University Challenge

[Gangster Octopus]

Going to miss you.

[ad hoc]

Wow. You'll be sorely missed PF. Thanks for all the work and knowledge you have put into all your posts. I hope you return one day

[ursus arctos]

Wishing you and yours all the best, PF

May the future bring everything you wish for and more

You will always be welcome here

[adams house cat]

Best of everything PF. May the Sun never set on your tabernacle. Should you ever get the itch again, we'll be here. Most of us anyway.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Wouldn't normally have clicked on this thread and now I see kev7 has disappeared. Thanks for all your posts on education in particular.

[Fussbudget]

Blimey Charlie, that was a sudden exit. Thanks for all your posts PF, and don't be a stranger.

[WOM]

Well shit. Adieu PF.

[Lang Spoon]

Aw Kev, you’ll be sorely missed. Good luck sir.

[Sporting]

I've only been here a while but that exit is like a punch in the stomach. Take care wherever you go.

[Gangster Octopus]

Students not having heard of aloo gobi. What is the world coming to?

[Uncle Ethan]

Who was PF? We lucked onto this (wife, middle son and I love watching this together) on the not at all illegal set top box last night. I found the Glasgow team very unGlasgowish and somewhat annoying. Massive ignorance of Charles Dickens as well, to the point they didn't seem to have heard of him. The other team had the most serial killer looking guy outside of an actual serial killer.

[NHH]

University Challenge

University Challenge should be two teams of early-twentysomethings competing with each other, on a fairly equal footing. Having a 51 yr old participating puts him/her at an instant advantage over their younger competitors, merely through their greater life experience. For example, it'll be easier for them to answer questions about Reagan's presidency, being as they lived through it.

I was on University Challenge back in 1998. It was the day France beat Paraguay in the World Cup 2nd Round, which I watched in the Granada canteen as they didn't have a TV in the Green Room (!). In the Green Room, we watched the rounds being filmed the same day, and felt reasonably confident - our level of knowledge seemed fairly well-matched to everyone else's.

However, and unfortunately for us, we were pitched against the Open University. Their team had a Mastermind finalist, a 15-to-1 Champion, and a 15-to-1 finalist. They'd signed onto to do degrees there in order to get onto the show. They were _so_ much better than us callow youths. The music round was about big band sounds from the 1940s and 50s, to which one of their fucking team waxed lyrical afterwards about dancing with his wife to the actual fucking artist for the starter for 10.

The OU were totally brilliant, and won that series of the show. For years, I thought we'd been totally gubbed, in an embarrassing fashion. The year before, Birkbeck's team had finished on minus points, and been monstered in the tabloids with headliens like 'are these the thickest students in Britain?' and in my memory, we'd narrowly avoided their fate. A few years' later, I watched the film version of Starter for Ten and decided to look us up, and found we'd done really quite well, and were about 15 points off qualifying as best runners up.

[Ray de Galles]

My wife and I were working our way through a backlog we recorded of the last series (though we cheated and watched the final live to avoid spoilers) so we are quite out of kilter with the scheduling. Is July a strange time for a new series to start? It seems like it usually starts at the end of summer/start of autumn to coincide with a new academic year but maybe I'm mistaken.

When were these recorded? Pre-COVID obviously, I wonder when we may see the next new series.

[Benjm]

However, and unfortunately for us, we were pitched against the Open University. Their team had a Mastermind finalist, a 15-to-1 Champion, and a 15-to-1 finalist. They'd signed onto to do degrees there in order to get onto the show.

I was slightly taken aback when it was revealed that Brandon Blackwell, the breakout contestant from the last series, had only come to the UK to study so that he could go on UC. Despite knowing how seriously people take pub quizzes, the obvious point that TV quiz shows are packed with serious hobbyist and semi-professional participants hadn't lodged in my mind. I usually avoid Mastermind due to a very low Humphrys tolerance but caught the final this year and had the same slow motion penny drop with that, as the character sketches revealed all the competitors to be deeply embedded in the quiz life.

[Diable Rouge]

My wife and I were working our way through a backlog we recorded of the last series (though we cheated and watched the final live to avoid spoilers) so we are quite out of kilter with the scheduling. Is July a strange time for a new series to start? It seems like it usually starts at the end of summer/start of autumn to coincide with a new academic year but maybe I'm mistaken.

When were these recorded? Pre-COVID obviously, I wonder when we may see the next new series.

I think they usually record them in the autumn, after the preliminary testing, which generally happens around now. Obviously Brain of Britain was put on recording hiatus midway through the first round, hence the hasty creation of the improvised My Generation.

[Fussbudget]

I was slightly taken aback when it was revealed that Brandon Blackwell, the breakout contestant from the last series, had only come to the UK to study so that he could go on UC. Despite knowing how seriously people take pub quizzes, the obvious point that TV quiz shows are packed with serious hobbyist and semi-professional participants hadn't lodged in my mind. I usually avoid Mastermind due to a very low Humphrys tolerance but caught the final this year and had the same slow motion penny drop with that, as the character sketches revealed all the competitors to be deeply embedded in the quiz life.

Yeah, we have a mate who's a proper quizhead and has been on all the big quiz shows (he won 10 grand on Tipping Point, single-handedly beat the 5 Eggheads in the final round etc.) He spends most of his spare time going to quiz events around the country and memorising stuff.

When he went on Mastermind he chose Father Ted as his specialist subject not because he's a huge fan of the show, but because there are only 25 episodes so it was easy for him to watch the whole thing 4 or 5 times from start to finish to make sure he had all the possible questions covered.

[Capybara]

I first became aware of all this a few years ago when someone I once knew (getting on for forty years ago) appeared on Mastermind and did rather well, reaching the final. He then turned up on Only Connect so I Googled his name and found that, indeed, a community existed. He's since won a series of 15-to-1. When I knew him, he didn't show any interest in quizzing whereas I used to do pub quizzes for fun and was reasonably good at them simply on the basis of having a brain that retains random facts. It always used to annoy me when Chris Tarrant would ask a contestant 'how do you know that?' because I knew that if I was in that position I wouldn't be able to give a coherent answer other than, 'I just do'. I later became part of a team in a league and we won it several years in a row. But I wouldn't stand a chance against any of these people as I could never sit down and learn stuff - it would take all the fun out of it and I probably wouldn't learn much that way anyway.

[Ray de Galles]

I first became aware of all this a few years ago when someone I once knew (getting on for forty years ago) appeared on Mastermind and did rather well, reaching the final. He then turned up on Only Connect so I Googled his name and found that, indeed, a community existed.

The surprisingly good ITV drama 'Quiz' about the "coughing major" on 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' touched on this.

[pebblethefish]

It always used to annoy me when Chris Tarrant would ask a contestant 'how do you know that?' because I knew that if I was in that position I wouldn't be able to give a coherent answer other than, 'I just do'.

I'm the opposite - for some reason as well as a good memory for pointless trivia I have a good memory for where I found it out (and annoying habit of sharing that information with the rest of my quiz team, who frankly couldn't give a shit). In crossword circles it's known as "Ninja-turtling" after the concept of only knowing the names of famous artists because they've watched the cartoon. So I've picked up random knowledge from Terry Pratchett, Asterix, Buffy etc, information that I would dearly love to share with Chris Tarrant.

[elguapo4]

When I was young one of the neighbours sons was on University Challenge. He was already a local celebrity for going to Trinity college in the first place. It was like the Italy World cup in the area, then we watched them getting well beaten and everything went back to normal.

[NHH]

I used to play in a quiz league in Lancaster; we were the D team of a pub which had as the A Team a group who were properly hated. Partly that was because several of them were well-known former teachers at the grammar school, so lots of the others teams had players who had been taught by these people. But the main reason was that they were grade-A knobheads.

They'd practice each week and set each other homework of stuff to gen up on. There was a system whereby if a player got a question wrong, it passed to another member of the team; the captain chose the player who'd answer it, and there was a five-finger rule in place, where 1 finger held out meant you could give an answer, and all fingers and thumb extended meant you were utterly confident. These tossers used to keep records of the fingers extended and the successful answers given, to give the Captain data on which person to go with.
Each week, a team in the top two-leagues would set the quiz that week. Before I joined the D team, our team had set a quiz solely designed to fuck off the A team. They had deliberately put specific questions in to make sure certain people on the A Team got them. The biggest twat was so affronted by being asked which rapper played a mutant kangaroo in Tank Girl that he seethed through the rest of the quiz, getting wrong some staples on the highest mountain in South America and US state Capitals.

When I was playing, we were on the verge of promotion to the First Division, where we would play with the A Team and others like them. We were ahead in the first half of the last match, but collapsed and had a stinker in the second, losing promotion as a result. It was never something planned, but none of us were gutted, and we all seemed to have collectively and deliberately choked to avoid getting promoted without every thinking consciously about doing it.

On the wider scene - I'm friends with someone though football who is a part of the quiz scene. He's friends with the Chasers from The Chase, and goes to events like the world quizzing championships etc etc. They do all collect various shows, but the one they venerate most of all is Only Connect. I think this is because this requires not just rote memory skills, but allied with cryptic-crossword style intellect.

[lambers]

It always used to annoy me when Chris Tarrant would ask a contestant 'how do you know that?' because I knew that if I was in that position I wouldn't be able to give a coherent answer other than, 'I just do'.

Me too, I hate that question, but that's probably routed in kids at school asking it in a manner of "You saddo, how do you know that?"

For those who ask with genuine curiosity, I wonder if they expect me to have a receipt for every knowledge transaction ("Thank you for that fascinating tidbit, please sign here to confirm that we have transferred the fact securely."). But it turns out they probably just know pebblethefish, and expect this sort of thing.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Me too, I hate that question, but that's probably routed in kids at school asking it in a manner of "You saddo, how do you know that?"

For those who ask with genuine curiosity, I wonder if they expect me to have a receipt for every knowledge transaction ("Thank you for that fascinating tidbit, please sign here to confirm that we have transferred the fact securely."). But it turns out they probably just know pebblethefish, and expect this sort of thing.

Me as well, I hate that. I also hated when Trivial Pursuit was a new thing and getting a question right was immediately met with "you've played this before" or the even more damning "you've played this before and memorised all the answers". Don't know whether it is just a British thing but people get really insecure about quizzes. Occasionally I set and host them for charity and it is surprising how annoyed people can get with questions they don't know. I didn't host it but we had a charity quiz at work one time in which a very intelligent lawyer quickly went into a huff, shouting "how am I supposed to know that?" in response to a number of questions that were fairly run of the mill general knowledge trivia questions, and which several other teams correctly answered, so well within the art of the possible. They ended up giving up halfway through, loudly proclaiming the whole thing to be a fix, but stopped short of requesting a refund of their entry fee (a whole quid).

[Diable Rouge]

Yeah, we have a mate who's a proper quizhead and has been on all the big quiz shows (he won 10 grand on Tipping Point, single-handedly beat the 5 Eggheads in the final round etc.) He spends most of his spare time going to quiz events around the country and memorising stuff.

When he went on Mastermind he chose Father Ted as his specialist subject not because he's a huge fan of the show, but because there are only 25 episodes so it was easy for him to watch the whole thing 4 or 5 times from start to finish to make sure he had all the possible questions covered.

Also famously Pat Gibson's specialist subject for the same reason.

[Fussbudget]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if that's where he got the idea from.