University Challenge 2027 First Round - University College, London v. Royal College of Art

The Teams

UCL

Max Emmett

Alan Hughes

Eva West (Capt.)

Coirle Magee

Royal College of Art

Jack Merriman

Alex Hadyn-Williams

James Bown (Capt.)

Imaan Hyder

When the first starter asked for a novel, of which the author said that when you’ve read it you should be in possession of a minimal Russian vocabulary I immediately guessed A Clockwork Orange. Given the full question James Bown opened the account for the newbies, the RCA. Artists who have designed statuettes for the Brit Awards left me pointless – I haven’t been able to watch the Brits since they were presented by Mick Fleetwood and Samantha Fox. RCA managed 2. I’ll be honest, for the next starter I only got the connecting word Goblin through Christina Rossetti and Spider-man. Alex Hadyn-Williams did the same. This brought a set of bonuses on plays of Tom Stoppard, and again, RCA took two of them. UCL took their first points with the next starter which gave several scientific uses of the word cone. Max Emmett took that one. I took my lap of honour while the going was good. We both managed two correct answers on the anatomy of the ear. I didn’t recognise the badge of Staffordshire County Cricket Club, while James Bown did, and they went on to identify one other member of the former Minor Counties. Coirle Magee knew the Sixth Generation film movement from China for the next starter. The title figures of operas by Thea Musgrave brought a full house to UCL. The score at the ten minute mark was 55-45 to RCA, which seemed to make light of my fears for them. I always feel that specialist institutions, such as RCA, are in danger of not having the coverage across a broad range of subjects, that other institutions do. Having four team members all studying writing seemed likely to put them at a disadvantage in the Sciences. Time would tell.

Alex Hadyn-Williams recognised references to Rachael Whiteread for the next starter. Bonuses on the Bible and the scientific method – strange bedfellows, I would have thought – brought one correct answer. Max Emmett came in early for the next starter on Thomas More – why were they all Thomases in Henry VIIIs reign? You’ve got yer More, your Wlsey, your Cromwell and your Cranmer. They were all Francises by the time of Elizabeth I’s. The famous midfield trio of Drake, Bacon and Walsingham. The Polish National Film School brought one bonus. UCL captain Eva West knew the term plexus for the next starter. Indian sweets brought two bonuses that put UCL into the lead for the first time. Max Emmett recognised the intro to Soft Cell’s cover version of Tainted Love – lovely little bit of early 80s, that – and for the bonuses that all sampled wee bits of Northern soul tracks, UCL proved that they know as little about it as I do as the only one we could manage was Fatboy Slim. Alex Hadyn-Williams correctly guessed that it was Thomas Paine’s remains alluded to in the next starter.(see below) Terms in Physics that share part of their names with animals showed that my fears for RCA were not that ill-founded. Blank looks and a failure to add to the score followed. Alan Hughes recognised various dromes – hippo- syn- and velo unless I’m much mistaken – for the next starter. This took UCL into triple figures which they compounded with a full house on actresses in history. Eva West knew that Jericho was the first city attacked by the Israelites under Joshua. Literary works with corvids in their titles brought another full house, which meant that they led comfortably by 140 – 85 at the 20 minute mark. The match had been competitive so far but that 50 point spurt in the last 2 minutes looked decisive.

Nobody recognised the usually unmistakeable colours of Gauguin for the second picture starter. Likewise nobody knew the author Henry Miller – dirty boy. Position created by Charles II gave me Astronomer Royal, and Eva West thought so too, given a little more of the question. More paintings with geese in them for the picture bonuses brought a correct answer.  Max Emmett recognised a description of Stockholm for the next starter. Learning Spanish saw me get a few answers because of the grounding in Latin grammar given to me in Elthorne High School by good old Mr. Rose in the late 70s. Thanks Lionel. The term hyperpop, in the words of Ultravox, means nothing to me but Alan Hughes knew it for the next starter. The play Woyzeck and its adaptations seemed to have the same effect on UCL and they failed to score. Max Emmett knew that the word Alligator derives from Spanish for lizard for the next starter. There was a reprise of Ultravox’s Vienna for me when the term ‘hauntology’ was introduced as the theme of the bonuses. However, I did remember how Derrida has been a UC staple over the years and he brought me a bonus. I’m a little bit surprised that, with at least one Welsh team contestant nobody knew Hafren means the River Severn in Welsh but there you go. Alex Hadyn-Williams recognised biographers of Stalin for the next. They got Science bonuses for their pains, the number of hydrogen atoms in a molecule of blahblahblahrium etc. They got more than I did with a correct guess. Jack Merriman knew the next starter about a lockdown performance of Hamlet. World events and British monarchs brought 2 bonuses. The contest was gonged while Amol was asking the next starter. UCL won comfortably by 210 to 115.

I’m glad that RCA reached triple figures. Their BCR of 42.8% would probably have been a bit higher if they hadn’t had those Science bonuses. Without a scientist somewhere in your team you are always at a disadvantage. UCL achieved 60.6%, and look to be a pretty useful outfit, as you’d expect from UCL.

Amol Watch

Maybe it was me but I did think Amol’s incredulity at UCL’s answer of Salt N Pepa to the second music bonus to be a little bit feigned. We know you are ‘down with da kids’ Amol, you don’t need to labour the point.

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

Thomas Paine’s remains’ (that sounds like the start of a nonsense poem.

Please don’t block my drains

With Thomas Paine’s remains)

whereabouts have been reported in places as far afield as Manchester, France and Australia.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Penguin diagrams are a subtype of what family of diagrams that represent contributions to particle interaction probabilities in quantum field theory? This family of diagrams are named for the scientists who introduced them in 1948. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2027 - First Round Heat 8

Back home from Helsinki, peeps and there’s catching up to be done. So let’s begin with last Monday’s 8^th heat of Mastermind.

First up was Taz Modi who was answering on musician Neil Young. More than a few times during this series so far I’ve watched rounds where I’ve thought that the contender is very good on specific areas of their subject, but then they get asked about things which they’re far less secure on. This seemed to happen to Taz a few times during the round. Oh, don’t get me wrong, 7 is perfectly respectable in this day and age but it’s not the definitive marker that you really want to be laying down in the first round.

Charlotte Long was answering on golfer supreme Rory McIlroy. Answering well, too. For most of the round this looked like it was going to be a really sterling double figure round. A couple of questions did trip her up a little on the way to the tape though and Charlotte levelled out to finish with a good 9 points. I didn’t answer any fewer questions than in the first round, but that’s not a consolation considering that I didn’t answer any in either round. Were we potentially looking at a zero aggregate for me on specialist?

No. Lauren Church gave us a round on US astronaut Sally Ride. While I don’t claim to know much about her life or career, I do know enough about US manned space programmes to be able to pick up a few pieces of low hanging fruit. With her score of 4 by the end of the round, it did look as if there were gaps in Lauren’s knowledge, but I can’t help feeling that she seemed to be affected by nerves as well. After all, I’ve no doubt she would have known Edwards Air Force base in California. I’ll say a bit more about nerves when we get to the GK.

Finally then Gustav Ader. His subject was British Brutalist Architecture. Now I don’t instinctively hate ALL British brutalist architecture. But I do hate a lot of it. The second question concerned Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, and I hate that building, an ugly duckling that has always remained ugly for sure. But leaving aside my own personal feelings, it’s an interesting subject and it brought me 5 points to push my aggregate for the Specialist to 8 points. Gustav did better but with 7 points he too looked as if he’s left a few points behind that he might have managed to get.

So to the General Knowledge. I mentioned about Lauren Church seeming to be a bit nervous in the first round. Well, there were definitely times during her GK round when you could almost see her desperately trying to push the right answer just a little further off the tip of her tongue yet not quite managing it. Who knows, maybe the first round was playing on her mind. She at least finished with a double figure aggregate, scoring 6 to give her an overall total of 10.

Taz Modi delivered a double figure round on GK. He remained calm throughout the round and accumulated points steadily, not rushing in to give a wrong answer quickly where a second’s thought might have produced a correct answer. As a result he pushed through to 11 points. Yes, we’ve seen better GK rounds this series, but only a couple of them, and with the way things have been going you fancied that this might well be a winning performance.

Within the first minute or so of Gustav’s round you couldn’t help feeling that he wasn’t going to match Taz. He too was not answering very quickly, however he wasn’t answering as well as Taz. It was an okay GK round from someone who you’d guess isn’t a quizzer. I’ll say a little bit more about that generally shortly. Gustav scored 7 to take his total to 14.

Finally Charlotte. Essentially she needed a round of 9 points and no passes to win. Basically, a good general knowledge performance. You don’t have to be a quizzer to have a good GK performance, but you do need a cool head, an ability to guess and above all else, just a little bit of luck with the questions you’re asked. At times it looked as if Charlotte had the first two requisites but not the third, as the clock ticked down. In the end she was close but the cigar remained unawarded, for she scored 8 to finish with 17 and no passes.

Well done Taz! With a good GK round many a tricky position at half time can be rescued, and if you can really nail down your specialist for the semi than you are going to be in with a shout. I wish you good luck.

Once again, as seems to have been the case for so much of this series and the previous we’ve seen contenders whose intelligence I have no doubt of, but who are not quizzers. Basically, when you’re a quizzer of a certain standard yourself, there are certain questions that contenders get asked during GK rounds where you think – if you were a quizzer you would have heard that question so often that you’d never get it wrong. And they get it wrong because they haven’t heard it before. Now, I know that it has always been the case that the non-quizzers greatly outnumber the quizzers among the contenders on Mastermind. But there just seem to be so few coming through on the show now who have a good quizzer’s general knowledge. Is it just that quizzers aren’t applying in decent numbers any more? Or is it that, for whatever reason, they’re just not getting through the applications process? I don’t have an answer, but it’s a question that could be asked, certainly.

The Details

Taz Modi	Neil Young	7	1	11	0	18	1
Charlotte Long	Rory McIlroy	9	0	8	0	17	0
Lauren Church	Sally Ride	6	2	4	2	10	4
Gustav Ader	British Brutalist Architecture	7	3	7	3	14	6

Rumours about The Chase Around the World

There was a report in one of the torchons this week that The Chase Around The World will not be commissioned for a second series. In the same article it did say that ITV had neither confirmed nor denied this – well, I have no idea if there is any more substance to it than a rumour. I hope not. As I’ve said consistently I really enjoyed the series. There’s still a lot of water left to flow under our bridge before the awards season comes round, but if it makes a strong bid for this year’s LAMMY I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

Mastermind Preview

I won’t actually be in the country for tomorrow night’s Mastermind, peeps. Yes, the English Fool is heading off Abroad with his sketchbook again, this time to Helsinki. Still, I haven’t gone yet so I thought we might at least cast a glance over tomorrow night’s subjects – I will catch up with the show next weekend when I’m back.

The specialist subjects are :-

Neil Young

Major-winning golfer Rory McIlroy

American Astronaut Sally Ride

British brutalist Architecture

Interesting subjects. Sally Ride is of course the only one to feature in the lyrics of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. I reckon I might get one or two on all of these subjects. I have to say that the last one, British brutalist architecture is a particular hate of mine. Be fair, I was born in the 60s and grew up in London in the 70s and we had more than our fair share of these eyesores. I mean, I am not a fully paid up member of the all-buildings-should-have-columns brigade and I accept that there was a need to put up cheap mass housing in our cities after the devastation of World War 2. But did they have to make them quite so pug-ugly? Alright, I know, it’s not everything that was built between the 40s and 70s – just too much of it.

See you next weekend.

A Case of the Pot and the Kettle

It was my turn to be question master in the club last Thursday. It has been an incredibly stressful week – I won’t go into details – and I did consider whether I needed to cry off. I had several offers to do the quiz for me under the circumstances. But I made the decision to do it.

31 years ago I introduced the concept of the connections question to the quiz, having stolen the idea from an open quiz I’d attended in Neath. I tend to use them whenever I do a quiz at the Rugby Club – between 3 and five seemingly unconnected questions in a round, and the teams have to decide what connects the answers. Now in the last round I always do a nine part connection. When I was making the quiz, I found that the lyrics of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” are a treasure trove of question sources. So much so that not only did I use them in a nine part connection for the last round but I also used them for a nine part connection for round four, the last before the half time break.

Now, as the papers were being handed back after the last round, one of the players made quite an audible comment that this was an unfair connection. Now, in one way, I can kind of see where he was coming from. After all, if nobody in your team knew the song very well, then not only were you going to be unable to answer one connection, you were going to be unable to answer two. But I couldn’t take the criticism quite as philosophically as that because of the person making the criticism. It was none other than Captain Slapdash. I called out to him that I felt that this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black and left it at that.

You see, the good Captain will persist in using his own connections questions. And the problem is that although capable of coming up with the occasional connection so good that I wish that I’d come up with it myself, his general slapdashery means that a lot of his connections are pretty poor, and for want of a better word – cheats. I’ll try my best to explain that.

I don’t know if everybody works this way, but the way I do it is to come up with what I think is a good idea for a connection. Then I have to find, or improvise questions that have answers that fit the connection. If I cannot quite make at least three that perfectly fit the connection, then I bin it. The captain doesn’t work like that. So many of his connections use answers that might be close to the connection, but don’t actually work. For example, the Captain often uses connections of US state Capitals. One time one of the questions leading there was – which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in The Queen? Who of course was HELEN Mirren. Well, Captain, there ain’t no US Capital called Helen. Or Mirren for that matter. Well, as far as the Captain was concerned Helen is close enough to HELENA, and what the hell, he couldn’t be arsed to create a question about, say, Helena Bonham Carter , which actually would have worked. Or the time that he got mixed up between Thomas the Tank Engine and Ivor the Engine that I’ve written about several times before. I mean I do feel that if you've made a quiz at the club you have more right to criticise than someone who has never tried, so I give the Captain that much, but it just rankled with me that someone who has perpetrated more bad connection sets at the club than the rest of us put together would criticise mine. 

So hopefully you can understand why I was feeling a little prickly about someone with his track record criticising my connections. Never mind.

University Challenge First Round - Birmingham v. Leicester

The Teams

Brimingham University

Elif Cetin

Teddy Fogel

Waleed Ghani (Capt)

Zhangir Satzanov

Leicester University

Abu Burton

Emma Hague-Wright

Samuel Carlier (Capt)

Patrick Loughrey

We kicked off with historical events in Portugal, which fell to Zhangir Satzanov with a fine early buzz. Birmingham took two bonuses on environmental disasters. Emma Hague-Wright worked out that cephalophores are saints traditionally depicted carrying their own heads. Knowing about time dilation brought me a lap of honour around the Clark sofa and Leicester a full house. Who knew that there was a region in Argentina called Mesopotamia? I didn’t at the start of the question but I’d worked it out by the end. So had Emma Hague-Wright. Disrupted weddings in Victorian Literature saw them fail to score on a gettable set. The picture starter showed us a map showing a disputed region of India. -Can’t be as easy as Kashmir – said I and I was right to say so. What was required was Jammu and Kashmir as supplied by captain Waleed Ghani of Birmingham. Three capitals of Indian states that lose some of their government functions during the winter brought their own full house. A Science starter sent me into Slumberland. When I woke up slightly later nobody had answered it correctly. For the next starter on “Why I Never Became a Dancer” by Tracey Emin, Teddy Fogel took his first correct buzz. Teddy, of course, was a semi finalist in last year’s Mastermind. He played like it in the second half of this contest too. Two bonuses on 1645 followed and provided Birmingham with a lead of 60-35 on 10 minutes.

Birmingham came in too early for the next starter allowing Leicester to listen until it became clear was looking for the term intermezzo, supplied by Patrick Loughrey, which delighted him no end. Greek mythological characters brought two correct answers. The Jikji Memory of the World Prize was another of those questions you had to wait and wait and then pounce. Best pouncer in this race was Samuel Carlier, who correctly answered that the country required was South Korea. Organs of the human body stubbornly refused to yield any points. None of the youngsters in both teams had a sufficient knowledge of rather obscure 80s chart acts to get Heaven 17 for the next starter. Another body parts question saw Elif Cetin actually know the right answer, but give it in the wrong way, giving the whole word rather than the initial asked for, and so Emma Hague-Wright knocked that ball into the open goal. This earned the musical bonuses on other groups or artists’ songs referencing A Clockwork Orange. A full house meant Leicester were steaming ahead. Brimingham came back when Teddy Fogel recognised various Fairy Queens for the next starter. Two bonuses on Oscar winning choreographers narrowed the gap further. Nobody quite managed to get the phrase balance of trade for the next starter. Samuel Carlier knew ground state (perfumery, stationery and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food going up.. . yeah, ask your grandparents) Islands that have declared energy self sufficiency brought two bonuses and so at the 20 minute mark Leicester had a decent lead of 110 – 70.

Saoirse Ronan brought Patrick Loughrey the next starter and this time he only did a single fist pump as opposed to the doubler he did earlier. Words of Malay origin used in English only yielded one bonus with orangutan – they’ll be kicking themselves about missing tea caddy. For the second picture starter we saw what was obviously an Impressionist painting, but nobody managed to zag with Monet, so it went begging. The next starter allowed Teddy Fogel to answer Shane Warne and Amol to remind us that Shane Warne is his hero. I thought that was Bertrand Russell – who , to be fair, never took quite as many test wickets as Shane Warne. This earned the picture bonuses on pine tree paintings, and they recognised the one by Cezanne. Says who? Various clues gave Teddy Fogel the word Liberty for the next starter. Moons of the Solar System brought us both a full house. Waleed Ghani knew the derivation of the word doula. A bonus on capitals of the state of Tennessee brought the scores level but all of the momentum was with Birmingham. Teddy Fogel knew that of the African countries with the furthest east , north, west and south points on the continental mainland only Tunisia did not begin with the same letter as the others. Solipsism, which provided me with a rare philosophy bonus, and brought Birmingham 2 bonuses. Teddy Fogel knew some Polish Nobel laureates and suddenly the bookies would have let you name your own price if you wanted to bet on Leicester. Foods associated with Milan brought a full house, and there was no need to ask for which of these teams the bell tolled. Elif Cetin hammered another nail in the coffin lid by giving the answer ligand for the next starter. 2 bonuses on biology applied a little more gloss to Birmingham’s score, and they won by 190 – 125.

In the end Birmingham outlasted Leicester and ended with a BCR of 70%, while Leicester achieved 52.3% which tells its own story.

Amol Watch

A good safe job done again. Well done, sir.

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

Saints depicted on Art carrying their own heads are called cephalophores.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Answer as soon as your name is called. Giving the names of the two scientists – one French, one Scottish – who, in the 19^th century posited hypothetical entities to argue respectively for a deterministic view of the universe and against the second law of thermodynamics – (incorrect interruption) – both of which are commonly described as demons? – After a break of a fortnight it’s welcome back ridiculously long and complex questions. I haven’t missed you. That would be dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 7

It’s heat 7 and up to now although we have seen much honest endeavour it seems to me that the series has been in need of a little bit of quality. Did we get it at the 7^th time of asking? Well, see what you think.

Lewis Demmon was first into the chair, answering on the Essays of George Orwell. It’s not a subject about which I know a great deal as demonstrated by my 2 points, so I don’t know just how much he wrote and I don’t know whether the questions Lewis was asked were a particularly tough lot. Whatever the case Lewis struggled with his round, and by the end of it he had only accrued 4 points. Hard lines.

By way of contrast Jane Gibbons achieved a perfect 12 from 12 on her round on the films of Madonna. I had 3 of these – which surprised me, since the only one of these films I’ve watched all the way through is A League of Their Own. Whatever your subject may be getting a perfect score is hard to do. I never managed it – my best performance was dropping just 1 point in the semi-final. If she could nail the landing on the GK she could end up with a really good score. Quality.

If Ali Morgan was daunted by Jane’s round, she certainly didn’t let it show. Answering on Pauline Gower she too whacked in a perfect 12 from 12. Me? Well, shame though it is to admit it, I don’t recall ever hearing abut Pauline Gower before, and I earned the precise total of nowt. Like Jane’s round before, this was a fine display of a contender knowing her subject inside and out, and I reckon she could have gone on for another two minutes and would still have had them all right. Quality.

So to Chris Matterface, answering on the 2000AD comics of the 80s and 90s. Well, whichever way you look at it, that’s a hell of a lot of comics. Me? Well, I thought I was a little too old for comics by the time the 80s came round (which was wrong. You’re never too old for comics) and I’d never read the comic before. So my aggregate stayed at the 5 points I’d scored in the first two rounds. It would have been remarkable had Chris also scored a perfect round. Well, he didn’t quite do that and with a veery good double figure round of 10 he was still in contention with the two leaders at the turnaround.

So then Lewis returned to the chair for the GK round. Put yourself in his position. For whatever reason your specialist round really hasn’t worked out. Then you watch all three contenders make a seemingly effortless show of posting excellent scores. You’re way behind and seem to have no chance of winning. So what do you do? Well, in Lewis’ place he kept his head, and scored a good 8, at least putting his night’s efforts into the honest endeavour category.

Chris Matterface then returned to the chair. Now, it’s dangerous to read too much into a contender’s face while they’re answering questions. But during Chris’ round he never looked uncomfortable, and even though it seemed as if there might be a few guesses in his answers, one of the marks of a good quizzer is that when they have to guess, they make guesses that have a good chance of being right. Chris delivered what has become a very rara avis indeed in this series, a score in the teens and posted 13 to take his total to 23. The two remaining contenders were going to need extremely good GK rounds of their own to beat him. Quality

Jane Gibbons gave it a lash. In several of the shows we’ve seen this series her 9 points, a good score in its own right, would have seen her into the winner’s enclosure. Not this time, though. But I think she can be very pleased with her evening’s work, and sometimes, that’s enough to be going home with.

Ali Morgan did not, sadly, do quite as well in her own GK. She zigged when she should have zagged with a couple of the answers, was caught out by a few others and ended the round with a decent 7 to take her score to 19. Putting Ali’s evening into perspective, what she can take away is that she has joined the pretty exclusive ‘perfect club’ for people who achieved a perfect round on specialist and believe me that’s something special.

But the laurels go to Chris, and rightfully so. That was actually a really good all-round performance. When I’m looking at heat winners with the potential to go further I particularly look for those who can really learn a specialist and can hack it at GK. On admittedly just one show’s evidence, Chris seems to have that. Very well done sir. Best of luck in the semi-finals.

Good show.

The Details

Lewis Demmon	The Essays of George Orwell	4	2	8	2	12	4
Jane Gibbons	The Films of Madonna	12	0	9	2	21	2
Ali Morgan	Pauline Gower	12	0	7	2	19	2
Chris Matterface	The 2000 AD comics of the 80s and 90s	10	1	13	1	23	2