall for you and sometimes they just don’t.

So it remained for Brian, whose round would determine the winner, one way of another. He looked a picture of concentration as he steadily built towards the 10 points he needed to be sure of an outright win. Well, with just a couple of stumbles along the way he managed that alright and added a couple more points, which gave him a total of 24.

Well done, sir. It wasn’t maybe the most flamboyant GK round we’ve seen this series, but it was pretty good. Using last season for comparison, 24 is the kind of score that should put Brian into the top half of qualifiers for the semi finals, and means he could well be one to watch. Brian, I wish you the best of luck.

The Details

Eric Davies	The History of Coventry	12	0	12	0	24	0
Gurpal Cheema	People Just Do Nothing	11	0	7	0	18	0
Annette Fenner	The Roman Emperor Nero	9	0	9	1	18	1
Nigel Haynes	The Life of C.B. Fry	10	0	11	0	21	0

University Challenge First Round - Green Templeton, Oxford v. Darwin, Cambridge

The Teams

Green Templeton College, Oxford

Will Owens

Annie Roberts

Yusuf Sahin (Capt.)

Fiona Asokacitta

Darwin College, Cambridge

Lewis Strachan

Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh

Louis Cameron (Capt.)

Jonathan White

Green Templeton were making their first appearance as a matter of note. We began with a starter in which Brian Aldiss described what seemed to have been from Frankenstein. Indeed it was, as Lewis Strachan thought, earning a set of bonuses on Breakfast at Tiffany’s for Darwin. We both took just the two bonuses. Clues to film portrayals of Sigmund Freud fell to Lewis Cameron. No bonuses on the Portuguese War of Restoration followed, although I think that they were unlucky not to get Ceuta. Lewis Cameron knew Clown for the next starter. Sex chromosomes (no sex chromosomes please, we’re British) amazingly not only produced this week’s first baby elephant walk moment but the last question in the set brought me a lap of honour when I knew that temperature changes in the eggs can determine the sex of turtle offspring. (Look, an NHS clerical officer just KNOWS these things, ok?) For the picture starter nobody recognized movements in a work by Ottorino Respighi. Vitamin B1 thiamin brought Annie Roberts and Green Templeton (henceforth I will call them GT) their first points. This earned the picture bonuses on movements in other tone poems and brought a further five points. Thus it was that just after the 10 minute mark that Darwin led 40 – 15.

Lewis Cameron was the first to recognize the person being described in the next starter as Genghis Khan. Art of the New York Subway provided an interesting set of which Darwin took just the one. With the next starter about an artist friend of Edgar Degas you had to wait until the pronoun ‘she’ was used, at which point I thought it was a 50/50 between Berthe Morrisot and Mary Cassatt. Lewis Cameron went for Cassatt and took the points. Game theory bonuses brought just the one correct answer. Will Owen knew the word Ambient as used in various album titles. Poaceae (the plant family not the Pokemon character) yielded only one bonus to GT, but at least it took us up to the music starter. Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh thought that the voice might be Leonard Cohen’s and was right. More songs that inspired the names of notable bands or artists provided just one correct answer. Captain Yusuf Sahin took one for his team with the next starter, recognizing descriptions of languages that all begin with the letters sin -. The Beach Boys . . . well the Beach Boys, like so many sets before them gave up just one correct answer. With the next starter you had to wait . . . and . . . wwwaaaaiiiitttt, until Menai Strait Bridge was mentioned, then sling buzzer. Will Owens gave the correct answer of Thomas Telford. Notable alumni of France’s Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees – nope, me neither – brought a rare full house. Which really changed the state of the competition. Darwin had been comfortably outbuzzing GT, yet at the 20 minute mark they only had a 15 point lead to show for their efforts, with the score at 85-70.

This was further reduced when Yusuf Sahin took the next starter with the Polish Galicia. We were back to famine rations of bonuses again though as only one bonus on Little Red Riding Hood brought the scores level. Lewis Cameron recognized the work of Heidegger (aka the boozy beggar) for the next starter and with two bonuses for art installations they began the long run for home. So to the second picture starter and the kind of illustration that could only be for Milton or Dante. Lewis Cameron buzzed too early and lost five. Will Owens went with Milton. It was Dante. Annie Roberts knew Progesterone (another Pokemon?) for the next starter and earned the bonuses showing three more depictions of Dante’s meeting with Francesca da Rimini. This brought them the two correct answers that they needed to level the scores again. A terrific early buzz to identify the character Clarissa Dalloway from Annie Roberts brought GT the lead. They sadly squandered a very gettable set on Greek Mythology. Emec and Etic (surely they are pokemon too) gave both teams the slip. A smut that grows on corn – and let me tell you that we are not averse to smutty corn or corny smut here at LAM Towers – lost Darwin five and fell to Yusuf Sahin. Natural world bonuses took GT to 130 meaning that Darwin needed two unanswered visits to the table. They took the next starter with residue. With two bonuses taken the next starter could tie the scores. Jonathan White took it. Was there enough time for any bonuses? Only just. Darwin took the only one there was time for and won the contest 135-130.

For the record both teams managed relatively modest BCRs. Green Templeton posted 42% while Darwin’s was 44%. Sadly their score of 130 means that GT do not make it onto the repechage table.

Amol Watch

I’m gratified to see Amol keeping to the principle of – if it’s not quite right than it’s quite wrong, even though Darwin may well feel aggrieved about Ceuta.

It appears that Amol is as fond of Leonard Cohen as he is of Bertrand Russell. Cohen is NOT unmistakeable, Amol, or GT wouldn’t have mistaken him.

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

Roy Lichtenstein designed a large mural at Times Square 42^nd Street Subway Station.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

X-inactivation is only one method of dealing with the asymmetry of sex chromosomes. Some species instead halve the expression of genes from both female X chromosomes, while others double that of the single X chromosomes in males. What two word term refers to these methods collectively? Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Repechage Table

Sheffield	170
SOAS	170
New College Oxford	150
Lancaster	145
---------------------------------------
Grenn-Templeton, Oxford	130
Cardiff	115
Linacre, Oxford	115
Newcastle	105
Bath	70