#University challenge

[purpleandgreen13]

Good lord

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

[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

[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

[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

[devouringyourson]

still the funniest thing to happen on british tv

[whereisyourheadkathryn]

OH MY GOD.png

[theuniversitychallengereview]

No Use Crying Over Smashed Mugs

Leaning too far to the left while sitting on my sofa, I nudged my prized blue coffee mug over the edge. If someone had been filming, it would probably have looked like those videos of cats slowly knocking items off of tables, except I did it completely by accident rather than by mischievous design.

A loud smashing sound was the only indication that something had gone wrong. That’s quite a big indication, to be honest, and when I peered over the side I knew what to expect. The mug had landed on the metal base of a standing lamp and been shattered into approximately 15 pieces. This is functionally no different than it being shattered into 1000 pieces, but I was denied the poetic image of such a platonically ideal destruction.

For a moment I decried the loss of the mug, and indeed I recall being far more upset for far longer for the loss of mugs in the past. But this mug was gone. There was nought to be done, and I had, only the day before, come into possession of a new mug. One in, one out, it seems. Such is the way of things.

I bought this mug from Ikea, and it cost me about £2, but it had served me well, and I would honour its memory with a 250 word eulogy.

You Wait Ages For A Bus

Something else which cost £2 and which does deserve a longer period of anger is the £2 price cap on bus tickets, which Labour have announced will be defunct from the start of 2025.

Aside from the fact it will increase the commuting cost of a bus rider by close to £500/year, it will discourage people from using the bus system and drive people into the arms of their cars. At a time when we should be moving towards a world of universal mass transit, this is a deeply regressive move in many ways, and it makes you wonder what the point of this Labour government is.

It is also starkly irritating how governments of all stripes are unable (or unwilling) to see things in any context at all. The bus subsidy will also likely reduce car accidents (fewer cars on the road) and increase economic activity in city centres among a bunch of other potential benefits. So looking at the raw cost of the subsidy doesn’t take the full picture into account, not even slightly.

But its no use crying — it only cost £2 didn’t it?

Special Episode, 1999 - Tabloids vs Broadsheets

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Edinburgh vs Leeds

I have used the bus in both of the cities represented by the teams who faced off in this week’s University Challenge, Edinburgh and Leeds.

Leeds is a historically underrepresented insitution on University Challenge. It has a student body of nearly 40,000 yet has only been on the show 5 times since 1995, with its last appearance coming in 2011.

Here’s your first starter for ten.

Edinburgh skipper Myles takes the opening points with mist, and they take a full set of bonuses on films with scores by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. He (that’s Myles, not Jonny Greenwood) takes the second starter too, but they only managed a single bonus on the 1924 general election, which was 100 years ago.

I’m now imagining an episode of University Challenge in 2124 in which the contestants are asked about this year’s election. Will someone born in the early 2100s know who Rishi Sunak was? Will they remember that Keir Starmer got rid of £2 bus tickets?

Aiton drops five points with an incorrect interruption before Myles makes it a hat-trick with nit, not, nut on the follow-up.

Edinburgh lead 55 points going into the picture round, which is on gears and it goes to Leeds’ Patel for their first points of the night. One of the bonuses asks for a gearing system named after an invertebrate.

Dadaism gives Aiton redemption and earns Edinburgh a bonus set on the League of Extraordinary Gentleman.

A guess of Dutch by Thomson gets Leeds going again, but they cannot build any momentum and general relativity hands Edinburgh the reins once more. Myles nominates Self to give Zinedine Zidane as an answer to one of the bonuses, which is a wise nomination. If one is not aware of the name Zinedine Zidane then one probably shouldn’t risk trying to pronounce it.

Mellor smashes the music starter with the Eurovision winner Loreen and Edinburgh manage two of the bonuses, giving them a lead of 95 points at the halfway stage.

Is The Comeback On?

Tan starts a Leeds comeback with James II, and they maintain their impetus with strange courtesy of Thomson. Prince Edward Island gives them a third consecutive starter, and they’ve halved their deficit.

Self takes the second picture starter for Edinburgh, but Banerjee Marvin is quickly back on it with the Bloomsbury Group on the next question. Could Leeds complete this unlikely comeback?

Cardinals for Patel closes the gap to 25, and Swansea for Thompson makes it 15. Their work on the bonuses isn’t good enough though, and Edinburgh stay ahead.

Mellor and Myles grab a couple of starters for Edinburgh, but they too struggle on the bonuses. A neg from Myles then opens the door for Leeds, but they can’t go through it and end the game 50-points adrift, tied on points with two other high-scoring losers.

No, it isn’t on.

Leeds 125–175 Edinburgh

The Scottish quartet slacked off a bit towards the end, but did enough to get over the line. Rajan tells Leeds that they have a chance of going through, but I don’t think they do.

The other sides who scored 125 points lost to teams scoring 240 and 275, so surely a 175–125 loss won’t be enough, regardless of what happens in the final two first-round matches.

Thanks for reading, and subscribe if you aren’t already to help me defeat the algorithm and stop me crying about the price of bus tickets and/or coffee mugs.

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