University Challenge 2026 - Round 2 - Churchill, Cambridge v Merton, Oxford

The Teams

Churchill College Cambridge

Ella McGovern

Matt Hasler

Sam Webber (Capt)

Shiv Seshan

Merton College Oxford

Ciaran Duncan

Evelyn Ong

Elliot Cosnett (Capt)

Verity Fleetwood-Law

I’ll be honest, I don’t really mind UC at Christmas, not like I’m really going off Sleb Mastermind. Part of that is because it doesn’t outstay its welcome, at least. Mastermind, take note.

So here we go then. With the first starter, I’ll be honest, when I heard it was Jean Paul Sartre describing a sculptor I thought Rodin. But when Amol started going on about elongated figures it had to be Giacometti. Nobody got it but Merton lost five. If you knew that William of Orange landed in Brixham then the first four letters were the answer to the next starter. Ella McGovern buzzed in and took first blood for Darwin. Now I take pride for knowing that the Barrons created electronic music for one of my favourite films, Forbidden Planet, which Churchill didn’t, and we both knew Stanley Kubrick for the last of the set on electronic film music. Elliot Cosnett took his first starter recognising a Tolkien quote about Beowulf. Philosopher/mathematician Putnam (David? Surely not.) brought two correct answers. Elliot Cosnett knew that there have been more popes called Pius since the reign of Napoleon I than you can shake a stick at for the next starter. Trust me, shaking a stick at a pope is a greatly overrated hobby. A full house on Thomas Middleton’s ever popular blockbuster A Game of Chess pushed Merton ahead. For the picture starter Ciaran Duncan recognised the work of George ‘Spotty’ Herbert. Other examples of concrete poetry (google it) provided nowt. If you came in too early on the next starter chances are you would lose five like Churchill. But Merton, hearing the name Sarajevo could be very certain the conflict described was the Bosnian War. Locations in some video game or other surprisingly gave me a full house. Merton managed one, and this meant that as the 10 minute mark loomed large in our collective windscreen they led by 65 – 10.

Elliot Cosnett knew Stephen Jay Gould’s The Hedgehog and the Fox for the next starter. Owen ‘Who’ Jones, architect and designer, brought two bonuses and Merton marched onwards. Siv Seshan stopped the rot for Churchill, winning the buzzer race to identify Crispin as one of two saints name checked in a famous speech in Henry V. Photographer and activist Nan Goldin brought a welcome brace of bonuses, at a time when Churchill were in danger of being muscled out of the match. Siv Seshan took his double with the next starter on the original kilogram. Pasta dishes whose names begin and end with the same letter  - al fabetti spaghetta, anyone? – yielded one correct answer. Nobody recognised a wee bit of Liszt for the music starter. Ciaran Duncan was in very quickly in for the next starter – he only needed one Pauline (probably Kael). Music bonuses on classical works written in memory of cultural figures brought one bonus. Elliot Cosnett knew that Hermes killed a tortoise (and a cow) in order to make the world’s first lyre. Those Greek gods, eh? The moon Europa brought two bonuses, and even the one they didn’t get was mentioned. Elliot Cosnett knew the two Erskines – Caldwell and Childers for the next starter. The German noble house of Thurn and Taxis (far more noble and more expensive than Thurn und Minicabs) brought another 2 bonuses. Again Siv Seshan buzzed to pull his team back from the brink with Active Galactic Nucleus (a support act for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in their 1981 tour, surely). 2 correct answers on the Chinese monk Faxian brought the score to 145 – to 65 to Merton just before the 20 minute mark.

Matt Hasler knew that the only team from a landlocked country to win the America’s Cup came from Geneva. Fossils discovered by Mary Anning brought two bonuses. I didn’t get the Buckland one either – I thought it might have been someone like Gideon Mantell. For the second picture starter Verity Fleetwood-Law correctly identified a painting by Hans Holbein. When Amol announced the bonuses would all be portraits of Doctors by other artists, Dr. Gachet sprang irresistibly to mind. Indeed, that was the only one either of us identified. A series of clues pointing to Charles I saw the splendid Merton skipper add another starter to his collection. Usage of the Hangul alphabet in languages other than Korean promised but little yet Merton again took a brace, and let’s be honest, it ended any real doubt that we might have had about the outcome of the match. Nobody knew Chanakya for the next starter. Nobody knew Oswald Avery (Tex’s brother?) for the next starter. For that matter nobody recognised a couple of lines from Keats’ Ode to Psyche for the next starter either. At last Ciaran Duncan took the next starter recognising the Concrete Jungle as the first example of the Heist movie. I do like a heist movie, me. Yom Tov, 6 major festival dates in the Jewish calendar, brought nowt. Siv Seshan knew that the second hand on an analogue clock passes through 6 degrees every second. I liked that question. One bonus was taken from a gettable set on Cicero. Fair play to Siv Seshan, he was still bussing away gamely at this point and took the next starter recognising that two Scottish 13^th century kings and two successive 19^th century Tsars were all called Alexander. Sarah Siddons added just one bonus to their score. That was that. Merton won by 180 to 115.

For the record Churchill achieved a BCR of 48% while Merton’s was 52%. Fairly even there, but there just wasn’t enough buzzing throughout the Churchill team to munt a realistic challenge.

Amol Watch

Nothing to see here. Go on with your lives, citizens.

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

The original kilogram was made from platinum and iridium

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Nope, noting bored the pants off me this week. Don’t worry. There will be another soporific science question along shortly

Happy New Year - but what about 2025?

Well, we all know what the 8^th January is, don’t we? Apart from my son Mike’s 38^th birthday, that is. First Thursday of the New Year? No? Alright, I’ll tell you. First Thursday night quiz in January is my quiz of the evets of the previous year.

Some years there’s so much has happened that the quiz practically writes itself and you’re beating off the good questions with a stick. Others, like 2025, are a little less productive. Still, even thought I can’t go giving away all the contents of the quiz, I will share with you possibly my favourite –

Anthony Coulson, general manager at the McVitie's chocolate refinery and bakery in Stockport – made what revelation in 2025?

The answer?

Well, he revealed that the side of the chocolate digestive with the chocolate is actually meant to be the bottom of the biscuit.

Learning from age and Experience

I often say that I’m teetotal because I don’t drink tea. Yeah, not exactly Oscar Wilde, I know. As it happens I don’t actually drink alcohol either. When you get right down to it I don’t really like the taste of either of them. However, I do have a particular fondness for Brooke Bond PG Tips that has nothing to do with the taste of the actual tea.

From the 60s right through into the 1990s, Brooke Bond used to issue collectors’ cards with their packets of tea. In the early 70s I think they made successive sets on The Race Into Space – Prehistoric Animals – the History of Aviation and a couple of others. I think that each set consisted of about 50 cards. Each card was of a comparable size to those you might get in a packet of cigarettes in days gone by, and each one had a rather lovely illustration on the front and a write up about it on the other side. You could buy an album in which to stick them. In fact, why would you collect the cards without the album? I’ve written in the past about the so-called collector gene and I guess this would have been one of its earliest manifestations within me.

The albums themselves were about A5 sized and landscape oriented. The covers were thin card but for all that they were rather lovely things. Even without the cards they were nicely illustrated and full of juicy information.

Of course, there was a problem to any would be collectors of the cards. Getting hold of all 50 of them to complete the set was difficult. There seemed to be always 1 or 2 you just never got, however many packets of tea you bullied your mum into buying. The Race into Space set was my older brother’s particular favourite. Prehistoric Animals, the next set, was mine. Now, complicating matters was the fact that I have a brother a year older, and another one 18 months younger and as far as I recall, all 3 of us collected the cards. My mum and my nan, in whose house we grew up, were no slouches when it came to tea consumption, but even they found it hard to drink enough to feed our card collecting habit.

I was two short of a full set of The Race Into Space. Neil was one card sort, the one showing Yuri Gagarin in his Vostok. I was one card short of a full set of Prehistoric Animals. It was one of the earlier cards in the set from the eras before the dinosaurs appeared. I never got it.

I think that I should add that Brooke Bond PG Tips did advertise that you could send off to them to buy the cards that you were missing. Whether it was the hassle or the expense, my mother was not keen on doing this for us, and she used what I look back on as an unusually cunning tactic, telling us that buying the cards you needed was cheating and it would only be a valid complete collection if you found all of the cards in tea packets.  Now, there was a woman who understood all about the collector’s gene, which is all the more remarkable considering that she did not possess such a gene herself.

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I still find dinosaurs and prehistoric and other extinct animals to be pretty interesting. Not as much as I did 55 years ago, but then that just goes with the territory. But I can’t say that in normal circumstances I would have experienced a desire to own an old card album from my childhood. Which makes me think.

I hung onto my Prehistoric Animals card album for quite a few years. In fact it is quite possible that it finally went in the great clear out of ’86. Basically, I left home to go to Uni in the Autumn of 1983. I came back for the holidays, but it was never my permanent home again. By the time I finished my degree in the summer of 1986, I was 21, a dad, soon to be a husband, and moving to Port Talbot. So it was a case of take anything I wanted to take to Wales, then what was left was chucked after my brothers had had pick of anything they wanted. But I can honestly say that I didn’t really think about it again until last week. If you’re a Facebook regular like me, maybe you’ll too have experienced the way that it often peppers you with adverts when you’re catching up, and one of these was for a PG Tips album from the 70s, complete with cards. Intrigued I made a search on ebay, and nearly, very nearly bought a complete album and cards set. Well, age and experience are amongst the best teachers I have ever known, and so I did what I’ve learned to do whenever I have a sudden collector’s urge like this. I went off the website and put it to the back of my mind, with the intention of coming back to it in a few days to see if the buying urge was anything like as strong.

Thankfully when I did come back to it, the urge was a lot less strong, in fact, non-existent. I really didn’t want it. I didn’t know what I’d do with it, where I’d put it and whether I’d even ever look at it again – probably not. You see, when you get right down to it, I wouldn’t be buying it for me. Not for the 61 year old me, anyway. I would have been buying it for the 7 year old me, and essentially, buying the whole set for that one card I never got when I was a kid. And the ironic thing is, there’s no way I can give it to that kid – because however much I might deny it, I’m not the same kid as I was back then.

Had I given in to that initial, misleading, siren-like compulsion, then the danger is that I’d start buying up other things I missed out on in my childhood. These include the friends of Major Matt Mason. I had the good major for my 7^th birthday, but the only accessories I ever had for him were the space sled and the ‘jet pack’. I remember writing about it in a ‘what I did at the weekend’ paragraph at school, and Miss Hall, my teacher, correcting it, and adding a ‘ge’ to the word sled. I had a mini rebellion against this, but Miss Hall, of whom I was very fond, would not accept that sled is an acceptable alternative to sledge. Which maybe was what led to the first tantrum I ever had about having something which I felt was so obviously correct marked incorrect. It wasn’t the last. Now, I’ll be honest. Even now, when I can look back on a career of more than 3 and a half decades of teaching, I find it difficult to understand why she wouldn’t accept my arguments that

a)   Space Sled is what it was specifically called on the packaging – and –

b)   Sled is a perfectly valid word anyway.

Mind you, if I was upset then, I was livid 5 years later. It was my first year at the comprehensive. Our English teacher asked us to write a story. The point, the title or the broad sweep of the narrative escape me now. However I do recall that in my story a ne’er do well was telling his accomplice to stop my hero from escaping. I wrote this small piece of dialogue.

“Get ‘im!” he shouted.”

The teacher put a big red circle around the apostrophe and the letter I, and wrote “Get him!” across the top of it. I was furious. To me, the apostrophe made it clear that I was fully aware of the missing ‘h’ and had left it out deliberately, as a phonetic rendition of how a ne’er do well would speak. Far from being an error it was, in fact, the sort of precocious display of using punctuation for stylistic effect that should have earned a little recognition, or possibly even a round of applause. I totally understand why I got so worked up about it then. I don’t understand quite so well why I still feel worked up about it today.

Still, for all that I guess that learning that even the people who you think should know that much better than you do actually occasionally don’t is ultimately a valuable life lesson. I think I’ve shared this last story with you before but what the hell, it’s a nice one to finish on. I had a student teacher once taking my class on the Scottish play when I was observing him. He was a good guy, and I have no doubt that he went on to have a very successful teaching career. However on the lesson in question, he fell foul of some of Shakespeare’s use of rather archaic terms – in this case the word ‘barque’, meaning ship. The witches in the Scottish play at one point cast an evil spell to inflict harm upon the husband of a woman who refused to share chestnuts with them. At the end of the spell they say

“Tho’ his barque may not be lost

Yet it shall be tempest-toss’d.” Which means, more or less, though we can’t sink his ship, we will make his life miserable with continual storms.

After our hero the student has given it a good old reading a hand shoots up in the front.

“What does that mean, Sir?” the pupil asks. She is not trying to catch him out.

“What?” he replies.

“His barque may not be lost, sir.” Now, I can see from the sudden panic in his eyes that he does not know. How he handles this will be interesting. Will he a) be really smart and tell the kids to look in a dictionary- or – b) be sensible enough to  look in the notes on the other side of the page – or c) gamble and bullshit?

He goes for option C

“Well – his barque may not be lost – means they can’t kill the ship’s dog.”

For the rest of his time with us he swore blind he was just joking. But I saw his eyes. I know the truth.

Sleb Mastermind v UC At Christmas

 I think you already know my opinion about Celebrity Mastermind. If you don’t, then I will summarise. I don’t want to criticise any of the celebrities who are asked to appear on it. They donate their fee to charity, and in all honesty with the size of the celebrity Mastermind audience and its makeup I think it’s unlikely to give them a huge career boost in the way that shows like Strictly, The Traitors and I’m a Celebrity can do. But when you get right down to it I just don’t think Mastermind is a good match for a celebrity version. For one thing, I don’t think that agents are clamouring to get their clients on the show. Granted, the Has Dave Heard Of Them Index is not the most scientific or reliable indicator of true celebrityness but even so, it’s not uncommon for me to be totally unfamiliar with more than half of the contenders in a series.

University Challenge at Christmas makes an interesting comparison. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the current series. Basically it’s not quite a Champion of Champions series. All of the teams have appeared on previous series, but they didn’t all win theirs. -Ah- thought I – there could be an issue here- . I’ll tell you what it is. Back in the first couple of series of UC at Christmas, some of the teams had members who had been successful in TV quizzes – most notably University Challenge itself. That policy – if indeed it was such a thing- ended. I thought to myself, if they have such a team from the early years of the series they might find themselves at a serious advantage.

Well, indeed there is such a team, in the shape of Trinity, Cambridge and yes, they have done exceptionally well. Now, I’m not saying this is only because they have a winner of full strength UC in the shape of Robin Bhattacharya, but for me he’s been the star performer of the series so far. Does it matter? No, it’s only a bit of Christmas fun. But I can’t help thinking it’s a little bit like having celebrities who’ve had dance experience and training in Strictly.

I’ll be honest, the Christmas Special I’ve enjoyed most over the holiday period was last night’s Only Connect Book Special. I do find the OC one off specials to be a little hit and miss (and not just because I’ve never been invited back to one). For example, last week’s pub quiz special really didn’t hit the target with me. But last night’s Books special was great, I thought. One of the things I love about Only Connect is that it’s not afraid to be conspicuously clever and last night’s show really was. Just now and again it’s so refreshing to be able to wear your brains on your sleeve without having to tone things down so that you don’t come across as smug and self-satisfied, in the comfort of your own home.

LAMMY Awards 2025

Yes, my friends, it’s time for the LAMMY Awards. You didn’t think you were getting off scot free this year, did you? So, with a quick fanfare, let the awards begin

LAMMY Award for the best new quiz game show of the Year

Yes, the eagle eyed among you will have spotted that we’ve widened the parameters of this category this year. I mean, I find that I spend more time watching new shows that are basically reality shows or game shows with just a hint of quiz than I do real quiz shows. I haven’t reviewed Amanda Holden’s The Inner Circle which is actually a quiz show, but I will be honest, I didn’t really want it winning by default. I do like Amanda Holden, but I’m afraid that I can’t get over the Share or Shaft final. We know from years of watching Golden Balls that you cannot be worse off by shafting. In the wider category Chess Masters was just odd and Genius Game did not for me manage to make the most of an interesting premise. The shows that I enjoyed most were Celebrity Traitors – which is ineligible for the award since it is essentially The Traitors – and Destination X. I think there are tweaks that can be made with the latter, but nonetheless I am pleased to announce that the LAMMY for best new Game Show goes to

Destination X

The Award for Best Performance in a Broadcast Quiz

The Nominees

John Robinson – Mastermind

Christ’s Cambridge

Anniko Firman

Brendan Bethlehem Oscar Despard

Linus Luu – University Challenge

Four Opinions

Jacob Epstein

Rafi Dover

Aron Carr – Only Connect

Any of our nominees is very worthy of a LAMMY. However, this year it has to go to the most recent Teacher to become a Mastermind Champion. The LAMMY goes to

John Robinson for Mastermind

The Award for Achievements in Quiz Mastership.

The field is always rather restricted because I don’t go to a wide range of quizzes any more. Now, I would love to nominate any of the setters of the rugby club quiz who aren’t actually members of my team.

But.

The simple fact is that I don’t believe any of them deserve it. That’s cruel, But, the simple fact is that none of them seems to stick to simple, basic principles, namely, check your answers. Read your questions several times in order to make sure that you are asking what you think you are asking. Try to provide something for everyone. Like I said, simple, but there are only 3 question masters in the quiz who regularly do this (alright, 4 if you include me). So the nominations once again are:-

Jessica Ayres

Adam Cook

Dan Ayres

This year I am awarding for all round excellence rather than one specific quiz. So the LAMMY this year goes to

Dan Ayres

University CHallenge 2026 - Lincoln v UCL

The Teams

Lincoln

Grace Bloomfield

Laura Bruce

Samuel Orman-Chan (Capt)

John Clayworth

University College, London

Zak Lakota-Baldwin

Alice Lee

Michael Doherty (Capt)

Manny Campion-Dye

Manny Campion-Dye opened the UCL account knowing that Mark Rothko once said ‘that man Turner, he learnt a lot from me.’ Bonuses on the Diablo series of video games provided them with a full house. John Clayworth heard ‘established by Edward III and came straight in with the order of the garter. Physics in 1925 provided one bonus, which was one more than I got. The clarinet gave Manny Campion-Dye a second starter. Public art at Liverpool Street Station brought two correct answers and it was nice to see a shout out for the Kindertransport statue, my favourite of all the works in the station. For the next starter a question whose length was beyond all proportion saw neither team get the word scavenger. Film director Francois Truffaut gave Manny Campion-Dye his and his team’s third starter. Knots from Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys (please insert your preferred joke here) were knot to UCL’s liking and they took just the one. So to the picture starter and Zak Lakota-Baldwin identified the flag of Togo. Other flags with unusual ratios brought the full house – in UC national flags are meat and drink to these guys. On ten minutes then UCL led 80 – 15.

John Clayworth put together the clues and came up with cavalier to take the next starter. Symbolism as a literary movement was not a fruitful bonus set fo Lincoln and they did not add any more points to their score. I’m a bit surprised that nobody got the word helicopter from the name Sikorsky from the next starter. Manny Campion-Dye took starter number 4 with The Castle of Otranto.Limestone brought them a single bonus. None of us knew tycopene for the next starter. Nobody knew pantheism for the next starter. Zak Lakota-Baldwin stopped the rot, recognising clues to the term cybernetics. A full house on African textiles brought us to the music round. None of us recognised the stylings of Young Fathers. Samuel Orman-Chan knew that if the question has Flemish in it then Belgium will always be a useful shout. The music bonuses consisted of three tracks from debut albums that won the Mercury Prize. They took one. I thought haversian canals were in Greater Manchester, but Michael Doherty kindly informed us they are in bones. Islamic pilgrimage destinations brought two bonuses. This meant that UCL led by 130 – 35, and Lincoln looked to have one and a half feet out of the door.

John Clayworth correctly answered Jane Austen for the next starter. Eponymous facial hair styles brought two bonuses. Gawd knows what the next starter meant but Michael Doherty gave the correct answer of Omega – not the renegade Time Lord though. Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant by Shaw brought nothing to the UCL table. For the second picture starter Zak Lakota-Baldwin recognised a photo of Cormac McCarthy, and stills from films of his works brought two more correct answers. Fair play to John Clayworth for knowing FC Copenhagen have a lion on their badge. 2 bonuses on the constellation Centaurus were taken. Nobody could complete a list of Northern Irish cities for the next starter. Increment by one – no, me neither – gave Samuel Orman-Chan the next starter. First time winners of European Football Leagues brought a few points. For the next starter Zak Lakota Baldwin recognised he description of the constellation Cygnus.The pigment vermillion brought two correct answers, but it was purely academic and had been for a while. Manny Campion-Dye recognised Shakespeare’s Cymbeline for the next starter. That was it as far as the point scoring for the match went. UCL won by 190 – 85.

For the record Lincoln achieved a BCR of 38.8% while UCL’s was 58%.

Amol Watch

Little Ms Dynamite is another we can add to the list of Amol’s likes. Her album was the anthem of his first year at university. Telling Sam Orman-Chan that he looked as if he was wearing a Fu Manchu moustache was a little personal for my liking. What was interesting here was that Amol never once tried to offer – lets see if you can get going Lincoln – type encouragement. That’s unusual.

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

The first known use of the word helicopter was in a British patent of 1861.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

 In chemistry what 9 letter term denotes a reagent added to a system to remove or bind trace components, usually with the aim of preventing unwanted reactions from occurring, an example being the sachets of iron powder and salt commonly added to packaged food (incorrect buzz). . . to absorb oxygen? In zoology this word means an animal that principally feeds on decaying matter or carrion (Thank God the question didn’t carri on.) Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

University Challenge 2026 Round 2 Trinity, Cambridge v. Edinburgh

The Teams

Trinity, Cambridge

Piers Marchant

Alessandro D’Attanasio

Yusuf Khand (Capt)

Lily Kearney

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alice Leonard (Capt)

Rayhana Amjad

Like Rayhana Amjad it was the mention of Superman’s polar home that gave me the answer of Solitude for the first starter.2 bonuses on plays about Oscar Wilde were taken.Swedish golfers fell to Piers Marchant and Trinity’s first bonus set on metals brought 1 correct answer and I took an early lap of honour for Niobium. So sue me. Yusuf Khand knew John Locke’s Treatises on Government for the next starter. Japanese folklore did not add to either of our totals. For the first picture starter Piers Marchant identified Montreal from a map. 3 more cities lending their name to international environmental agreements brought ten points. An interminable biological question lost Trinity five but brought nothing to Edinburgh. Various fatal ‘Vespers’ incidents fell to Johnny Richards. Incidentally, the first time I heard the phrase Sicilian Vespers I thought it was referring to a brand of motor scooters. The film director Joanna Hogg brought two bonuses. This meant that the score was 45-40 to Trinity on 10 minutes.

Piers Merchant knew New Caledonia for the next starter. Portuguese Goa yielded just 5 points. Yusuf Khand came in too early for the next starter and lost five and given the whole question Johnny Richards knew we wanted Montmartre. Artistic depictions of Alexander the Great only brought the one bonus but the scores were now tied. For the next starter Parthav Easwar jumped the gun allowing Piers Marchant in with Mombasa. Questions on nano technology provided a full house. For the music starter we heard a bit of classical harpsichord. The teams were Baching up the wrong tree with Handel and Teleman as it was JSB, the lad himself. Johnny Richards gave the answer of palaeogenomics for the next starter to earn the music bonuses. 3 more tracks played at the funeral of Mr. Sakamoto brought a full house. Good match. Johnny Richards recognised a quote about John Donne – didn’t mention his old show on radio 2 though. I’ll be honest, I am not really familiar with the work of RF Kuang but I managed two of the following set. Edinburgh took all three. Johnny Richards was on a role and he knew about the red stockings and blue stockings for the next starter. Bonuses on philosophy gave Edinburgh ten points and at the 20 minute mark they led by 120 – 75.

Rayhana Amjad recognised references to Ancient Armenia for the next starter. Songs whose titles are years brought a full house and things were looking ominous for Trinity. The second picture starter showed a still from a film with a pram rolling down steps. Piers Marchant won the buzzer race to identify Battleship Potemkin. Other works discussed in a book about Socialist Art – laugh a minute stuff, I imagine – did noy bring them any more points. Piers Marchant recognised references to the word cahiers – and got a French pronunciation lesson from Amol for his pains. Santa Croce in Florence brought a welcome full house. Nobody knew something I didn’t understand about computing. A UC special on instrument strings lost five for Edinburgh and brought Alessandro Attenasio his first starter with 5. Guage bosons brought 10 more points. That man Johnny Richards knew that Hanga Roa is the largest settlement on Easter Island. Natalie ‘Qui?’ Sarraute brought two bonuses that meant Trinity were going to need at least 2 visits to the table. Alessandro Attenasio earned one with a fast buzz for acid base in the next starter. Vegetables in Maya Angelou’s poem The Health Food Diner added no points. Alice Leonard took the next starter with Evelyn Waugh. A couple of bonuses on Iphigenia pretty much sealed the deal. Piers Marchant took the next starter on Tucuman. But that was the last question answered correctly before the gong. Edinburgh won by 180 to 150.

Trinity took a BCR of 46.4% while Edinburgh posted an excellent 74% and that, my friends, is essentially the story of the match.

Amol Watch

It seems that, along with Bertrand Russell Richard Feynman is an Amol hero too. ‘Great man.’

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

The only thing about doing these reviews in this way is that I don’t seem to be picking out the juicy little facts as I normally would.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

Responsible for the cellular transport of various organelles, vesicles and other cargo and for the alignment and segregation of chromosomes during mitosis, which family of motor proteins are responsible for retrograde transport in the cytoskeleton? That is, they move along microtubules , , , (incorrect buzz) towards the minus-end as opposed to the plus-end directed kinesins. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.