University Challenge 2025 - Quarter Final - The Open University v. Bristol

The Teams

Open University

Nicky Maving

Tom Barber

Karie Westermann (Capt.)

Hector Payne

Bristol

Ted Warner

Bridie Rogers

Kevin Flanagan (Capt.)

Olivia Watts

With the Open having an average score of less than 200 and Bristol an average score of over 300 the result of this match looked something of a foregone conclusion. Yet we’ve already seen that the quarter finals have proved to be a harder proposition for pretty much all of the teams so far this year.

It was nice to have a starter on Virgil’s Aeneid and it became clear pretty soon we were looking for harpies for the answer. The teams sat on their buzzers a bit before Ted Warner broke cover to give us the answer. Terms in life science containing the letter combination o-c-h saw Bristol take a full house in pretty short order, and it looked as if the expected Bristol onslaught was beginning. I thought that the next starter was heading for Judith Butler, and so did Karie Westermann. She was right to do so, and Open were off the mark. Two bonuses on films meant that they were close behind Bristol. Ted Warner knew the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe for the next starter. Gerry Hassan – not a chap I have any great knowledge of myself – brought nowt to Bristol. The first picture starter showed us a simplified family tree based on characters from a famous novel. Count Vronsky gave me Anna Karenina. Hector Payne thought he knew, buzzed, then realised he didn’t. Bristol could not capitalise. I know of conjugation in verbs, but not in biology. Ted Warner did and this earned the picture bonuses. Three Russian novels brought two bonuses – I answered Brothers Karamazov to all three guaranteeing myself one bonus. Green Chapel – and Narrative poem – is only ever going to lead to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Karie Westermann was the first to take the plunge on it. Jazz musicians yielded nothing and this meant that Bristol led by 55 – 30 on ten minutes.

Karie Westermann knew Lily Gladstone – who is an actress and not the drag name of the Victorian Prime Minister. (That was something quite different, I believe). The first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry unleashed a stream of yawn inducing gobbledygook which brought the Open up to Bristol’s collective shoulder. They fell back a bit with an incorrect interruption on the next starter, allowing Bridie Rogers in with the suffix -etta. A lovely UC special set on characters in Middlemarch who share forenames with characters in Jane Austen novels saw Bristol unable to add to their score. For the following music starter none of us recognised a rather lovely bit of Faure. Nobody knew a white dwarf for the next starter. Hector Payne came in too quickly for the next starter and lost five, allowing Ted Warner to say that the Don flows into the Sea of Azov. Three other works conducted by Nadia Boulanger, the LPO’s first female conductor, again saw Bristol failing to bother the scorer. Undeterred Hector Payne very quickly identified the year 2014 through some of its sporting highlights. Eggs in contemporary Art brought two bonuses. Names ending in gong brought Karie Westermann another correct starter. 2 bonuses on pseudocereals levelled the scores at 75 apiece as we passed the 20 minute mark.

So, our marathon had now come down to a sprint. Ted Warner knew Byzantine Emperors called Leo. Julia ‘Qui?’ Kristeva brought none of us any joy. None of us recognised a black and white still from that popular family favourite The Spirit of the Beehive. Hector Payne knew or worked out that Europe’s furthest point from the sea is in Slovakia. Good shout, that. For the picture bonuses we saw stills from films by directors who went a long time between films. Kubrick will be there, said I, and he was. The Open also had one of the others and for the first time in the match they were in the lead. Karie Westermann was unlucky not to quite get Kintsugi for the next starter. I only knew it from a previous series of the Great Pottery Throwdown. One of those seemingly simple arithmetic questions – you know the sort, add the number of nostril hairs visible on the Mona Lisa to the number of smarties in half a packet and divide it by the number of faces on an octonoctofloctohedron – and nobody had it. Bridie Rogers knew that Claudio falls in love with Leander in Shakespeare which was followed by the names of European football clubs whose names contain just one of the five vowels. They took two for a ten point lead. With hardly any time remaining Open needed to take the next starter. But it was Bridie Rogers who linked up South Pacific and Pacific Rim. Polish artist Jan Matejko brought the two bonuses they needed to ensure that even a full set would not be enough for the Open. As it was nobody could take the next starter on Helium 3, a popular jazz trio from the 1930s. Ted Warner hammered the final nail in the Open’s coffin by taking the next starter on the word crane. Bristol won by 135 – 95, but it was a close, close match

If we look at the BCRs of both teams it becomes pretty clear where this battle was won and lost. The Open managed a straight 50 while Bristol only managed 38, so it was their sharper buzzing that brought victory. It isn’t quite true that it’s bonuses for show and starters for dough, but you can’t expect to win the match if you’re losing the buzzer races.

Amol Watch

Amol has this habit of saying words to the effect of – the other team knew the answer to that one – when a team gets a bonus wrong sometimes and if I’m honest I’m not entirely sure what it brings to the party. He also has the habit of saying ‘good job you’re a biologist/physicist/mathematician’ when someone answers a question on their own subject. I wonder what he’d say if someone got a starter right on the novel ’Portnoy’s Complaint.’? “ It’s a good job you’ve got a – - - on your team“  No, I am not explaining that. Ask your parents.

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

Europe’s furthest point from the sea is in Slovakia.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

The Van ‘t Hoff factor explains how a given solute affects what class of properties for a mixture, such as its osmotic pressure, freezing point, depression and boiling point elevation? These properties depend on the ration of solute and solvent, and not on the chemical species present.

Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.