University Challenge Eilmination Qualification Match - Reading v. St. John's , Cambridge

The Teams

Reading

Sylvian Jesudoss

Margaret Ounsley

Michael Hutchinson (capt.)

Kira Bishop

St. John’s, Cambridge

Thomas Clark

Louis George

Jonathan Chan (capt.)

Kyanna Ouyang

Howdy there pardners, and thanks for joining me here in the last chance saloon. Incidentally, Jeremy P. called it that in his own introduction. Hmm, we might have a copyright issue here. Is he, by any chance, a closet LAM reader? I’d like to think so. So here we had two teams that I’ve enjoyed watching this year, and I was going to be sorry to see one of them go. Difficult to pick a winner here. Reading had Michael Hutchinson, one of the best buzzers in this series, whose buzzing has really impressed when he’s been on song. Would he be the winning difference between the teams?

Well, it was certainly in evidence with the first starter. We were both in very early to take the adjective ‘white’ from Jack London’s Fang of that ilk. Bonuses linked by the name Eustace brought two correct answers. Michael Hutchinson took his double by buzzing in to identify serendipity as a word coined by Walpole. Incidentally, when the Reading skipper announced at the start that he’s just finished his PGCE and become a teacher I was moved to shout “DON’T DO IT!” at the screen – but then when people said as much to me in 1987 I ignored them too. See where that got me. With the plant bonuses that followed I was tempted to take a lap of honour for knowing angiosperm but spurned it on the off chance I might get something physicsy or chemistry-y later. Then I got cotyledon and thought- bugger it- and set off. Reading took a full house on that set. Sylvian Jesudoss just didn’t quite get the whole of the next question, and lost  by answering Buddhism instead of Buddha, when he clearly knew that correct answer. This allowed in Louis George to open the account for St. John’s. German terms in academic discussion didn’t exactly sound full of eastern promise as a set of bonuses brought 10 points. Neither team picked up the starter defining the very similar words palpitation and palpation. Michel Hutchinson did exactly what I did with the next starter. Being asked for a mountain which shares its name with the country in which it is located we both leapt in with Mount Kenya. No, no no. The rest of the question identified it as a volcano in West Africa. Nobody knew Mount Cameroon. Doubtless Margaret Ounsley recalled Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” which begins “My heart aches/and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk- “ as she correctly identified hemlock. None of us could do anything with some chemical stuff about DNA and what have you – stop me if I’m getting too technical. Just approaching the ten minute mark, the score stood at Reading 45 - St. John’s 20.

Nobody knew the Great Basin of America’s south west for the picture starter. Now, I’m sorry to brag, but when asked for the SI units of resistance, capacitance and inductance, neither team managed my answer of Ohm, Farad and Henry. Now, theoretically I’m against taking two laps of honour in one show, but I’m afraid that nothing less for me would do. Margaret Ounsley knew that Chipping in English place names means market. This earned the picture bonuses, and Reading identified two out of three more basins. The nest starter asked for the last alphabetically of the first magnitude stars, and Michael Hutchinson took a punt with Vega. Paris of films, where the last letters of the title of the first are the first letters of the title of the second brought a timely full house to put Reading within touching distance of the triple figure barrier. Neither team knew Miyamoto for the next starter. Thomas Clark took a punt that a list of novels including Vernon God Little (possibly my least favourite Booker winner) were all set in Texas. The painter Gentileschi provided them with one bonus. The music starter followed, but neither team recognised the work of the man with the ever expanding cheeks, Dizzy Gillespie. Margaret Ounsley knew that the art installation Speedwell marking the 400^th anniversary of the Voyage of the Mayflower took place in Plymouth, which earned the jazz bonuses, three more contrafacts – gesundheit – of I Got Rhythm. No more points accrued. That man Hutchinson, playing his customary captain’s innings, buzzed in with the information that it was Murray Gell-Mann who introduced the term strangeness into physics. Horrible maths bonuses sprinkled liberally with xs and equalses and other gibberish did nowt for me. They did nothing for Reading either, other than run down the clock, since it was past the 20 minute mark now, and they led by 105-35.

Redemption was still theoretically possible for St. John’s, but they needed buzzes and they needed them now. Skipper Jonathan Chan provided one, knowing or correctly guessing that the Kemijoki is the longest river of Finland. Words from James Mill’s glossary of terms used in British India in the early 19^th century brought just the one bonus, although the two that were wrong were both plausible. Michael Hutchinson won the buzzer race to answer the next starter, the sculptor Oldenburg. It was hard work for them, but Reading managed a full house on diaries and diarists. For the second picture starter Jonathan Chan recognised the work of Titian. Three other depictions of the myth of Callisto brought a well earned ten points. Thomas Clark was in early for the next starter, but sadly just didn’t connect Eos and Aurora with the dawn. Margaret Ounsley did. Questions about Russian history to which the answers began with P provided two correct answers, and extinguished St. John’s faint hopes. Some nonsense about logarithms followed, but nobody knew the answer which was 2.5. Yawn. Jonathan Chan identified several varieties of kale for the next starter. That was as far as we could go though, since the gong duly gonged before the completion of the first bonus.

Reading won by 145 to 70, and deserved to go through to the semis. Bad luck St. John’s, but as I said earlier, you have been a pleasure to watch.

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

The Kemijoki is the longest river of Finland.

Mastermind 2022 - Semi Final 3

Let’s start with a look at how last night’s contenders did in their heats, shall we, dearly beloved?

Helen Garner	The Films of Tom Cruise	13	1	14	1	27	2
Tom Lea	Line of Duty	12	0	10	1	22	1
Allister Mallon	James Craig, Viscount Craigavon	13	0	9	2	22	2
Eleanor Ayres	Catherine de Medici	9	0	12	0	21	0

Now, on paper, this looked as if it should be a clear win for Helen Garner. As we all know, we don’t play Mastermind on paper. There was nothing much to choose between Tom, Allister and Eleanor’s final scores, but possibly the most significant factor was to look at the GK scores. It’s a hell of a lot easier to improve your specialist performance between heat and semi than it is to improve your GK, which suggested that if there was going to be a dark horse, then this was more likely to be Eleanor than the gents.

Helen had given us the films of Tom Cruise, with which she scored a fine 13 in the first round. Last night she gave us the X Files. I was grateful for that for it brought me a few points. She did well, but did miss a couple, and the difference between an 11 in a semi final specialist round, and 13, is the difference between a competitive score, and a commanding score. Well, you’re not out of it with 11 at the halfway stage, that’s for sure.

Second up was Eleanor. Again, she offered a subject that offered a couple of points, in the shape of York Minster. I’ve loved the building ever since I badgered my parents into taking us to visit the National Railway Museum in 1977. Once we finished in the museum, we took a long walk around York, and I fell in love with the place in general, and York Minster in particular. Not that I know a massive amount about the history of the Minster. Eleanor did, though. She matched Helen’s score of 11, although she did incur one pass along the way.

Tom Lea gave us the specialist round of the evening on England at the Cricket World Cup since 2003. I’ll leave it to other commentators to voice opinions about the relatively narrow scope of the subject. It was a terrific round, and Tom really had to know his subject inside out to cope with what appeared – from my limited knowledge – to be a very testing set of questions. A score of 14 gave him a three point lead with just one contender still to go.

That contender was Allister Mallon. Allister was offering my favourite subject of the evening, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. I don’t know if any other readers remember a TV series from quite a few years back called something like 7 Wonders of the Industrial Age. Different episodes focused on The Bell Rock Lighthouse and the Great Eastern and one of them focused on the Brooklyn Bridge, and very good it was too. I’ve always been interested in it ever since. Allister knew more than I did, and he answered well. Crucially, though, he didn’t answer very quickly, which meant that he levelled out at 8. 6 points off the lead, essentially his chances of the win were over.

Allister was the first to go in the GK round. His 9 was perfectly respectable, but it wasn’t going to offer him much of a chance to move up the table. Not in this sort of company, I’m afraid. The pre-race favourite, Helen returned to the chair next. Now, if all three of the contenders repeated their heat scores in GK, then Helen would beat Tom by 1 point, and Eleanor by 2 points. Helen did not manage to repeat her 14 scored in the heats. Oh, she did fine, scoring 12, but she missed out on several things I might have expected her to get based on the round she put in during the heats. Whether this was due to nerves, or to a set of questions that didn’t quite suit as well as the questions in the heat, only Helen could say for certain. But it meant that the door was open.

Right. Let us talk about Eleanor’s round. I have not stood up and applauded the telly since Jonathan Gibson in the final last year. I did last night. Eleanor produced a GK round right out of the top drawer. 17 is comfortably the highest score we’ve seen in GK this series, and Eleanor didn’t score this because she had a rogue easy set of questions. They weren’t. As a round it was every bit as testing as all the other rounds we’ve seen so far. It was all the more remarkable considering that it was so much better than her round in the heat. With the quality of answers that Eleanor gave, you’d be forgiven for thinking that she is a regular, serious quizzer. Honestly, the round was that good. If this round is typical of what we might expect from her in the final, then she is a very, very serious contender indeed.

Which pretty much gives the game away that Tom Lea did not manage the 14 and no passes he needed to win on pass countback. Again, he provided a perfectly respectable round of 10, but after the pyrotechnics of Eleanor’s round you’d have to say that anything less was always going to be a bit of an anti-climax.

Well played to Helen, Tom and Allister. You are all of you worthy semi-finalists, and that in itself is something. But Eleanor goes forward, with a GK score to put the fear of God into any of the opposition in the final.

Helen Garner	The X Files	11	0	12	0	23	0
Eleanor Ayres	The History of York Minster	11	1	17	0	28	1
Tom Lea	England at the Cricket World Cup 2003 - present	14	0	10	0	2	0
Allister Mallon	The Building of the Brooklyn Bridge	8	0	9	4	17	4

 

My Boy Done Good

I did say last week that I’d let you know how Dan get on being Question Master down the club on Thursday night. Well, I’m delighted to say that the lad done good. Or to put it another way, he produced a good quiz that everyone seemed to enjoy. Ever since I learned that he was going to be question master, I’d tried very hard to bite my tongue and not barrage him with advice – goes with the territory being a teacher, I’m afraid – but one thing I did say was that while people might complain that a quiz is too hard, they don’t tend to complain that a quiz is too easy. Dan produced a quiz that gave all the teams the chance to achieve a high score, while there was enough to separate the metaphorical men from the boys of the same ilk.

My favourite question of the evening was this one – I don’t remember the exact wording, but the gist of it was this:-

In the Waldorf Salad episode of Fawlty Towers, when the American guest explains what a Waldorf salad is, he gives a list of five ingredients. If you can name three of them, you get one point. If you can name all five, you get 2 points.

Nice question. I imagine that most teams ticked off apples – celery – walnuts as we did. We had mayonnaise, but missed out on grapes, so got just the one. 1 point, and a good question that I shall undoubtedly steal and reuse a couple of years down the line.

On Thursday Adam from our team volunteered to be question master in a couple of weeks’ time. I’m looking forward to that. Then my daughter Jess told me this morning that she is currently compiling a quiz, and when she is ready, then she will tell Dai Norwich. When this happens then all regular members of our team will have compiled a quiz and acted as QM. I may possibly be wrong, but I believe that may well make us the first team in the more than a quarter of a century that I’ve been attending the quiz where all the regular members of the team have acted as QM.

There was just one small incident at the quiz on Thursday. Dan asked which rank in the British Army is immediately below Lieutenant Colonel. Now, we have a group of about a dozen people who come every week, leave just after half time, and don’t play as a team, but do listen to the quiz. When Dan pronounced the word lieutenant as ‘lootenant’ one of them shouted out “It’s LEFFTENANT! – We’re not in America!” As one, my team all glared at her, and one of us quietly said “Leave him alone! It’s his first quiz. You’re not even playing.” Yes, of course it was me. Well, I’m not saying that she heard me, but she did come up to our table at half time and asked us to apologise to Dan for her, but it was just something she felt strongly about. I did briefly consider explaining to her the French origins of the word lieutenant, but let it go. Does this mean I have to turn in my certified pedant’s membership card now?

University Challenge: Elimination match - King's, London v. Emmanuel, Cambridge

The Teams

King’s, London

Ananth Sathyanath

Rachael Bedwin

Atyab Rashid

Oliver Beard

Emmanuel, Cambridge

Nicole Pullinger

Nicholas Thatte

Cara Malcolm

James Wrathall

Well, hello, dearly beloved, and thanks for joining me in this very belated visit to the last chance saloon. Busy week. Right, a quick glance at the form book suggests that Emmanuel were just one fast buzz away from taking a place in the semis last time out, while Kings are one of the great battling teams of this series, sometimes down, but never out as yet.

The first starter asked for words starting with the same double letter. Dutch architect suggested aa, and a reference to Aachen confirmed it. It confirmed it for James Wrathall as well. This earned Emmanuel a set on prisons in Italy, which failed to bring any points. Oliver Beard knew China’s Xianjing Province for the next starter to level the score. A UC special set on words that were the same, but a second T had been added in the second provided two bonuses, but Kings missed out on oology and otology. Both Oliver Beard and I understood the reference to a garden folly for the next starter and answered pineapple. Bonuses on marsupials did not add any further points. Cara Malcolm knew that the answer to the next starter was pernicious anaemia. Good shout. Names of pre-Columbian civilisations from the Nahuatl language provided just one bonus. This brought us to a very tricky picture starter. Basically we saw a diagram inviting us to take one bar of a tricolour flag from three different flags – with the countries in question being highlighted, but the bars of the flags being left white. Then the teams were asked which countries, flag was being indicated by the diagram. I love flags but I didn’t work out that the answer was Armenia. Neither did the teams. Rachael Bedwin was the first to work out that the various clues to the next starter all pointed to the word Flint. This earned Kings’ the dubious honour of the flag bonuses, of which neither of us took any points. This meant that at the ten minute mark Kings’ led by 40 to 25, but it was almost all down to the buzzer sice both teams were struggling to answer bonuses.

Cara Malcolm buzzed too early for the next starter, and lost . I got it from the reference to the car race, the Mille Miglia, given Garibaldi and French pastry Rachael Bedwin worked it out for Kings’. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I know bugger all about semiconductors, more surprising is that Kings’ only managed one themselves. I recognised a description of the Brussels Atomium just as Cara Malcolm buzzed in early with the same answer. The British Black Arts Movement continued the question setter’s mission to show how little any of us know this week, when none of the bonuses were answered correctly. This brought us smartly to the music starter. I was pleased with myself for correctly guessing that the tuneless caterwauling that followed was Shostakovitch. (Look, I have a tin ear, whaddya expect?) Both teams recognised that the next question was asking for the scientist after whom the process of galvanisation was named, but Rachael Bedwin guessed Galvin, while Cara Malcolm guessed Galvini. Rather surprised that nobody could get Galvani for that one, if I’m totally honest – I didn’t even think I deserved a lap of honour around the sofa for it. A lovely starter followed which asked for the obtuse angle of the hands of the clock in Brooke’s Grantchester. Neither team worked out it was 1 – no, of course I didn’t either! Nicholas Thatte recognised references to the Ballad of Reading Gaol for the next starter. I’d forgotten about the music bonuses, which now came back for Emmanuel. Three other works that damaged their composers’ reputations brought nowt. TBH, the only one that I knew was the Chorus of the Slaves. Both teams sat on their buzzers for the next starter, asking in which conflict Lord Aberdeen had resigned the premiership. After what seemed like a long time, Ananth Sathyanath took a speculative punt with the Crimean War and watched he ball sail sweetly between the posts. Settlements in Scotland beginning with Inver- brought two bonuses, which was something like a feast after the famine rations that both teams had been living on for most of the match. It meant that Kings’ led by 7 – 0 just after the 20 minute mark.

None of us knew a colophon for the next starter, although Kings’ lost five for giving their wrong answer too early. For the next starter, both teams again sat on their buzzers when asked for the largest city of New Mexico. ‘ALBUQUERQUE!’ I screamed at the screen. Oliver Beard had a wrong guess, allowing Cara Malcolm to guess the right one. Something chemical which I don’t pretend to have understood gave Emmanuel our first full house of this match. After 22 and a half minutes the teams were separated by one bonus, and neither was close to the 100 point barrier yet. So to the picture starter, a still from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. I’d say that Emmanuel were closer with Look Back in Anger, but neither team had it. Something about integers and perfect squares failed to spark a buzzer race. Given a free shot, Ananth Sathyanath gave an answer that JP accepted, rather grudgingly, I thought. Still from three other kitchen sink drama films didn’t promise Kings’ a great deal. I predicted the three would be Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and was right, but sadly this didn’t help Kings’. The mnemonic pale gas is used to recall the 7 Deadly Sins. Atyab Rashid zagged with the virtues, allowing Nicholas Thatte to zag with the 7 deadly sins. Bonuses on Pahlavi – which I thought was a slang used by those in the live entertainment profession but turned out to be an ancient language brought the 2 correct answers that Emmanuel needed to take the lead. – Next correct buzz wins- I announced to nobody in particular. Well, that shows how much I know, because the contest was gonged before the next starter was completed. Emmanuel had won it with the last answer.

Hard lines to King’s. They were, as I said, a good battling team, but in all honesty you have to better with the bonuses than they did if you want to go to the semis. Mind you, Emmanuel only did slightly better – I believe they only took one more than King’s. But they’re in the semis, and that’s what matters.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know

Olmec – as in the meso-American civilisation, means inhabitant of the rubber country. Boinnngggg!!!!!

Mastermind 2022 Semi Final 2

Well, dearly beloved, we are in the privileged position of being able to look at the form book before the review proper begins.

Will Vince	Joseph Rowntree	12	0	11	0	23	0
Paul Risebury-Crisp	Björk	10	1	9	0	19	0
Patrick Wilson	JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth	11	0	13	0	24	0
Alice Walker	Rodgers and Hammerstein Musicals	11	0	15	0	26	0

A couple of things stand out. Based on first round form, Alice scored a monster 15 on GK, and if she produced anything like this in her semi, then it could well be an uphill struggle for the others. Patrick Wilson’s 13 on GK was a good score as well, suggesting that he might well be duking it out with Alice when we got to the business end of the competition.

The competition, then. Will Vince kicked us off. He’d scored 12 on his first specialist subject of Joseph Rowntree (who played Shaft on TV and invented Rolos). Last night he was answering on an artist I have really grown to love over the years, Vincent Van Gogh. Well, you can’t say he hadn’t prepared, and you can’t say that he didn’t do well. But 9 is a score which you can’t help feeling is going to leave you a little short in a semi final.

Paul Risebury-Crisp had one of the most modest heat winning scores in the first round, so he really had nothing to lose when it came to the semi final.Bjork in the heat gave way to the Bill and Ted films in this semi final. He did a little bit better, too, giving himself a lead of two points over Will by scoring 11. You’ve got a chance with 11 – I know it’s only 2 points more than 9, but somehow it feels a far more substantial score.

The first of last night’s highest ranked contenders to return to the chair was Patrick Wilson. Patrick scored 11 on Tolkien’s Middle Earth in his heat. This time the subject was drum abd bass in the 1990s. The result was the same though, as Patrick again scored 11. Which certainly gave him a chance, all depending, of course, on how well Alice Walker would do on her own subject.

Alice, who had taken on Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals in the first round, shifted her attention to Julia Margaret Cameron, more commonly known as Julia Margaret Who? in LAM Towers. I’d already scored 8 in aggregate on the combined specialists – all of which had come from Vincent, Bill and Ted and it’s true to say that Margaret did not deign to supply any more correct answers for me. Alice, though, produced a good round, the only specialist round we saw last night that really reached similar heights to those we saw in the first semi. She had a two point lead with 13, and looked a good bet for the win.

Will was the first to return for the GK round, and to be fair he made pretty good progress for the first half of the round. For the second half though progress was somewhat slower, a few near misses robbed him of momentum, and although he managed a good 9, it wasn’t going to be enough to win, with 3 contenders still to go. outu

Paul Risebury-Crisp scored 9 in his previous GK round. If he could repeat this, then that would be good enough to give him a 2 point lead, and that’s exactly what he did. I rather felt that this was a few points short of the total he would have needed to mount a realistic challenge for the win. Nonetheless, he can be satisfied with his 2022 Mastermind campaign.

So back to Patrick. What followed was a round as good as his first round GK, and as good as we saw in last week’s semi-final. Which was not, I will admit, a blowing away all the competition score, but it was a good 13, which meant that Alice was going to have to pass through the corridor of doubt in her own impending round.

Speaking of which, if Alice had hit the heights she had hit in her first round heat, then she would have comfortably achieved the 12 needed to win outright. However, judging by last night’s round, I’d guess that she had a round where the questions fell kindly with her in the heat, and that she had a round last night where the questions didn’t fall quite as kindly for her. So, as the round progressed, there was a growing doubt that she would get there. In the end, though, she scored 11, and crucially, did not pass. This was enough to win her the show outright, but it was enough to force that rarity in Mastermind terms, a tie break.

It looked to be advantage Patrick, since he had been more impressive in his GK round than Alice had. By my reckoning, if my answers to the tie break were right, then he’d only cored 2. Alice came back into the studio and gave her answers to the same questions. If I was right, then she had 3. Well, to cut a long story short, I was right, and she did.

Congratulations Alice, well done on becoming a Mastermind finalist – a fitting reward for keeping your nerve. Hard lines to Patrick, but well done on a good performance.

The Details

Will Vince	The Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh	9	0	9	0	18	0
Paul Risebury-Crisp	The Bill and Ted Films	11	1	9	0	20	0
Patrick Wilson	Drum and Bass in the 1990s	11	0	13	0	24	0	2
Alice Walker	Julia Margaret Cameron	13	0	11	0	24	0	5