#University challenge

[theabigailthorn]

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE BAYBEEE

I'm gonna be on University Flippin' Challenge!

Tune into BBC2 at 20:30 on New Year's Eve to catch me representing my alma mater St Andrews in the Celebrity Christmas Special!

It'll be available on iPlayer afterwards too!

-------------- TRANSLATION FOR BAFFLED AMERICANS ------------------

University Challenge is a quiz show on the BBC, it's been going since 1962 and it's a British institution. Viewing figures are usually measured in the millions and it's a huge honour to be invited on. It's famously super difficult. There's no prize money and after I'd paid my makeup artist and manager I was actually down fifty quid lmao; you do it purely for the love of the game

[hamletthedane]

watching University Challenge is like Hi my name is Frederick and I’m from Waddle-to-Town in Blackberryshire and I’m reading for a D-Phil in classics.

…and then they proceed to demolish a dozen questions in a row about the biochemistry of elm tree bark

[purpleandgreen13]

Good lord

Harvey on University Challenge while he's in med school needs to be added to my prequel fic! :D

[abiiors]

NEW SEASON OF UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE LETS FUCKING 👹GOOOOOOOO👹

[theuniversitychallengereview]

The Fame Game

For the past week or so, I have been obsessed with Chappell Roan’s album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. It is full of incredibly catchy hooks and playful lyrics and is very addictive. I also listened to Brat by Charli XCX and it paled in comparison, just in case you thought I was playing to the crowd with my admittedly late-to-the-party hot take on Roan.

The past week has also seen a swathe of articles about how Roan resents the fame she has acquired as a result of this banger album. She describes this fame as having the “vibe of an abusive ex-husband”, and talks about how people act like they have a right to her time and fail to respect her boundaries with creepy behaviour.

Backlash to the backlash

This complaining opened her up to criticism, as she is someone who has courted fame and is now seemingly rejecting those who are responsible for her being famous (and by extension, rich) in the first place.

But that’s not really fair, is it? Regardless of who you are you should be able to have some boundaries. Football players are sometimes slagged off for ‘not being able to take’ the abuse which gets hurled at them from the stands, but its not normal for someone to go to work and get yelled at by strangers.

Social media unfairly gets the blame for a lot of things these days, but on this one I think the finger is correctly pointed. People as mildly famous as YouTubers with a few thousand subscribers are subjected to online abuse (albeit on a smaller scale than Roan and Premier League footballers). This abuse is sent partly because the abuser doesn’t view the abused as an actual person. They are merely an Internet persona, not a thinking, feeling person who may read those posts.

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Parasocialites

When this view translates to the real world, as can happen in instances where people are super-famous, you get things like a fan grabbing and kissing Roan in a bar. These are not people, they are avatars through which the viewer is free to do anything they please. Characters in a video game.

One of the lower-level examples of this are some of the tweets you read about University Challenge contestants. Most tweets on the hashtag are lovely, encouraging and celebratory, about the enjoyment of the show. But every week there are a few which single out contestants (more often than not the non-male contestants) for abuse or creepiness.

The podcaster Blindboy (whose recent episode prompted me to give Chappell Roan a proper listen) gets around the problem of fame by wearing a bag on his head for any public appearance so that people don’t recognise him without it. But this isn’t a solution for most people.

It would be better if people remembered that fame doesn’t reduce the wearer to a caricatured cardboard cutout, free to be moved around as they please for whatever purpose they see fit.

So with that in mind, let’s get onto the episode which featured eight very real human people from the Universities of Reading and Exeter.

Reading were making their first appearance since a run to the final in 2022. Their captain that year, Michael Hutchinson, was on Only Connect last week with Fatima Sheriff, a member of the Imperial team who beat Reading (the third member of the OC team was Michael Kohn, who had reached the UC semis with Imperial the year before).

From rivals in the #UniversityChallenge final to teammates on Only Connect

Hutchinson 🤝 Sheriff (plus 2021 UC semi finalist Michael Kohn!) pic.twitter.com/hfqfi81fot

— Joe (@TheUCReview) September 16, 2024

If you want to watch the episode before reading the review you can do so at this link.

Here’s your first starter for ten.

To be fair to them they manage two out of three bonuses (and the third one on the Great Glen was pretty tough), but they answer them in the way you would answer a question about Norway, if that makes sense.

The second starter also goes to Mouelhi, as does the third, and the fourth, and the… no, that was where the run ended. But still, four starters in a row to kick things off is pretty incredible. It is not the all-time record, as confirmed by statman Jack McB, but it doesn’t happen very often.

Also, for the record, Mr Mouelhi’s getting of the first four correctly answered starters of the game isn’t a record; I know of at least one occasion where this has been bettered (the first six in a QF many years ago). #UniversityChallenge

— Jack McB. (@jack_jmmcb) September 23, 2024

This streak gives Exeter a lead of 95 points before Finkelstein finally gets Reading off the mark. He takes a second consecutive starter, and I’m already thinking about what I’m going to write if he takes four-in-a-row like Mouelhi, but Moorcroft hits back for Exeter to put a halt to these musings. Four-in-a-row-in-a-row might have been the opening sentence.

We Gonna Rock Down

The music starter on Electric Avenue goes to Exeter’s Rock, and they clean up with a hat-trick of bonuses on British synth and new-wave. Reading look like they are building some momentum, but Moorcroft stops them again with condensation, winning Exeter a bonus set on Euclid’s elements, a book about maths which describes a cylinder as:

“a figure created by carrying a rectangular parallelogram around and restoring it to its original position, while keeping one side of the parallelogram about the right angle fixed”

Which I can’t wrap my head around at all. Does wrapping my head around an idea also create a cylinder somehow? I don’t know.

Finkelstein grabs another starter, and Reading close back to within 40 points, but this would be the end of their resistance as Exeter ended the show with a 100–0 run.

Reading 100–240 Exeter

A close-ish match, before Exeter ran away with it in the last five minutes. They posted a decent score, and could make the quarter-finals so long as they avoid one of the big hitters like Bristol and Imperial in the second round.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week for Birkbeck vs Darwin.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Apparently people don't like the new university challenge presenter because he says haitch instead of aitch. Classism alive and well in Britain, then.

(It's probably also relevant that he's brown, but they can't say they don't like him because of that, so they're finding classist things to pick on instead!).

[whiteshipnightjar]

there should be a rule that every quiz team needs a joanna newsom girlie

[e-von-dahl]

When it’s Monday night and you get a question right on only connect AND university challenge that’s when you know you are the smartest person alive

[turquoisewaves07]

URSULA LE GUIN and GALL WASPS mentioned in university challenge

[theabigailthorn]

here's a link to me on University Challenge! https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0026dxw/university-challenge-christmas-2024-7-st-andrews-v-lse

[slowlystupendousdelusion]

Amol Rajan's being a picky bitch on UC tonight

[a-dotrivenitupontop]

heartstopper mention on university challenge :))

[unnamednarrator]

one time i got an answer right on university challenge that none of the participants did and no one can take that away from me

[justlesbian]

Watching this UK quiz show called "University Challenge" with my family, and usually it's a show with really hard Oxford level questions but tonight one of the questions was "who sings this song" and they played 2 seconds and this bitch on one of the panels pressed that buzzer SO QUICK and was like "GIRL IN RED"

And then they had to know names of movies and they showed a picture of Kristen Stewart and one of the guys on her team looked at her desperarely and was like "KRISTEN STEWART!! Do you know this one??" (she did OBVIOUSLY)

And THEN they were asked something about iconic women in history or something

University Challenge more like the Great Lesbian Challenge these questions were done by some lesbian who was like fuck this pretentious shit

[theuniversitychallengereview]

Voyage to Upton Snodsbury

There are six different rounds in a series of University Challenge.

Round 1

Repechage

Round 2

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

Grand Final

In order, I would rank them:

Quarter-finals

Repechage

Round 1

Semi-finals

Final

Round 2

Let me know in the comments what order you would rank them in.

This week saw the first of the two repechage matches, AKA the high-scoring loser play-offs, my second favourite round after the quarter-finals which have such a fun format.

Four teams qualify for the second chance of the repechage, which has been in place since 1999, when Balliol and Victoria, Manchester made it through.

In 2010, the Emmanuel, Cambridge team led by Alex Guttenplan famously won the series title after coming through the repechage.

Wondering whether it was an advantage to enter the play-offs as the team with the highest round 1 score, I crunched the numbers. This is what I got.

There have been 26 years with play-off rounds.

The No. 1 ranked team won 15 (57.1%)

The No. 2 ranked team won 12 (46.1%)

The No. 3 ranked team won 13 (50%)

The No. 4 ranked team won 12 (46.1%)

So, potentially a slight advantage for the first seed, but not much difference among the rest.

These days the 1 and 4 ranked teams often play each other but hasn’t always been the case. Sometimes No. 1 would play No. 2.

UCL came into this year's repechage as the No. 1 ranked side, with St Andrews the 4th, but as you can see from the data, that didn't rule them out.

Upton Snodsbury

St Andrews' George Capell says he's from Broughton Hackett near Upton Snodsbury. Normally I am against such granularity in the 'this is where I'm from' section', but Capell justifies his level of detail here.

Both of these places sound like they have been made up by a bored train conductor who is testing to see if anyone is listening to them.

There is also a meme along the lines of 'why is every village in England called something like Mildew Cobblington or Grunkle?' and Upton Snodsbury fits wonderfully into this.

I wondered whether Capell might have been bending reality a little bit to get a mention of Upton Snodsbury in there. Surely there is a more recognisable place a little bit closer than Upton Snodsbury?

But to be fair to him, it is 1.3 miles (a 28 minute walk) from Broughton Hackett to Upton Snodsbury, which is also the larger conurbation, with a population of 392 according to the 2021 census while Broughton Hackett has a mere 175.

Here's your first starter for ten.

Mandel takes the opening points with pastoral, and UCL manage one bonus on cities ending in the letters 'abad'.

An incredibly quick buzz from Buffet-Mogel gets St Andrews off the mark, and they took a hat-trick on flywheels to grab the lead.

Vitamins keeps UCL healthy, but Mr Upton Snodsbury himself hits back for St Andrews with voyage on the picture starter. Prabhakar picks up a Buffet-Mogel mistake, winning UCL the first of several bonus sets this episode which feature a very long-winded explanation as to the type of answer which is to be expected.

The Fens continues Mandel's excellent start to the episode, and Buffet-Mogel keeps St Andrews in it with her second, art deco.

This wins them a bonus set on a mathematician, so Skerrett looks at his teammate Rosas, who is studying physics. Rajan says 'Don't look at him!' as if scolding a misbehaving schoolboy glancing at a partner in crime for reassurance. But this is exactly the situation he should be looking at Rosas, who clearly has more expertise in the subject than he, himself a historian.

A super-quick buzz of Holst on the music starter by Mandel, followed by an equally impressive one of mole by Skerrett on the next starter, keeps the game tight, but it doesn't remain that way for long.

Five starters in a row for UCL, three for Mandel and two for skipper Holtermann Entwistle, end the game as a contest.

An unfortunate neg of panthers instead of panthera compounds St Andrews' misery, but a couple of late starters brought them into triple digits, a very respectable score to bow out on.UCL 215 - 105 St Andrews

Congratulations to UCL, who become the 15th team to enter round 2. Join me next week to find out who of Durham and SOAS will become the 16th.

In the meantime, subscribe so you never miss an episode, and join me on Blue Sky, where there is a party starting.