University Challenge Elimination Quarter final match - Darwin, Cambridge v. Warwick

The Teams

Darwin, Cambridge

Lewis Strachan

Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh

Louis Cameron (Capt)

Jonathan White

Warwick

Josh Howarth

Antoni Kluzowski

Chris Levesley (Capt)

Lucy Dennett

Last chance saloon time again peeps. Louis Cameron won the first gulp when he knew that Dante Gabriel Rossetti created many versions of Persephone/Proserpina. Roman perceptions of Britain - multa pluvia est – (ask your Latin teacher. Thank you Mr. Rose) Darwin took the first two but didn’t know that Tacitus wrote about Agricola. I prefer Settlers of Catan. Neither team knew the two Baltic states concerned with operation Red Trek. Funnily enough I visited Estonia just a fortnight ago – really enjoyed it. I know nothing about semi conductors – but Chris Levesley did to take the next starter. Three questions on the fictional Clorinda brought two bonuses for both of us. Lewis Strachan knew that two of the Mongolian Three Games of Men were Archery and Horseback Riding. I think that refusing to bother the doctor may be the other. Greek letters used representationally in physics raised a groan in LAM towers when it was announced as the bonus subject. Darwin weren’t groaning, they managed two bonuses. For the picture starter we were shown a photo of the bridge between the mainland and the Isle of Skye. Lewis Strachan took that one. Maps showing Scottish Islands with single syllable names brought two bonuses. Film adaptations of short stories by Murakami saw a good early buzz from Louis Cameron. Social sciences yielded us both just the one bonus. Still, this meant that Darwin led by 75 – 15 on 10 minutes and looked good value for the lead too.

Amazingly I earned a lap of honour for the next starter. I didn’t understand any of the guff Amol spouted for most of the question, but Expansion Constant seemed to match Hubble’s constant and it did. Chris Levesley had it too. Now, Raphael was a renaissance artist as well as a turtle apparently, and Warwick did very well to take a full house on him. The next starter, asking for a port city, was a wait for it question. Both teams did and as soon as Amol mentioned ‘sweet orange’ Jonathan White went for his shooting irons and gave the correct answer of Jaffa. Music theory sounded an unpromising subject for bonuses but Darwin took two of them. Well done. Josh Howarth worked out that Sam Houston was the only person to be governor of two different US States. Sandstone brought just the one bonus. Nobody recognised the work of Mendelssohn for the music starter. Antoni Kluzowski knew that Bismuth s the most naturally diamagnetic metal. Nope, me neither. This earned the dubious reward of the music bonuses. Pieces that premiered at the Three Choirs Festival did not add to the Warwick total at all. Louis Cameron recognised references to Soren Kierkegaard to earn bonuses on underground rivers. These also yielded nowt – tough set but they might have had the Mojave from the clues. Louis Cameron came in early to pair Absalom with Achitophel as in Dryden’s poem about the Duke of Monmouth. Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh helped her team to a pair of bonuses on Irish mythology. The clues were all there in the next starter but nobody worked out that Trafford was required. Gawd knows what an affine transformation is but so does Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh. Processes used in making confectionary brought, well, nothing. Didn’t matter. After allowing Warwick a wee revival Darwin had pulled away again and led by 135 – 65 as we approached 20 minutes.

Mathematical notation brought them two bonuses. For the second picture starter Jonthan White recognised some eucalyptus leaves. Other antibacterial plants brought both of us just one bonus for Aloe vera. More flippin’ science saw Chris Levesley take the next starter with phosphorus. Dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones (yeah, go on then, Bill ‘Who?’ Jones) brought Warwick one bonus. Jonathan White knew about Canossa for the next starter. The United Rugby Championship brought two bonuses and with the clock ticking down it looked as if Darwin had already passed the Event Horizon. Chris Levesley hadn’t given up though. He recognised various uses of the Greek letter theta. And yay, the bonuses were on more blimmin chemistry. Actually to be fair I did have quicklime and limelight. Warwick themselves only took one. Nobody knew that BNG on an ordnance survey map means British National Grid. Lewis Strachan knew aether for the next starter. Eastern and Southern Africa did not add any gilding to the Darwin score but they were home and dry by now. Antoni Kluzowski recognised that a group of football clubs all have the word Plough in their name. English words for clergy and their derivations brought us to the gong and Darwin had won by 175 – 125.

For the record Darwin managed a BCR of 42.4% while Warwick did slightly better with 48%. But it’s bonuses for show and starters for dough in this game and this is where Darwin won the contest.

Amol Watch

You know, the mark of a good question master is often that you don’t notice them during the quiz. So to that extent this was a lovely performance from Amol, a fine example of the simple art of getting the hell on with it.

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

The only person to act as Governor for two different states at different times was Sam Houston. He was also president of the Republic of Texas at one time. Busy guy.         

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Which lepton was discovered in 1936 by Carl D. Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer in cosmic ray particle showers? It is unstable, with an average lifetime of just 2.2 microseconds and has the same charge and spin as an electron but is 207 times more massive.  – I was okay up to Which. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2026 Semi Final 2

The Tale of the Tape

3	Diane Howe	12	0	14	1	26	1
=15	Matthew Patenall	11	0	8	0	19	0
=15	Max Bougeard	9	0	10	0	19	0
17	David Slater	6	1	9	1	15	2

 

Well, prior to the start of the second semi final you’d have been forgiven for making Diane Howe the red-hot favourite based on the first round performances of all involved. Diane was 3^rd on my unofficial table and had posted an excellent 14 on GK – sorry, but that marks you out as a potential series winner. While our other three contenders were all from the bottom half of the bottom half of the table. But semis don’t always work out according to the predictions of the form book. Do they?

Diane was first up. She was answering on American singer Jeff Buckley. I expected no points on this round, but the question about who wrote ‘Hallelujah’ was such a gimme it brought me an unexpected point. Diane did well. 9 is not a score to be sniffed at. It was not, however as good a score nor quite as good a performance as she gave us in the heats and 3 passes looked just a little on the profligate side to me.

Max Bougeard offered us the managerial career of the much-travelled Rafa Benitez, a man who it seems had more clubs than Rory McIlroy (and almost as many as Frank Worthington). Again, there was a tiny bit more for me in this round than I expected, and 3 points brought my score to 4. Max had scored a double figure GK round in the heats, so he would be in with a chance of a famous victory if the questions fell for him.

Matthew Patenall looked to need a cricket score in his specialist based on his GK performance in the heat. He was answering on Andy Warhol and for the most part answering very well, too. I took two of these, though it would have been more if I could have remembered Sedgewick. That’s life. Matthew scored 10 and having incurred no passes this took him into the lead on countback.

There’s been a bit of comment (some of it from me, admittedly) about David Slater making it to the semis with a total of 15 in his heat. Well, all you can do is beat the other contenders you’re up against and David certainly did this in his heat. If he could now win the semi then all discussion of his first round performance would be academic. I loved his specialist subject – the classic Routemaster bus. Hey, I grew up in West London in the 70s, and the AEC bus works was just down the road between Hanwell and Southall. However, it is the kind of ‘out there’ subject that is going to find you out if you have not comprehensively and meticulously prepared. There were just too many holes and gaps in David’s knowledge I’m afraid and he scored 5. I ended with an aggregate of 8.

So it was all down to GK, and you have to say that even though she lay in third it looked very much advantage Diane. David though was the first to return to the chair and considering the disappointment he must have felt over his specialist he did a very good job, scoring 10 to equal his first round heat total of 15. This time though it surely wasn’t going to be enough to bring a win.

Diane did not manage to repeat her GK performance of the heat. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t put in a good GK round. Anything in double figures is good, we know that. She started brilliantly, but just showed signs of fatigue in the second minute where she started dropping a few gettable points. She kept her cool though and in the end she had scored 11 to set the target at 20. If anyone was going to beat her they were going to have to equal or exceed their heat scores.

Max Bougeard couldn’t. He gave it his best shot, but it was clear that he was behind on the clock by the halfway mark and in the end he could only add 7 to his total for 17.

As for Matthew Patenard, well you could tell he wanted to succeed very, very badly indeed. Every time he supplied a wrong answer you could see him react almost as if a tiny electric shock was passing through his body. Sadly the questions just did not fall for him. Not enough of them anyway.  He scored 6 for a total of 16.

Well done Diane! You are now, and will always be a Mastermind Grand Finalist. As I said earlier, you can only beat the opposition in front of you, and that you certainly did.

The Details

Diane Howe	Jeff Buckley	9	3	11	2	20	5
Max Bougeard	The managerial career of Raphael Benitez	10	0	7	2	17	2
Mattew Patenall	Andy Warhol	10	0	6	0	16	0
David Slater	The Classic Routemaster bus	5	2	10	1	15	3

University Challenge 2026 - Quarter Final Qualification Match - Sheffield v. Imperial

The Teams

Sheffield

Rhys Lewis

Abdelrahman Elsisi

Jacob Price

Isobel Dobbie

Imperial

Rahim Dina

Eugenia Tong

Oscar O’Flanagan

Justin Keung

Good evening. In this second qualification match one of our two repechage winning teams was going to earn that coveted place in the semis. But which team would it be?

Jacob Price buzzed first to identify a description of lemongrass. Three Shakespeare bonuses saw me fail to score, to my shame. Well I’ve neither studied nor seen Measure for Measure. Sheffield managed one. Nobody knew that the Five Sisters window is in York Minster. Jacob Price knew the largest city in Western Sahara. South American cowboys seemed an unlikely subject but it brought Sheffield a full house. Oscar O’Flanagan opened the Imperial account, knowing the Overground Liberty Line. Particle physics brought them a brace of bonuses. For the first picture starter nobody could quite identify Cologne and Mainz from their positions on a map. Not surprised – not many clues on the map at all. Abdelrahman Elsisi recognised a description on mark up language for the next starter. More pairs of cities mentioned in Baedeker’s guide books brought them two bonuses. Oscar O’Flanagan identified fictional colonels for the next starter – sadly Bloodnok and Mustard did not feature. A pair of Swiss cheeses took the scores at just past the ten minute mark to 60-40 with Sheffield ahead.

Oscar Flanagan took a flyer on the next starter coming in early to identify Norway as the country with specific difficult climbs. Surveillance capitalism – no, me neither – brought one bonus. Nobody knew the Epistle to the Romans was the answer to the next starter. Sheffield committed the first incorrect interruption of the contest for the next starter allowing Oscar Flanagan to supply the geographical term Badlands. Works by architect Hiroshi Sugimoto brought not a lot but took us up to the music starter. Rhys Lewis recognised the work of Grieg (Edvard, not Tony) Classical pieces written for types of dances brought one bonus. Eugenia Tong knew that Palladium is the catalyst for more chemical processes than you can shake a stick at. Crelle’s Journal brought two bonuses. Nobody had the next starter on French cinema. Various phrases containing the word ‘vulgar’ launched a fantastic buzzer race, won by Oscar Flanagan. Ray’s Apu trilogy – much appreciated by Amol himself – brought two correct answers. Which meant that Imperial now led by 105 – 70 as we approached 20 minutes.

Nobody knew the Swiss mathematician Paul Bernays for the next starter. It seemed as if Oscar O’Flanagan got his west mixed up with his east when he went for Edinburgh for the next starter allowing Isobel Dobbie in with Glasgow. Countries with exactly three official languages brought 2 correct answers. For the second picture starter we were shown what was so obviously the work of William Hogarth that I was surprised when only Justin Keung went for his shooting irons straightaway. This brought bonuses on other representations of the Wheel of Fortune – none of which incidentally featured Michael Miles (ask your grandparents) Nicky Campbell or Graham Norton. They took one bonus. Oscar O’Flanagan seemed very excited to take the next starter on Seamus Heaney’s poem about blackberry picking. Foundation myths brought two correct answers and let’s be honest, you wouldn’t have bet against Imperial at this point. Nobody recognised the term ablation for the next starter although Imperial tried too early and lost five. The next starter asked which king was married to Isabel and Isabelle and Oscar O’Flanagan was just far too quick, supplying the correct answer of King John. Three questions on Birch reduction (doesn’t a chain saw usually do the trick?) saw Eugenia Tong take two correct answers for her team, earning her skipper’s approbation. Said skipper was dominating on the buzzer by now and he knew the term quench from metallurgy for the next starter. The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley brought just the 1 point, but it was all academic by now for Imperial had a winning lead. Oscar O’Flanagan buzzed early again for the next starter, but this time it didn’t come off. Sheffield could not answer that Petunia is ultimately derived from a guarani word. Abdelrahman Elsisi knew that the word hippogriff was first mentioned in Orlando Furioso which at least put Sheffield into triple figures. 3 questions on Labuan brought two bonuses. Jacob Price recognised a description of the term inertia and took the next starter. There was no time for them to earn any bonuses on Speedway. Imperial had won with 160-120 and are through to the semi finals.

Amol Watch

He can be a little tease, our Amol. When Oscar Flanagan gave the answer Internet of Things, teammate Justin Keung said “No!” “I have to take your first answer,” said Amol. Dramatic pause.”Which is just as well for you because it’s right!” Nice one.

In his comments Amol seemed to think that Imperial only came into the contest in the last 10 minutes. Yet they were ahead with half of the contest still to come. Shome mishtake shurely?

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

Daniel Defoe thought that Glasgow was the most beautiful city in Britain after London.                                  

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Which Greek letter denotes the type of meson discovered by Aihud Pevsner in 1961? Consisting of a mixture of up, down and strange quarks, their discovery completed the meson octet proposed in the Eightfold Way model. No, it’s not the longest, but it’s still deadly at up to 100 paces. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2026 Semi Final 1

The Tale of the Tape

Position	Contender	SS	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
=6	Lorna Frankel	12	0	12	0	24	0
11	Elis Matthews	11	0	9	0	20	0
=12	Peter Glanvill	10	0	10	1	20	1
=15	Teddy Fogel	10	1	9	0	19	0

Evening. The relative first round performances of our 4 semi finalists in tonight’s show did not contain any of our top 5. Lorna Frankel was clear of the field but you could barely slide a cigarette paper between the other three. If any contender could dredge up their best specialist form and have a blinder on GK, then any of them might make it through.

First to chance his arm was Elis Matthews. He’d won his heat with a good specialist and solid general knowledge. Tonight he was answering on the TV comedy series Fleabag. In my preview I predicted that I wouldn’t get any right. I was right too. Elis didn’t quite manage perfection but he equalled his score from the heats with a good 11. He would still e incontention at the turnaround, whatever else happened.

Well, what happened was that out highest scorer from the first round, Lorna Frankel, delivered a perfect round answering on Michael Faraday. I scraped 1, which paled into insignificance compared with Lorna’s 13 from 13. It really was a superb round, and from the moment she answered the first question it never looked like she was going to drop a point, even had Clive continued to ask questions about Faraday for the rest of the show.

Did this have an effect on the contenders who had to follow Lorna in the specialist round? Who knows. What we do know is that Teddy Fogel, answering on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, didn’t do as well as he would have hoped. It’s a big subject that , not just because Reagan was a two ter president. There were areas of the subject that Teddy just didn’t seem to have covered in his preparation and sadly by the end of the round he had only scored 6 to be 7 points off the lead and out of the contest to all intents and purposes.

Completing the SS round was Peter Glanville. For ¾ of the round on British marine invertebrates he was mightily impressive, but one question where the answer refused to take a dive from the tip of his tongue just robbed him of a bit of momentum. He still managed 10 which meant that we would have 3 contenders fighting it out for the spot in the final. I failed to score in this round but at least the 3 points I had scored on Reagan bumped my aggregate up to a 4.

Fair play to Teddy. You would have forgiven him for baling out a little in the GK round. Instead he showed great concentration, picking and answering what he knew and guessing what he didn’t. As we know, any double figure round is good in the current era of Mastermind and Teddy scored 10 for 16 and could leave the series with his head held high.

With all due respect though, Teddy’s score just wasn’t going to win this heat. Peter Glanville though was certainly in with a shout. AS it was, he did manage to post the highest GK score of the match, with 11. I somehow suspected this just left enough daylight that one of our remaining two contenders would be able to squeeze past on the inside in the run up to the tape.

Elis Matthews did not match Peter’s GK performance. But he didn’t need to. He’d scored 1 more point in the specialist round. He scored one less point than Peter in the GK and this meant they were tied. However Peter had used the tactic of passing to maintain momentum and this meant that Elis just snuck into the lead on pass countback.

Lorna had scored 12 on GK in the heat, and she could afford to fall short of this by several points which would still bring her a win. What she produced was a perfectly good GK round of 10. Credit to all of our contenders tonight, it is a pleasure to see all four contenders posting double figure GK rounds. Lorna’s total of 23 brought her the win and the place in the final. Da iawn! I wish you the very best of luck in the final.

The Details

Elis Matthews	Fleabag	11	1	10	3	21	4
Lorna Frankel	Michael Faraday	13	0	10	0	23	0
Teddy Fogel	The Presidency of Ronald Reagan	6	0	10	0	16	0
Peter Granvill	British Marine Invertebrates	10	2	11	4	21	6