University Challenge (also featuring Only Connect and other BBC quiz shows)

i had a ridiculous haircut (black/white striped) at the time, which loads of people seem to remember when i mention it ("ohmygodyouwerethatfreakonuniveristychallengewiththeweirdhair!!" etc).

She had an Italian name, but I have forgotten it, so no stalking for me.

-- toby (toby_ge...), January 8th, 2002.

My mate David was on it the year Durham won it - he was UCL, who were you with toby?

As part of the Lancaster team we made it to the final round of auditions two years ago. They actually interview you as if you're going onto an actual game show ("What books have you been reading recently?"), which I found vaguely disconcerting, but answers to the questions on the test we sat included "Tony Hawkes" and "Sixpence None The Richer". So that's alright then.

OK, that may be just me.

1. Stream of Consciousness

2. Greil Marcus's Mystery Train

3. something else interesting - what was it?

I thought he did well.

1970s video games? paxman was aghast that people knew all these, i thought they were piss-easy. (pong, tetris, asteroids, snake)

Perhaps we should not be surprised that you thought they were easy?

I'd like to see how many questions he was actually asked as compared to the others.

Uni Chal Mastermind and Buzzocks makes Monday night the best BBC2 line up all week.

"what's 'amped' mean then?"

I found it strange that they didn't know what COBOL or SQL were yet got the (IMO) more obscure Ada question right.

University Challenge makes me realise how much stuff there is that I don't know. I'm usually chuffed to bits if I get a run of Starter + 3 Bonuses correct.

Discovered a fairly good quiz show called Eggheads yesterday while I was off work. A team of "boffins" (I think most of them are former champions of 15-to-1 or similar) is challenged by a different team of plebs every episode. Plebs can win £20000, boffins just get to be smug about being clever. Plebs won yesterday for the first time in umpteen episodes.

UC was good, I knew more answers than usual (ie, about 5). The Greil Marcus question reminded me of RJG. I liked the set of questions where they had to say who ruled in a X-ocracy, and one of the words sounded very much like phallocracy, and they dithered and snickered and then it was something not rude at all.

I like Eggheads too.

That was because it's named after Ada Lovelace innit. I didn't know the others but I know who the daughter of George Gordon, Lord Byron was. Hung out with Babbage, nice one.

(still, not as bad as the cow-orker who pronounces "spamhaus" "spamhorse")

My old drama teacher got to the semis on MM in '86 or so.

Didn't he get a wee bit more time than the others - Humphrys explained something by way of explanation about the lipreading thing but I was in the other room so missed most of what he was saying.

I wondered about the cane too.

Was the other interesting thing the karaoke backing tracks of cheesy ballads (all of which I recognised, much to the amusement of my husband and parents)? Wasn't there a Smiths lyrics question too, or was that last week?

(also next week Quizzy Monday is on Tuesday)

Disappointed I didn't get to answer Asterix at the end of this week's UC

had an amazing run on the first 4 or so rounds of OC

not recognising that all four pieces were from Peter and the Wolf was the shouting at the tv moment of the week though

"Wind instruments playing Classical music, descending in size"

Victoria had to give it to them as that's the sort of question they would use

One that made me smile, on Mastermind:

What single by Lieutenant Pigeon was No1 for 4 weeks, had no discernable lyrics apart from the title repeated in a gruff voice?

Ans: One Step Beyond

Obviously it's Mouldy Old Dough, but I never thought that they bore similarities until he effectively mentioned it.

It isn't true, anyway. Mouldy Old Dough does have one other line in its lyrics, that being "Dirty old man".

Ah, that was only that one Top of the Pops performance, it's the name of one of their album tracks.

Although, there's a "take it away" quite clearly.

Victoria being too generous today.

Oh God yeah. Vague ideas of what the concept of the answer might be are not answers.

I get that occasionally there's a connection that isn't the one on the card.

But, we were yelling "dog" ...

oh, i got an answer nobody in the UC studio got last week. name of the last book in the Orestes trilogy, Eumenides. (read earlier this year although known about earlier - from both Amber Fury and Sandman). i guess they are easy if you know them.

I'm way behind the air dates but I have to hand it to Only Connect for working an incredibly sly slap at the New York Times into a wall: having five options that fit the category "NYT Games," and having the odd one out be ... Connections

two five-pointers on OC yesterday foundlings, fresh prince

Christmas specials started today for both OC and UC according to the listings.

(family tv is showing nothing but darts, 8 hours a day, every day so it'll have to wait. also the OC specials seem to be meagre and padded out with previous years)

oh, looking at it closer, OC tonight was the next episode of the current series. tomorrow and Wednesday are new specials and Friday is a repeat

OC has had repeats interspersed with new specials the last couple years, much to the chagrin of people who would love another go at it.

not been watching the specials, because darts.

but did see the christmas celeb chase just which was effectively lucy porter vs the world (of the 14 questions they got, she answered 11 of them, and they got 3 freebies, nobody else contributed). they were beaten easily by paul sinha but hey.

I know this was a silly mistake caused by jitter, but Professional Food Critic Jay Rayner suggesting lutefisk is made with anchovies?? I would never show my face in public again.

ha I know!
I've been enjoying the Christmassy UCs this time.

far be it from an american to criticize a british institution however it’s kinda dumb that the xmas UCs are structured in a way that’s just about getting your team’s point total as high as possible. last evening’s match was a dramatic 150-145 nail biter but the winning team kinda lost too bcuz they didn’t amass enough points to move forward. it should be structured more tournament style imo so there is some reward for winning a close match

anyway that’s just a small complaint, UC is always our post dinner appointment viewing & this year has been pretty loose and lively, it’s fun to see amol ribbing the players. i also love when a team misses the starter question and he bellows “YOU MAY NOT CONFER” to the other team and they all get scared and sit up straight in their chairs like good schoolchildren

So, I assume that conferring also includes checking to see if any of your team-mates is going to have a go, and if they're not, then you might have a go? Because that what they always seem to be doing, rather than actually discussing any kind of answer.

Jay Rayner confidently overruling everyone to insist that The Wide Sargasso Sea was based on Rebecca was also a lol.

OC pub quiz is an experiment they should not repeat

otm

Yes, unplayable and unwatchable and I'm sure it was great fun to do, but just no.

far be it from an american to criticize a british institution however it’s kinda dumb that the xmas UCs are structured in a way that’s just about getting your team’s point total as high as possible. last evening’s match was a dramatic 150-145 nail biter but the winning team kinda lost too bcuz they didn’t amass enough points to move forward.

You need to remember they were up against a very strong team. The game is all about momentum.

the OC question that mentioned right to a trial by jury was a bit on the nose

was slightly too specialised, the law episode

the question about consent, jfc.

Which country is this stamp which says suomi on it from?

Which country is this stamp which says Ukraine on it from?

amol needs to stop pausing in the questions. People think it's the whole question, have a stab, get penalised for interrupting when they wouldn't've if he hadn't paused

Good contest in the final. Two teams were good throughout

yes, the suomi stamp one confused me.
there seem to be more tenuously Christmas-related questions this year, which I appreciate.

did anyone see the Rudolph in the second-to-last episode (Durham v Trinity Camb)?

Paxman used to do a stupid dress-up once or twice as well, full on pantomime dame type things

Felt that Doherty of UCL was a bit unlucky as like him I assumed that Rajan had finished the question.

So, Only Connect had a "connection" of they are all ex-partners of Taylor Swift.

I fully expect next week to go "Jane Asher", "Francie Schwartz", ....

palladium being named after an asteroid named after a goddess is pretty recondite knowledge; and tellurium, is the earth a celestial body? you can't see it in the night sky.

"A celestial body, or heavenly body, is any natural object in space outside Earth's atmosphere, including stars (like our Sun), planets (Earth, Mars)"

an object outside earth's atmosphere like the earth, thanks ai!

next monday (and tuesday... and wednesday...) on bbc4, Only Connect from the beginning

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lskhg/broadcasts/upcoming

(but not episode 3, strangely)

i have never seen the greek letter version of OC

wall graphics look very cheap

Episode three had some political types so can't be broadcast during the run-up to the elections (or so my spies tell me)

was interesting to see their slightly timid walls yesterday, thinking them through before starting to hit the buttons, not manically cycling through alternatives like they do now

also, they didn't get up/down/strange/charm

i can see why i bounced off Only Connect when it started - they are all very posh

these people on only connect have never seen only connect, i have realised, because it hasn't been on tv yet. except it's the quarter finals now, so they have.

When we did it, the whole thing was in the can before anything aired, and we only saw the episodes we were in because we were in them. So it's entirely possible these people have no concept of what's gone or is going on at all.

Like, we recorded two in March and three in April, I think? And those episodes aired in December onwards. Had it been series one, we'd have had no idea of anything else other than those and the first we'd have seen anything else would have been months after we'd finished filming.

it shows in these episodes in the lack of trying combinations on the wall and finishing group 3 without considering the connection for group 4.

the one connection yesterday seemed unfair in that you could never have realised they all rhymed from the first clue, there was no possible way to get 5 points. (they got 0)

the missing vowels round seems much harder in these early episodes.

just watched s1e01 and yes, it's quite strange!

woah at s02e01 - victoria's personality has completely changed to the modern one - funny monologue, and not letting the teams introduce themselves. younger contestants, much less stuffy.

still haven't seen anyone with even as much as a suntan though.

The Beast on OC tonight