University Challenge 2027 - First Round - Pembroke, Cambridge v. St. Andrews

The Teams

Pembroke, Cambridge

Hebe Robertson

Arvin Boraghi

Timothy Ho (Capt.)

Rory Moloney

St. Andrews

Barney Young

Rowan Pelfrey

Harry Howard (Capt.)

Hugo Shaw

Respect to Hugo Shaw for buzzing very early on the year that saw the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, but sadly he couldn’t make it stick, offering 1869. Pembroke sensibly took the whole question, and once other events like the Emancipation of serfs in the Russian Empire were mentioned Arvin Boraghi knew it had to be 1861. 3 films each of whose titles begins with the word Don’t yielded two correct answers. Don’t Look Now was the only one I knew. The next Science starter set my internal orchestra playing Baby Elephant Walk, but I half listened and had a flashback to a TV show in which presenter Jon Tickle walked across a swimming pool full of custard. “Non Newtonian Fluid!” I shouted, frightening the cat, and set off around the sofa on my lap of honour – which was made all the sweeter considering neither team had it. Skipper Harry Howard put the St. Andrews score into the black, knowing inferior goods. Bought a few of them off eBay in my time, I can tell you. The 3^rd millennium BCE brought a couple of bonuses and levelled the scores at one starter, 2 bonuses and one penalty apiece. Both teams sat on their buzzers a bit with the next starter – if it’s a figure from Greek mythology being compared to Eve, it’s gotta be Pandora (the Explorer?) A very well taken full house on taxonomy followed. The picture starter showed us a geological map of Great Britain, with areas of a particular building stone highlighted. I reckoned limestone was a good percentage answer and so it was. Neither team had it. A terrific observation from an entomology textbook, that Marx’s theories applied better to ants than humans fell to Harry Howard. This earned the picture bonuses. An igneous rock concentrated around the Aberdeen area amongst others had to be granite. North Wales for the next gave me slate, but I missed sandstone. St. Andrews took 1. For the next starter it wanted a musical instrument and the moment eucalyptus was mentioned a buzzer race ensued, won by Hugo Shaw to give us didgeridoo. (Giving didgeridoo sounds like a rather unpleasant euphemism somehow.) One bonus on paintings within paintings, that is, paintings which depict paintings by other artists somewhere within the composition brought 1 bonus. This meant that St. Andrews led by 45 – 35 at just past 10 minutes.

Hebe Robertson recognised the start of The Yellow Wallpaper (me neither) for the next starter after St. Andrews lost 5. People buried in a cemetery in Geneva known as the Genevan Pantheon brought a full set of bonuses. Harry Howard recognised scientific terms which were completed by the word disc. They took a single bonus on Chinese mythlogy. For the music starter none of us recognised a wee bit of Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Hugo Shaw knew that Karakalpac is a language spoken in an autonomous region of Uzbekistan – good shout. Music bonuses featuring pieces that evoke automobiles brought nowt to the St. Andrews score. Both teams really sat back on the next starter, eventually , seeing no one else was going to buzz, Arvin Boraghi identified Krishna. Mary Somerville (no mention of Mungo Somerville or Midge Somerville, sadly. Ask your grandparents.) brought two bonuses. St. Andrews’ stalwart captain Harry Howard knew that of the species Pan, chimpanzee is one, and bonobo the other. Works created for the Stuttgart ballet did not in all honesty promise a great deal, and brought nothing. This meant that for all of their good buzzing, St. Andrews had fallen behind as we rounded down on 20 minutes as Pembroke led 80-75.

Arvin Boraghi recognised the words of Wittgenstein (the beery swine) for the next starter. A full house on associates of Socrates meant that Pembroke had begun their gallop off into the distance. Poor Barney Young fell right into the trap in the Shakespeare starter that followed. Asked which is the only Shakespeare play in which the title character appears as a ghost, he answered Hamlet. Well, the ghost is actually also called Hamlet, yes, but the title of the play refers to Hamlet the son, not his ghostly father. This allowed Hebe Robertson in with Julius Caesar. The Bishopric of Liege brought Pembroke another full house and the outcome of the match was starting to look signed, if not sealed and delivered yet. Please with myself for recognising a Watteau (Watteau, Jeeves) for the second picture starter, but neither team did. Arvin Boraghi knew P is for pulmonary as well as papa for the next starter and earned the picture bonuses to identify artists whose works were influenced by rococo and who worked in Britain at one time or another. For once they failed to score. Neither team picked up American IndyCar racing for the next. Captain Timothy Ho knew that the largest island in the Caribbean – Cuba – beings with C for the next starter. Biological terms ending in -tin brought a full house. The estimable Harry Howard knew that welterbe is German for World Heritage. Two bonuses on novels with titles beginning “Death Comes – “(true, but don’t rub it in) took St. Andrews to 90. Neither team took the next starter on Macedon. Arvin Boraghi knew about computer bugs for the next starter. Place names brought two bonuses. That was it. In the end Pembroke won comfortably by 180 to 90, but this was a genuine contest for 20 minutes.

It might not have been the highest scoring contest, but I was pretty impressed with Pembroke’s BCR of 74%. St. Andrews’ BCR of 35% gives a pretty good indication of why there’s such an imbalance on the scoreboard, despite St. Andrews being very competitive on the buzzer for 2/3 of the match.

Amol Watch

Normally I don’t like it when a QM says words to the effect of – you should have known that – however matily they say it. But yes, Amol, I do agree that when you know the question is about an artist, and it contains the word Tahiti, then answering anything other than Gauguin really is cause to kick yourself.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know of the Week

Lots of things I didn’t know, as always, but nothing stood out this time. As you were.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Rheopectic, pseudoplastic, dilatant and thixotropic are terms used to describe subtypes of what broad class of substances whose viscosity – (incorrect buzz) – changes in response to applied stress or force? Examples include ketchup, which becomes thinner when shaken and corn starch water suspensions which harden under sudden impact. – Well, I had it right so I guess I’m not so dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

More thoughts on Mastermind 1977

Just as a footnote to last night’s heat 6 of the current series a couple of things struck me about the latest edition of Mastermind 1977 on BBC4 last night.

The first of these is the way that memory can cheat you. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this was the series won by Sir David Hunt and I thought he was beaten in the first round by Timothy Beaumont, Lord Beaumont of Whiteley. Yet last night was Lord Beaumont’s heat, and Sir David Hunt wasn’t in it. What I suppose that I remembered was thinking how unusual it was to have a Lord and a Sir in the same show. But maybe they were in the same semi final. Or maybe what I really thought 50 odd years ago was it was unusual to have a Lord and a Sir in the same series. Well, time will tell on that one.

The other thing, though, was that in terms of what happened on the show, it wasn’t a million miles away from what we often see in the first round now. A couple of specialist rounds that didn’t quite come off. Three of the contenders giving their best but not having a strong enough GK to make it stick. Maybe the talent was as thinly spread back in the day as it is now.

There were a couple of noticeable differences. Firstly, I repeat the comment I made previously about people being much more profligate with passes back in the day. Also the really notable difference was at the top end of the score board. Both top scorers in the specialist round made a few errors but scored 13 – you’d need to go like the clappers AND have a perfect round to do that today. Likewise, Lord Beaumont won very comfortably with 26, having scored 13 on both rounds. But again, with the GK I wouldn’t have said, looking at what he missed, that it was a great round. It was a round that might have scored about 9 today – a good score but with quite a bit of room left for someone to score more highly.

Mastermind 2027 - Heat 6 Review

So here we are at heat 6, which I believe is actually ¼ of the way through the first round. Have we seen the eventual series winner yet? Hard to say.

Akin Ajayi kicked off with my ‘banker’ subject. Well, I say that. When I originally took a gander over the subjects for last night I thought it was the whole of the Tour de France rather than just the Tour de France in the 21^st century. I went off it for a few years after it became blindingly obvious that Lance Armstrong (and some others) had cheated their way to wins or high positions and didn’t really get switched back on until Geraint Thomas won in 2018. Nonetheless I managed 4 of these. Akin did better, and after a minute double figures looked possible. He didn’t quite get there, but in the context of this year’s low scoring series, 8 did look quite competitive.

Mary Obodo gave us my second ‘banker’ of the night with George Harrison. Mary is a retired teacher so of course she had the dubious reward of support from the Clark sofa. She certainly knew what she knew, and reached a respectable 7, but there did seem to be gaps her knowledge of aspects of George’s life and career which caught her out once or twice. I took another 4, and a double figure aggregate looked possible.

I don’t pretend to know the story behind the Aeneid as well as I know the Greek myths on which Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are based, but I thought I should get at least 1 on Paula Lawford’s round. I doubled my expectations and got 2. Paula seemed to know her stuff, as did all of last night’s contenders, but some of the questions caught her out a bit, and left her with 6 at the end of the round. That was still only 2 points off the lead, but there was still one more contender to go on specialist.

This was Hugh Nicholl, and his specialist was Lyndon B. Johnson. He’d never have been a banker for me, but US politics is always an interesting subject and I reckoned if I kept my wits and plucked off any low hanging fruit I might get 1 or 2. 2 is indeed the score I managed. This took me to an aggregate of 12 for the show and meant that I had been able to answer some questions in each of the rounds. Speaking of which, Hugh’s was the finest specialist round of the evening, a very good 11. I don’t want to lecture or preach, but you have to prepare thoroughly and you have to prepare smartly for your specialist. It’s not necessarily about the amount of time you put in – although the more time you can put in the better. It’s just as much about using that time well and making sure that you’ve covered all aspects of the topic that you possibly can. If you do, then you can end up like Hugh, with a very healthy 3 point lead going into GK.

I don’t get off on watching any contender’s specialist round when it doesn’t go as well as they would have liked. But I felt especially sorry for Paula Lawford over her specialist when she returned to the chair to deliver a really good general knowledge round. 11 in GK this year is no mean feat. It pushed her up to 17 and that with no passes either. We’ve seen heats won this year with a lower score.

Mary Obodo, sadly, didn’t really get to grips with her own GK round. 7 is nothing to be ashamed of, but it wasn’t a score or a performance to get the pulse racing or bring her close to the target.

Akin Ajayi, on the other hand, was certainly in contention in his round. He didn’t match Paula, no, but 10 would have been enough. Well, in the current series there’s nothing easy about scoring 10 in general knowledge and he fell just short, scoring 9. This put him on 17 as well, but behind on passes.

Only Hugh Nicholl stood between Paula achieving the best comeback since Lazarus. But I think Hugh has what seems to be a wise head on young shoulders. I think he knew that he didn’t have to match Paula’s 11, and so he never got flustered when he didn’t give a right answer, but just kept on providing answers to what he did know, and guesses to what he didn’t so he wouldn’t lose on passes. He achieved the target with a little to spare and in the end scored 8 for a total of 19.  Well done Hugh! Best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Akin Ajayi	The Tour de France in the 21st Century	8	0	9	3	17	3
Mary Obodo	George Harrison	7	2	7	1	14	3
Paula Lawford	Virgil’s Aeneid	6	0	11	0	17	0
Hugh Nicholl	Lyndon B. Johnson	11	0	8	0	19	0

 

Mastermind 2027 Heat 6

Well, there’s a turn up. I’ve had a look at Monday’s specialist subjects and for once I quite fancy my chances of getting a decent score. They are:-

The Tour de France

George Harrison

Virgil’s Aeneid

Lyndon B. Johnson

In all honesty I will be disappointed if I don’t get at least 1 on both the Aeneid and LBJ and a few on both the Tour de France and George Harrison. The former, the Tour, was a subject I considered doing for Champion of Champions, and it made my personal shortlist, though I eventually plumped for the Bayeux Tapestry. Which doesn’t mean that I think it will get me close to the 7 I scored on last week’s TFL moquette round, but that score was a little artificial in as much as if I had not done the research on it I would not have scored any.

It’s not impossible that I might not be able to post a review tomorrow- family issues, you know – but don’t worry, I will post as soon as I can.

The Chase Around The World

So we reached the final of The Chase Around the World on Thursday evening. All that remained was to see who would take away the moolah and whether the show would stick the landing. Well, both will be revealed here, so if you haven’t seen the final yet and don’t want to know yet, then look away now.

For the final, then, our three remaining pairs were in Athens. Athens holds very special memories for me. As a kid we never went away anywhere as a family for various reasons, most of them to do with my late father, and I was desperate to travel. In the summer of 1982 when I turned 18 I used proceeds from my evening and weekend job and bought a return flight to Athens. For a large part of two unforgettable weeks I backpacked and island hopped down to Crete and back, spending a couple of days in Athens at the start and again at the end of the trip. Great days. Every edition of the show has been very picturesque and this was no different.

The twist in the final was that at each stage of the final, the contestants actually got to face the Chasers in person, and some of the quizzes involved even more strenuous challenges to answer the questions. And, for the final challenge, the pairs were split. The first pair to be reunited at the finish with Bradders won. And that team was Steven and David. That was probably fair. In terms of the weekly contests they had won more of them than either other couple and had probably been just about the most consistent on questions asked throughout the series.

I’ve often mentioned that I have a misanthropic disinterest in learning about contestants in quiz and game shows. Despite this though I did find myself getting to like the teams in the show, and I have no qualms that if there could only be three teams through to the final, then these were the best three. I wouldn’t have felt disappointed if dad and daughter Ashwin and Nikita, or sisters Kati and Amy had won and I think that this is because of some smart decisions made by the programme makers. At the heart of many quiz and game shows is something of the structure of a morality tale. We feel pleased seeing the most deserving contestant win through having demonstrated worthiness in overcoming challenges, and all three of our pairs had done this at different times during the series. For the previous shows of the series before the final it would have been easy to have foregrounded the Chasers a lot more, and maybe have a longer Beat the Chasers endgame, to capitalise on the Chasers’ popularity. The fact that the show didn’t do this allowed more time to be spent on the contestants’ efforts in the show with the result that this increased the chances that we, the viewers at home, would invest more in them. Smart move. Likewise, not asking the contestants to carry out any sneaky or underhand moves against each other – smart move.

Did it “The Chase Across the World” stick the landing? Yes it did. I have really enjoyed this summer show. I really hope that we’ll get another series of it, and I don’t mind if another series would also be confined to just Europe, there’s more than enough picturesque places for several series. I worry that it’s an ITV show. I have no idea what the ratings for “The Chase Around the World” have been like, but I know that for ITV, more than for BBC, the bottom line in the form of viewing figures is the bottom line. Fingers crossed.

Captain Slapdash Rides Again

About the quiz in the club last night, then. Firstly I have to commiserate with the team who came runners up last night. They played exceptionally well all evening to tie with us on the question rounds and we only won because we top scored in the hand out. Well, we have puzzle solver Dan in our team, you see. But I commiserate with them for having played so well and still not quite done it.

Now as regards the ongoing story of the team whose scores in the mark your own era were so suspect, well, they did turn up last night, four of them which is practically a full team. They did accept answer papers and handouts from Captain Slapdash and they did listen attentively when the swapover procedures were explained. Once again, at the handover after round 1 they decided they weren’t playing. Now, okay, this time they did make an excuse – one of them said something about a problem with eyes. Might have been true, I don’t know. If I was going to be mean- and I am -  I would say that they did the first round, looked at their answers and realised that there was every good chance they would not score well and decided not to play at that point. But I don’t know. And frankly, I’m reaching the point where I don’t care that much. Guys, play if you want to, don’t play if you don’t want to, but if you play, tell us what you actually scored rather than what you want us to think that you scored.

As for Captain Slapdash. Well, rounds 2- 8 seemed relatively error free, fair play. Granted, too many themes and gimmicks for my liking, but each to their own. But he made a very characteristic howler in round 1. He asked this set:-

Which is the largest castle in England?

Who commanded the British 8^th Army at El Alamein?

Which children’s song has these lines at the end of its first verse - Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, And come with your playfellows into the street.?

In Greek mythology which Goddess was known for her sporting prowess especially in Hunting?

What is the connection between your last 4 answers?

Now, to give him a little credit he did qualify that Windsor was not the answer to the castle questions, although he burbled some crap about it not qualifying because it is inhabited. So this gave us Dover.

Question 2 was going to be Bernard Law Montgomery. So at this point we had two US state Capitals.

The Song was Boys and Girls come out to play, we knew. Couldn’t see the capital yet.

Now, the mythology question as asked only admits one answer – Artemis. But even using the captain’s very slipshod standards, you can’t turn that around to make a state capital. However, if you take out goddess and substitute heroine in its place then you might also answer Atalanta. Which suddenly occurred to me. Is the Captain capable of making such an error? I asked myself. Too bloody right he is, I thought. And as for the basic wrongness of Atalanta being rendered as Atlanta, well, that’s small potatoes to Captain Slapdash. Boys and girls come out to play? Oh, you’ll have worked that out. Boise City, Idaho, obviously. Doesn’t even work on paper, let alone phonetically.

Now, in one way I was quite proud of having been able to work through the convoluted processes to get the answers that the Captain had down. But the petty, obsessive, small-minded pedant in me rails against his whole attitude of – oh, it’s close enough, it’ll do because I can’t be arsed to put the effort in to make the connection actually work- I introduced connections to the quiz over 30 years ago, and if you’re going to use this gimmick, you should bloody work at it and do it properly. Grrr!

Vintage Mastermind 1977 Heat 2

It was heat 2 of the 1977 series of Mastermind on BBC4 last night. The Jeeves – Jesus question was actually the first to be asked. As for what happened on the show, well it was a very similar story to what you’ll often see in episodes of Mastermind nowadays – one good performance in GK not being enough to overcome a deficit in the specialist round, while the best performer in specialist put on a steady enough performance in GK to get over the line. Like last week, we saw many more passes than you’d normally expect, but at least it was nice to see Magnus back on form, even though I thought he gave more help and leeway to a couple of the contenders than you’d see today.

One thing that struck me was just how formally everyone dressed at this point in the show’s history. I mean, we’re not exactly quite saying top hat and tails, but collar and tie and sober dark whistle seems to have been mandatory.

Here’s another thing, too. Now, I’m no spring chicken myself, but of the two regular heats of this series we’ve seen so far, the average age of contenders would seem to be a lot higher than it is nowadays. Was this in fact the case, or was it just that people looked older back then? Don’t laugh, I’m serious. I am 62. My father, whom I resemble, passed away at 51. His father, whom he resembled, passed away aged 56. I’ve seen photos of him taken at his silver wedding, and in those early 1960s fashions he looks ancient.

But if the average age of contenders is much younger than it was 50 years ago, I can’t help wondering why that might be. Does it reflect a conscious bias on the part of the production teams towards one part of the age spectrum or the other? Does it reflect that an appearance on Mastermind is more appealing to younger people than older people now? Has the growth and development of quiz culture in 50 years had something to do with it.? Maybe its none of these, maybe it’s a combination of reasons. Still, I’ll be interested to look at the ages of next week’s contenders.