Only Connect Champion of Champions

The Analysts v. The Scribes

No time to draw breath in our weekly round up of the very best of TV and radio quizzes, as we have this biennial joust between the winners of the most recent two series. It hardly seems like days since Holly Pattenden , Gareth Price and Dom Tait , the Scribes, won the 6th series. Well, it was only shown a few weeks ago. I have written off the Scribes’ chances far too often in the past, so I had a completely open mind as to who would be the most likely winners between them and the Analysts, represented by Paul Steeples, William De Ath, and captain David Lea. I’m fairly confident in saying that in a straight, ordinary quiz, over a couple of hundred questions, the Analysts would win. But this was Only Connect, and there’s nothing ordinary about it..

Round One – What’s the Connection ?

The As chose Lion, and received 10 foot gypsum statue – wood plastic head and toy submarine – and I knew what we had here were famous hoaxes – which was confirmed by orang-utan jawbone and human skull, then paper cut outs of fairies. The Analysts had it there. Scribes took flax, and found Mars Climate Orbiter – Stonehenge in This is Spinal Tap, and they had it from that. As anyone who has seen and loved the movie knows, these were measurement mix ups. Which gave the Scribes a useful lead. Water brought the As the pictures. A seemingly unconnected series of pictures showed different ways of getting into Narnia. The As suggested children’s books, which was close, and the Scribes were closer – they mentioned CS Lewis. Not close enough for Victoria, though. Fair enough. Two Reeds hid the music connection , one of which was the end of round music from this very show. Another was Sting’s Fields of Gold. Another was “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin. Neither team got the connection, and neither did I , yet it’s so simple when you know. After all, in which film did we hear “The Entertainer” ? That’s right – the Sting. The OC music is the sting between rounds. Red face moment of the show ( so far. ) The As took eye of Horus and found Professor Layton – Uncle Sam ( I was thinking top hats ) – Alan Sugar ( now I thought pointy fingers on posters ) and Lord Kitchener. The As made no mistake. This left Horned Viper for the Scribes. They had Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, Anfield Stadium, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I thought that was pretty straightforward, and so did the Scribes, who were happy to take locations of Eternal flames off these three clues. So they led by 5 to the As’ 2.

Round Two – What Comes Fourth ?

The As chose two reeds. Prefix for nine – followed by he spilled his seed on the ground, which was Onan – followed by Prefix for ten to the power of – 9 which I guessed was nano. If the first was nona, then I worked out that you used the same 4 letters, but put the first one last for each next word. Which would leave you anon. Correct, and the As had worked it out as well. Scribes took water, and received Imbolc – Ostara – Beltane – Hello, though I , celtic / pagan festivals. OK, but what next ? I guessed Samhain, which I think is sort of Halloween, but actually it was midsummer, Difficult one that. Not s hard as the As though. They got the pictures, and these were representations of Egyptian hieroglyphs for numerals. They needed to give the symbol for 1, but nobody knew it was a staff or straight line. The Scribes received SATOR – AREPO – TENET . Nope, I didn’t know. They are the SATOR word square, and the next would be opera. Paul knew the connection, but not the word for a bonus. The As had Secret Diary - Parish news – and we were dealing with Private Eye, and David and the boys knew the last would be the New Coalition Academy newsletter. Good shout off two. The Scribes had Edward Borough – John Neville – Henry VIII. Both teams were working on increasing numbers of wicves, but no. They were the successive husbands of Katherine Parr, with Thomas Seymour being her fourth and last. Still, the round , while not high scoring, had made a difference. The Analysts now led with 7. Still, with the vowels to come after the walls, they needed more than a 2 point lead to be confident of defeating the lightning quick Scribes.

Round Three – The Connecting Walls

I thought that the Scribes did brilliantly to quickly see and separate a set of words which can be made into other words by placing a letter a at the start – trophy – venue – corn and steroid. They almost immediately found grain crops, with quinoa – sorghum – amaranth and millet. They knew the other two connections – words preceded by continental – and sporting trophies, and they found them . The continental words were shelf – plate – drift and crust, and the trophies claret jug, dish and belt. This meant that the maximum lead that the As could have would be 2 points. Frankly, if I was playing the Scribes in vowels I’d want a much bigger head start than that .

The As at least wouldn’t have known that their opponents had scored a full house. They were given the water wall, and they quickly found a set of Croatian cities, in Split – Dubrovnik – Zadar and Rijeka. A set of middleweight boxers – Hearns – Hagler – Benn and Eubank followed. Then almost before Ihad a chance to blink they’d unraveled the other two sets – Duran – Sub – The – Talk, and also Leonard – Timer – Pula – Loon . I didn’t know The The , or Sub Sub, but I did know Duran Duran and Talk Talk, the answer being when you double the original word you get the name of a band. As for the last set – I didn’t know it. If you changed one letter you could make each of them into a big cat. So only 7 points meant that the Scribes now took the lead, with 15 to 14.

Round Four – Missing Vowels

The mission for the As was simple. Just beat the Scribes on the vowels. Simple as that. Literary Aunts fell fell 2 – 1 to the As. Films with photographer protagonists fell 3 – 1 to the Scribes. Correct versions of common misquotations fell 2 -1 to the As _ what a good game ! Works of JMW Turner went 1 – 0 to the Scribes, and that was that. Not a lot in it at all, but the As finished with 19, and the Scribes with 21. Superb work guys, and I have no doubt that sooner or later we’ll get to see them take on the Mighty Champion of Champions of Champions, the Crossworders.