Vintage Mastermind - 1977 Heat 1

I didn’t realise until I watched the show on Monday evening, but the first heat of Mastermind 1977 - shown on Monday on BBC4 -  did actually get a brief mention in Magnus Magnusson’s “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish”. I only realized this when we came to the end of the show and Magnus issued a correction to Martin Leadbetter’s score, where he was awarded an extra point. It made no difference to the out come of the show and neither would it had he been awarded another point for what he felt was another badly worded question.

The heat was won by student teacher Sue Jenkins. I was struck by a number of things about it. Remember that this was 1977, by which time the show had well and truly found its feet and was becoming something of a national institution. I was just surprised how relatively unimpressive visually it was. If you compare it with the studio bound set used in the Next Generation, it all looks smaller, even maybe just a little cosier – although it was nice to see the black ribbed flooring around the chair that I remember.

Another thing which surprised me – and I feel a heel for saying this, because I was a fan of Magnus as the question master and regret never having had the chance to meet him – was how many slight stumbles and hesitations he made asking the questions. In fact he actually said that meticulous efforts were made to ensure each contender had the same amount of time and extra time was allotted for his own little stumbles and hesitations. Talk about letting daylight in on magic.

As for the contenders, well, I think I have to strike a note of caution. I do not know what quiz culture was like in the UK in the mid 70s. I really don’t know if, for example, pub quizzes were anything like as common or popular as they are now. I do know that quiz shows were one common TV staple back then because I watched a lot of them. But I have to say that I felt the GK round scores were rather modest considering the number of questions they got through. I don’t know if it was just an anomaly in this particular heat, but the number of passes made across the 4 rounds was huge compared to a show from the 2020s.

One other thing that struck me as well was that at least 3 of the contenders in this heat were a lot less impassive than has become the norm. You could see , at times, frustration, anger and despair going on inside all of which was at times written across the three gentlemen’s faces.

I hope that BBC4 is going to continue showing the 1977 series. If nothing else, in heat 2 we get to see where Magnus supposedly tells a contender that Jesus’ first name was Reginald. (It was Jeeves’ first name, but a viewer in Northern Ireland misheard and complained about the ‘blasphemy’).

University Challenge 2027 - First Round Magdalen, Oxford v. Warwick

The Teams

Magdalen College, Oxford

Anapan Bandi

Ellie Spicer

Bernardo Lustrini (capt.)

Ioan O’Reilly

Warwick

Jolie Yeh

Patrick Hartley

Odysseas Gabrielatos (capt.)

Tobin Payne

For the first starter I had the given name Jane from the young woman from Baltimore in novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tobin Payne had it from Jane Eyre. Starter one. Two bonuses on the Congress of Vienna followed. Magdalen lost five on the next starter allowing Jolie Yeh in with the word vernacular. Bonuses on the Chott el Djerid – as opposed to my answer, the Wadi El Yerwant – brought just one bonus, and they probably ought to have had Jules Verne as well. Ellie Spicer put Magdalen’s score into the black, recognising the moon Io for the next starter. Chemistry bonuses yielded two correct answers to Magdalen and one quick lap of honour around the Clark sofa for me. Yeah, I know very little about the subject but I know enough to yell ‘diabetes!’ when the words disease and ketones feature in the question. For the picture round we saw a chakra wheel, similar to that on the national flag of India, but nobody could link it to Ashoka the Great. Jolie Yeh recognised a description of the legendary Mulan for the next starter. Three more flags and symbols bearing prominent chakras brought a brilliant full house to Warwick. If Magdalen didn’t already know that they were in for a long evening, this might well have convinced them. Tobin Payne took a second starter knowing that the 2024 women’s Olympic climbing champion was Polish. 21^st Century fiction inspired by the Arabian Nights brought just one bonus. At the ten minute mark Warwick led 75 – 15 and they looked pretty good value for their lead, too.

The onslaught continued as Patrick Hartley correctly guessed that Mary Cassatt had completed a mural for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Recent biographical films about musicians brought them two bonuses and pushed them to the brink of triple figures.  Tobin Payne took his third starter, knowing that the Codex Regius containing the original manuscript of the Poetic Edda had to be housed in Reykjavik. Vreiðr vas þa Ving- þorr etc. etc. Frederico Busoni brought one bonus. The next starter was one of those UC specials where you wait and wait then there’s a mad dash for the buzzer when it becomes obvious. As soon as NH3 was mentioned Ellie Spicer was in with Ammonia. Two bonuses on optical illusions were taken. So to the music starter and both Tobin Payne and I recognised Chuck Berry. This was Tobin’s 4^th starter. Other pieces used for walk-on music by professional darters only brought one bonus, but as regards the match even at this stage it seemed very unlikely that Magdalen were going to be able to muscle their way back into it. They tried, though, you have to give them that, coming in too early on the next starter- which was exactly the right tactic even if it didn’t quite work this time. Warwick skipper Odysseas Gabrielatos came in with tremelo which meant that every member of the team had answered at least one starter each. They took just one on a pretty gettable set on the Judgement of Paris. Patrick Hartley took his second starter knowing that Henri de Navarre – King Henry IV was the first Bourbon to be King of France. They’d all been custard creams up to that point. You know, even I’m ashamed of that one, sorry. Currencies with geographical names brought two more bonuses. Patrick Hartley took a third bonus with Rhode Island. Didn’t once mention Family Guy in the questions either. One bonus on shades of blue named after people – Bert Prussian and Sid Cobalt were not name checked, unfortunately – brought one correct answer. This meant that the scores were 175 – 30. And the Warwick juggernaut rolled on.

A mind-numbing physics starter gave Tobin Payne starter five. Kapuscinski, a member of the famous ‘Who?’ family, brought 2 bonuses. Edward Muybridge’s famous horse photos pushed Warwick through the 200 barrier. Bonuses on horse paintings brought just one bonus – I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t know Stubbs. Ioan O’Reilly bought some hard-earned points for Magdalen, knowing that the first correspondence course taught shorthand. The wittig reaction – ‘twas wittig and the slithy toves ? – brought a full house and earned Ellie Spicer the gratitude of her skipper. I thought Ioan O’Reilly’s buzz for the next starter was a good one based on what we’d heard, but it was a gamble and lost 5. Given the full question Tobin Payne didn’t manage to add to his starter tally, even though the clue to Sweden was in the full question. Again, Bernardo Lustrini was definitely on the right lines with his early buzz for the next starter, but he gave chess openings while the question called specifically for the Sicilian Defence. To be fair to Tobin Payne, he did sound apologetic when he answered this to pick up his 7^th and last starter. A full house on terms from Japanese cookery raised the possibility of a 300+ score. With the next starter you had to wait and wait, then it became obvious that placenta was the answer and Jolie Yeh won the buzzer race to take her third starter. Seascape paintings brought a full house and Warwick hit 260, less than 2 full houses away from 300. Sadly Magdalen lost five with an early buzz for the next starter. Given the words philosopher and hemlock Odysseas Gabrielatos knew it had to be Socrates, captain of the 1982 Brazilian world cup football team. The South African National Assembly Elections of 2024 brought one bonus, but it meant that Warwick were just one full house away from 300. Odysseas Gabrielatos took his own third starter, knowing that the Diomede islands belong partly to the USA and partly to Russia. Three concepts in physics gave them the full house and the rarely achieved triple hundred. That was it. Warwick won by 300 to 40.

Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. Magdalen are undoubtedly better than a 40 point team. Buzzing without caution was a gamble, but it was a worthwhile gamble. Yes, had they been a little more cautious they might even have approached triple figures, but they had to try to disrupt the Warwick rhythm. I give them credit for that. As it was they achieved a BCR of 77.7%. But they were very much outbuzzed by Warwick. Despite having so many bonuses to answer, Warwick still managed a BCR of 58.3%. How good are they? Well, we’ll start to find out the answer in round two. But a team to watch, I reckon.

Amol Watch

For once I thought Amol’s rather hyperbolic commiserations to the losing team were pretty much what was called for. Nice work, sir.

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

Mulan means Magnolia

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

It was very tempting to select ‘pyruvate oxidative decarboxylation’ but the sheer endless waffle of the following has to take the prize:-

In Physics what letter of the alphabet names a theory that, according to one proponent, has the potential to unify the various forms of string theory with the theory of supergravity? What the letter in question represents is unclear, one suggestion being a mathematical term for a rectangular array of numbers or data.

Unless of course you prefer dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

A Conundrum

Somehow I doubt that there’s a simple explanation, or indeed a single answer to this question but I’m going to ask it anyway. Why is it that some shows explode from the country of their birth to go on to be a success across different parts of the world while some only remain a home grown smash, and others find great success yet still have a few countries in which they flop.

I’ll tell you what prompts me to ask. The BBC have just put a couple of series of Australian Survivor onto the iplayer. I’m a Survivor fan from way back., and used to watch Australian Survivor on Netflix. And I’ve never quite been sure about why it never caught on in the UK, not in the original 2 UK series on ITV nor on the BBC revival a couple of years ago.

We can look at the things which can blight a homegrown version of a hit. If we start with the host, I don’t think Mark Austin was the right choice for the original couple of series on ITV. Too straight down the line and serious – it really called for someone with at least a foot in the world of Entertainment. Had you asked me beforehand whether I thought Joel Dommett would have been the right choice for the BBC revival I would have said absolutely not. But then he turned the dial on the godawful cheese that he dishes out on The Masked Singer (enjoy the show but not him on it) so much so that he was almost channelling the host of Australian Survivor, which was pretty much exactly what the show needed. Yet it never caught on and has not been back since.

Looking at the ingredients, it’s difficult to see which of them might put off a British audience. There’s been enough popular shows in the last two or three decades that have relied on contestants showing sneakiness and nastiness to each other that it surely can’t be that. There’s nothing on the show that is quite as gross as a lot of the bushtucker trials in the hardy perennial I’m A Celebrity. As for the physical trials, well, in some ways they are every bit as exciting and impressive as anything you’ll see in Gladiators. But for all of that it just doesn’t seem to catch on here. Strange.

Vintage Mastermind on BBC4

Of course, the silver lining to the cloud of having no new episode of Mastermind tomorrow night is that we do have an episode of Mastermind from 1977 on BBC4. The specialist subjects are The Alps, symphony orchestra instruments, children’s literature and the Old Testament.

I remember the 1977 series well. I turned 13 in 1977 and I’m pretty sure I watched most if not all of the shows in the series. It had really got into its stride by then and was well on the way to becoming a national institution. The 1977 series was won by Sir David Hunt, retired diplomat. I remember that in his heat he was defeated by, if I recall correctly, Lord Timothy Beaumont, when, according to Magnus’ book, he became rather too interested in the questions. He didn’t make that mistake in the repechage or the final.

He’s not in tomorrow night’s show, the first episode of the series, well, not according to the photo on the Mastermind webpage. 9pm tomorrow.

The Chase Around the World Update

4 Mastermind heats without a break and ‘That’s yer lot!’ says Auntie Beeb. Not sure why it’s off the screen tomorrow, but it’s only off for a week. Until the next time, anyway.

I’m still enjoying The Chase Across the World.The previous episode we saw another pair losing to the Chasers and going home from Lisbon. Last week we were in Paris. Now, some of the advertising for the show led me to believe that we’d be finishing in Paris – don’t remember now where I got that idea from. For the first time I incorrectly predicted where Bradders was going to be by the end of the show – I thought it would be the Eiffel Tower but that was just a stop on the way.

In the very first show we saw Ashwin and Nikita make a good stab at the GK and the Chasers make an uncharacteristic couple of errors in the Final Chase and they survived to make it to the next destination. In last week’s show, having made a wee bit of an oreille de cochon of some of the clues Ashwin and Nikita again were the last to complete Where’s Bradley. Again, they made a decent fist of the GK – although not, I fancy, quite as good as their first. Again, the Chasers made uncharacteristic errors and our intrepid pair survived. Once is bad luck for the Chasers. Twice is beginning to look careless.

When you get right down to it, I like that there’s precious little sneakiness being asked of our teams in this show, which I felt was a bit of a jarring note in Destination X last year. Yes, okay, the team in first place one week gets to determine the order in which the teams will be asked starting questions in the next show but that’s it. The show is about answering questions , working out clues, and passing through a few locations that are very easy on the eye and I like that.

Seriously, does anyone actually like the long questions?

Being a quizzer and an ex-teacher means I could probably moan for Britain (England through birth, Scotland through ancestry or Wales through long term residency. I also have Irish ancestry, but too many generations back for me to qualify and French Huguenot ancestry from even further back. )  And one of the things long term viewers of Mastermind do like to moan about is the length and wordiness of too many of the questions. This is not exactly news to anyone, is it? Now, on the odd occasions that I have heard anyone official justifying this the argument has been that it plays fairer to the viewers at home who then have a bit more time to think of the answer yuttah yuttah.

I wonder. Is it maybe just possible that the repeat of episodes from Mastermind – The Original Series on Monday evenings at 9pm will maybe encourage the production team to rethink this? As I noted in a previous post, BBC4 repeated the 1972 Grand Final last Monday. Yes, there were some notable differences between this first final and what Mastermind – The Next Generation has become. But one of the things worth noting was the sheer speed with which the rounds moved . Yes, okay, the specialists were 2 and a half minutes long, and the GK 3 minutes long, but blimey, they didn’t half cover some ground and get through a lot of questions. To me, that’s a lot more exciting than watching the poor old contender sit through a question so long that you’ve forgotten the start of the question before Clive has got to the end of it, who then passes or gives a wrong answer anyway.

And the thing is it doesn’t seem to be only me who feels this way. That bastion of truth, honesty and fair play, the Daily Express, published a thundering article in the week, claiming that angry viewers had blasted the performance of last Monday’s 4 contenders. Typical clickbait rubbish, but what was interesting was the number of comments from viewers unfavourably comparing the questions on the current show compared with the 72 final. With the best will in the world, I do think that the style of questions at the moment makes it very hard for a contender to build up any momentum, and I honestly think that with shorter questions the average GK scores of the contenders at least would increase. Blimey, it’s got to be worth a try, at least.

The Continuing Saga

If you’ve been following my recent posts about the changes to the marking system in our quiz at the Aberavon Rugby club and my suspicions about the scores emanating from one of the teams during our ‘mark your own’ era then you’re maybe feeling that it’s all rather distasteful and shows me up as small-minded and petty. Probably guilty as charged if I’m being totally honest. Well, if you are of this opinion, this post is the latest installment of the mini-saga and you might want to give it a miss.

Right, now they’ve gone, let me tell you what happened last night. To recap, from the end of lockdown until a fortnight ago we had a marking policy in the quiz that everyone would mark their own answers, relying on the fact that it’s just a fun quiz with no prizes to be able to trust teams not to inflate their scores. For all bar one team I trust their scores implicitly. With the other one, no, ‘fraid not.

I’ve mentioned these suspicions on the blog from time to time, but never tried to discuss it at the quiz. Just didn’t think I could, really. Blimey, the way that team reacted when I asked them how they managed to score 15 on a 14 point round would put anyone off making a scene in the club. Then  a fortnight ago our esteemed and valued organiser, Dai Norwich (his name is David and he has spent a lot of time in Norwich) announced that with Covid hopefully receding ever further behind us we would be switching to swapping our answer sheets with another team for marking. The team I have my suspicions about were not there. Last week, when I was the question master, two of that team were there. Now, bear in mind that they have several times played with just two of them there. I gave them the answer sheets, and the picture handout and they did not say a word about not playing. I announced we were carrying on swapping answers for marking. Then, when it came to swap answers they said that they weren’t playing.

Right, so what happened last night with them then? Answer – nothing. They weren’t there. Maybe they were all away on holiday. One of the guys has an injury at the moment I believe as well. On the other hand, I just can’t help wondering whether the change in marking policy has anything to do with it. Dan, Jess and I were discussing this in the car on the way home and we all agreed that we’d just really like to be certain about it all. Yes, I think that they were inflating their scores somehow, but all I have is evidence, not proof. I’d just like to see how they perform in a few quizzes where someone else is marking their papers and knows what they really, honestly scored. And if they still score as well as they were scoring when they marked their own papers then that’s absolutely fine. We’ll know. Likewise, I really don’t want to thrash them week in week out – it’s not that kind of quiz. I don’t want them to be driven out of the quiz. But I do want to feel we can trust the scores that teams are saying they had , and I don’t want to be leaving the quiz on a Thursday evening feeling that one team is taking us all for mugs, which to be honest is a feeling I’ve had a lot over the last 5 years.

I Wonder

In conversation yesterday I reflected that my grandparents’ generation lived through the Second World War. In fact in 3 of my grandparents’ cases, they lived throughout both First and Second World Wars. My youngest grandparent, my father’s mother, was born in 1915, so she at least lived through part of both wars, although she was too young to remember the first at all.

Both of my grandfathers died before I was born. Neither of my grandmothers ever seemed to want to talk about the Second World War. Which is ironic really because when we talk about their generation, we tend to remember them specifically as the generation that lived through the war, rightly so. Yet in both grandmothers’ cases the war was something they didn’t particularly want to talk about.

Both of my parents were born in London in the early months of the war. Both were only 5 when it ended and neither of them had particularly strong memories of it. But their generation was the generation of war babies who got to grow up during the post war austerity of the late 40s and the 1950s. I can’t help thinking about what Sir Billy Connolly once said about the 1950s. He was talking about that period before Rock and Roll hit our shores. And he basically said words to the effect of – I remember the 50s. I was there and it was like living in the Eurovision Song Contest in a school uniform. The world was beige and the music was crap.- I’m guessing he meant Eurovision as it was in its first couple of decades and not as it is now.

I can’t help wondering, in the future, when my grandchildren are grown up and have children and grandchildren of their own, how will they think about our generation, that is, the kids who were born in the 60s and grew up in the 70s. Because looking back, I can’t help feeling just a little bit blessed that I was born when I was. I grew up in a Britain with a functioning NHS, went to a comprehensive school just 2 years after the local authority had ended the 11 plus system that in a lot of ways determined the future course of kids’ lives from some tests they did before they reached puberty, went to a University and not only did not have to pay tuition fees, but got given a grant to support me when I studied. Off the top of my head it’s difficult to think of anything in my lifetime anything like as hard or traumatic as what my parents’ and my grandparents’ generations lived through. There was Covid, certainly, which was unusual and very frightening at the time. Thousands and thousands of people died who should not have died at that time, and it’s easy to forget this as the memory of lockdown recedes into History. Growing up we lived with the fear of nuclear war, but that was just it. We lived with it, it didn’t seem to affect our lives that much. Who knows what they’ll say about us? Time alone will tell.

 

Museums

In 2022, a couple of years before my years of working at the chalkface came to its blessed end my school held a craft fair in an evening during the summer term. I was offered a stall and I sold a couple of paintings and a couple of prints. Lovely jubbly, thank you very much. Now one of the stallholders came up and invited me to take a stall in another craft fair, nothing to do with the school, being held in a couple of weeks in Neath. I had to take out some public liability insurance, and this meant that I was going to need to sell more pictures than I’d sold in the school to make any kind of profit. But hey, she told me, it was being held in a much bigger venue, for longer, all day rather than a couple of hours in an evening and it was being well advertised, locally.

Well, it was certainly a bigger venue and there were more stallholders. I don’t know how well it had been advertised, though, because there was hardly anybody there all day. I sold precisely nowt. Adding insult to injury the organisers came round asking stallholders for donations to charity. I replied that I would gladly make a donation as soon as I broke even for the day, knowing full well that this was unlikely to happen.

The only good thing about the day was that it did enable me to meet and start to get to know a real-life costumed hero. Captain Beany. If you don’t know about the captain, it’s probably a safe bet to say that you don’t come from Port Talbot or the local area, or you haven’t lived there for a long time, or you don’t visit it a great deal. We’ve all heard of national treasures. Well, Captain Beany is a Port Talbot local treasure. By his own efforts, he has become something of a legend.

Which is not something I would have predicted 40 years ago. I moved to Port Talbot on Friday 12^th September 1986, having got married on the 10^th. On the 15^th I started the primary school observation stage of my PGCE teaching certificate. Quite a week. One item of local news that same weekend was an eccentric gentleman called Barry Kirk and his attempt to break the world record for sitting in a bathful of beans. He succeeded too, as I recall, and from then on he and his alter ego Captain Beany from the Planet Beanus would become a fact of life in Port Talbot that just was not going to go away. Beany legally changed his name by deed poll to Captain Beany in 1991. Over the years he has raised tens of thousands of pounds for charities and good causes in the area.

In 2009, Beany opened his Baked Bean Museum of Excellence in his own council flat. It was opened by TV’s Danny Wallace, who featured it in one of his TV shows. Hunter Davies, the man who wrote the official biography of the Beatles, visited and wrote about it. At one stage it was Trip Advisor’s most popular attraction in Port Talbot. Beany invited me to visit, but I never quite got my act together to do this before the museum closed in 2023, when the council sent Tai Tarian in to renovate the flats.

I love museums. Whenever I’m off on a trip somewhere one of the first thing I do is google to see what museums are there. But somehow I seem to have missed out on a lot of the strange museums you can find in different places, even when it would have taken little or no effort to get there, like Beany’s. Just off the top of my head, I missed out on the Devil Museum in Kaunas when I visited in 2018. That wasn’t strictly my fault, having said that. It was Easter time, but Spring had come later in the Batlic than it did in the UK that year, and it was bitterly cold for most of the time I was there, and like an awful lot of places, the museum was closed when I went.

Then there was Reykjavik’s Phallological Museum. Yes, that word Phallological does mean what you think it means. Sorry, but I just didn’t fancy popping in when I had so much else to do and see in my short time in Iceland. My daughter and son-in-law went to Reykjavik the same year. My daughter gave it a miss, but James, my son in law did have a look. When I asked him about it he said, ”I found it quite interesting . . . even if it was just a load of willies.” There you go.

I mention all of this chaff because I took a long weekend on leave from work last week and made a visit to the Helicopter Museum in Weston Super Mare. It was one of a few museums I’ve never visited that I think would make a nice trip in a single day. The Helicopter Museum won out because it is closest to my home and is home to the few remaining bits of the Fairey Rotodyne. The Fairey Rotodyne was one of a number of aviation initiatives post war Britain came up with and somehow managed to make the least of. Basically the Rotodyne combined a rotor that was powered by jets on the tips of the blades during take off and landing, but spun free like an autogyro during level flight. It performed very well in tests, but there were concerns over the noise the jets made during take off and landing, and only one prototype was built then the government pulled the plug before any orders were received. I’ve become a little obsessed with it I suppose and even painted it a couple of weeks ago.

The other museums on the list? Well, I would really like to go to the Hovercraft Museum in Lee on Solent and have long meant to visit the Tank Museum in Bovington. Which sets me wondering, is there any mechanical means of transport that there is NOT a museum dedicated to in the UK? Did you know that there is a Lambretta scooter museum in Weston Super Mare? No, me neither or I might well have been tempted to make it part of a double header when I went to Weston last week. The National Cycle Museum is in Llandrindod Wells, a place well worth a visit in it’s own right. Amazingly , there is even a Bubblecar Museum! It’s in Lincolnshire, near Boston. Now that’s too far for a day trip for me, but it’s a definite addition to my must-see list. Sorry, but I absolutely love the Isetta, Messerschmidt and Heinkel bubblecars. Should I ever win the lottery – highly unlikely since I never buy a ticket – I want one of each.

Entrepreneurs might note that there is not yet a Segway Museum nor a Space Hopper Museum, so it Is still possible to get in on the ground floor with those.

Mastermind Grand Final 1972

I don’t know if it was planned because the BBC knew that a pretty underwhelming edition of Mastermind was showing earlier in the evening and they wanted to give the fan something more meaty by way of apology, but after UC last night, over on BBC4 we had Sally Magnusson giving us her memories of the show during her much missed Dad’s 25 year stint as question master. I really rather enjoyed this 15 minute show – although even if I hadn’t I would have forgiven her anyway because when I met her in person she was handing me my Mastermind bowl.

This was followed by the 1972 Mastermind final. I found this really interesting as I’m pretty sure I have never seen it before. Although much of what we remember about the show during the Magnus years was in evidence, there were some quite unusual aspects. Firstly there were only 3 contenders – Nancy Wilkinson, Beryl Leatham Thomas and Joan Taylor. Secondly, these rounds were long – 2 and a half minutes on specialist and 3 minutes on GK. Much of this has been written about in Magnus’ own “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish”, his history of the first 25 years of the show. But to continue – the specialist categories were extremely broad, and I can guarantee that they’d be a lot more narrowly defined if taken today. As it was, I got double figures on Nancy’s round on the History of Music just from my general knowledge.

There was no mention of passes being counted in the event of a tie, and indeed all three contenders showed no hesitation and passed a lot more than you would have expected.

Anothr thing that intrigued me was that Joan Taylor, the last contender to go in the GK round, had reached 35 in response to Nancy’s 37, and immediately after Magnus asked the question, the buzzer went. AT which the audience burst into applause, and she never answered. Under the established rules, Magnus would have said that she could answer at this stage, but she didn’t even try. It wouldn’t have made any difference, but I found it a bit surprising.

You knew that this was recorded in the early 70s when Magnus came across just a little bit patronising when he made the point that all 3 finalists had to beat male opposition to get to the final.

One thing you didn’t see is a story that Magnus tells in the book, where he explains that with the GK rounds being 3 minutes long, Nancy went so quickly that he ran out of questions! Bosworth Taylor had to get a copy of the World Book and make up some more while Nancy waited. You couldn’t tell from watching the show, though.

Do you know what? I wouldn’t mind watching a few more like this.

University Challenge Round One - Guildhall School of Music and Drama v. Darwin, Cambridge

The Teams

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Sam Warburton

Jamie Harms

Tara Beavon (Capt.)

Dara Toal

Darwin, Cambridge

Ella Mason

David Lumsden

Rachel Gu (Capt.)

Macsen Brown

Well, good people, after the rather lacklustre Mastermind earlier yesterday evening it fell to University Challenge to provide us with a little quality and maybe a modicum of excitement.

The first question was a pretty topical one, which is surprising considering it was about a Victorian lady called Elizabeth Wardle. I knew she was the driving force behind the Victorian copy of the Bayeux Tapestry. It’s wonderful. All of the naked figures in the original have little shorts and proto bikinis – well, this was the Victorian Era. If you’re ever in Reading go to the museum and see it. Captain Tara Beavon came in very early for this one. Films of the actor Mia “Who?” Goth brought one bonus. When Amol said in the next starter that the creature he wanted can grow up to 2 feet long and is harmless to humans I guessed a snake of some sort and was right, but neither tea, picked up on the clues. Daniel Lumsden opened his team’s account knowing some ancient names for the Caspian Sea. Pairs of words differing only by the replacement of an initial C with a K proved a nice UC special set though it yielded just one correct answer. Rather embarrassingly Guildhall lost five on a music question, allowing Ella Mason in with Alberti Bass, who played Bootsie in the Army Game (ask your great grandparents). Scientific words beginning with the prefix helio – brought Darwin a full house. I as happy to take an early lap of honour for knowing the last two. For the picture starter, I recognized the flag of the Isle of Wight immediately, having a patch of the very same in my collection of patches from places I’ve visited. Macsen Brown – who had introduced himself by saying Hi in Welsh despite coming from Kilburn – was first to win the buzzer race. More flags of islands around the UK brought a good couple of bonuses. Both teams rather sat on their buzzers with the next starter, eventually allowing Daniel Lumsden to take a leisurely buzz and identify the US State of Virginia. 2 bonuses on volcanoes completed a very effective first ten minutes for Darwin and they led 80- 10.

Sam Warburton struck back for Guildhall, recognizing several definitions of the word lobe. 1 bonus was taken from a gettable set on Michelangelo. They could have had another but said the Greek name, Dionysus instead of the roman one, Bacchus, God of Wine, whose brother Tobacchus was the God of Nicotine. (RIP John Browning.) Tara Beavon was the winner of the buzzer race to identify Figaro, from two operas based on a song by the Brotherhood of Man. One bonus on Stockholm was taken. So to the music starter. Nobody recognized a wee bit of Mahler. For the next starter I had eyepatch from Snake Plissken, while Macsen Brown had it after Danger Mouse. More classical pieces dedicated to drinking and alcohol did not, sadly, include J.S. Bach’s “Buy us a pint or I’ll kick yer arse”, and brought one bonus, Darwin missing out on Beethoven and Carl ‘Sod’ Orff. The old quiz chestnut about Percy Spencer’s invention of the microwave oven fell to Sam Warburton. Biographical films about the lives of scientists brought another single bonus. Jamie Harms knew that the R in several abbreviations stood for rights. Granta’s first list of best young novelists from 1983 brought them, well, another single bonus. Still, at least Guildhall were having a bit of a purple patch with the buzzer and Jamie Harms knew that it was Hector whose wife was Andromache. Bonuses on trip-hop (no, me neither) , well, somewhat inevitably they got just the one. Going into the second picture starter on 20 minutes the score stood at 95 – 85 to Darwin.

Sam Warburton won the buzzer race to identify a photo of a swift. Other birds with long migrations at last provided Guildhall with a full house and the lead. Ella Mason knew that the smallest sword used in fencing is a foil. One bonus on early Christian imagery levelled the scores with only 6 minutes to go. Macsen Brown won the buzzer race to identify Orion from Rigel and Betelgeuse. Equations in biology brought two bonuses, and only a slip of the tongue prevented a Darwin full house. Tara Beavon knew the game Cyberpunk for the next starter. The three bonuses were all connected with the word strawberry. They took one, ignoring the time honoured axiom that if it’s an old Swedish film, then the answer is often Ingmar Bergman. I did not know that sarcasm comes from the Greek for flesh tearing, but worked it out from sarcophagus – flesh eater. Nobody had it. Jamie Harms identified the pectoral muscles for the next starter. German prepositions brought them two bonuses and late in the game either team could win, and both could get a repechage score. Macsen Brown recognized a list of people who have all appeared on £10 notes. Poets writing about poetry brought 1 bonus. Ella Mason recognized various types of root for the next starter pushing Darwin back in front. Universities named after people gave them a 20 point lead. It looked as if Guildhall had to get the next starter. Dara Toal got it for them too, recognizing applications of the word screen. They didn’t have enough time to get any bonuses on adaptations to extreme cold, though. Darwin won by 165 to 155.

Guildhall had a BCR of just under 43%, while Darwin’s was 55.5% and so even though Guildhall got more starters, the bonuses won the game for them. As for Guildhall, well, I rather hope that they will make it to the repechage.

Amol Watch

Do you care that Amol was born in 1983? No, me neither. He does like his little autobiographical asides does our Amol.

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

The Adelie penguin makes the longest migration of any flightless bird, at a staggering 8000 miles (and if I was walking 8 miles, let alone 8,000, let me tell you that I’d be staggering too.)

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

What biological concept whereby organisms appear to behave in a way that is harmful to themselves but beneficial to others, is rationalized by Hamilton’s rule? This formula takes into consideration the cost and the benefit of performing a certain action, as well as the genetic relatedness between the two individuals involved.

Altogether now – dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2027 Heat 4

Well, there we are then. In the week that the Beeb announced that they will be putting Celebrity Mastermind out of our misery, how did the latest set of contenders do?

First to go was Ria Drabble . She was answering on British Birds of Prey. Now, in my better late than never preview I suggested that it was possible that I might get some points on each of tonight’s rounds, and in the first half dozen questions or so I raced away to 3 points. I didn’t get any more for the rest of the round, though. Ria too started well but struggled more as the round went on and it was only with a late rally that she managed to post a total of 5.

Josh Duckmanton was answering on my banker subject for the night, the Roger Moore era of James Bond films. He too started very well. Like Ria before him he suffered a mid-round wobble but managed to keep going and lift his score to a respectable 8. As for me, well I did do slightly better than I did on the birds of prey, levelling out at a further 4 points.

I can do nothing more than extend my sympathy to poor Gurdas Singh Sually. He had the horrible experience of pushing his score nicely along to 4 and then not answering another question correctly until the end of the round, which was more than a minute away. I’ll be honest, my three points all came from within the first few questions and I did not get any right after that. Which is not to say that I think that this was a rogue set of questions, but it does go to show what can happen in a specialist round, especially in a show where there seemed to be something in the air, like tonight’s show.

After the previous three specialist rounds you maybe wouldn’t have blamed Bryony Richards if she’d made a run for it at this stage, but she didn’t. Bryony was answering on Sylvia Plath. This was the round where I doubted if I was going to get any points, but I managed the one and that was enough to take me to an aggregate of 12. Bryony always seemed calm and self-possessed throughout the round, but she did not find it notably easier than the rest of tonight’s contenders. With 6 points she’d have been out of contention in the average show, but in terms of what was happening this did not appear to be an average show.

First back was Gurdas. I thought that his round was marginally tougher than the other GK rounds in tonight’s show, and it’s fair to say that it turned out to be a bit of a grim old struggle. He scored 6 for a total of 10. Chalk it up as one of those nights, sir, and put it behind you.

Ria, then, had an outside chance of taking an unlikely win if she could produce a really good general knowledge round. Well, it didn’t happen. To be fair, she scored 7, one more than Gurdas had managed, but in all honesty it wasn’t a great round. Well, Ria, it’s a story you can tell to the kids that you teach. Thank you for playing – we’d have no show if people weren’t prepared to give it a go.

Bryony, as I said, was in with a shout, despite her modest GK score. She adopted the tactic of trying to get through as many questions as possible by passing anything where an answer didn’t occur to her straightaway. And who is to say that the tactic didn’t work? She scored 9 to take her total to 15. Normally this would not be a winning total. Tonight though it looked as if anything could happen. The number of passes she had incurred looked worrying, though.

Josh, then, needed an achievable 8 points to win. I say achievable, but only Bryony had beaten it all evening. Josh had scored 8 on specialist. As with so many rounds this evening, the pace slowed, and Josh seemed to be wading through treacle in the last 30 seconds. He had 15, but the 16^th point to make it certain just would not come. In the end though, Bryony’s pass total was just too high, and Josh won. Well done, sir, and good luck in the semis

Alright then, let me tackle the elephant in the room. In terms of quality, that was not a very good heat. It’s difficult to guarantee that you’re not going to have 4 modest scores in the same heat – combinations of subjects can throw this up. It happens. It’s not the sort of thing you would want to watch every week, I know. But no contender deliberately achieves a modest score and as I said earlier, if we don’t have contenders willing to put themselves into the firing line, then we don’t have a show.

Ria Drabble	British Birds of Prey	5	3	7	4	12	7
Josh Duckmanton	James Bond: The Roger Moore Years	8	1	7	3	15	4
Gurdas Singh Sually	King Charles I	4	2	6	3	10	5
Bryony Richards	Sylvia Plath	6	2	9	5	15	7

 

Mastermind Heat 4 Specialist subject preview

Sorry I’m late guys. Still, with over an hour to go there’s just time for me to preview today’s specialist subjects.

We have:-

British Birds of Prey

Roger Moore’s tenure as James Bond

King Charles I

Sylvia Plath

If I can scrape a point out of Sylvia Plath I reckon there’s just a chance I might get points in all 4 of these rounds. The banker round? Well, I usually do okay on British Kings and Queens, but the Roger Moore years of James Bon look an even better bet for me. Now that I’ve said that I’ll probably score 0 on it.

Coming back to Sylvia Plath, I distinctly remember when I was studying English Literature over 40 years ago, whenever Ted Hughes’ name was mentioned a sizeable chorus would always pipe up “The wife-murderer!” Of course, Ted Hughes did not murder Sylvia Plath. They were separated when Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963.

And on that note . . .

A Purely Hypothetical Question

Allow me to ask a hypothetical question. Let’s suppose that there is a quiz (a hypothetical quiz) on a Thursday night (a hypothetical Thursday night) in a rugby club in Port Talbot (a hypothetical rugby club). Since the end of lockdown, the procedure at the (hypothetical) quiz has been that (hypothetical) movement will be limited by each (hypothetical) team marking their own (hypothetical) papers. Alright, so let’s take the hypothetical thing for granted, shall we? So we have one of the teams who have been stuck in the bottom half of the table for decades before covid, suddenly becoming the second best team after covid, whose scores are miles better than all of the others apart from the top team.

Okay. Now in our quiz, the organizer institutes a new procedure whereby every team swaps with a nearby team for marking in a clockwise direction. The first week that it’s trialled, the suspect team are absent. Then the next Thursday, they turn up. Let’s say that the question master is a hypothetical (sorry) me. I give out the answer sheets and scrap paper to the team. Not a word to discourage me from doing so. I give out the picture hand out sheets to the team. Not a word to discourage me from doing so. Then I announce that we’re going to be using the new marking procedure again and say which team is going to be switching with which. I deliberately do not look at them while I am doing this, so can’t be sure how they react.

I know how they react when I ask the teams to swap at the end of round one, though. ‘We’re not playing.’ they say. And they don’t.

Now, before I ask the question, I think you should be in possession of all the facts. The team normally consists of 4 or more players and there are only two there this night.

So let’s get to the hypothetical question. Bearing in mind the suspicions that have been felt about the team, what hypothetical conclusions would YOU have drawn about their decision not to participate last night?

I know what I think.

Rather unpleasant

Actually, speaking of Mastermind, I had rather an unpleasant experience on Sunday. My mother-in-law had a TIA, or mini-stroke. Before I go any further I should add that she seems okay and recovering well and is at home. That wasn’t just unpleasant, it was shocking.

The unpleasant thing was this. Mary and I were at a quiz. She was out in the afternoon with her friend Helen, and found that the pub/hotel they were in up the Afan Valley, the Afan Lodge, was holding a quiz later. I said I’d join them there for the quiz.

You may find this hard to believe but when I go to a new quiz in a new place I haven’t been before I never go boasting about having been on Mastermind, never mind having won it. Well, when I arrived on Sunday I soon discovered that Helen had been doing just this, broadcasting to all and sundry ‘Mary’s husband’s coming to the quiz and he won Mastermind!” So in part it’s her fault.

We had just completed two handout rounds and were halfway through the first round, on lateral thinking, when Mary received a phone call about her mum. We got up and rushed out, and as we were going the 20-something question master boomed out over the mic – “Mastermind’s going! The quiz is too hard for him!”

I had no time to stop and put him straight. Helen says that she ripped him a new cakehole, but then Helen says a lot of things, which was one of the causes in the first place.

But if by any chance you are the question master from the Afan Lodge last Sunday and reading this – well, now you know. We left for reasons which had nothing to do with your quiz – which to be honest had by that stage showed no signs of being anything to write home about.

Adios, Sleb Mastermind

I’ve just seen an announcement from the BBC that it will show one more series of Celebrity Mastermind and then that will be it. If you’re a regular reader of the blog you’ll know that I greet the news with a certain amount of relief.

At the risk of going over well-trodden ground again, Mastermind was always a strange choice to beget a celebrity version and I’m afraid that in more recent years it has become a bit of a source of ridicule, in part for the low levels of GK shown by the average celebrity, but also due to the fact that for large sections of the viewing public, we don’t have a clue about who the majority of the ‘celebrities’ actually are. LAM reader Daniel Adler hit the nail on the head when he said that it’s coming to something when you recognise more of the contenders on a heat of the regular series than you do on an edition of the celebrity show.

I know that all of the contenders in the celebrity show are giving their services to raise money for charity which is an admirable thing. But that really does not mean that it’s an enjoyable show to watch. In both 2025 and in 2026 the first round of the regular series was ruined by taking it off the air to show the celebrity series. In 2026 they even showed a repeat of the first heat of the celebrity series the week after they broadcast the last one! And it had been crap the first time as it was!

Well, I can at least remember one entertaining moment from the show’s 20+ year run. The late Ian Lavender had just sat in the chair, and when John Humphrys asked “Your name?” Rick Wakeman sitting on contenders row shouted “Don’t tell ‘im, Pike!” Hey, it made me laugh.

There's a novelty -

I met Rod Burton on a tube train the late 70s once. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate. I was on a tube train once and Rod Burton came into the same carriage and got off a couple of stops later. We didn’t exchange any words so I didn’t exactly meet him. Well, be fair, it was a tube train and you didn’t.

Rod, if you’re not sure, was one third of Rod, Jane and Freddy. If you’re still not sure they had a pretty long running kid’s TV series running through the 80s into the early 90s. I watched it a few times with my kids. I think the best way to describe the shows is that each was a 15 minute mini musical, concerning different issues like moving house. It was rather good for what it was, unless memory deceives me.

Of course, the trio are probably far better known for providing the music component of ITV’s iconic and long running younger children’s show, “Rainbow”. Why I mention “Rainbow” is this. I am currently moonlighting in the office today, responding to the live CDS phone line rather than the messages on the DAP phone line. Don’t worry about it. But it does mean that I’ve been surreptitiously looking at Facebook on my phone in the interludes between calls. There’s been quite a bit of clickbait about the show there because puppeteer, Ronnie Le Drew, who operated Zippy, passed away this week.

Now, if you click on clickbait then you probably deserve what you get. But one thing I learned was really rather interesting. I knew in the 70s that Rod and Jane were married. Not for all that long, it appears, though. They divorced in 1979, I think. What I didn’t know though was that in the mid 80s Jane began a relationship Freddy Marks, the Freddy of Rod, Jane and Freddy, culminating in marriage quite a few years later. So, at different times, Jane was married to both Rod and Freddy. Well, good luck to all three of them. Freddy sadly passed away a couple of years ago. Rod made it quite clear in an interview that his split with Jane had nothing to do with Freddy and that their relationship didn’t start until several years later.

I just found it interesting – there’s lots of examples of TV performers marrying their co-stars, but marrying both of your co stars at different times, now that’s a bit special.

Tip 'n Strip

True story. On Monday, my friend, colleague (and former pupil) Viv returned to the office after a week away. She gave us all presents, in my case a biro. I was in the middle of a phone call and only took a quick glance at it and saw a young woman’s head. I idly wondered if it was one of those novelty pens where, if you hold it point down to write with it the lady in the bathing suit on the barrel of the pen miraculously loses her clothes. When I had finished the call I had a closer look at the pen and realised the lady on it was the Virgin Mary. Viv had been to Lourdes with her church. Thanks goodness I had not voiced my suspicions to her. And no, before you asked, nothing happened to Our Lady’s image when I began to write with the pen.

Just out of interest the technology that made the wonders of the ‘tip n’ strip’ pen possible was, like lego, created in Denmark. Baker Peder Eskesen created the leak proof mineral oil sealing process for floating action pens in 1946. The company he created started to market the ‘tip n’ strip’ or ‘disappearing swimsuit’ pen in 1962.

Just out of interest, the first pen to use the floating oil technology was created for Esso, and featured a floating barrel of oil.

I really don’t know if the ‘tip n’ strip’ pen is commonly available any more, but if it is I’d guess it’s probably in seaside souvenir (crap) emporia. Which brings to mind one Wednesday morning seminar I took part in 43 years ago.  At that time the Warden of University of London Goldsmith’s College was Richard Hoggart, father of Simon and author of “Uses of Literacy”. He was a very interesting speaker, whose lectures under the guise of seminars were something I looked forward too. Even if he did remark once that he thought Mastermind was simply the most ridiculous programme on television. He was an incorrigible name dropper (he once told us he had to end the seminar early because he was going for a late breakfast with Graham Greene) and one of the names he once dropped was George Orwell. Rather than going into detail about any of the novels what he really wanted to do was to talk about Orwell’s 1941 essay on seaside postcards and the work of Donald McGill.

McGill was the artist most clearly associated with the genre of ‘saucy seaside postcard.’ Reading his Wikipedia biog I was surprised to see that he was actually prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1857 as late as 1954. He apparently never received more than 3 guineas per design even at the height of his fame, and no royalties. So even though his most successful postcard “Do you like Kipling?” “I don’t know, you naughty man,I’ve never kippled.” has sold more than 6 million copies, he never received one penny for it after the initial payment.

I’ll be honest, I don’t think that the kind of humour in these postcards - you can call it innocent if you wish but I reserve my right to disagree – has stood the test of time. But when I was growing up in 70s it was still pretty mainstream. The Thames Television Benny Hill shows, for example, are an oft quoted example and they are oft given as an example for a good reason. Now, Benny Hill was actually a very clever and intelligent man and a gifted comic, but he knew the market he was aiming for an he aimed for it unerringly.  To give another example, the Two Ronnies used a far wider variety of humour and was often far more clever than Benny Hill’s ITV shows. But Ronnie Barker – as clever, intelligent and witty as Benny, as good a comic as Benny and a great actor to boot, was very fond of this seaside postcard humour, and had a huge personal collection of seaside postcards. And there are times in Two Ronnies shows where you can clearly see this influence.

I’m struggling to bring this post to any kind of conclusion. So I’ll bring it back to the whole question of seaside souvenirs. 10 years ago, when my daughter Jenn started her career as a travel agent, I rediscovered my love of travel, and in 10 years I’ve been all over Europe and as far as New York City. Wherever I go I try to buy a souvenir cloth patch for my collection, these having been very much one of the tourist souvenirs of choice from when I was growing up, and taking up a lot less space than snow globes. I’ve been places where you just can’t get them. But fridge magnets! They are like stinking fish now! And I just can’t help wondering why that is, and how they have grown so popular to the detriment of other kinds of tourist tat. Answers on a postcard, please. (But preferably, not a saucy, Donald McGill one.)

University Challenge 2027 First Round University College, Oxford v. St. John's College, Cambridge

The Teams

University College, Oxford

Adam Sakabani

Deepro Choudhury

Delia Cropper (capt)

Shaon Bhattacharya

St. John’s College, Cambridge

Callum Thomas

Jonathan Watts

Liam Plimmer (capt)

Aurelia Walker

Deepro Choudhury took first blood for Univ with a deeply impressive early buzz. He needed only the first item to identify that all the items on the list have names ending in -ibo. I do wonder if Haribo would have been one? I guess we’ll never know. Words for lookalikes in different languages brought Univ a good full house. I thank a recent Weaver’s Week post for giving me Prisoner’s Dilemma as the answer to the next starter. Univ skipper Delia Cropper took that one. It would not be her last starter of the evening by a long chalk. Hyperboloid structures in architecture – announced Amol. There’s a novelty, said I, then took two to Univ’s full house. Jonathan Watts elbowed St. John’s into the contest winning the buzzer race to answer incisor for the next starter. Experiments involving drops brought a full house, and the last one was so easy, about Gallileo and the Tower of Pisa, that I didn’t even take a lap of honour for getting it right. The picture starter involved a map of England and Wales highlighting several AONBs (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty). Delia Cropper knew that their names all contain the word Hills. More AONBs with shared name elements brought Univ one bonus. Liam Plimmer, the St. John’s skipper recognised various uses of the name Gilead for the next starter. Short kings was an intriguing subject for a set of bonuses but these tiny monarchs yielded nothing for St. John’s. At least they managed a second consecutive starter with Callum Thomas buzzing very early to identify a reference to Norwegian. Kinship systems as described by Lewis Henry Morgan. Two bonuses meant that the scores were nicely poised, with Univ leading 65-55 at just after 10 minutes.

Delia Cropper was the first to recognise bands or songs linked by the word Bay which brought her the next starter. Dryden and Shakespeare brought two correct answers. A long and tedious starter on Mersenne (ex Arsenal midfielder Paul?) was thankfully stopped in its overly long tracks by Jonathan Watts. Terms in extraction of metals brought one bonus. I had a rare music starter right, recognising, as did Jonathan Watts, the Radetzky March (Diddle dum, diddle dum, diddle dum dum dum) 3 more marches, also conducted by Leonard Bernstein, brought two bonuses. This just edged St. John’s into the lead. Sadly they lost five for the next starter, but this allowed Delia Cropper to add to what was becoming an impressive total of starters for glyph as in heiro and petro. Univ took two bonuses on the Panama Canal but missed the explorer Balboa, who was named after a well known Sylvester Stallone character. Very quickly Delia Cropper added another starter recognising a series of terms belonging to Mario 64. People recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as patron saints of all Europe – now that’s a big gig – provided a full house of bonuses. Kublai Khan was called Emperor Shizu. I have nothing to add to that – but it gave Shaon Bhattacharya the next starter. Birdsong in classical music provided just one bonus, but the momentum was back with Univ. For the second picture starter Adam Sakabani identified the work of Georges Braque (‘Bricker’ as his mates called him). Three other paintings critiqued by Tom Wolfe in “The Painted Word” provided just one correct answer, but what did Univ care? It ran down the clock and they were leading 160-85 at just past twenty minutes.

Delia Cropper stuck the knife in a little further being first to answer that Vincent Van Gogh had lived for a period in Arles. 2 bonuses on chemistry (I think) brought them to the brink of their double century. Then an interesting thing happened. St. John’s found their buzzing fingers. First captain Liam Plimmer took a starter on Hagarism. Japanese film directrs and composers brought them 2 correct answers . I answered Kurosawa to each, and got a correct answer by doing so. They beat Univ to the buzzer for the next starter but got their Copernicus in a twist by saying Gallileo, allowing the inevitable Delia Cropper in for the correct answer of Copernicus. Meta -ethics promised little and only delivered one correct answer to Univ. But St. John’s were warming to their task as Aurelia Walker buzzed early to identify the Senegal Lions football team. Food terms from other languages delivered a full house in quick time. Callum Thomas then buzzed early with the prehistoric Sunda/Sundaland subcontinent. Another lightning fast full house was taken on the mathematical birthday problem. Delia Cropper just failed to take the next starter, giving best of instead of the best, which fell to rival skip Liam Plimmer. Another lightning full house on cricketing positions meant that, with hardly any time left, St. John’s were only 15 points behind! Neither team could take the next starter but ST. John’s lost 5. Liam Plimmer buzzed first for the next starter. He zigged with Congo, allowing Delia Cropper to zag with Niger. Tat was it. We were gonged before Amol could complete the first bonus question on American states. Univ had won by 200 – 170.

For the record Univ’s BCR was 63.3% while St. John’s was a whopping 70.3%. Good match up.

Amol Watch

Again, a thumbs up for a consistent application of – if it ain’t euite right, it’s wrong with the best question.

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

Worthless rock surrounding otherwise valuable metals or minerals is called gang.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment.

Which polymath and priest gives his name to laws relating the fundamental frequency of a vibrating string to its length , mass per unit length and tension, formulated in his 1636 to ’37 work , Harmonie Universelle? He also gave his name to the set of prime numbers of the form to the N . . . (the questions was not even over yet when we got to thi point and Jonathan Watts buzzed in. He certainly wasn’t dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum).