University Challenge 2024 Quarter Final Round - UCL v. Christ Church , Oxford

The Teams

UCL

James Hall

Ali Izzatdust

Tayana Sawh (Capt.)

Jacob Finlay

Christ Church, Oxford

Eliza Dean

Melika Gorgianeh

Arthur Wotton (Capt.)

Elliot Lowe

Nobody goes straight into the semis. Nobody goes straight home. Yes, that’s the way it works in these first few quarter final matches. But they’re a pretty good pointer to which teams have the buzzing and the BCR to go all the way.

You know, I always get the feeling it’s going to be a good show when Rosa Luxembourg is name checked in an early starter. Ali Izzatdust, so effective on the buzzer in his team’s previous matches, knew that she had written a work with the word Capital in the title. Capital answer, I’d say. I was also delighted to see the Art Nouveau buildings of Riga name checked in the first of the architecture bonuses that followed. I spent Easter last year there and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a really lovely city. UCL took a full house and as a statement of intent that’s pretty hard to beat. The internal orchestra struck up early last night on the very next starter. On the mention of the name Hawking I shouted out black holes but it turned out these were in the question anyway. Neither team had it. Now the next starter was one of those which suddenly becomes obvious with the mention of a name. Blah, blah, blah, blah-blah, Ravel – BUZZ! I answered Bolero and so did Elliott Lowe, which earned bonuses on marsupials. A full house for Christ Church levelled the scores. Ali Izzatdust recognised various uses of the word ghost for his second starter of the evening. Which in turn gave UCL their second full house of the evening with world events of the 16^th century. “Disasters of War” suggested Goya for the next starter and James Hall thought so too, taking it for UCL. Placenames in French and English proved to be UCL’s talon d’Achille, and they failed to add to their score. So to the first picture starter, and much to my delight a detail from a flag with a star and crescent moon. It was from the flag of Croatia – a really small detail from the shield emblem in the centre of the flag. This gave James Hall a second consecutive starter – good shout that. More flags from outside the Islamic world with crescents and stars followed. I recognised Portsmouth from the badge of their football club. UCL managed the other two. Nobody knew The Sound Pattern of English for the next starter, but Arthur Wotton got his team moving again with Pitch Drop – no, me neither – for the one after. Bonuses on literary criticism brought just the one, much to Amol’s amusement. At just past the ten minute mark UCL had a comfortable lead of 80 – 40.

Captain Arthur Wotton took a second consecutive starter with a great early buzz on the Russian Pale ( as opposed to the Russian Mild and the Russian Bitter, I suppose) Malay culinary terms removed ten more points from the Christ Church deficit. None of us knew the sagittal sutures on the skull. If you were going to bet on anyone from the UCL team taking back the initiative on the next starter you would probably have plumped for Ali Izzatdust, especially since it was about a mathematician. He gave the correct answer of Germain. “Your bonuses” announced Amol, “ are 3 questions on dimensionless quantities in Physics.” – Oh, that’s alright then, thought I. The last question asked for two subatomic particles, and not knowing any better I gave proton and electron. They were right! I set off around the sofa, sitting back down just in time for a piano quintet for the music starter. Nobody recognised the work of Brahms. Arthur Wotton again played a captain’s innings, recognising a description of the work of Racine. Got to the root of the problem, you could say. (see what I did there? Oh come on, French – English puns, what more d’you want?) More 19^th century piano quintets yielded nowt. Elliot Lowe came in too early for the next starter and lost five, allowing Ali Izzatdust a shot at an open goal with the Dahomey Amazons. Only one bonus on Charles II followed. I added a bar to my lap of honour for knowing Iridium comes between Osmium and platinum in the Periodic Table, and James Hall was happy to snap up that particular piece of low hanging fruit. Mottoes on the seals and arms of Africa countries brought one bonus. I felt for Arthur Wotton as he fell into the yawning trap the next starter opened before us. It seemed to be begging for the answer bit, but when Arthur Wotton bit it allowed Ali Izzatdust to tap it in for byte. I enjoyed the set on words ending with- illa, even though Godz, Astonv and Windym were not amongst the set. Jacob Finlay piled on the agony for Christ Church getting the island of Sark for the next starter. Bonuses on reflex actions took the score to 170 – 55 in UCL’s favour. Game over? Pretty much so, I’m afraid.

The second picture starter showed us a self portrait of an artist with a mate. To be fair to Arthur Wotton I thought that it had just a touch of Caravaggio about the right hand figure. Nobody recognised the work of Raphael (feel free to apply your own turtle-based comment if you wish). A buzzer race on the next starter saw James Hall win the right to provide the answer about Byron’s follow poet Shelley. The self portrait with buddies bonuses did not add to their score, but frankly that was never going to have a bearing on the outcome of this match. Eliza Dean took her first starter on the word ray, to earn bonuses on the Hornbostel-Sachs Instrument Classification System. Gesundheit. Christ Church took one bonus which was one more than I did. Ali Izzatdust knew that the Battle of Dettingen took place during the War of the Austrian Succession. Fathers and sons in Greek Mythology took UCL through the 200 points barrier. If I tell you that Hysteron Proteron was the correct answer given to the next starter by Elliot Lowe, what do you think that made me think of? Yes, it had to be Captain Scarlet – this is the voice of the Hysterons etc. CAF African Footballers of the Year saw Christ Church deliver a full house at full speed. Eliza Dean knew that Jae Austen’s final published novel was Persuasion. The International Booker Prize bonuses took Christ Church into triple figures. Nobody took the next starter on spiral galaxies. Elliot Lowe knew Submediant for the next starter. The first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry gave me a second bar to my lap of hour for recognising a description of osmosis. That was it. At the gong, the scores stood at 200 – 130.

Winners UCL had a BCR of 55%, while Christ Church had a BCR of 54%. So it all came down to the buzzer. There is a crumb of comfort for Christ Church that when they started really slinging buzzer in the last few minutes they were outdoing UCL.    

Amol Watch

I took issue with Amol’s reaction on the literary criticism bonuses – ‘Your mates who study English are going to crucify you for this”. I studied English and I don’t recall crucifying anyone for not knowing about practical criticism. The objective correlative, now that’s a different story and one for another day.

Do you remember back when I was forming the impression that Amol might be a Jedi bearing in mind the galvanising effect his encouragement was having on teams in the first round? Well, he waited until the 18^th minute before encouraging Christ Church, who had slipped 70 points behind by this stage. It didn’t help, I’m afraid.

I applaud Amol for upholding the first answer rule on the Greek Mythology set. As he said, maybe it’s harsh, but that’s the rule.

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

Manzanilla possibly takes its name from the Spanish for small apple. I mean, I worked it out, but it had never occurred to me before.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

The Bekenstein-Hawking formula shows that the surface area of a black hole’s event horizon is linearly proportional to what other property? This formula contains the speed of light, Boltzmann’s Constant, Planck’s Constant and Newton’s gravitational constant and helped lay the groundwork for the study of black hole thermodynamics.

I feel fully justified in highlighting this question since neither of the teams had a scooby either. Although they didn’t sing ‘dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum’ which is a bit of a shame.