University Challenge 2026 First round Cardiff v. Bristol

The Teams

Cardiff

Harri Slaughter

Aeron Wheel

Carenza Danko (Capt)

Freddie Lancett

Bristol

Lewis Jenkins

Lois Connolly

Hugo Goodwill (Capt)

Nathaniel Joyce

As soon as the first starter mentioned Ilich Ramirez Sanchez Freddie Lancett went for his shooting irons and hit the target with jackal. Philosophers brought us both a brace of correct answers. We had gone an awfully long way with the next starter before the words Sonic and Mega Drive signposted the way to the answer of Sega at which point Lois Connolly opened Bristol’s account. Perennial favourite Old Cat’s Book of Practical Possums yielded a full house and put Bristol in the lead. Nobody really fancied the next starter but Nathaniel Joyce had a punt with imprinting and he was right. France’s Ecole Polytechnique (who was also a mid 80s mime artist who appeared in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) brought two bonuses and took us all up to the first picture starter. This was a great UC special. Silhouette maps of Britain and France had three red dots showing the places of death of three Kings with the same regnal name. I thought it would be Richard because the locations seemed right and so did Lewis Jenkins, earning Bristol three more of the same thing. They took their second full house of the night. The next starter was one of those where one word suddenly makes everything clear. Joanna Bonger and artist did not seem to do much to enlighten us, but the name Theo sent Carenza Danko for the buzzer and the Cardiff skipper gave the correct answer of Van Gogh. Operas of the 1830s brought two bonuses, but at the 10 minute mark Bristol were comfortably ahead with 70 – 40.

For the next starter I followed the dictum that if it’s a 20^th century German dramatist its probably Brecht. So did Freddie Lancett. Artists with the same surname but unrelated to each other brought us both just the one correct answer. None of us knew that Kil as in Kildare and Kilkenny means church. Lewis Jenkins knew the south Asian cookery term dal. Instruments for land surveying beginning with the letter t brought two bonuses. So to the music starter and Lois Conolly was the first to recognise the distinct stylings of the Stone Roses, a popular beat combo of the 90s, so I’m told. A lovely UC special set of bonuses asked them to identify bands whose song was also used as walk out music for a Premier League Football team. And yes, I did get The Dave Clark Five and no, that’s not where my parents took my name from even though I was born in 1964 at the height of the short-lived Tottenham Sound. For the first time Bristol only managed 1 bonus. Play word association for the next starter – dinosaurs – literary award – Manhattan Concert Hall. Did you say Carnegie? Freddie Lancett did. Japanese cinema was the subject of the bonuses, specifically films with a prime number in the title, and yes, Seven Samurai was one and no, none of us got any of the others. As soon as Amol reached ‘inventor sent a signal in 1901’ with the next starter a buzzer races ensued, won by Hugo Goodwill. The Great Whin Sill only provided a single bonus. Isabella of Castille showed a clean pair of heels to both teams, and Lewis Jenkins lost five with an injudicious interruption. This meant that at the 20 minute mark Bristol led 115 to 70.

Bristol looked the more likely winners now, but a Cardiff purple patch might change everything. It didn’t begin with the next staretr as Lewis Jekins, unflustered by his previous incorrect buzz, came in with Arthur Schopenhauer, much to Amol’s approval. Stuff about making cheese – and don’t forget, blessed are the cheesemakers – brought Bristol a full house and increased the height of the mountain Cardiff would have to climb. For the second picture starter Harri Slaughter recognised the work of Rembrandt. 3 more paintings also made for city governments brought two bonuses and narrowed the gap to 50.I’m surprised nobody had the literary term corpus as in a body of work for the next starter, but there you go. Bristol buzzed early and lost five. Nobody got the word nitro for the next starter, and Cardiff in their turn came in too early and lost five. When you hear ‘Anglo Saxon’ and ‘rampart and ditch’ you buzz and say King ‘Make Me An’ Offa. Aeron Wheel did. Well, the Offa bit anyway. The latin phrase Cuius Regio Eius Religio brought one bonus, but the result was still in doubt since over tree minutes remained. It looked less doubtful after Lewis Jenkins buzzed in with the correct answer of Burkina Faso to the next starter. You know Burkina Faso – it has a capital city named after the group that had a 1983 hit with Too Shy Shy (hush hush, eye to eye). Formula 1 drivers who took more than 100 GP starts to win one brought two bonuses. What small chance Cardiff had with Lewis Jenkins’ correct buzz for the next starter to identify references to the word lag. A full house on Shakin’ Shakespeare only served to apply some gilding. Freddie Lancett gamely fought on, identifying Ely Cathedral as the Ship of the Fens for the next starter. The inaugural winners of the Kyoto Prize did nowt for me but brought 1 correct answer to Cardiff. That was it. Bristol won by 180 to 115.

For what it’s worth Cardiff achieved a BCR of 47 while Bristol achieved an excellent 74 – a coincidental inversion there. Bristol didn’t thrash Cardiff, but they were better on both buzzer and bonuses and that pretty much sums it up.

Amol Watch

We all of us have our go-to phrases. Jeremy Paxman could never introduce UCL without the phrase ‘Godless Institution of Gower Street’ and Amol always suffixes a mention of Bertrand Russell with ‘my hero’. Fair enough.

We saw the rare sight of Amol having to ask ‘anyone fancy a go?’ when both teams showed extreme reluctance to try their luck with the imprinting starter.

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

Kil- in Irish place names derives from a word for Church.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Sorry to disappoint but there was nothing to initiate the chorus of dum de dums this week

Repechage Table

Sheffield	170
SOAS	170
New College Oxford	150
Cardiff	115
-----------------------------------------	------
Newcastle	105
Bath	70

 Last week we saw Bath elbowed out of the repechage slots to become the first team to definitely leave this year’s competition. This week Newcastle joined them. I can’t see it being long before Cardiff follow.

Mastermind 2026 First Round Heat Five

Well, I know what you’re asking yourself. Did Dave live up to his prediction of doing worse on the specialists last week and end up with zero? Well, no, actually. Go figure.

Two of my 6 points came from the first of the specialists and that was Robert Cohen’s round on the History of Sheep. Look, I live in South Wales so I can guarantee that I’ve probably heard more jokes involving sheep than most and I have no intention of adding to them. This was one of those left field subjects that must have been difficult to prepare for, but it’s also the kind of round that just might offer a couple of pieces of low hanging fruit that the non expert can guess. There weren’t 8 of these though, but 8 was the score that Robert Cohen managed. This was good, but did leave quite a bit of room for the other three contenders, and if one of them managed a perfect round then Robert might be in a spot of bother.

Right, let’s get to Liz Bain’s round on the Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante. I have never read any of these and I managed none of these. I want to be honest about Liz’s round but on the other hand I really don’t want to be horrible. Liz scored four, and looking at the questions she missed my gut feeling was that she had probably not prepared carefully enough. It’s not always about the amount of time or effort that you put into it. I have never tried to learn a set of novels for Mastermind, so I don’t know, for certain, but I wouldn’t trust my memory to retain what I needed to know just from re-reading the books however many times. It’s a shame. The last thing I want to see is contenders not having a really positive experience. I pay credit to Liz for putting a brave face on it, but she still appeared a bit shaken.

I couldn’t call myself an expert on the music of Katy Perry, a noted chanteuse of recent decades, so I gathered. Nonetheless a couple of decent guesses provided a couple more points for me to add to the aggregate. At one point I thought that Katie Stoyle was looking good to take the outright lead but just a couple of stumbles slowed her progress just a little. Like Robert she finished with a good 8.

What might have been going through Maxim Sinclair’s mind as he approached the chair, the last of the contenders to go in the specialist round? Was he thinking of what had happened to Liz in her round and hoping lightning would not strike twice in this heat? Or was he looking positively at the lead, and hoping for a round that would blow the others out of the water? Well, what happened was neither of these two extremes. I took two of his questions to pull myself to a respectable enough aggregate of 6. Maxim scored 7. I often make the point that sometimes there seems to be something in the air in a show, ad this show was a case in point. It meant that while Maxim would have been out of contention in many of the other heats at this same stage, he was handily placed on the shoulders of the leaders in this one.

Poor Liz Bain. When you’ve had a testing time in the specialist, the thing you need most of all in the GK round is a couple of questions you know the answers to at the start of the round in order to get you moving with a bit of momentum. Liz just didn’t get that. Maybe I was reading things into it which weren’t there, but even though she tried to maintain a brave smile I think you could see that she was suffering. She rallied to post a total of 9.

Maxim, on his return to the chair, did not seem to be suffering at all, on the other hand. It was an admirable display of sang froid considering that a lot of questions just would not fall for him at all. He kept picking up what he could, and in the end added six to his total to raise the target to 13 overall.

Robert returned to the chair and gave us what seemed to me to be a better round than his specialist had been. In this day and age it takes a bit to get at least a dozen in GK but that’s exactly what Robert did. It wasn’t a perfect round and it wasn’t the best GK round we’ve seen so far in this series but it was good and despite all of the honest endeavour of all of the contenders we really hadn’t seen a contender having a genuinely good round, rather than a respectable one in this heat. Robert reached the psychologically significant 20, and Katie was going to have to match this score with only 1 pass to win.

Well, she gave it a lash and you can’t realistically ask for more than that. But by halfway through it was clear that what we were looking at was another decent round. Decent but not good enough. Katie managed the second highest GK score of the night, with 7 and that was good enough for the runner up spot.

So, well done Robert. I’m sure that your children who egged you on to enter are very proud of you. Best of luck in the semi-finals.

The Details

Robert Cohen	The History of Sheep	8	1	12	1	20	2
Liz Bain	The Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante	4	3	5	3	9	6
Katie Stoyle	The Music of Katy Perry	8	0	7	0	15	0
Maxim Sinclair	Gerald Winstanley and the Diggers	7	2	6	2	13	4

30 Years a Question Master

I’ve compiled a quiz for the rugby club which we’ll use this Thursday evening. I made my first for the club in July 1995 so this is the first one I’ve made since I reached my 30^th Anniversary mark. I’ll be honest, 30 years ago a) it was a whole lot more work to make a quiz for the club – and – b) somehow it was more fun.

It was more work because this was five years before I had the internet. I had amassed a small but very comprehensive quiz reference library, but checking your answers could still be quite a labour-intensive process. . Even writing out the questions was a bit of a drawn out affair. First you’d gather the different categories of questions and write them by hand ( 8 sport, 8 history/current affairs, 8 Geography etc. etc.) Then you’d write them in rounds by hand. Then, after roadtesting them in school and making final changes and corrections, you’d type out the rounds (on my Sharp electric typewriter). And one thing you did achieve through this process was by the time you made the final quiz, the questions were as clearly written as you could write them.

The picture quizzes were a whole different level of work. You’d collect newspapers, colour supplements etc. in the weeks between quizzes, and be continually selecting pictures for the next quiz. Then it was a matter of literally cutting and pasting, with real scissors and real paste. Then there was the photocopying in the local library.

It all certainly built your anticipation, I can tell you that. And sometimes it didn’t go down well which was very disappointing, but sometimes it went well, and that was just the best feeling you could have. I do think that it was all of the time and effort that I put into compiling quizzes for the club in the first ten years that made me a good enough quizzer to at least have a chance of winning Mastermind. You couldn’t help learning more about your weakest subjects if you were doing it properly.

I’ve looked back to a post I wrote in the first couple of years of this blog, in about 2009, where I pontificated on my advice on setting a quiz. This is quoted directly from it :-

“* As a rule of thumb, people never complain that the quiz is too easy. If you're in any doubt about whether a question is too hard, then simplify it, or ditch it.

* Don't go making a quiz to appeal to your own interests. Your quiz will go best when there's something for everyone in it.

* I don't think that everyone realises just how important it is to phrase a question clearly, so that it is absolutely clear what you are actually asking. Even if you do take care, you'll still get asked for clarification sometimes. But if you don't take care it can be a very frustrating experience all round.

* You will make mistakes anyway. Some questions you've included in good faith from quiz books, for example, will be wrong. That can't be helped. Making up your own questions and not checking that your answer is correct CAN be helped, and its something you really should avoid.

* Aim to write a quiz for the middle ability teams rather than the most or least knowledgable. I know that if the majority of teams are scoring about 60 out of 80, then I've pitched it just about right.

* Listen to constructive criticism. Unadulterated praise is nice, but not exactly helpful. Neither are comments along the lines of "Your quiz was crap ". If people tell you that they liked something or disliked something, then think about it. if it’s not fair comment - OK, but if it is fair, then use this to help you make your next quiz.”-

Well, to be fair to myself I was a lot more serious about quizzing in those days. Having said that, I still don’t think it’s bad advice, and if I was being particularly bitchy I’d say it was advice that would make quite a few of the quizzes in the club a lot better if some of our semi regulars followed it. Not referring to my own team here, I hasten to add. I do try to be patient. Now. Time was when a qm would ask “What is the fastest bird?” and leave it at that. Chances are, you’re sitting there thinking – fastest where? Underwater? On land? In flight? (straight line or diving?) Well, time was I would have expected a question master to have considered this when they wrote the question. So when I asked “Do you mean etc. etc.?” it used to really pee me off when the qm would say ‘I don’t know. It’s the one I have here.” Because the QM really ought to know what they’re asking. But as I said, you mellow as you get older, so when this happened a few weeks ago I just said ‘Fair enough’ and wrote down peregrine falcon. It’s usually the answer.

For over 10 years I was as keen as mustard to compile the quiz and would have done it every week if I had been allowed. Now though. . . well, by Covid it had become a chore, and even since I won’t volunteer but will aways try to do it when asked. But I’ll be honest, I only really enjoy making sets of connections questions. I was the first to introduce connections to the rugby club quiz, and many have adopted the gimmick since. Why not? I stole it myself from Geoff Evans of the Neath quiz league.

Well, considering my ‘butterfly mind’, the fact that I’m still interested enough to be doing it after 30 years is something of an achievement in itself. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it.

Mastermind Heat Five specialist subject preview

Well, presuming that this week the BBC will actually let us watch it, in the next heat of Mastermind the specialist subjects will be –

The History of Sheep

The Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante

The Music of Katty Perry

Gerald Winstanley and the 17^th century protest movement, The Diggers

Right, you know how I only managed to answer 1 specialist question last week? Well, this looks potentially worse to me. I haven’t wikied before Mastermind for several years but I really don’t want to get zero if I can possibly avoid it. There is not one of these subjects where I think there is even a chance I might scape a guess.I will let you know tomorrow after the show.

Destination X Five and Six - (Spoilers)

If you’ve read my previous posts on Destination X you’ll know that I thought that I had a handle on the show and its mechanics – as I said this time last week ‘unless there’s some new rule or rule change that we haven’t foreseen in a upcoming show, nobody forces you to make the specific location choices that decide whether you stay or go. Let’s be clear on that. Thus far your fate has been in your own hands, and no amount of ‘treachery’ can change that.’ Well, it just shows how much I know, for in this week’s episodes five and six, that swerve is exactly what we got.

In episode five there was overwhelming evidence that the destination was Italy. But was it Milan or Venice? – we saw clues for both. In one challenge, which to be honest was more Jeux Sans Frontieres than Race Across the World- the contestants were required to hold trays with wine glasses. Drop them and you’re out. Each was asked questions. Get them right and you can give glasses to an opponent of your choice. Get them wrong and they go on your tray. Somehow it seemed natural that good old Economics Ashvin dropped his before even being given any more glasses. He’s come across as a really nice chap, but frankly never looked likely to find his name engraved on the winner’s trophy. Winner of the challenge, Pilot Josh earned, amongst other things, the power to move someone else’s X 250 km away from the destination.

For the first time we didn’t learn the identity of the ejected contestant at the end of the episode. But we saw that Pilot Josh saw Marathon Nick as his biggest competition and moved his X. So it came as a bit of a surprise when, at the start of episode 6 it was Economics Ash who was ejected. Had he placed his X on the Shetlands, or something? Well, the point of the episode was to allow the contestants to snipe and plot, so they were all allowed out in Venice to see some scenery and play a few games. To be honest it was a bit of a nothingy episode – or would have been had we not got to meet the hitherto unseen star of the show, Jackie P. It means she doesn’t get to join Mrs. Mainwaring/Mrs. Wolowitz/ Charlie Brown’s teacher as one of the great unseens of the world of telly, but there we are. Battle lines were drawn, but nobody went anywhere and nobody got ejected, so all in all there was an unmistakable feeling that this was all padding that might have been forced on the show by one of the original 10 travellers deciding to leave the bus long before the end of episode 1.

I’ll be honest, I’m not totally sure that I like the swerves that happened this week. When you get right down to it I don’t want the winner to just win because they were the winners of a couple of silly games along the way. But I’m still watching and I’ll doubtless have more to say about the show this time next week.

University Challenge 2026 First Round - Manchester v. New College, Oxford

The Teams

Manchester

Ray Power

Kirsty Dickson

Kai Madgwick (Capt)

Rob Faulkner

New College, Oxford

Benji Stimpson

Paige Crawley

Jonah Poulard (Capt)

Daan Timmers

All ready then? Eyes down for a full house. Kai Madgwick came in very early for the first starter, things named after the city of Nice. Never even got onto those horrible coconut biscuits – yeah, just my opinion and feel free to disagree. Abi Morgan stubbornly refused to yield any bonus points. Benji Stimpson opened New College’s account with my long time favourite Nina Simone. What seemed to be a relatively gentle set on Monmouth’s rebellion did not bring them any bonus points. Clues to descriptions of the rainbow saw Benji Stimpson beat Kai Madgwick to the buzzer, but an incorrect answer allowed the Manchester skipper to give the correct one. Artists and designers who collaborated with Merce Cunningham (from Happy Days?) brought two correct answers. Which brought us to the first picture starter. An alternative national flag saw a buzzer race between the two captains won by Kai Madgwick who identified it as belonging to New Zealand. More flags with native flora or fauna brought Manchester the first full house of the whole competition. Nobody seemed to have heard of a depot injection for the next starter. A question which namechecked the Aztec fondness for crunchy frog tamales saw New College lose another five for an incorrect interruption and Manchester took advantage and earned two bonuses on theoretical physics while I earned a lap of honour for knowing that the theoretical particles named after the Greek for swift are tachyons. Manchester led comfortably by 70 – 5.

1837 History of the French Revolution? Gotta be Carlyle, but both teams sat back a moment or two before Paige Crawley buzzed in with the right answer. The 1954 FIFA World Cup brought two bonuses, but an inability to conjure up the name of Bobby Charlton’s brother Jack robbed them of a full house. Kai Madgwick knew various film directors called Jacques (Becker, Demy and Hattie?) Languages of India brought two bonuses and took us to the music starter. The more I heard of this piece from the 18^th century the more I thought it was Bach. Neither team did though. Jonah Poulard earned Amol’s approval knowing that the British Colonial Federation of Rhodesia and Nyassaland being dissolved in 1963 led to the independent countries of Zambia and Malawi. For the music bonuses pieces featuring more than two timpani brought precisely nowt. Daan Timmers knew about pair production for the next starter and the New College revival continued. Floods in Science Fiction brought a single bonus. Kai Madgwick was in very quickly to identify Morgan Le Fay as the legendary figure after whom the Italian mirage (the Fata Morgana) was named. To be fair to myself, protein shapes are of less interest to me than pasta shapes so I wasn’t surprised that I failed to add to my score. Manchester took two. The museum in the next starter in Barcelona wasn’t dedicated to Dali or Picasso, I reckoned so that brought Miro into the equation. Kai Madgwick thought so and it earned his team bonuses on Chinese history. Thank you very much, said Manchester and took a full house on Chinese Imperial dynasties. Kirsty Dickson buzzed in quickly to identify sarco as the Greek prefix meaning flesh. Lodis brought a full house, and despite New College’s mid round revival, Manchester led by 160 – 50.

For the second picture starter Kai Madgwick leapt a bit theatrically for his buzzer but Benji Stimpson beat him to identify a still from 12 Angry Men. (For some reason I have never yet seen this film. I really should.) 3 more Sidney Lumet film stills followed. New College only managed 1 but at least they were going again. Kai Madgwick leapt to the buzzer again, but just too early with the next starter allowing Paige Crawley in with the latin centum. Two bonuses on alphabets were taken, and captain Jonah Poulard was visibly becoming more animated with each correct answer. Paige Crawley, doing so much good buzzer work now, took her third starter knowing that the Phoenicians who founded Carthage came originally from Tyre. Nanoparticles? Nanothankyou I replied. I still knew Buckminsterfullerene. So did New College and more besides. The gap would still require more than one visit tot the table, but things were beginning to look interesting. Even more so when Benji Stimpson correctly linked Katherine Graham with the Washington Post. The petting of dogs in literature was a lovely UC special set which brought 1 bonus. Nobody quite knew the Medieval Warm Period and Kai Madgwick lost five for an unlucky early buzz. Again, Kai Madgwick buzzed early on Jebel Toubkal and lost five. He knew it was the Atlas Mountains, but that wasn’t the question. Jonah Poulard knew the country required was Morocco. Italian architectural terms brought two bonuses and narrowed the gap to five points. Paige Crawley took the next starter knowing the Ars Poetica of Horace. New College had wiped out a huge deficit and had the lead and all of the momentum. People sharing their names with European Capitals did not, annoyingly, ask for Karol Ljubljana, inventor of the hole in the lavatory seat. New College took the harder second but missed the easier first and third. Still Kai Madgwick hammered the buzzer on the next starter and this time he really hit the target knowing that we were talking about a Neutron star. Well, I wasn’t but you know what I mean. Just one bonus on rivers emptying into the Channel gave Manchester a five point lead. There was time for one more starter. The whole contest boiled down to this one question. Given several places in different countries Joah Poulard knew they each housed amphitheatres. He won the buzzer race, but . . . argghhh! He called them colosseums. Kai Madgwick gratefully came in with amphitheatres and the game was over. Very, very bad luck, but ultimately a correct call in my opinion. Manchester won by 170 to 150.

Well, at 20 minutes it looked like a fairly comfortable stroll in the park for Manchester, but a really splendid fightback gave New College at least the chance of a repechage spot and made for a very exciting contest. For the record New College had a BCR of 40 while Manchester’s was 67. So it’s a tribute to the New College buzzing that they managed to come as close as they did.

Amol Watch

It was a little bit much to say that every football fan in the country was cursing New College for not knowing Jack Charlton. Not everyone is obsessed with the boys of 66, Amol. Not any more, anyway.

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

The California Grizzly Bear as featured on the state flag is actually extinct.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In medicine what five letter term is informally applied to a injection that delivers a slow release form of a medication – for example, contraceptives (incorrect buzz at this point ) for example contraceptives or anti-psychotics. They are so named because they create a reserve of the medication in the injected muscle. The word in question being used in other contexts to mean place where goods are stored. Hmmmm – dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum?

Mastermind 2026 First round Heat Four

Maybe unfairly, I often feel that when Mastermind returns after arbitrarily being taken off for a week or more the BBC owe us a top class edition. As we saw after the prolonged Christmas break last season, we don’t always get it. So would last night’s show go with a bang or turn out to be a damp squib?

Well, it certainly started brightly enough. Basab Majumdar was answering on the playing career of the great Sunil Gavaskar. Now, when I tell you that of all four of last night’s subjects this was supposedly my banker, then all that tells you is just how little I know about all four subjects. To be precise, I got none of these, even by randomly shouting out cricketing test playing countries whenever given the opportunity. Basab was very well prepared, and from where I was sitting a double figure score seemed the least that he deserved.

Alright, I have seen the first Hunger Games movie. That’s not where I got my singular specialist point from though. No, in a unit of work I taught for the last few years we used a passage from the original book which is how I knew Katniss’ little sister’s name. Thus concluded the specialist round for me. Not so for Hannah Mimiec. Like Basab before her she seemed very well prepared and a double figure round of 10 seemed only fair. I don’ know, there was something in the specialist rounds last night, which meant that each of them ended up with a point less than I would have said they were worth.

On with Miles Searle. Miles was answering on Leonard Bernstein. Again, this was another very well prepared contender. I don’t know much about Mr. Bernstein – as demonstrated by my zero points on the round – but this was a wide ranging, testing round. I thought that Miles was unlucky to miss out on double figures. Still, being realistic it did mean that he was only one point off the lead, with only one other contender to go.

That final contender was Devon Krohn. Devon is a teacher trainer. I’m not sure if that means she trains people to be teachers, or she delivers INSET to train people who are already teachers. Well, even if the latter is the case we won’t hold that against her. Ah, INSET, or as I like to think of it, the best part of 1000 hours of my life that I will never get back. However, I digress. Devon was answering on Edvard Munch, brilliantly, as it happened. She scored a perfect round answering every question correctly, yet only scored 11. It wasn’t as if she was going particularly slowly either. As I said, something in the air in last night’s show?

Normally you wouldn’t be first back to the chair for GK if you had scored 9 in the Specialist round. However that’s exactly what happened to Miles. How did he respond? By going like billy-o, showing an impressive breadth of knowledge and answering 13 questions correctly. All of which shows just how important momentum is. When you go first in the GK round all you can do is post the best score that you can and hope to do enough to at least put the others within the corridor of doubt. In Miles’ case this was a job well done.

It's relatively rare to see a round come completely off the rails. Poor Basab Majumdar had the horrible experience of needing to score 12 to just draw level, then seeing his first four answers miss the mark. I give him full credit for taking stock on the fifth, dredging up the right answer and building a score from there, but in all honesty it looked a struggle. He finished with a total score of fifteen. Sometimes it’s just not your night, I’m afraid.

To get 13 in a Mastermind specialist round you either need a very good general knowledge – you might almost say a quizzer’s general knowledge – or a lot of luck. Only having Hannah Mimiec’s round to judge by, I would say that luck didn’t seem to have much to do with it. She scored 9, a good total in this day and age, but not a great one. Not a quizzer’s one and not a heat winner’s one. She finished on a very respectable 19.

Only Devon remained. If you’re an experienced quizzer the answers contenders give to one or two specific questions will give you an idea whether the contender is going to finish with a big score or not. Devon gave a couple of these early doors in her round which made me think she was going to fall short of the target. Like Hannah before her she scored 9. That’s a good score and in the current era anything in the 20s is a good total. But even so it meant that she finished outside the winner’s enclosure.

So very well done to Miles. He hinted that he is a very young Masterminder indeed by saying that he is on a gap year before starting university, which means he may be 18 or 19. If he went on to win the series he would in that case be the youngest ever. Such talk is premature, so when he did explain that his Dad is a taxi driver and he thought he could maybe chalk up another one for the cabbies by going all the way, namechecking the great Fred Housego, I did worry a little. I just think that this sort of thing unnecessarily tempts Fate. Nonetheless, I give you my congratulations, Miles. Well done and best of luck in the semi finals.

The Details

Basab Majumdar	The playing career of Sunil Gavaskar	10	0	5	1	15	1
Hannah Mimiec	The Hunger Games	10	0	9	0	19	0
Miles Searle	Leonard Bernstein	9	0	13	0	22	0
Devon Krohn	Edvard Munch	11	0	9	0	20	0

Admitting you're a Mensan

I hope that I haven’t given the impression that I’m doubting the intelligence of any of the players in Destination X, because I’m not. Geographical knowledge, well, that’s maybe a different matter, but knowledge and intelligence are by no means the same thing. Now, episode 4’s ejected player, Chloe-Ann, revealed that she was a member of Mensa. During the show many of the other players singled Chloe out for her intelligence, which the editors gleefully used to heighten the shock when she was out.

Incidentally, I stopped paying the fees and let my Mensa membership lapse. This is not the reason for that, but personally, I never found that anyone who learned that I was in Mensa was very impressed to find it out. In fact, it was while this was passing through my mind watching the show on Thursday that it brought to mind probably the most ignorant comment ever made about Mensa to me. This was about five years ago An acquaintance I’d only met a few times got onto the subject of quizzing. “Well,” he asked at one point, “never mind pub quizzes and leagues, what have you won?” Well, I have done well in lots of things but haven’t won a lot of biggies, so I replied, “Mastermind and Brain of Mensa”. His brow furrowed. “Mensa?”  Then it darkened. “Jimmy Savile was in Mensa.”

In all honesty I couldn’t think of anything to say. Had I possessed any wit at all I might have said, “Yes he was. And you know, Adolf Hitler was in the Mothers Union and Jack the Ripper was in the Salvation Army as well?” But then, they weren’t, to the best of my knowledge while Savile was definitely in Mensa.

On reflection, I think that my actual reply which came after a few moments of silence was ‘Yes, I believe he was. I never met him.’ And I don’t know that anything other than that reply, and walking away after saying it would frankly have had the slightest effect.

Destination X - 3 and 4 - Spoilers

Well, being as I don’t have a Mastermind preview to post today – last week’s still stands – I thought I’d give you an update on Destination X. Yeah, I’m still with it, although not necessarily for the reasons the producers might hope.

Well, in this week’s two episodes we did get to see, I suppose, some of the treachery we’d been promised. Although I will have something to say about that. In episode 3 the first stop was a railway station, presumably in the middle of nowhere. The players were split into two teams and then given three challenges. Now, every member of both teams got to see several clues, one of which was a ticket to the Oktoberfest. There were others, but that was the most glaringly obvious clue seen by everyone. The team that completed the challenge got the other glaringly obvious clue – a magazine with an article about Harry Kane.

Now the three players who won this final clue, Nuclear Judith, Marketing Saskia and pilot Josh (my nicknames, no offense intended) decided to use a bit of disinformation and told the others they had seen people dressed in Borussia Dortmund kit. Before the map room there was a distraction when the three original dumped players returned, to face a challenge with the others or a place on the bus. Judith, Josh and Saskia as challenge winners were all exempt, and could pick one other player to go through. Liverpool James, who had an alliance with marketing Saskia, confidently stood in anticipation he’d be the one thus pardoned but Pilot Josh was having none of it and burst out with Taxi Daren’s name. (I was tempted to call him Jackie P’s husband, but I do find his constant references to her as Jackie P rather endearing). Saskia protested but to no avail.

Now, the challenge saw the three newbies each teamed with one of the old hands. The challenge actually required knowledge of places, or sheer luck. Liverpool James gulped apprehensively, and rightly so. Two by two the others claimed their places on the bus until only he and Economics Ashvin remained. In the short time he’s been with us Ash has seemed pretty much on a par with James as regards Euro cluelessness, but he won the challenge anyway.

So on to the destination and the map room. The three newbies were safe for now, while the others had to digest the fact that all the clues everyone has seen that they have been able to decipher point directly to Munich. Only Josh and Saskia now claim to have seen anything relating to Dortmund. Marathon Nick goes correctly with the body of evidence. Surf School Ben in his own words ‘ignores his gut feeling’ and goes for Dortmund. Ben is forced to leave the bus but at least gets to join in with some Bavarian dancing, and the majority of the audience at home are left to ask – how the hell did he not know it was Munich? Well, I have an idea about that which I will come to.

So to episode four. Now, it’s not clear whether Taxi Daren had also gone for Dortmund – but it looks likely. Still, he pushes the idea that the old hands must stay together and work against the three newbies. Challenges make it crystal clear that the destination is connected heavily with the film The Sound of Music. History Chloe-Ann doesn’t know where it was filmed. Taxi Daren strongly suggests they’re going to Vienna. No, says Sergeant Claire, it was filmed in Salzburg. Once in the map room, it looks as if Economics Ash is plumping for Vienna. However History Chloe-Ann definitely does, and she is the furthest away. Like Ben before her she laments not going with her gut.

Okay, observations. On the Traitors, when a majority of the remaining players decide to get you out there is nothing you can do. On Destination X, unless there’s some new rule or rule change that we haven’t foreseen in a upcoming show, nobody forces you to make the specific location choices that decide whether you stay or go. Let’s be clear on that. Thus far your fate has been in your own hands, and no amount of ‘treachery’ can change that.

So far, the destinations have been pretty clear if you ignore all of the white noise and concentrate only on the clues you yourself have seen or heard. Alright, we don’t all have the same amount of Geographical knowledge, to be fair. But if we take Ben’s case, he said he should have gone with his gut. I take a little issue with it. You see, all the knowledge he had, all of the primary evidence he’d seen told him it was Munich. I’d argue that it was his ‘gut’ that told him to go for Dortmund. Likewise, all the clues in episode four didn’t just point to The Sound of Music, they screamed it out in capital letters. Sergeant Claire even told Chloe-Ann it was filmed in Salzburg. Alright, maybe Chloe-Ann has never seen the film. Well, neither have I. But come on – the hills are alive with the sound of Music. Well, there ain’t many hills that are alive with the sound of music in Vienna. But Chloe-Ann still went for Vienna. She claimed she should have gone with her gut. Again, I think she did go with her gut – her gut feeling that Daren, with whom she had shared the prize for winning the first challenge, was telling her the truth, the gut feeling that made her ignore the facts as they were. I suppose you could claim that this is a form of confirmation bias.

So I shall watch the show again this coming week. Not for Rob Bryden, although he does his job perfectly well. Not for the challenges, although these are proving to be quite fun. Not for the minuscule amount of scenery we get shown. Not for the players being sneaky to each other. No, I am primarily interested, I will admit, in just how obvious the destinations will continue to be and just how players continue to convince themselves to plump for the wrong one. Which I suppose is schadenfreude. Well, I don’t have to like myself for watching it.

University Challenge 2026 Round 1 heat four - Newcastle v. Edinburgh

The Teams

Newcastle

Anna McCully Stewart

Alice Groth

Laurie Guard (Capt.)

Dan Hill

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alice Leonard (Capt.)

Rayhana Amjad

Well, at least we were allowed to watch OC and UC last night, which is something.

A first starter on films with the word ‘All’ in the title allowed Anna McCully Stewart to open the Newcastle account with an early buzz. I really liked the bonus set on books read by the Monster in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” – I always thought that the Monster was more of a ‘Titbits’ sort of guy. (Ask your grandparents). Two bonuses were taken. Poor Alice Groth fell right into the trap with the next question. Ullrich Salchow and Alois Lutz identified the sport in question, but she answered with ice skating – while Amol had asked for the correct specific term. Parthav Easwar went the wrong way, trying his luck with ice dancing, while figure skating was the answer required. For the next starter Rayhana Amjad began Edinburgh’s run for home by recogising Simone de Beauvoir’s “Must we burn De Sade?” World capitals and languages brought us both a full house. The next starter asked for the three letters ending a series of words to which we were given the definitions. Newcastle skipper Laurie Guard came in too early with -asm and for the second consecutive starter Newcastle lost five. I’ll talk more about that later. Johnny Richards waited to hear the full question then gave the correct answer of mma. The French actor Vincent ‘Qui?’ Cassel brought two bonuses and the picture starter. Lovely one this. I have never seen the flag of the Russia oblast Volgograd before. But I have seen photos of the Mother Russia statue featured on it, and I knew it is in Volgograd. Nobody had it although Dan Hill came close with Volga. Parthav Easwar knew that La Malinche helped the conquistadores to overthrow the Aztec Empire. This earned the picture bonuses on further flags of Russian oblasts and they didn’t do badly at all with them, scoring a full house. Parthav Easwar knew that pistachios are used in baklava (not only that but they were my least favourite flavour of ice cream available in the sadly missed Rossi’s ice cream parlour in West Ealing.) The human digestive system brought two bonuses. This meant that after Newcastle’s positive start Edinburgh seemed to have the whip hand, leading 90 – 10.

The next starter gave me this week’s baby elephant moment, but also a lap of honour. When it eventually mentioned human papillomavirus – HPV – and smear test the disorder in question had to be cervical cancer. Laurie Guard had that to set Newcastle moving again. A full house on Caspar David Friedrich – been a while since he was namechecked on UC – was swiftly taken. The clues were all there that the next starter was referring to Yeats (W.B. and not Eddie) and Rayhana Amjad gave the answer. Fast growing cities in Africa brought two correct answers. Rayhana Amjad seemed delighted to hear Amol announce that the music round was on Jazz. Nonetheless Dan Hill very nearly beat him to it. Sadly, he gave Art Brubeck as the answer, allowing Rayhana Amjad in with Dave Brubeck. I wonder – if Dan Hill had just said Brubeck, would Amol have accepted it? On balance I think he might well have. More tracks with titles referring to their time signature – look, just go with it, ok? – yielded nothing for their pains. I’ve never heard of tropicalia as referenced in the next starter but I still said Brazil. So did Johnny Richards, correctly. Dynasties of Roman Emperors proved tricky for Edinburgh and they only managed the Julio-Claudians. Newcastle’s bad luck on the buzzer continued when Dan Hill guessed that Jupiter was the second densest planet in the Solar System. Give that it also has the smallest radius Rayhana Amjad knew it had to be Mercury. French mathematician Sophie Germain promised me nowt, but, like Edinburgh I took one on Fermat’s last Theorem. You had to wait and wait with the next starter but as soon as Amol mentioned the Blue Rider Alice Groth was in with Kandinsky. Mythological depictions of scorpions brought a full house and made things look slightly better for Newcastle who now lagged by 55 to Edinburgh’s 145 at the 20 minute mark.

Both teams sat on their buzzers a little for the next starter but Rayhana Amjad worked out that if it’s in ACT it must be Canberra. Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi were not members of Steps, apparently, but architects who brought no more points to Edinburgh. So to the picture starter, and nobody recognised the Rokeby Venus of Velasquez – one of the most famous bottoms in the Art World (Venus’, that is, not Velasquez’s). Alice Groth knew the writer Alice Munro which won the picture bonuses. Other paintings that had, like the Rokeby Venus, been targeted by climate activists brought just one correct answer. Amazingly I got the next Science starter on things linked by the number three. I guessed the cusps mentioned belonged to the tri rather than the bi. Laurie Guard had that one. Endonyms brought us both two correct answers. I believe that having those two penalties early doors in the match had made Newcastle withdraw into their collective shell. Now they seemed to have surmounted that mental hurdle. Time, though, was not on their side. I think that Johnny Richards got the word young (youth) from the reference to the German word jugendstihl for the next starter– that’s where I got it from.’Not even wrong’ brought only one bonus, but Edinburgh were well over the event horizon by now. Dan Hill knew that the bloke in the Wilton Diptych was Richard II. The legacy of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” brought Newcastle a triple figure score at least. Several clues to the word bubble brought Rayhana Amjad another starter. Tuna in Japanese cuisine brought a full house. Nobody knew Bone mineral density for the next starter. There was just time enough for Alice Leonard to give weaving terms warp and weft to take her team to 200, against Newcastle’s 105 at the gong.

When they took starters Newcastle did not do badly with them achieving a good BCR of 67, noticeably better than Edinburgh’s 55. If you can’t at least achieve parity on the buzzer, though, you are always likely to struggle. Hard lines, and congratulations to Edinburgh.

Amol Watch

“Bad luck Dan,” said Amol in response to the Art Brubeck answer – “Them’s the breaks. Quite so.

Amol was pushing it when he said “plenty of time, Newcastle” just past 17 minutes.  

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

Shaming as it is to admit it, I was not previously aware that Dar Es Salaam means abode of peace.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

A test for which specific disorder was developed in the 1920s by the physician Georgios Papanikolaou? (who was surely a character in the League of Gentlemen. Hello Dave.) The test involves the collection of squamous and glandular cells, which are observed for abnormalities such as the presence of koilocytes, a hallmark of infection by the human papillomavirus and the test is often known - (here there was an incorrect buzz from Parthav Easwar) – by an abbreviation of Papanikolau’s name as a pap test or pap smear.

Need I say more? Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.