University Challenge 202: Southampton v. Christ Church, Cambridge

The Teams

Southampton

Elise Harrington

Rhys Counsell

Roshana Wickremasinghe (Capt)

Chris Meredith

Christ Church, Cambridge

Eliza Dean

Melika Georgianeh

Arthur Wotton (Capt)

Elliott Lowe

What’s that you say? Me? Oh yes, I had a very nice time in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, thank you for asking. Now, let’s get down to business.

For the first starter Roshana Wickremasinghe showed commendable confidence buzzing in early, but considering the starter was about a description of a building in Rome she only had a one in several chance of being right, and she wasn’t. Given the full question, and the invaluable clue that the building bears the name of a renaissance pope Arthur Wotton took his first starter with the Sistine Chapel – from Pope Sixtus IV, you see. Trilingual inscriptions led me to predict to my empty sitting room that the Rosetta Stone would come into this and indeed it was the last of this set. That was the one that Christ Church managed. I didn’t understand the next starter on Maths, but I rather liked the correct answer given by Chris Meredith, namely Big O notation. I never would have known that the great Roy Orbison was also a mathematician. I wasn’t disappointed that Southampton didn’t know Edward Casaubon is a main character in Middlemarch. Richard Hoggart once told me that Middlemarch is the perfect 19^th century novel. There you go. Mind you, he also told me that Mastermind was a most ridiculous programme in his opinion, so what can you do? 2 bonuses levelled the scores. Roshana Wickremasinghe buzzed early to correctly identify Rita Hayworth’s Gilda as an example of a femme fatale. Winners of the John Maddox Prize for people who promote Science and Evidence brought me my first lap of honour round the living room since returning from Denmark for knowing HPV stands for Human Papillomavirus. I actually had a full house on this set. So did So’ton. So, to the picture starter. We were shown a passage from The Great Gatsby, with two highlighted compound verbs. Neither team recognised the present perfect. Not surprised. Chris Meredith won the race to identify the island of Hispaniola as the birthplace of Wyclef Jean. This gave So’ton the picture bouses of more passages from famous novels and more tenses to identify. Ah, but the novels were all in their original languages, there’s the rub. I was able to take a full house more by luck than judgement, while So’ton took one. Now, the mammals of the class Sirenia, asked for in the next starter, were always going to be Manatees or Dugongs. But which one? Arthur Wotton zigged with Manatee and he was right to do so. A nice UC set on bathing in mythology brought a full house. This meant that the two teams were pretty evenly matched at the 10-minute mark, with Southampton just slightly ahead by 55 – 40.

The lead increased when Roshana Wickremasinghe buzzed in early to identify Doughnut, Edible and Poor as words that can precede Economics. Yeah, I still don’t think I’ll be using this as a connections set in Thursday’s quiz.  African National Parks yielded just the one bonus. Both teams waited patiently with the next starter. It asked about the oldest written text in a language, but when Amol mentioned Pamplona Arthur Wotton won the race to answer Basque. Both of us managed 2 on modern British sculptors. I’ll be honest, I’m not very familiar with the Southern Gothic genre of fiction and neither were the teams for the next starter. Arthur Wotton added to his already impressive collection of starters, recognising a description of the word electricity. One bonus on Bell Labs followed. For the music starter we heard a guitar solo, and Roshana Wickremasinghe played the percentages answering Jimi Hendrix. Don’t blame her since I did the same. Other guitar solos played backwards on the records themselves brought two bonuses. Now, given Helluland and Markland, Elliott Lowe knew that the more well-known name give to an area of North America he explored by Leif Ericsson was Vinland. I guess this was before he starred in ‘The High Chapparal (ask your grandparents). That’s Leif Ericsson, not Elliott Lowe. Japanese film actor Takashi Shimura saw Christ Church fail to add to their score. And to be fair, the answers were all very well-known Japanese films. Would their profligacy with bonuses give them a cause for regret? Time would tell. Various things connected with Queen Anne saw Arthur Wotton give his team back the lead and bonuses on overseas departments of France gave Kings a full house. The Cambridge skipper had the bit between his teeth now and took the next starter knowing a mango when he heard a description of one. Abandoned invasions of Britain gave a couple more bonuses. As we approached the 20 minute mark the buzzing of Arthur Wotton and his team in the last few minutes had changed the complexion of the competition, for Christ Church now led by 130 – 90.

I didn’t know that ilmenite contains the ore of titanium but Elise Harrington did for the next starter. The bonuses on metals had a memorable moment when Elise Harrington made a slip of the tongue and gave skipper Roshana Wickremasinghe F203 as the chemical formula of magnetite rather than Fe203. When Amol commiserated that he couldn’t accept it she gasped ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ Relax – no need for such apology, we’ve all done it. Well, not on a Science question in my case, but you know what I mean. Two bonuses took So’ton to within a full set of the Cambridge team. I was impressed with the speed that the excellent Arthur Wotton recognised the work of El Greco (‘Buddy’ to his mates) for the second picture starter. More paintings of funerals brought one bonus. A really good shout from Eliza Dean saw her correctly answer the de facto state of Somaliland for the next starter. Sociology bonuses pushed the lead to 55. That man Wotton knew that artists including John Singer Sargent(when he wasn’t inventing the sewing machine and conducting orchestras) had painted presidential portraits. Authors born in Ohio added nowt to the Christ Church score, but the set ran down the clock which in itself was helpful to their cause. Neither team could get the term free verse for the next starter. Now, had I not been suffering a little from my arthritis I would have awarded myself a bar to my earlier lap of honour for guessing that the molecules affecting the atmosphere being asked for were CFCs. Chris Meredith had that too. He didn’t do a lap of honour either. A UC special set on pairs of words where one is the other prefixed by we- . A full set helped their cause, but So’ton were still more than a full set behind. Now, if you’re asked for a Tudor cardinal, go for Wolsey. That’s what Roshana Wickremasinghe did. The history of cereal crops, as a set of bonuses, were not full of eastern promise. Nonetheless two correct answers brought the gap down to 15 points. Once again, though, it was Arthur Wotton whose buzzing made the difference. He was first in with the term greenwashing. There surely would not be time for another starter after the bonuses. In fact there wasn’t even time for a full set of bonuses. The gong ended the competition leaving Christ Church the winners by 155 – 180.

Another good contest, well fought by both teams. It’s probably fair to say that it was Arthur Wotton’s 9 starters that made the difference. Especially when you consider that they had a relatively modest bonus conversion rate of forty three percent, as against Southampton’s sixty-seven. I doubt that Southampton will be back, though, bearing in mind the scores I the series so far.

How is Amol Doing?

On the Middlemarch set one of the questions asked for the Smiths song which paraphrased a sentence from the novel in the lyrics. In order to get ‘How Soon is Now’ Roshana Wickremasinghe sang a wee bit of the lyrics – you know the bit, it was used as the theme to Charmed. I think Amol was a wee bit charmed as well, since he replied, “You can sing it as long as you want if you give me the answer.”

A few weeks ago I did note that Amol will say that there’s plenty of time left in the same breath as saying there’s only a couple of minutes to go. He did it again in this show. Look, as far as QM habits go it’s far from the worst you could have, but I couldn’t help noticing it again.

Southampton were never more than a couple of sets behind Christ Church, but Amol seemed to think they had almost pulled off the most unbelievable recovery since Lazarus, saying “I thought you were going to pull of the most incredible, incredible recovery.” Steady on, Amol. Cool head.

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

Sir Thomas Browne was the first person known to use the term electricity in English. It is derived from the Latin for ‘like amber’