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?

Thanks to recent podcast-related research, I got the Zydeco question, which wouldn't have been the case three weeks ago.

AR corpsing on Les Mis was adorable.

Loved the team that got all the music years correct; I'm backing them all the way.

I loved that Belfast didn't run down the clock. If they didn't know it they passed. Very likeable team.

Loved the team that got all the music years correct; I'm backing them all the way.

― mike t-diva, Monday, August 12, 2024 7:35 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes! Finally some who actually know music older than 2000! I was impressed.

Yeah, I bought Cannonball and I still got the date wrong (picked the wrong answer between 93 and 94).

I always feel like a sense of structure is restored to the week when UC comes back. Mondays and the work week don't quite make sense without it.

Agree.

otm

All the answers for UC 2024-08-19:

Orwell
Sea Cucumber
Loquat
Wasabi
Interpol
Absalom
Gethsemane
Ascension
Iodine
Half A Yellow Sun
Brit Bennett
Arundhati Roy
Graz (Austria)
Bilbao
Calgary
Rotterdam
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Cottongrass
Sphagnum
Heather
Montreal
Diana Von Fürstenberg
Prada
Stella MacCartney
Indonesia
Rome
Plebians
Justinian
Python
Lausanne / Newcastle
La Rochelle / Little Rock
Freetown / Libreville
Stephen King
Young
Brown
Mohs
Run DMC
Latifah
Tone Loc
Salt n Pepa
Cultural Relativism
Cherokee
Surinam(e)
Hangol
L and K
Bruges
Germany
Poland
Beta
Jews / Quakers
1830s
1990s
Bauhaus
Transit Of Mercury
Descartes
Tycho Brahe
Ferenc Puskas
Lev Yashin
Socrates
Gerd Muller
Sinead O'Connor
Steve Reich
Gilberto Gil
Patti Smith
Cyborg
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Macbeth
Gall
Cheek
Nerve
Butterfly
Astroid
Cissoid
Cardioid
South Africa

of which i got 17:

Gethsemane
Arundhati Roy
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Python
Stephen King
Brown
Mohs
Run DMC
Salt n Pepa
Hangol
Beta
1990s
Bauhaus
Steve Reich
Gilberto Gil
Patti Smith
Cardioid

some of those 17 actually spelt correctly

weirdly I was looking at a map of Sicily yesterday and noted the city in question in an early .... question.
also I just finished reading the book that was one of the physics questions.
and I got the pancake one they didn't.

All the answers for last tuesday. not sure about the last deaf film. or "Literin" which kept autocorrecting to Latrine.

Lise Meitner
Syracuse
Batavia
Ithaca
Vanity Fair
Cretaceous
Iridium
Yucatan
Anthony Eden
Sorrel
Sorrow
Sorrento
Theremin
Cleopatra
Bottom
Hamlet
Cerebelum
Occipital
Parietal
Temporal
ECG
Myocin
Titan
Sarcomere
Caster Semenya
Bourbon
Parma
Sicilies
Laterin?
Dosa
Injera
Blini
Rashomon
Sumerian
Gilgamesh
Vishnu
Beethoven
Aufbau
Bela Bartok
Sibelius
Debussy
Malaysia
Nitrogen
Tryptophan
Pellagra
'T' (Trent, Thames)
Copyright
Bern
Trinity College, Dublin
Warhol
Ballet
Marc Chagall
Sugar Plum Fairy
Géricault
Courbet
Millet
Manet
Pierre
Kop
Peru
Dominican Republic
Brazil
Parabola
Three Body Problem
Cixin Liu
Helium
Ragu
Zaragotha
Baku
Glasgow
Frisian
Myanmar
India
Cambodia
Vole
Bass
Ukulele
Violin
Ford Madox
Sound Of Metal
Ukraine
Freed? (deaf film)
Roman Citizenship
Avocado
Brunswick

i got 10, which is pretty terrible

(as is my spelling again)

I think 41 based on that list. Third time this year I've answered a question on Zaha Hadid's bridge in Zaragoza!

ok, bags i'm on your team

they didn't seem like first round questions to me, and yet the winners had the highest score i think i've seen.

realised i can use the iplayer subtitles for the two answers i didn't catch

Lateran
Creed

UC 2024-09-02

Afghanistan
- Three
- Nebraska / Main
- Faithless Elector
Andre
- Leith Edinburgh
- Portsmouth
- Durham
Emulsion Test
Imax
- Peru
- Cusco
- Neruda
Malta
- Saint Vincent
- Vanuatu
- Cape Verde
Shoulder
- Dialysis
- Diazepam
- Diastole
Mandate Of Heaven
- Paris
- Los Angeles
- London
Ribo-
- La Rioja
- River Main
- Rhone
Symbolism
- Haumea
- Eris
- Pluto
Verdi
- Sousa
- Kenneth J Alforn
- Straus Snr
Fanny Price
Black Sabbath
- Cornet
- Flugelhorn
- Euphonium
Markov Chain
- Heart Of Darkness
- Australia
- Bombing
Plutarch
- Flood
- Prometheus
- Helen
South Africa
- Cairo
- Iran
- Samarakand
Jamboree
- Tess of the D'urbervilles
- Return Of The Native
- Mayor Of Casterbridge
The Aviator
- Carol
- Orlando
- The Favourite
Newtonian
- Borneo
- Cuba
- Madagascar
Second Republic
- Laurence Olivier
- John Huston
- Willy Brandt
A Tale Of Two Cities
- South
- East
- West
F
- Turin
- Cinema
- Coins
Stay
- Zero
- Descartes
- One
Alexander Nevsky

the cubic equation questions i need to hear again. did they constrain the domain for the first because otherwise it'd be the same as the third. Markov Chain was the only clever answer i got... i missed the dickens and all the hardy questions through slowness.

catching up on UC

'mulberry' has been a thing on both OC and UC in recent weeks

pointless. 7 non-pointless answers for winner of the women's ballon d'or today. a single non-pointless answer for women's prize for literature the other day (mantell).

Re:Monday's UC, Wichtenstein, lol.

Xerox has been on both, no? Or am I confused with Connections on the NYT games?!

a pedant writes: it wasn't Xerox on uc though because they wanted the process and not the brand name

A couple weeks ago there was a rocky horror and a new wave round and I was in my fucking element.

And the answering team clearly weren't. i think that was the same week and same team that were stumped by the old timey sf film questions, even the old guy on the team didn't know about klaatu or forbidden planet or even ming the merciless.

Another lol from this week, A Wonderful Life. They still won though :(

Ha yes - I couldn't believe they didn't get that one.

The girl with the hyphenated last name got some good music ones this week though I can't remember what specifically.

the sci-fi films round WAS the rocky horror question - all films mentioned in the opening song (i finally watched that tonight)

there was a picture round too, slightly harder, relatives in films or something, Paper Moon etc

saw something daytime with Graham Norton(?) during the week which was basically 'here are pictures of 5 things, what are they?' which seemed ridiculous

^ Alan Carr's Picture Slam

i always, apparently, get those two mixed up

the sci-fi films round WAS the rocky horror question - all films mentioned in the opening song (i finally watched that tonight)

^ Yes. Science Fiction double Feature Rattles off loads of actors.

O out of 3 for Stax records ffs, what are they teaching thr kids these days

modern music? ver kids weren't even born.

anyway, i liked the way Tarsala got to answer 'Masala'

amol just as snobbish about music in his own way as paxman

Those two lads in the tiebreak at the end of Mastermind looked very familiar. Where do I know them from?

Lewis has been on Only Connect and University Challenge recently, think the other lad was on University Challenge as well.

that st andrews intro was a sketch

probably the most tailored-to-my-interests music round ever, ha

wow westermann is the worst

well its _not my specialty_ glaring at yerman to her left and constant passagg "want me to nominate you" at anyone offering a guess eek no thanks captain

Just started the Xmas ones; these are far more my level.

wtf not a single one of 8 adults recognised a very distinctive music round there

Nice to see Legendary Internet Hardman Barry Lasagna randomly turn up on one of the new specials.

Respect to the Southampton alumni who confidently asserted that William S Burroughs was the author of Billy Budd.

how long before the losing teams start clocking that they didn't in fact Almost Had It There and that they weren't in fact Facing An Astoundingly Strong Team, he just says that every time.

Lemonshead!

Boateng was a very charming captain, good-sport chuckling over Lemonsheads and such, vs. Parker Bowles's irritating insistence on making exaggerated hopeless faces at every question as a prophylactic for not knowing the answer

Love the absolutely crazy wrong answers when they do a popular music round.

In one of the Xmas ones they played Spiritualized and after one guy muttered "is it the Stones" for a few seconds they decided to guess "Cream"

ha just watched that one. got quite a few again. copious amounts of christmas cake clearly good for the brain cells.

wow

"Tom Petty"

lol exactly