University Challenge 2024: Round One: Emmanuel, Cambridge v. Jesus, Oxford.

The Teams

Emmanuel, Cambridge

Jerry Chen

Alex Sutton

Jay Alagar (Capt)

Alexander Harrison

Jesus, Oxford

Andy Deng

Andy Schwebel

Ben Biggs (Capt)

Meg Goundry-Napthine

Yeah, look, I’m sorry about this – posting late for the second week in a row. Would you believe that it’s because today was the date for the semi annual filial visit to Worthing? Well, it doesn’t really matter, but I do think that these little personal vignettes add a little flavour to a review, don’t you?

The first Oxbridge Derby of the Amol Rajan years, then. The first starter was one of those where it pays to keep your nerve, and a steady finger on the buzzer. It was Alexander Harrison who struck first, recognising references to FW Murnau’s original film version of “Nosferatu.” Now, look, I’m no expert on goats, (I ain’t ‘fraid of no goats) but pair the topic with Greek Mythology and I’ll usually give a good account of myself. Both Emmanuel and I managed a full house on a relatively gentle set. For the next starter Alexander Harrison took his second correct buzz knowing that the names Chatterton et al. can be preceded by – the death of -. T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste(of time)land” provided me with a second consecutive full house, while Emmanuel took just the last one. Lusophones took me to 9 in a row and gave Jesus their start when skipper Ben Biggs identified them as speakers of Portuguese. A rather wonderful UC special set followed, which asked Jesus for the names of countries that begin and end with two letter symbols for chemical elements. Senegal brought my streak to an end at 9. I took Argentina, as did  Jesus, but they failed to get Cuba.Now I did consider taking a lap of honour after recognising a diagram of a cosine for the next starter. In the end I gambled and let it ride. Graphs of other trigonometrical functions brought Jesus a full house, and me nowt, and levelled the scores. I did cash in my lap of honour for knowing that the nucleus of a cell contains most its genetic material, as did Alexander Harrison. Science bonuses saw me get Mr. Van De Graff which Emmanuel missed, but miss the next two which Emmanuel got. A great fast buzz from Alexander Harrison saw him identify Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan from its subtitle. Bonuses on professional football clubs associated with industrial concerns brought the 10 points that gave Emmanuel a lead of 70 – 40 at just after the 10-minute mark.

Ben Biggs did just what a captain should by taking the bull between the horns and buzzing when he thought he might know the answer to the question – who was the last British monarch prior to Elizabeth II to die in Scotland? He was wrong, sadly, but the tactic was right. This allowed Alex Sutton in with the correct answer of James V of Scotland. They managed two words ending in tic. That man Alexander Harrison piled on the agony for Jesus, recognising the Sorrows of Young Werther. ‘That’s original’ I punned to the empty room. The Earth’s atmosphere continued what had already been an unusually successful evening on Science for me as I managed a full house as opposed to the two taken by Emmanuel. None of us recognised Shostakovitch’s Leningrrad Symphony for the music starter. Now, believe it or not, I had the Science starter that came next before either team did. Yes, I knew that if it’s radiation and has something to do with a black hole, then Hawking Radiation’s yer man. Alexander Harrison had that one. This earned the music bonuses, that asked Emmanuel to identify the composers of pieces named after cities. They only took one, but it was enough to give them a 100 point lead. A lead which grew when the Emmanuel skipper knew that the second largest city of Washington state is Spokane (birthplace of Bing Crosby) which starts with SPO. Brazilian states brought us both just the one bonus with Amazonas. Weber’s definition of the word state saw Alexander Harrison just beat Ben Biggs to the buzzer with the next starter. The set of bonuses on culinary plants included one about the mango being a member of the cashew family. Hang about a cotton picking minute. Haven’t we already had a virtually identical question in an earlier match in this series? Ironically Emmanuel had that one wrong. This completed a shut out of Jesus for the ten minutes since the ten-minute mark, and Emmanuel had what looked to be a game-over lead of 170 – 30.

Both teams had the name Fourier in their answers to the next starter but neither also had the word transform which is what Amol wanted to hear. Again Alexander Harrison outbuzzed Ben Biggs for the next starter, knowing works containing the word Beyond. Funny enough, - the Poseidon Adventure – wasn’t one of them. Final plays brought one bonus. So to the second picture starter. Finally Ben Biggs won a buzzer race to answer that the house we saw was the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. More buildings brought one correct answer. Jerry Chen took his first starter knowing that in Entertainment terms BET stands for Black Entertainment Television. A couple of maths bonuses brought Emmanuel to 200. It was all too easy for Alexander Harrison who took the next starter  - his ninth - on aromatic compounds. A nice UC set on years consisting of three consecutively descending digits brought just the one bonus, but it was all academic in terms of the effect on the result of the match. Alex Sutton took the next starter, knowing that if the name’s Jinnah, the answer must be Pakistan. A full house on defaced works of art followed.  Ben Biggs took another starter recognising the translated title of a chapter of the Tale of Genji. There was only time for one bonus on the US penal system. Emmanuel had won by 240 – 60.

How is Amol Doing?

We were just over 12 minutes into the show when Amol issued the dreaded ‘Plenty of time to go, Jesus.’ Sadly, this really did seem to act as the kiss of death for them. He repeated this when Emmanuel stretched their lead to 100 a couple of minutes later, but then added “See if you can get going with this.” It’s tricky for a question master, trying to encourage the team who are lagging behind, without it sounding like ‘let’s hope this is a nice easy one for you.’ Would JP have accepted Amazon for Amazonas as Amol did? Not sure, the coin is in the air on that one. Especially considering he had to apologise to Jesus for not accepting Vienna School, when he had asked for a three word name. “Sorry Jesus. And Emmanuel, you’re just wrong.” Miaow! Fair play to Amol for telling Jesus “It just wasn’t your night.” At the end of the day, that’s what the scale of victory and defeat often comes down to.

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

In the Southern hemisphere, more people speak Portuguese as a first or second language than any other single language.

University Challenge 202: Southampton v. Christ Church, Cambridge

The Teams

Southampton

Elise Harrington

Rhys Counsell

Roshana Wickremasinghe (Capt)

Chris Meredith

Christ Church, Cambridge

Eliza Dean

Melika Georgianeh

Arthur Wotton (Capt)

Elliott Lowe

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

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

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

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

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

How is Amol Doing?

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

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

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

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

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

True or False Rounds do not a good quiz make. Is that True or False?

Here’s a thing. We won at the club again last night. Well there’s no point me pretending any more that just winning the quiz is enough to keep my curmudgeonly tendencies in check. But there are just some nights when I find the post mortem of the quiz on the way home in the car to be more enjoyable than the quiz itself. And yes, last night was such a night.

I find myself becoming something of a scratched record whenever I write about the quiz at the club at the moment. But I keep coming back to one thing. I honestly believe that your job as a question master is to give people the most enjoyable evening that you can. And for the second time in three weeks I found myself asking – did the question setter really think that people would enjoy the quiz they asked?

Last night’s QM was one of our semi regulars. She’s lovely and to be fair the last quiz she did was enjoyable. To be fair, four of last night’s rounds were enjoyable again. Unfortunately four of them weren’t. I don’t know what your opinion is about True or False rounds. Personally I don’t like them at all. I don’t like guessing games. Actually let me rephrase that. I like educated guessing games, but I really don’t like the kind that asks you something that you are not going to know and so you have to mentally flip a coin. You know the sort of thing I'm talking about - 

The second largest crater in the Solar System is about 2500 km in diameter. True or False? 

There is no reason why you could expect people to know that it's true. Unless you were the geezer who set the quiz a couple of weeks ago you'd never ask -

What is the diameter of the second largest crater in the solar system?

Even when the true or false questions are fair I don’t really like the way that they rob you of the satisfaction of knowledge. What I mean by that is that instead of being asked, for the sake of argument,

Virginia Woolf actually wrote ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ True or False?

I would far rather be asked 

Who wrote ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’. 

The majority of the True or False questions were of this easy variety. Of the forty true or false questions last night we had only 2 wrong, I think and the lowest scoring team didn’t have more than four or five wrong. Now, I don’t know, maybe the setter really likes this kind of question. Maybe she thought it would be a great leveller between the teams. But judging by the groans she got from teams when she announced – the next round is another true or false round – she can’t now think that it’s something people like. Personally, I wouldn’t even include one whole true or false round in a quiz, but four is definitely too much. In my opinion.

There was one question last night that set alarm bells ringing.

Usain Bolt holds 9 Olympic Gold medals – true or false? – 

I’m sure you know why the alarm bells were ringing. Usain Bolt now holds 8 Olympic gold medals, but he won 9 – being stripped of one of his 3 relay golds when his relay teammate Nesta Carter was later found guilty of doping. This is going to sound horrible, but the fact is that I know some question masters who are knowledgeable enough, and precise enough in their use of language in the question whom I would not have had a quiet word with. But I didn't think that last night's QM would appreciate the problems with the question last night. As soon as she finished reading out the questions in that round I went and had a quiet chat with her about the question. It’s well that I did, for the QM had it from an old quiz book and had the answer as true. When she realised what had happened it's to her credit that she didn't stick with the tried and trusted - well, that's my answer and the question maser is always right (and to be fair she would have been perfectly within her rights to do so)  she had the common sense to tell people that either answer - true or false - would be acceptable. 

I’m finally off to Copenhagen on Monday so there will be no UC review until I get back at the weekend. See you then.

University Challenge Round One - Birkbeck, London v. Oxford Brookes University

The Teams

Birkbeck, London

Danny McMillan

Olivia Mariner

Samir Chadha (Capt)

Margherita Huntley

Oxford Brookes

David Caldecott

Lara Gardner

John Manton (Capt)

James Broadbent

Oh, don’t the Mondays come round quickly now that Quizzy Monday is back? That’s not a complaint, by the way. It’s an expression of gratitude.

So, it was Birkbeck, the only college still part of London University that has won UC before, v. Oxford Brookes, who in just five series have reached the quarters twice already. The Curse of the Clark sofa was firmly on Birkbeck, being as I am an alumnus of London University (although not Birkbeck) and also because Birkbeck Captain Samir Chadha is from my home borough, Ealing. Would Birkbeck be strong enough to withstand the effect of Clark support?

John Manton misfired on the first starter. To be fair to the Oxford skipper he was going to have a good night on the buzzer, so he can be forgiven this. It was Danny McMillan – who would have an excellent night on the buzzer, who recognised that Maria Therese of Austria was a Habsburg. This brought a set of bonuses on films whose titles include the surname of a British Prime Minister. “Blair Witch Project!” I shouted before the first was asked. And indeed, it was one of the answers. “Douglas-Home Alone” was not. This was a relatively gentle set and we both took a full house. John Manton recognised James Joyce’s description of the word epiphany to move his team’s score from red to black and earn bonuses on the Biafran crisis. They too took a full house. The next starter was one of those where it paid to wait, as it became obvious that the answer required was Mount Fuji once Hokusai’s The Great Wave was mentioned. Incidentally, did you know that you can get a lego set of The Great Wave? Very good it is too – my daughter Jess made one at the weekend. Danny McMillan took that one. Twentieth century novels whose titles all include a nationality saw our first dropped bonus when none of us got Frenchman’s Creek. Still 10 bonuses out of the first 11 was pretty good going by both teams. Lara Gardner took the next starter with Karst. Supply your own puns for that. Given constellations OB also missed the second in their set of bonuses. I’m a little surprised that they didn’t know Betelgeuse is in Orion. For the next starter, when asked what Woody Guthrie’s guitar claimed to do Danny McMillan buzzed in very sharply to answer ‘Kills Fascists’. Sporting terms from their origins was an interesting set and Danny McMillan pulled himself back from the incorrect scrum to the correct ruck on the first. They also took the third of the set. So to the picture starter, showing us a national flag. “Togo!” I shouted – hey, I love Sporcle. Maybe James Broadbent does too because he was very quickly in with the same. More flags with stars and stripes brought another full house. This meant that both teams were level with 65 at the 10-minute mark – and only three incorrect answers had been given so far. What a good contest.

David Caldecott recognised a description of Clive Barker’s Candyman character for the next starter. The artist Fuseli was the subject of the bonuses. Curiously enough none of them asked about his 2006 hit ‘Chelsea Dagger’. OB took a brace of these. John Manton recognised a description of the term sophist to earn a set on Italian chef Giuseppe Cipriani – and once again curiously enough none of the bonuses mentioned his spell as England’s fly half. Now, when it came to the acronym SCOBY, I didn’t have a scooby. Margherita Huntley knew that the Y stands for yeast. Googling reveals that the whole thing stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. Mmm, bacteria and yeast. Yum yum. A terrific UC special set on Shakespeare gave clues to the main locations where one of his tragedies is set. Birkbeck took two missing out on Tony and Cleo. Halfway through the show and we finally came to the first starter neither team could answer, on Alan Dawson’s “The Relative Hills of Britain”. Well, we’d had a good long run at the start of the show, but the time had come for a Science starter. The answer was Young’s Modulus – nope, didn’t even understand the question since you asked. The next starter suddenly became obvious when it mentioned workers smashing machinery and it was Danny McMillan who won the buzzer race to answer Luddites. Economics brought 2 bonuses. So to the music round. I’m not overly familiar with the musical Funny Girl, but the lyrics of the extract made this the most likely answer to the starter. Both teams took their time to mull it over Samir Chadha came in first with the correct answer. More biographical musicals brought just the one correct answer. John Manton knew various definitions of the word break for the next starter. Scientific terms beginning with the letters comp brought a full house. It also brought me a lap of honour for knowing the word compound. Yes, I know it was the easiest of the three, but you have to take it where you can get it, don’t you. The set gave OB the lead, by 135 – 110.

Australia, Japan and South Korea are the only three countries outside Europe and North America to host the Summer Olympics during the 20^th century. Asked for 2, John Manton gave Australia and Japan. The excellent Danny McMillan had Australia but went for China – which was 2008. Female heads of state stretched the lead by a further 10 points. Danny McMillan ate into the lead by knowing that Kodiak is the second largest island of the US. Government departments or offices brought another full house. Samir Chadha recognised a still from The Handmaiden for the next starter. Three more films in non-European languages that won BAFTAs for Best film not in English brought another full house, and more surprisingly it brought me a full house as well. This was enough to give Birkbeck a narrow lead. This was extended by that man McMillan as he buzzed in early with Chatham House for the next starter.  Sunsetting Empires provided another fine UC special set brought the London side another full house. I earned a potential second lap of honour with the term precipitation for the chemistry starter that followed. Lara Gardner took that one. Words used in English of Hungarian origin brough OB their own full house and reduced the deficit to a single bonus. James Broadbent knew that the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey was the first games console. The Fields Medal and some of its recipients brought a full house. I also got a full house on these. What was going on in this show?! Less than 3 minutes left on the clock, and OB led by 20.It was Danny McMillan who knew that Hawkeye’s alter ego in the Avengers has the surname Barton for the next starter. A full house needed for the lead. The subject? Literature, novels linked with labyrinths. Birkbeck took the first two – and they took the third as well! Surely, whoever took the next starter would win. Again, I ask what was going on in this show, because the starter asked about a contemporary singer who produced and directed her own video, and I had it right! Okay, Taylor Swift was always the percentage answer, but come on! I am nearly 60! Samir Chadha played a captain’s innings getting that one right. The match was gonged before Amol completed the first bonus. Birkbeck had won by 220 – 205.

What a contest! Both teams deserve huge congratulations for the excellent performances on display tonight. Birkbeck had an incredible 80 percent bonus conversion rate while OB had a mind-boggling 88 percent rate. I cannot remember the last time that a team scored over 200 in the first round and still lost.

On a personal note, I always set my target at answering forty questions correctly. In the last couple of JP years this became difficult. Last night I answered 56 correctly. I think a combination of factors worked in my, ad both teams’ favour. Amol’s speedy delivery is one. The fact that these were two teams who didn’t as a rule argue the life out of the bonuses and just got on with it. And for me, the questions were rather more accessible than is sometimes the case.

How is Amol Doing?

We’ve already noted Amol’s partiality for cricket in this series, and he was indignant when Birkbeck dropped a googly by confusing their googlies with their doosras. “It is very much NOT a googly!” Alright Amol, don’t take it personally. When James Broadbent took the flag starter he suggested it was just because he watches a lot of football. This is not perjorative – you ask schoolkids to identify national flags, and you’ll be surprised how many the football fans will identify. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed to me that Amol was even more conversational and matey towards the teams in this show. When Harry’s Bar in Venice was an answer he replied ‘Very pricey – you wouldn’t be able to afford it on usual student finances.’ Then almost immediately after, when the answer given was Bellini cocktail he chaffed ‘You’ve obviously had a few, haven’t you?’ Woah here, Amol. You can’t go suggesting that a player has an alcohol problem. Then at the end there was an almost Paxonian rubbing of salt into OB’s wounds when he said “I bet you thought until the last minute that you were going to win!”

Levity aside, Amol continues to seem calm, relaxed, and enjoying himself as much as the audience at home, and that’s really a lot of what I’m asking for from the host of UC. Keep it up.

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

Medecins Sans Frontieres was established in 1971 in response to the Biafran Famine.

In his 1992 book, Alan Dawson gave any peak of 492 feet or higher the name Marilyns – inspired by Munros, geddit?!

The word coach is derived from the name of a town between Vienna and Budapest.

Sorry for the three way tie this week.

It was Twenty Years Ago Today. . .

In my previous post, I mentioned the 2003 Channel Four Quiz Series Grand Slam. It’s 20 years ago that this show happened, and I thought it might be worth looking back on it now.

I remember the buzz about this show when it was being made. In 2003 I was a year or so away from making my own first appearance on a TV quiz show. Grand Slam was a quiz competition, contested between 16 players in knockout format. The big talking point at the time was that each of the contestants had to put up £1000 of their own money in order to take part. I’ll come back to this later.

I’ve googled the show because although I did watch some of them, it was a long time ago and I wanted to be certain of my facts. I remembered that it was a race against the clock. A similar idea has been used in segments of several shows before and since, but in case you’re not familiar, it works like this. Both contestants have a clock with 60 seconds on it in each round. When one is asked a question, the clock ticks down until he or she provides a correct answer. The clock stops, the opponent’s starts until he or she provides a correct answer, and so on. According to my sources the rounds were always:-

General Knowledge

Words and Language

Contemporary Knowledge

Numbers

The Final Combination – a miscellany of questions from the other round categories.

At the time the show went out the only contender I knew personally was Mark ‘the Beast’ Labbett. Mark was unfortunate enough to be drawn against eventual series winner Clive Spate in the first round. Clive was a multi-Countdown champion, as were some others among the 16. From the general knowledge quiz world, notable names were world quiz champion Olav Bjortomt, future Brain of Britain David Stainer, Discovery Mastermind champion Michael Penrice and BBC Mastermind champions David Edwards and Gavin Fuller. Clive defeated Gavin in the Final, to win the top prize of £50,000.

The idea of a tournament between champion quizzers is a pretty sound one to my mind, and it has been used occasionally since in shows like “Are You/Make Me An Egghead”. I did find that the format of Grand Slam meant that in practice the result of a great many of the shows became clear before the final round, which robbed the shows of much tension. I wasn’t quite convinced by Carol Vorderman as the host either.

Well, let’s come back to that USP, the £1000 entry fee. Now, I’ve no reason to say anything other than that this was kosher and above board and all of the 16 did have to pay a grand of their own money. Even at the time though I couldn’t help wondering whether this was brave or foolhardy. I mean, I’m still a pretty decent quizzer and I never enter a quiz where I don’t want to win. But I know for a fact that I cannot win every quiz I play in. Along with the vast majority of the population, there are a lot of people out there who are better quizzers than I am. That’s not even to mention the people who are no better than me, or worse, but who may have the lucky fall of the questions on a particular night. Can I see myself ever having paid £1000 to enter a quiz where my chances of winning would be slight at best? No. Can I see myself ever having paid £1000 to enter a quiz? Don’t be daft. So I can at least tip my metaphorical hat to the 16 for putting their money where the proverbial was.

The Better Late Than Never Puzzling Review

What do you think of the UK’s Channel Five? Be honest now. It’s a strange beast in some ways, is Channel Five. I mean, can you think of any really successful drama series from Five which haven’t been either imported, or picked up from one of the other channels when they have discarded them? You can say the same about a lot of genres. Then when it comes to documentaries, it seems to me that the huge majority are about the Royal Family, or murders – I haven’t watched one that combines the two, but if there is such a thing it will doubtless have been shown on Channel Five. As for quiz shows, well, there’s Eggheads, snapped up when the BBC seemed to have grown cold on the idea of further series. As for home grown quizzes, well. . . there was 100 Percent in the early years of the channel, and not a lot else.

Enter Puzzling.

Now, for reasons I’ve hinted at in my opening comments, Puzzling is just not the kind of quiz game show that I would ever have expected to see Channel Five showing. Which brings me to what has to be the elephant in the room when discussing Puzzling. This is the fact that the show seems to owe something to Only Connect. If we take the superficial similarities first, then both shows are hosted by highly intelligent blonde women. Both shows pit two teams of three against each other. The teams face off in several rounds of puzzles. While each show produces a winner, the goal is to reach the final and win the whole series overall.

The big differences are these. In OC the focus is, naturally on connections – what connects, what completes a sequence, which of the items on the grid are connected to each other and what connects them, and missing vowels, with sets of words and phrases all connected by themes. In Puzzling, there isn’t such a tight focus. In the two shows that I’ve watched, the teams played against each other across the same rounds. These were :-

In Other Words. This one involves being shown two words. Substitute them for other words with the same meaning and try to get a phrase connected with a theme you’ve already been given.

Pressure Points. This is a number round, not unlike the mental arithmetic tests in Child Genius a few years ago. In Pressure Points, though, the contestants ae helped by onscreen visual representations, although never in straight Arabic numerals – instead spots on a dice, roman numerals, you get the drift, I’m sure.

Rule Breakers is basically Odd One Out (for those of us old enough to remember it). So, the teams have to work out the connections between groups of four, but then also work out which one doesn’t fit.

Picture This is where the teams have to complete lyrics from Blondie top forty singles. Or in the real world, it’s basically a set of questions involving picture puzzles of several different sorts.

Memory Bank is the final round where the teams play against each other. They’re show a five by 3 grid, each rectangle containing a potential answer to a question. After a wee bit of time, the words are replaced by numbers. Questions are asked, and the teams have to answer with the number where the correct answer was.

That’s the team rounds then. Which brings me to the other big difference between Puzzling and OC. For the teams actually consist of three people who have never met before and been allocated to teams before the start of the show. So after the five teams rounds, the 3 members of the team with the lower score leave with nothing. The three remaining players now play Divide and Conquer – or put it another way, more questions like the ones we’ve already seen from he previous rounds. One player wins and will be back for the semis, the others won’t.

I can’t think of very many examples of commercial channels trying to produce their own high-brow, high difficulty – low reward quiz games in the past. However, on the few occasions I can remember, the particular demands of commercial television seem to have worked against them, with the exception of Channel Four which at least can point to Fifteen to 1 and Grand Slam on its resume. So hats off to Channel Five for even trying this. While I thought that the difficulty of some of the picture questions varied enormously, on the whole I didn’t feel that Puzzling is an example of a more challenging quiz game being dumbed down and diluted to be more accessible to the wider audience at home. And I appreciate that.

With regards to the similarities to OC, well, Only Connect, to me, now always runs like a well-oiled machine. It zips along like a brand new Porsche and there’s no fat to be trimmed off the joint. In terms of game play and playing along at home. I didn’t feel quite the same about Puzzling. It is broken up by adverts, and while you can’t blame the show itself for this, it does mean that it’s imperative to get the pacing right, and I don’t feel that Puzzling does this yet. Let’s remember that Only Connect grew up on the relatively sedate backwaters of BBC4, where one suspects that ratings would have been something of a dirty word. By the time it became a mainstay of Quizzy Mondays the show was already a seasoned campaigner, comfortable in its own skin, and with a hard core audience who would watch it whenever or wherever the BBC chose to position it in the schedules. It remains to be seen whether Channel 5 will allow 12 Yard and Wheelhouse the time to nurture Puzzling to the stage where it develops its own hardcore following.

Lucy Worsley, then. You know, time was when I wasn’t a fan. But I have to say that over the years I’ve come to like and appreciate her qualities as a presenter of interesting History documentaries on the Beeb. As a curator of the Royal Palaces, a lot of these have focused on royalty – maybe this is what attracted Channel Five to her in the first place. I didn’t appreciate her style at first but she won me over with her infectious enthusiasm, and her penchant for diving into the dressing up box for period costume whenever the opportunity arises. Seriously, if you watch a Lucy Worsley History documentary you can play a drinking game where you have to take a swig every time she changes into costume. 

As a quiz/game host though? After all, you might think it looks easy, but it requires a particular set of skills and attributes. I think of Paddy O’Connell from the first series of “Battle of the Brains”. Paddy is a fine broadcaster, with a ready wit but as a quiz show host I felt he was very much out of his comfort zone. Prior to the first edition of Puzzling being broadcast Lucy put on record her admiration for Victoria Coren-Mitchell and did nothing to play down comparisons with Only Connect. This worried me a little, because at the end of the day there’s only one Victoria Coren-Mitchell. You don’t see VCM trying to present documentaries about the 9 wives of King Louis the Randy of France, do you? Thankfully Lucy did her job well for the most part. She seemed warm and friendly, and also relaxed with the teams. Yeah, I think she spent too much time talking with them, but then you know what I’m like. I’m just not interested in that sort of thing.

Will we get just the one series of Puzzling? I hope not. I hope that Channel Five will give it the time to tweak itself a little, work out the pacing issues, and develop a following.

Ironically, my team are the Boycs - short for Boycott.

It was a tale of two quizzes again this week. Yes, it was the monthly film quiz in the Gwyn Hall. July’s theme was Disney movies. Now way back in the day, some twenty years ago, my late teammate Anne and I always used to say that if we could only win one quiz in the rugby club a year, then we would want it to be the end of year quiz. Well, when it comes to the film quiz in the Gwyn, if there was only one quiz in the year we could win, we’d want it to be this one. We’d put quite a lot of pressure on ourselves with our performance last year, when we had already amassed a winning total before the questions in the last round were even asked. Well, to cut a long story short, we did not amass a winning total before the last round on Wednesday. Thankfully there was daylight between ourselves and the second placed team at the end – but not so much as last year.

As a local quiz, I think that last night’s was the best attended I’ve ever played in. I think that I’m right in saying that there were forty four teams last night, which is remarkable really. Yeah, I know, we would have about a hundred teams sometimes for the Birmingham mega-quiz, but Birmingham is certainly not local.

I mention this because it’s the time of year when attendance at the rugby club quiz becomes a bit sparse at times, what with people going on holiday. In fact we arrived last night to be greeted by Mr. Norwich with a heartfelt plea for my team to provide question masters for quizzes on 10^th and 17^th August. Well, I’m sketching in wonderful wonderful Copenhagen for a few days in early August and I’m not back until the 11^th (don’t blub – I will catch up as soon as I get back.)So Jess is going to do the 10^th and I’ll do the other.

I think it was Adam who made the very pertinent point to Dai – wouldn’t it be a good idea if all of the teams took it in turns to provide a quiz and a question master. I have known places where this is the norm and it has worked successfully. However, we’re walking a bit of a precarious line at the club at the moment. We have only five regular teams, and to be fair four of these teams do provide at least one question master on a regular or semi-regular basis. However there’s no obligation for them to do so. Our fear is that if were to become a regular obligation, then we might end up losing teams, which is something we just can’t afford. So we’ve ended up with this situation whereby one team never provides a question master, while our team provides four.

It isn’t a perfect world, so it’s sometimes necessary to accept an imperfect situation like this. I would far rather put in the time and effort tto make a quiz now and then, than have weeks when there’s no quiz because there’s no question master.

However, that doesn’t mean I think we should give in to threats along the lines of one I was told of last night. If you read my post about last week’s quiz, you might remember that it really was not very enjoyable in my opinion. Well, it turns out this was an opinion shared by pretty much everyone who expressed one. Mr. N. said that he’d had his ear bent by members of all of the other teams. In particular he said that one team had threatened that if last week’s setter were to do it again, they would not be turning up for the quiz.

This is a tricky one. It’s not actually black and white. I mean, if you really don’t enjoy a quiz set by a particular setter should you really be under any obligation to attend it? Well, maybe not. But in our particular situation, though, I kind of think that it’s rather churlish if you do start to give a particular question master a miss. Most of us come week in, week out, expecting that there will be a quiz for us. Of the 20 – 30 regular players, less than 10 produce a quiz for everyone else on anything like a regular basis. So I don’t think it’s unfair to expect the rest to show some appreciation by turning up whenever possible.

Yeah, I know I was moaning about the quiz last week. However, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t turn up next time this setter does it. Lord knows, in the last 28 years we’ve had a couple of very poor setters in the quiz but I’ve always turned up for them if I could. There was only one setter I boycotted I the club ad as I’ve explained in the past, that was personal issue, not because her quizzes were frankly mediocre at best (which they were).

I’d like to think that I’ve mellowed a bit in the years we’ve known each other, dearly beloved. So I’m not going to say – hey, if you never do a quiz yourself you’ve got no right to boycott someone else’s quiz. However, I can’t help feeling that if you don’t like someone else’s quiz, have a go at one yourself and try to show them how it should be done.