University Challenge 2027 - First Round - Glasgow v. Goldsmiths

The Teams

Glasgow

Sam McDermott

Grace Sedgwick

Harry Braid (capt.)

Taylor Reece

Goldsmith’s, London

Mila Appleby

Frances Robinson

Jessica Peng (capt.)

Catalia Pliskova

Yes, it’s the reappearance of my old alma mater – Goldsmith’s College (BA(Hons) English Literature 1983-6). Objectivity goes out of the window, I’m afraid. Although I did worry for my team when I saw that three of the team are studying Creative Writing. Nothing wrong with the subject at all, but it meant that the side looked heavily unbalanced compared with Glasgow’s. On with the show.

Initial omens were good for Goldies as Jessica Peng buzzed very early to recognise works all linked by the word Scandal. Would A Scandal in Bohemia have been one if we’d had the full question? Documentaries that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival brought one bonus although the team did talk themselves out of another. Irish born British artist working in the second half of the 20^th century was enough for Harry Braid to get Francis Bacon for the next starter and Glasgow were off the launch pad. The Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS (a new one on me, I’m afraid) brought Glasgow a well earned full house. Grace Sedgwick recognised various people linked by the city of Alexandria for the next starter. Bicycle frames, specifically the alloys used to make them, steadfastly refused to give them any points. For the picture starter Grace Sedgwick took her double by recognising the sporting location highlighted on a map of England as Silverstone. Other venues for grand prix in the first season of the Formula 1 world championships in 1950 gave me the rare experience of a full house on pictures. Glasgow took two of them. Technical uses of the word flutter saw Sam McDermott take his first starter and Goldsmiths lose 5 points. When Amol announced the subject for the bonuses as being poems about intense nocturnal horse rides I immediately said ‘Paul Revere’. That was actually the third. Glasgow had that, and also Tam O’Shanter, but not Robert ‘Gravy’ Browning. So at the 10 minute mark Glasgow led Goldies by 75 – 10.

If you hear the words Irish folk group and you answer The Dubliners you’ll be right as often as you’ll be wrong, and Grace Sedgwick did exactly this and took the next starter. Art movements and their countries of origin brought two correct answers and put them just one answer away from triple figures. A lovely old quiz chestnut about the two islands with three legged symbols on their flags saw Frances Robinson gamble by buzzing early. She answered the Isle of Man, but gave Corsica as the other and lost 5. Taylor Reece gave the correct answer of the Isle of Man and Sicily and all members of the Glasgow team had answered at least one answer correctly. Human biology netted me a lap of honour around the sofa for knowing that the aqueous humour is found in the eye. As for the bundle of His, well, I had that one asked me in my Mastermind final. I was guessing then but still had it right. Glasgow took a full house. Harry Braid knew that the geographical feature which comes after the name Mariana has to be trench. Feminist thinker Carol Hanisch brought one point and we heard Amol, on 13 minutes and 43 seconds issue the dreaded ’plenty of time to get going” to Goldsmiths. In his first series this imprecation often had a galvanising effect on teams but those days are, it seems, long gone. Both teams sat on the buzzer while we heard the unmistakeable Aretha Franklin until Amol ordered for someone to guess and Harry Braid gave the correct answer. Other tracks also featuring session musician Tommy Cogbill brought just one bonus. It was pleasing to see Frances Robinson again buzz early and supply the surname Brick for the next starter. At least I think that was what she said (naughty boy, I do apologise.) We both got just one music bonus on Bruce Springsteen. Frances Robinson buzzed too early on the next starter allowing Glasgow the full question, where the word ‘soup’ gave away that we were looking for the word primordial – Taylor Reece tapped that one into the open goal. Primordial Soup often featured on the school dinner menus when I was a lad, as I recall. X Ray crystallography brought us both two correct answers. Still Glasgow continued to pour on the agony for Goldies. Harry Braid supplied the answer White Rose for the next starter. Single mothers in fiction brought a single bonus. Which didn’t matter because with the score at 185 to 15 at 20 minutes, the match was over as a competition.

I shan’t lie to you. I was fearing at this point that my beloved Goldies might be heading for a worst score ever. There didn’t seem to be any hiatus in the onslaught from Glasgow as Hary Braid weighed in with the latin word Amicus. Works of authority on the UK’s unwritten constitution revealed ANOTHER of Amol’s heroes, Walter, ‘Carrier’ Bagehot and brought one bonus. Nobody recognised a statue of George Frederic ‘Deadman’s’ Handel for the second picture starter. Harry Braid knew about the opening scene of Chariots of Fire and this earned the picture bonuses on statues and memorials to composers. I bet they have the Sibelius monument in Helsinki – said I, having been there a couple of weeks ago. They did. It was the only one that Glasgow managed. Sam MDermott knew about the derivation of the word viper. Roman Jewish historian Josephus brought two bonuses. Finally, at 24 minutes into the competition, with only 15 points to their name, the shackles came off from the Goldies’ team’s buzzing fingers. Mila Appleby identified Rastafarianism for the next starter. With two bonuses they began to pull away from record low score territory. Captain Jessica Peng buzzed early to identify Descartes maxim cogito ergo sum. Brueghel’s Hunters in the Snow brought another two bonuses. Catalia Pliskova knew about the architecture of the CPU and the Goldies’ score was looking more healthy all the time. 2 bonuses on weaving patterns followed. Goldies were not quite done, either. Jessica Peng buzzed in very early to identify Queen Victoria (Gawd Bless ‘Er). A correct answer on UNESCO sites and mining took them to 90. If they could take the next starter, then an unlikely looking triple figure total beckoned. But the gong did not allow them this much I’m afraid. The contest ended with Glasgow winning 235 – 90.

Glasgow delivered a BCR of 53.8% to Goldsmiths’ 50%. As so often happens it was really the superior buzzing that won the day. Goldies just didn’t sling enough buzzer until far too late, I’m afraid.

Amol Watch

We weren’t even halfway through when Amol started doing what he tends to do when one team is getting battered, highlighting the fact that the team were only just fractionally beaten to the buzzer. It almost acts like an index – the earlier Amol starts doing this and the more he does it, the worse you know that he thinks you’re doing.

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

The term viper refers to the fact that most of their young are born live rather than from eggs hatched outside their bodies.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Father and son William and Lawrence Bragg were pioneers in which specific scientific technology? They were known for encouraging women into the discipline including Dorothy Hodgkin to elucidate the structure of vitamin B12, penicillin and insulin? Just about creeps in this one, not the dum de dum dumest at all.

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 11

Well, it wasn’t quite a case of all human life was there in the specialist round in tonight’s first round heat, but we certainly got to see the highs and the lows. The high was provided in the very first round. Rob Hayman was answering on The Aztec Empire, and he scored a magnificent 12 from 12. I predicted I might get one of these. In fact I got 2 – Mexica and Lake Texcoco. I should have got 3 but I mixed up my Teotihuacan with my Tenochtitlan. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Could Sara Knapper match that on Janis Joplin? Well, no, or rather, not quite. Nonetheless she managed a good 9 points. In this day and age to get 9 you just really have to know your subject and Sarah clearly did that. In fact I felt that she was a little rushed with the last question and might just have had 10 otherwise. Well, that’s the way it goes.

Right. Polly Allen’s round on the TV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot. I’m afraid that Polly only scored 3. It didn’t look as if Polly was especially nervous and I suspect that only Polly could really say why things didn’t work out for her. She has my sympathy. Her expression on the return to her chair was a salutary reminder of just what prospective contenders could be letting themselves in for when they apply to the show.

Finally Jag Bhogal with the Dutch superstar racing driver Max Verstappen. With 2 on the Aztecs and one on Poirot I had been on famine rations and this round only added 1 more point to my aggregate. Jay hesitated a bit, but for the most part he followed the hesitation with a correct answer. Again, he knew his stuff. He was rewarded with a double figure round of 10 which as we know is a mark of quality.

Polly was first back to the chair. You know, I’ve said before how gratifying it is when you see a contender who has had a bit of a ‘mare on specialist manage to compose themselves and put together a much better GK round and Polly did this. A satisfactory 8 put her into double figures. Not, sadly, a target, because Rob had already scored 12, but at least a battling performance.

Sarah was next. It’s not been that often in this series that a contender who has scored 9 in specialist is only in third at the turnaround, but notwithstanding Sarah gave it a good lash. For the second round running she didn’t quite make it into double figures, but as we’ve already said 9 is a pretty decent score and her 18 set a competitive target for the others to aim at.

Jag Bhogal’s hesitations seemed even more obvious in his GK round than they had in the specialist. So while he was getting the first few answers right, he was losing time and when he started getting a few wrong it was looking touch and go as to whether he would be able to match Sarah’s total. As it happens he did, scoring 8 to take him to 18 and by virtue of having only 1 pass he was actually the leader in the clubhouse. However Rob was still to come.

For the first few questions Rob looked like he might very well be on for the best performance on GK of the series so far. The word aileron saw him passing though, and he lost just a bit of momentum. Not in a disastrous way, though and he kept on picking off the points to take him into double figures for the second time this evening. He finished with 11 for a total of 23, winning both rounds and putting a five point gap between himself and the others. Thou hast it all - King, Cawdor, Glamis and all. Well done, sir! Best of luck in the semi finals.

The Details

Rob Hayman	The Aztec Empire	12	0	11	1	23	1
Sarah Knapper	Janis Joplin	9	0	9	0	18	0
Polly Allen	Agatha Christie’s Poirot	3	2	8	0	11	2
Jag Bhogal	Max Verstappen	10	0	8	1	18	1

 

Mastermind Going out to Tender

I read in yesterday’s Weaver’s Week that Mastermind is being put out to tender by the BBC again. Well, let’s start by saying that Hindsight and Hat Trick have by no means done a bad job with the show over the last few years. But in a spirit of helpfulness, I will try to add a little advice for any prospective production company who might be interested in taking on the show.

Don’t force the question setters to write such needlessly long questions any more. This will speed the show up and make it more exciting. It will also allow the scores to rise a bit. I don’t wish to be mean, but one of the first round heats of this current series was won by a total of 15. Give the stars a chance to shine.

Consider bringing back semi final slots for the highest scoring runners up. Last year’s semi final line up was weakened by excluding one of the strongest performers in the first round who was beaten by an exceptional performance in a freak heat. As it is, I think that the talent is spread too thinly to accommodate 24 heats. Cut it down to 22 heats, with the last 2 semi final slots going to the two highest scoring runners up of the first round. That would cut the series down to 29 shows. If you absolutely have to do 31 shows, then bookend the series with a couple of specials. Only Connect does this sort of thing very well. For example you could have a one-off special on, for example, kings and queens with each of the 4 contenders answering on a specific monarch, with general questions about the lot of them for the second round. Or a football special. Or a sitcoms special. (If you want more ideas about this sort of thing then just comment at the bottom and we’ll get it on.)

I’m a little bit of a traditionalist and I would like to see the format reverting to 2 minutes on specialist and 2 minutes on general knowledge as well.

Don’t be tempted to try to ‘jazz’ the show up a bit. We had that silly business a few years ago making the contenders only enter the set when it was their turn in the chair and not being told who was in which position to the end, which was pointless and unnecessary and thankfully died the death.

There it is. Drop me a line if you’d like to pick my brains a bit more on this. You know it makes sense.

Mastermind 2027 - Heat 11 Specialist Subjects

Just time to cast an eye over tomorrow night’s Mastermind specialists. We have :-

The Aztec Empire

Janis Joplin

Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen

I don’t know a massive amount about any of these subjects. Maybe a point on the Aztec Empire – maybe a point on Max Verstappen. See you tomorrow.

New Show - The Wisdom of the Crowd

I have mentioned in the past that I like Strictly Come Dancing. Sue me. It was the second of the live shows this evening and I have to be honest, I do find the earlier shows in each series can be a little bit of a trial of endurance. In this ‘phoney war’ phase of each series it takes quite a few weeks to weed out the no-hopers and the unpopulars to whittle the number of couples taking part down to a reasonable amount. So tonight I was reeling a bit after the 2+ hours long show and did not find the energy or interest to go searching for something else to watch, which is how I came to catch John Bishop’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” for the first time.

The show takes its title and central idea from the theory that the collective opinion of a diverse and independent group of individuals will result in the best judgement. It was supposedly first noted by Francis Galton – more about him in a minute. While attending a fair in Plymouth in 1906 800 people took part in a contest to guess the weight of an ox. Galton added together the sum of all 800 guesses, then divided by 800 to find the mean guess. He was amazed to find that this was within 1% of the correct answer.

Galton was a very interesting, if somewhat eccentric man. He’s possibly best known for his method of classifying fingerprints. A first cousin of Charles Darwin of Charles Darwin, he has been criticised for his views on eugenics. But let’s get back to the show.

So, true to its title, on tonight’s show we saw three contestants each take on the crowd, that is the live audience of the show, on three questions, for lessening amounts of money. Each question required an estimate of a given quantity – say, the number of billionaires in the UK in 2024. If the contestant’s estimate was closer than the mean guess of the audience to the actual number, then they would take the cash. If not, it would get added to the prize pot. On their third question, each contestant was given the ‘wimp out’ option of taking a seat in the audience, but that would only happen if their guess was closer than 100 members of the audience. Not one question was one by the contestants. £30,000 went to the audience prize pot.

For the end game, the audience were invited to put themselves forward to try to take a go at winning the prize pot. If they won it, then they would take it all home. If they didn’t, then they had to leave the audience and the show. If more than one player put themselves forward then the player who had been statistically the best player out of the audience members who had put themselves forward would be chosen.

It’s the first time I’ve watched so I don’t know if this is always the case, but tonight, the contestant and the audience were asked a set of five true or false questions – contestant v. the majority answer of the audience. The contestant got 3/5 while the audience had a full house. That was it, that was the game.

I will be honest, I wasn’t really expecting to like this very much. Yet, maybe because it was such a contrast to the slightly ponderous Strictly marathon show that preceded it I found it fresh and rather interesting. These were real ‘guessing’ questions and I found it really quite remarkable just how close the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ was to the actual answer on almost every occasion. I don’t think I would have beaten them on any of them. John Bishop works very well as host for me too. His blokeish good humour notwithstanding he’s a highly intelligent man and he kept the show moving along at a fair old clip. In fact, the only maybe slightly negative thought that occurs to me is this. At the start of the show I’m sure that John said that in the two previous show the audience had won all of the questions, although the money had been won by the individual in the endgame. If the audience keeps on winning every time – if nobody can beat them on an individual question at all, then I can see the show starting to lose its appeal. This is just my opinion and feel free to disagree, but I do think that the great British Public do have a certain sense of fair play. We don’t mind something being hard for a contestant, but we don’t like it to be practically impossible.

Well the jury is out. But I certainly enjoyed it for one show.

University Challenge 2027 First Round Emmanuel, Cambridge v. Somerville, Oxford

The Teams

Emmanuel, Cambridge

Olga Devine

Sam Palmer

Fin Brickman (capt.)

Adrija Bhattacharya

Somerville, Oxford

Milton Lee

Zoe McGuire

Rohan George (capt.)

Elijah Scheinson

For the first starter I thought it had to be Tito (that’s General Tito of former Yugoslavia not Tito from the Jackson Five). Sam Palmer buzzed in early with the same answer. Bonuses on fine Art and the TV show Succession brought one correct answer. Adrija Bhattacharya, who was going to have a very productive evening, recognised clues to the Catalan language. I’d guess that there was at least one Great British Bake Off fan on the Emmanuel team because they took a full house on baking terms in fairly short order. I’m sure that I have seen the swan automaton that was the subject of the next starter but Somerville lost five and Emmanuel didn’t know it. The next starter took a while to become clear but the phrase ‘polyalphabetic substitution’ suggested cryptography and Adrija Bhattacharya won the buzzer race to give that answer. Organometallic chemist Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson is not, I will admit, a household name in LAM Towers but despite the soporific effect of the bonuses about him I answered one, earning myself a lap of honour while Emmanuel didn’t get any of them. So to the picture round and a line drawing of an oak tree and an oak leaf. Now, I hope that we’re all mature enough that I can mention that they came from Baden-Powell’s “Scouting for Boys” without any sniggering in the back of the room. Fin Brickman sounded as if he was guessing, but he was right. More of the same brought nowt. A work on medicine allowed Milton Lee to raise the Somerville total to zero, having had two incorrect interruptions earlier. The linguistic landscape of the middle East at around the time of the birth of Jesus brought a full house. This meant that at the 10 minute mark Emmanuel led by 55 – 15.

For the next starter Fin Brickman knew that Lloyd George became PM on the resignation of Robin Asquith. (ask your Grandad). Secondary characters in The Witcher series of books brought two bonuses. Look we weren’t given enough of the next starter for me to have a clue about it but Adrija Bhattacharya gave the correct answer of Transformer. The third Muromachi shogun did not promise me a great deal – yet I managed two correct answers as did Emmanuel, who missed a full house by zigging with Kabuki while they should have zagged with Noh. For the music starter nobody recognised one of Mussorgsky’s chart toppers, Night on Bald Mountain. Elijah Scheinson knew the latin term Colonia after Emmanuel had lost five. Music bonuses on more pieces inspired by mountain climbing brought them one bonus. A bit of a convoluted twisty question eventually allowed Elijah Scheinson to take his double with California. Heinrich Kayser (what a geezer) brought one bonus. Rohan George continued the Somerville purple patch knowing about the muon. UNESCO World Heritage Sites in France brought another single correct answer. Both teams’ members are probably too young for the portmanteau word Madchester to mean much to them and neither team got it for the next starter. That man Scheinson obliged with the next starter, knowing what a theme was in the Byzantine empire. The bonuses were uses of the word villain in Shakespeare, (‘Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, and in his cups, a right villain, innit?’) They took one but would have done better to just guess at the biggies rather than looking for something more obscure for the 2^nd and 3^rd. Still, as we rounded down on the 20 minute mark Somerville had made significant inroads into the Emmanuel lead, as the score stood at 90 – 75.

For the second picture starter Adrija Bhattacharya recognised a still of Michael B. Jordan in Sinners. Three more stills from films in which actors played their own twins brought nothing. Sir Clive Lloyd – whom I saw in what I think was his last test match in England at the Oval in 1984 – I knew was from Guyana. Nobody else did. Milton Lee knew that the first non round moon to be discovered was Hyperion. A full house on countries of the Middle East narrowed the lead to just 5 points. So Olga Devine picked just the right time to get her first starter, giving Norway as The Country That Became Too Rich. The discovery of Australopithecus brought two bonuses. Adrija Bhattacharya took another starter knowing that Korsakoff’s syndrome can lead to amnesia. (supply your own jokes). Terms used in climbing and bouldering brought two bonuses. Sam Palmer won the buzzer race to identify the northernmost point of Canada as being situated on Ellesmere Island. Poems on Death brought another two bonuses and the gap was looking unbridgeable in the few minutes we had left. It didn’t help too much when Fin Brickman buzzed too early for the next starter, which allowed Rohan George to answer fluorine. Music in the early 20^th century saw a bit of confusion throw away one of the bonuses and take one of the others. Poor old Rohan George jumped too early at the Brothers Grimm to give us fairy tales, but the question concerned their other hat, as lexicographers. Olga Devine knocked that one into the open goal. Terms in biology beginning with sph brought a couple of bonuses, and the outcome of the contest was certain by now. Words beginning with Dh allowed Fin Brickman to apply a little more gilding to the Emmanuel score. Former counties of England brought one bonus before the gong brought the contest to an end. The last few minutes had been dominated by Emmanuel and they won by 190 to 105, but make no mistake, they were made to fight for it

For the record, Emmanuel’s BCR was 47.2% to Somerville’s 52.3%. Not a lot in that, but Emmanuel won it with their buzzing and found an extra gear when they needed to.

Amol Watch

I’ll be honest, I think that saying “At one point I thought that you guys might get zero” to Somerville was not the most consoling thing he could have said at the end.

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

Lincoln is ultimately derived from the Latin word Colonia, meaning a city or outpost in recently conquered territory.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Wilkinson shared the Nobel Prize with which German chemist (das Boots?) who also discovered the structures of organometallic sandwich compounds? This chemist and Richard Schrock give their names to two different varieties of transition metal carbene complexes. - Would one of them be dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum?

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 10

When you appear on Mastermind, there’s really only one aspect of the show that you have any control over and that’s your specialist subject. Now, you can prepare thoroughly and things can still go wrong for a number of reasons – nerves, feeling ill on the day of the recording, or maybe a mismatch between your understanding of the parameters of the subject and the setter’s understanding of it. By and large, though, the more effectively that you prepare, the better you will do. Yet bearing this simple axiom in mind, it is remarkable how many times we see contenders failing to really hit the heights on their specialists. If you watch the 1977 series which is being repeated at 9:30pm on Monday nights on BBC Four, you’ll see that this is by no means a recent development. In last night’s BBC Four show we saw three contenders underachieve on GK, which meant that the other, despite having a ‘mare on GK, still won.

Well, heat 10 of the 2026 series kicked off with Kate Peck answering on the music of George Michael. This was my ‘banker’ subject of the night, which says more about my lack of knowledge of the other subjects than my knowledge of George Michael, but it still delivered me three points. It delivered Kate a good round. For most of it she looked as if she was heading for double figures, but fell just short to finish with 9. That’s a good score in the current era.

The only other specialist I thought that was likely to bring me any more points was the next up. Gareth Peel was answering on tennis star Monica Seles. Surprisingly this one gave me more points than George’s music did. I landed 4, to take me up towards respectability for the aggregate. Gareth, like Kate before him, looked as if he was heading for double figures and what’s more he achieved it finishing with 10 points and a singe pass. Good round.

There was only one of the four specialists which I could not score on and if you’d asked me before the show which one it was going to be I would have picked Justin Uzomba’s round on Kerry James Marshall. Yet I did get a point, more by luck than judgement. There was no luck involved in Justin’s terrific score of 11, though. Like the previous two contenders his round had double figures written all over it in fact the only surprise was when he ended up passing one. Quality.

Three specialists and three really good rounds. Was Eileen Thatcher going to be able to complete a full set with the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L. Sayers? Yes, she was. Sometimes I say that there’s something in the air, something infectious that seems to make successive contenders struggle in some shows. Well, what there was in the air with this show was confidence and knowledge, and Eileen too powered through her round to take a fine 11 and 1 pass. Quality.

Well done everyone! The fact we so rarely see all four contenders in a single heat do so well on their specialists made this a better heat already than many of this series.

Was it a case of ‘after the Lord Mayor’s Show’ in the GK? Not really, no. Kate Peck, who would be forgiven for thinking herself a little unlucky to be in fourth place after scoring 9 on specialist, gave a competent performance on GK, scoring another 9 for 18 in total. Which would have won or tied some of the earlier heats in the series. Good work.

We were all returning to the chair for GK in the same order in which we’d undergone the specialists so it was Gareth Peel back next. Now, Gareth’s first half dozen or more answers were delivered with such confidence and authority that I thought he was going to be on for a second double figure round in the same show. But the wrong answers and a couple of passes crept in and he lost a bit of momentum. In the last part of the round he steadied the ship and took the last question to give himself 9 for a total of 19 and the lead.

Now, I don’t think that we saw a single bad round last night, but we did see a round where one of the contenders seemed to struggle just a little bit. That was Justin’s GK round. Now, don’t get me wrong, the 7 he scored brought him to a perfectly respectable 18 points, a total which has been a winning total already during this series. However he did look just a little disappointed not have claimed at least a share in the lead with one contender still to go.

This was Eileen. She needed 9 to put the result beyond doubt, and this she achieved. You know, there’s a lot to be said for keeping your head, answering what you know, giving the percentage answer for what you don’t and just carrying on answering. In the end it brought Eileen 11 points for a total of 22. The feat of achieving double figures in both specialist and GK is one we haven’t seen that many times during this series yet, and so many congratulations for that. In fact congratulations to all four contenders for making an exciting show. I wish Eileen the best of luck in the semi-finals.

The Details

Kate Peck	The Music of George Michael	9	0	9	3	18	3
Gareth Peel	Monica Seles	10	1	9	2	19	2
Justin Uzomba	Kerry James Marshall	11	1	7	1	18	2
Eileen Thatcher	The Peter Wimsey Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers	11	1	11	1	22	2