Really?!!!!!!

 I can only hope that I'm mistaken about this. In the hope that proper Mastermind might be restarting on Monday I went to check the BBC2 schedule for Monday coming. At 7:30 we have . . . Celebrity Mastermind. Oh Gawd. But then according to the schedule they are repeating the first episode of the series that is just supposed to have finished. Because it has Chesney Hawkes and Danny Robbins in it and I remember watching it. It's hardly surprising I remember it because it was only shown a few weeks ago! I hope that either I, or the iplayer, is mistaken. Come on Beeb - please, don't take the piss.

When Did that Happen?

 UK Gameshows is Back! We reported that the website had gone down in 2025. I have periodically checked my link. I'm not sure the last time that I checked, but it wasn't working then. I checked again tonight. . . and it is! Best thing that has happened in 2026 so far! (even if it happened before the end of 2025)

University Challenge 2026 Quarter Final - Darwin, Cambridge v. Sheffield

The Teams

Darwin, Cambridge

Lewis Strachan

Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh

Louis Cameron (capt.)

Jonathan White

Sheffield

Rhys Lewis

Abdelrahman Elsisi

Jacob Price (capt.)

Isobel Dobbie

Okay folks, so it’s another quarter final. No bus fare home in this one, but that’ll come soon enough. With the first starter I recognised the given name we needed was Gustave on the reference to Caillebotte. Isobel Dobbie seemed to have the same revelation as she opened the scoring for Sheffield. Two bonuses on Elizabeth Barrett ‘Gravy’ Browning followed. Jacob Price recognised two principal divisions of Austria Hungary for the next starter. Dilma Rousseff brought two more bonuses. Nobody knew that the Jaen in Spain produces mainly a lot of olive oil. The next starter on celluloid went begging as well, but while Sheffield lost five I took my lap of honour for knowing it while the going was good. Louis Cameron knew that the Books of Chronicles take their name from a Greek word for time, to open Darwin’s account. Mathematical transformations brought one bonus. So to the picture starter and Isobel Dobbie identified the logo of the International Criminal Court. Three special ICC tribunal logos brought Sheffield a full house. This meant that as we approached the ten minute mark they led by 60 – 10.

Louis Cameron recognised Keats’ Belle Dame Sans Merci for the next starter. Actors who have played the same role in different films that are not part of a franchise brought them one bonus. Ideally they could really have done with a full house at this point to get the scoreboard really moving. Louis Cameron, clearly undaunted, took the next starter on the term Inherent Vice. (As opposed to the TV series with Don Johnson which was often incoherent vice.) Prominent sexologists (innuendo overload imminent) brought just a single bonus again. Jacob Price recognised a description of Baku. Pairs of bowlers who bowled unchanged throughout a whole test innings in the 21^st century saw Sheffield dispatch all three over the boundary rope for a full house. For the ensuing music starter the Sheffield skipper was first in to recognise the voice of Patti Smith. Other artists associated with Max’s Kansas City – nope, me neither – in the 70s and early 80s brought Sheffield no joy. Gawd alone knows what magnetic monopoles are when they’re at home but Jacob Price recognised them when he heard them described in the next starter. Shellac brought one bonus. Now, if you didn’t know about the Revie plan, then you had to wait until the very end of the next starter, and when Leeds United was finally mentioned Rhys Lewis won the buzzer race. Major settlements located close to the Tropic of Capricorn saw Sheffield take two bonuses, and they talked themselves out of the other. Abdelrahman Elsisi was a little unlucky that his early buzz on the next starter didn’t quite come off. He said ethics – but as the rest of the question showed, our survey (and Louis Cameron) said Medical Ethics. Quarter Days and Cross quarter days failed to provide Darwin with any points. There’s actually a park in the London Borough of Ealing where I grew up called Lammas Park. There you go. Almost twenty minutes gone and Sheffield looked comfortable with 130 – 50.

For the second picture starter Louis Cameron buzzed in having recognised a still from Citizen Kane. Other directorial debuts on the BFI’s list of The Greatest Films Of All Time Yes We Really Mean It This Time (Until The Next Time) at least brought them 2 bonuses. Jonathan White knew the Battle of Evesham for the next starter. The extinct language Auregnais failed to bring them more points. Nobody got the Holmes and Moriarty Problem for the next starter but Sheffield lost five. Lewis Strachan recognised various theories to do with dreaming – or did I dream it? – only to earn a set on creatures that can produce silk or silk like threads. One bonus put them one question away from a triple figure score. Abdelrahman Elsisi was first to recognise Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. The artist Joseph ‘Betta’ Beuys didn’t help the Sheffield cause but did at least serve to run the clock down a bit. Darwin came back with Louis Cameron first to leap on the term Veldt. Sarasate the Spanish violin virtuoso brought two bonuses and the gap was down to 20. Nobody knew the operculum. Gesundheit. Abdelrahman Elsisi was first to work out that there were 24 states of the USA in 1825. That more or less sealed the deal for Sheffield. Greek letters used in statistics brought pushed the Sheffield score further out of reach. The next starter went unanswered. That was it. Sheffield won by 155 to 115

There wasn’t that much to choose between the teams in terms of starters, but Darwin could only manage a 33.3% BCR while Sheffield posted 63%. That tells its own story.

Amol Watch

When he’s not trying to be a) too matey with the teams or b) Jeremy Paxman and just gets on with it, Amol does a fine job. Last night was such an occasion.

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

In some languages the chess bishop is called the elephant.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

On its establishment in 2009 the principal aim of the MoEDA experiment at CERN was to search for which hypothetical particles known bya two-word alliterative name? The second of Maxwell’s equations states mathematically that these particles cannot exist, but (thankfully Jacob Price buzzed in at this point. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.)

New TV Quiz/Game show review - The Floor

Way back in the mists of time (last year) I wrote about Rob Brydon’s Destination X. As I recall I rather enjoyed the show, even though there really was next to no quiz content within it. A couple of weeks ago he launched the first instalment of the ITV version of a show that has been a hit stateside and in other countries. This is The Floor.

I may have elements of this wrong, so don’t take everything I say as gospel, but as I understand it, the show works like this. 81 players occupied spaces on a 9x9 grid. Each player had their own nominated specialist subject. The player who starts can choose the players in any square adjacent to theirs to play against. So if, for the sake of argument, the player chooses to play against Bob who has nominated early Etruscan Pottery as his subject, then the two square off in a head to head on Early Etruscan pottery. The head to heads are short rounds. Basically the two players are both given 60 seconds on their clocks. In turns thy are asked questions about – what did we say? Oh yes, early Etruscan Pottery. A correct answer moves the question to the other player. When the time runs out on one of the players, the other wins. Whoever wins takes over the other player’s square as well as their own, and I believe that the opponent’s specialist subject becomes their’s. Whoever loses leaves with nothing.

Now, on paper at least this format is not without interest. After all, with a little effort we can all be good on our own specialist subject. But a wide range of them? I can see strategic thinking being involved but sooner or later contestants are going to need to show decent knowledge of a potentially wide range of topics. I like that. For that matter I like Rob Brydon, one of Port Talbot’s finest. So having got all of that in its favour, I think that I should own up to a salient fact. I watched all of the first show. I haven’t watched it since. Partly this was because I forgot that it was on. But that in itself tells its own story. Because when you get right down to it a show like this should have gripped me. But it didn’t grip me enough to make an appointment with myself to watch the next show.

It’s hard to be absolutely cut and dried about why this doesn’t quite deliver for me, but I’d say it boils down to a couple of things. If you’ve been with me for a while you know that I much prefer shows where the questions – chat ratio is slanted much more towards the former. I haven’t sat down to work out just how much of the show’s length is given up to questions being asked and answered, but in all honesty it didn’t seem like a lot to me.

Also, on the show I watched it seemed to me that at least a couple of the contestants had only a brief passing acquaintance with their specialist subjects. Now I will admit that I don’t know just how the allocation of specialist subjects worked on the show – whether it was totally up to the contestants themselves, or whether they were given a selection of subjects to choose from, or whether it was dictated to them – you will do this subject. But if they had a free hand to choose their own subjects, well, some of them weren’t that impressive to be perfectly honest. As for the moolah, well it is possible to pick up £5000 bonuses as you go along. The grand prize is £50,000. Ok, that’s certainly not to be sniffed at, but it isn’t riches beyond the dreams of avarice, is it? Not when you compare it to other shows of the genre.

Well, there we are. I may watch again. But then again I may not.

Half and Half

So, the big question is – am I in a glass half full, or a glass half empty kind of mood, writing this? Let’s have a look at the glass half empty view. We got to the club on Thursday night to find that the question master was doing 8 themed rounds. Each team would have two jokers, to play before the start of whichever 2 rounds they chose, Now, this sort of thing is not my cup of tea really, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Now let’s look at the glass half full point of view. It wasn’t as bad as I feared.

So, what’s wrong with themed and/or gimmicked quizzes? Well, although it is perfectly possible to make a very good quiz that is themed and/or uses gimmicks like jokers, it is difficult. It requires skill, patience and a capacity for taking pains with it, even if it means ripping up a round and starting again because it just doesn’t quite work. In my experience it is only very good question masters ( and most of these that I have known have also been good quizzers) who can pull this off.

Now, as I have said before, on a personal level I like all of the regular quiz setters in the club. But I’m afraid that I think that, with the exception of Dan, Adam and Jess, they are none of them much better than okay. That’s harsh and it maybe sounds mean-spirited. All of us who set the quiz for the club do it for nothing more than a couple of drinks and a desire to give people an evening’s entertainment. Well, there’s a scene in the film of Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical “Biloxi Blues” where Matthew Broderick’s character - supposedly based on Simon himself – is made to read out his journal by other members of his training platoon, and he doesn’t want to read out what he has written about his friend Eugene, because he expresses the suspicion that he might be gay. (Look, the film is set during World War II) When he is reluctant to read it out, Eugene tells him, and I’m paraphrasing here – if he compromises on what he feels then he becomes a candidate for mediocrity. So, although I don’t necessarily like myself for saying it, this is really what I feel. And that is, that you should master the craft of putting together a good, basic general knowledge quiz on a regular basis before you try doing anything more complex.

Last night’s setter I have written about before. Starting with the negatives, Dan once nicknamed the setter Captain Slapdash and I can’t think of a more apt nickname. Why? Well, like me he’s been setting quizzes for the club for a long time now, and he’s been playing in the quiz for even longer than I have. So, over the years you hear certain questions again and again. You think you know what the answers are so when you use them yourself you can’t be bothered to check. In the sports round last night he asked ‘Who is the only track and field athlete to win gold medals in the same individual event in four consecutive Olympic Games? Now, you’ll probably have spotted the issue with this question. Because there are two athletes who have done this now. Yes, when I started quizzing the only one was Al Oerter who won the discus in 4 consecutive Olympic Games. But since then, Carl Lewis did the same in the Long Jump. It’s not hard to find this out but you have to check in the first place. It is not enough as a question master merely THINKING your answer is right. If you can’t, won’t or don’t accept this, then why are you making the quiz in the first place?

You know, when I started going to the quiz in the club 31 years ago, one of the things that used to really frustrate me – in fact it still does – is when a question master doesn’t pay enough attention to the phrasing of their question, and so doesn’t actually ask what they think they’re asking. Case in point – last night the second round on which we played our joker was ‘what came fourth?’. Except that it wasn’t. It was – which one is missing from this group of four? - Now, that’s okay, it’s just a small point. But one of the questions was - Which is missing from this list of America’s founding fathers? - This greatly annoys me. The Founding Fathers is, I believe a term applied to the signers of the US Declaration of Independence, and there were more than 4 of them! Now, from the list – Washington, John Adams, James Madison it was fairly clear that what he really meant was the first four US presidents, with the missing third president being Thomas Jefferson - but that isn’t what he asked for and I find it irritating

Which is a shame because with those couple of questions put to one side, he didn’t do a bad job of it at all. If you take the view that even in a themed round there should be as much variety as possible and something for everyone (and you should) then there was only one round where he fell short. This was the first one on Wales in the 21^st Century. Once what is essentially an ‘in the news’ question is more than a couple of years old you’re going to really struggle to recall the answers, and with one exception all of the teams had a low score on this round. In other rounds, though, the theme was not that much more than a rather general link which worked a lot better. For example, Wedding Anniversary Gifts was a round in which all of the answers contained a wedding anniversary gift even though that wasn’t what the question was actually about. This was nicely done – and we were kicking ourselves for not seeing that the answer to ‘what spans 9 provinces and 100 counties? – might be the Great Wall of China.

Continuing in glass half full vein, people do like ‘the captain’. He has a lot of charm as a question master and Dan has made the point that there is always a nice atmosphere at his quiz. And to be fair he did ask a number of questions that made you feel good for being able to dredge up an answer that you didn’t know if you still knew. For example, in the TV and film round all of the teams played their joker, but we were the only team to have a full house. I’m pretty sure that the question that did for the other teams was, “Who was played on TV by Mary Holland in the 50s and 60s?” It took a bit of thinking to dredge up Katie, the original Oxo Mum.

So you can’t complain too much if you end up being pleased with something you got right and something you could have got right but didn’t because you made the wrong call. And on that note it seems that the glass is definitely half full this time.

University Challenge 2026 Quarter Final - UCL v. Merton, Oxford

The Teams

UCL

Zak Lakota-Baldwin

Alice Lee

Michael Doherty (Capt)

Manny Campion-Dye

Merton, Oxford

Ciaran Duncan

Eveline Ong

Elliot Cosnett

Verity Fleetwood-Law

Off we go then, with neither team to be given their bus fare home at the end of this match, since it’s the quarters. Ciaran Duncan came in too early for the first starter allowing Alice Lee to identify Anthony and Cleopatra for the first starter. Bonuses on films whose titles contain a chemical element (the Unsinkable Molybdenum Brown?) brought them the best possible start with a full house. Alice Lee zigged with Dekker for the next starter when she should’ve zagged with Desmond allowing Elliot Cosnett to put his team into a positive score. Bonuses on John Marston’s The Malcontent  brought their own full house to level the scores. Eveline Ong recognised references to Gericault for the next starter and Hollywood film legends yielded the third consecutive full house of the show. None of us recognised Blackburn for the picture starter. I didn’t get the next starter about molecular modelling but Eveline Ong knew the answer was methane. I often find that. Bonus photographs of towns with Cathedrals but lacking city status – I thought they might show Guildford but didn’t – brought no points. Manny Campion-Dye came in remarkably early for the next starter to identify the words of Kant. Veterinary medicine brought a single bonus and this meant that UCL trailed at just after 10 minutes as Merton led 55-35.

For the next starter Michael Doherty was first to realise that South American country – and – ask permission from Amsterdam must mean Suriname. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (I preferred Blondie’s) brought UCL the two bonuses they needed to draw level. Eveline Ong was very quick to recognise a description of the opera Elektra. Three plays with the word God in the title brought both of us just the one correct answer. Nobody knew the document legitimizing the rule of Richard III. Zak Lakota-Baldwin took his first starter recognising a description of viruses. Women honoured in the Pantheon in Paris brought a single bonus. It was back to opera and back to Eveline Ong for the music starter. She recognised Delibes’ Lakme. Other musical works with lyrics by Gille brought a single bonus. The match had developed into a bit of a dour old slugfest at this midway point. Now, I did know that Hans Christian Anderson was born in Odense and so did Alice Lee. Statistical mechanics announced Amol. No thanks, I replied, but he carried on anyway. UCL were quite happy about it and took a full house. Ciaran Duncan knew y-u-g-a (it’s fun to stay at the y-u-g-a) for the next starter. Poems of Shakespeare brought two bonuses. Manny Campion-Dye had a great early buzz to identify T.S.Eliot’s description of Tiresias. Japanese authors whose names included Kawa or Gawa brought nowt to any of us. Still, UCL had a narrow lead of 105-95 at just after 20 minutes.

Who wanted it more? Well, Elliot Cosnett was first to buzz for what was surely the work of Durer. So it was. More etchings brought us both just the one bonus. Michael Doherty won the buzzer race to identify a minority language in Portugal. The ceremonial county of South Yorkshire brought just one bonus. Individual bonuses looked as if they would be crucial to the result in this match. Nobody knew about the FBI approach to offender profiling. Nope, me neither. Elliot Cosnett knew the Federalist Papers for the next starter. Baked goods made from choux pastry brought just a single bonus. Nothing to choose between the teams at this point. Elliot Cosnett took a flyer on the next starter and fortune favoured the brave as he identified rivers forming the border between China and North Korea. European history yielded a full house – was this going to be the decisive moment that separated the teams? No, for Michael Doherty knew that the first head of CERN was called Bloch. So a Bloch-head, in fact. Well, please yourselves. Zora Neale Hurston brought just the one bonus. Zak Lakota-Baldwin knew the Coltranes (Robbie and Roscoe?) for the next starter. Disguises in opera brought them the one bonus they needed to tie the score. Surely the next starter would win. The answer was Fleurs – as in du Mal – and it was given by Elliot Cosnett. GONG! Merton had won by 160-150.

Both teams managed the same number of starters. UCL managed a BCR of 48% while Merton managed 55.5%. That’s the tale of the tape, folks, it all came down to just two bonuses. A great match.

Amol Watch

I felt Amol was just a little arsey in this show. ‘Chester is absolutely nowhere near there!” he sniffed on the picture starter. After the picture bonuses he added ‘you’re quite right, your Geography is terrible’ and without a chuckle in his voice either. Amol, mate, you don’t need to try to be Jeremy Paxman.

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

The name Desmond is derived from words meaning from South Munster

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In thermodynamics the words ‘canonical’ or ‘grand canonical’ may precede what 8 letter word to refer to a collection of many sets of particles that each represent a possible state of a physical system?  - it’s not the longest dumdum we’ve ever had, but flippin’ ‘eck! Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

3 more Sleb Masterminds to go

 It is with a heavy heart that I noticed we still have 3 Celebrity Masterminds to go in the current series. There is no date on the BBC Mastermind website for the real show to start again. I hope that it will be in a fortnight, since the last sleb show is due to be shown on Wednesday 28th January. 

BBC did a similar thing with last year's series and I'm afraid that it pretty much killed the rest of round one for me. It didn't help that with one exception the scores were unremarkable. I mean, not as low as the celebrity scores but not high enough to get the juices flowing as it were. 

Well, there we are. Grin and bear it and hurry back the real show.