University Challenge First Round LSE v King's Cambridge

The Teams

London School of Economics

David Worley

Diya Khatri

Henry Jameson (Capt)

Daniel Yang

King’s College Cambridge

Niall Kim

Ben Lafond

Claire McLellan-Cassivi

Adhyan Shukla

September already, peeps! I give my heartfelt commiseration to all of my siblings of the chalkface who are returning to the classroom this week. That’s one of many things I don’t miss about my former profession.

The LSE skipper, Henry Jameson was the first to recognise clues to Taiwan for the first starter. Questions on the Romanian revolution provided 1 bonus. I visited Bucharest in February of 2024, and if you do the same I would heartily recommend a coach trip up to Transylvania to visit the Peles Palace and Bram Castle. Ben Lafond opened the Cambridge side’s account knowing a book about Esperanto. Fictional characters with the surname Archer brought King’s one bonus too. Claire McLellan-Cassivi knew the video game series Persona to take the next. Chapter headings of the former Mr. Romanadvoratrelundar (if you know, you know), Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene brought King’s a full set. The picture starter saw Ben Lafond identify the symbol for IUPAC (wasn’t he shot in Las Vegas in 1996?). 3 ore logos of authorities I’ve never heard of brought the team nowt. With the next starter we were asked for an adjective preceding several words. It all sounded rather like gibberish until we were given convertor. Henry Jameson won the buzzer race to give catalytic, and got a little angry with himself for giving the answer before Roger Tilling had finished giving his name. Three questions on Altaic languages yielded nothing. On the 10 minute mark King’s led by 50 – 2, after what had been as tough a 10 minutes on the show as I can remember for some time. Slim pickings for Dave last night.

LSE lost five of those points on the next starter allowing Niall Kim to recognise several depictions of oranges in Art. Music in the films of Wong Kar-Wai brought a single bonus to King’s. Daniel Yang recognised a reference to Switzerland in the next starter. Plant pollination by mammals allowed the LSE to take two bonuses. Now, in a music starter which is by a British Composer you won’t be far off with Vaughan Williams and it was Niall Kim who gave this percentage answer. To me it sounded more like Elgar and Henry Jameson certainly felt so and was right. More pieces being conducted by former PM Edward Heath (remember him? Didn’t think so.) refused to yield any further points on the set. The next starter earned my lap of honour for the night, when, like Henry Jameson, I correctly identified the star system Alpha Centauri.  The UN’s Responsibility to Protect schema brought LSE a rare full house and the lead. A lead which widened when the irrepressible Henry Jameson took another starter, identifying the work of Messiaen, ( he’s not the Messiaen, he’s a very naughty boy.) The architect, the late Terry Farrell, Ben Lafond stopped the rot for King’s with Fragments of Sappho. A set of noble gases, each of which questions nobly resisted the temptation to drone on for clause after clause after clause for once yielded two bonuses. Ben Lafond then took a double, recognising terms from voodoo. North African cities brought two bonuses and meant, as we swiftly approached the 20 minute mark King’s led by 110 to 90.

Thence to the second picture starter and Niall Kim identified the word of Mark Rothko, (who was played by Ron Moody in the early 80s kids TV show Into the Labyrinth). 3 more paintings depicting clouds brought 1 bonus. Claire McLellan-Cassivi recognised clues to the term truss (‘Blink and you’ll miss ‘er prime minister was not one, though). Bonuses on melancholia (I prefer coca-cholia) brought 2 bonuses. Niall Kim interrupted the economics starter that followed just before it could stray into baby elephant walk territory with interest rates. Three questions on UC hardy perennial Paul Dirac yielded a full set, and suddenly King’s seemed a long way ahead. Daniel Yang knew that the Sykes – Picot agreement set out to carves up the Ottoman Empire. German Economist Klara Tisch didn’t exactly promise a barrel of laughs, but at least it gave LSE two bonuses. Niall Kim correctly guessed that the next question referred to crustaceans. So I guess that makes the answer from King’s a King’s Crustacean, as opposed to a Charing Crustacean. As well as that appalling pun this also earned them a set of bonuses on Olives – none of them being Olive Oyl or Olive Fromonthebuses. They took just the one bonus, but had they listened to the question they might have had a full house. Daniel Yang knew that the city after which the criteria for eligibility to join the EU is named is Copenhagen. One bonus on years known as the year of three (kings – kaisers – popes) was taken. David Worley knew that the word poodle comes from the German word for to splash. 2 bonuses followed for them on the Geography of Spain. The LSE revival continued as skipper Henry Jameson identified the mathematical term hyper. Terms in biology with female given names sounded a rum old set but proved to be straightforward and LSE took two. Amazingly a full house would now give them the lead. But their answer was wrong, and they lost five. The gong sounded an end to the contest with King’s holding on to win 185 – 160.

Both teams had the same number of bonus chances, with LSE having a BCR of 46.6% and King’s 56.6%. That was enough to seal the deal for the Cambridge side. Wouldn’t be totally flabbergasted if LSE make the repechage, though.

Amol Watch

One of Amol’s defaults at the start of the show is to tell both teams they look scared. He said it again this week even though both teams were grinning in anticipation!

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

Taiwan translates as Terraced Bay.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Well done setters! Nothing of a ridiculous length this week!

Mastermind 2027 - Heat 7 Preview

I really don’t pretend to understand why Mastermind has been taken off for another week. This time its replaced by Grand Tours of Scotland’s Lochs. Which I’m sure will be interesting and picturesque, but hardly necessitating the disruption of the normal schedules, I would have thought.

Well, when heat 7 is aired a week today the specialist subjects will be –

Essays of George Orwell

The films of Madonna

The Pilot Pauline Gower

The 2000 AD comics of the 1980s and 1990s

I would like to think I will get a couple of points. Not in each round, but as an overall aggregate. None of the subjects can I pretend to know anything about. I think the only Madonna film I have watched all the way through is “A League of their Own.” I have never read any of the essays of George Orwell. Nor, for that matter, 2000 AD. I have never heard of the pilot Pauline Gower, to my shame. So hopefully general knowledge will help me scramble a couple of pieces of low hanging fruit.

Thankfully there’s still Mastermind 1977 on BBC Four, and it’s the only edition of Mastermind to see Sir David Hunt beaten, I believe. He won the repechage semi and the final and then won the 1982 Champion of Champions series.

Last night at the club

You must have been in this position before. You’re in an ordinary pub quiz and you hear a question and you just know that something about it is wrong with it. Last night we were asked this:-

What is the name of the object hit in a game of hockey? –

Now to me, that question had to be asking what you hit in a game of ICE hockey. I just can’t see that you’d ask it if the answer was ball. So I asked Anne, the question master, if that was what she meant. She fell back on the old excuse of question masters who haven’t checked their answers properly – oh, the source of the question just said hockey . – Then she looked at the answer and said – but it looks like the answer means it must be ice hockey. – This sort of thing is one reason I say that with quite a few of our question masters it does seem that they can’t be arsed to check their quizzes before they ask them. That aside, the quiz last night was okay, and there were a couple of really rather good questions. Did you know that the US version of Gogglebox is called “The People’s Couch” ? I didn’t, although my team guessed it. Unfortunately, I’m sitting here this morning with my ears ringing. The thing about Anne is she does shout into the microphone, and with her voice being a bit shrill in the high registers it is actually quite painful. We even asked for the mic to be surreptitiously turned down at half time, but the damage had been done by then.

The damage also appears to have been done to what I have come to refer to as the ‘suspect’ team. There have been 6 quizzes since we instituted the swap your answers over marking policy. The team I suspect of making up their own scores have not played in any of those quizzes – despite turning up to two of them. They didn’t come last night. I feel that the longer they leave it to come back and play, the harder it will be for them to do so. Or are they maybe waiting for everyone to forget what their scores were like when you marked your own answers? Well, sorry guys, but it’ll be a long time before I do. If you are going to come back, it’s better to rip that sticking plaster off now.

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.