Christmas University Challenge: 17th-21st December

So, we're into the festive fortnight, as it were. Christmas DoND begins on Monday. But University Challenge began it's Christmas specials a week early. So, here's a quick summary of the week's events on Christmas University Challenge.

Firstly, the biggest thing: the new set. Back in July, 'Welshguy' from the Bangor team on this year's UC reported that the show would be moving to Salford for the next series, so a new set would be there. This seems to be the precursor to it, as it were. I'm not too sure about this new set. The colour scheme is good, but the set itself is rather small, and the teams look kinda close together. But this is only a minor quibble, and it's good to see the set finally get updated.

But, enough of that, onto the matches:

Monday 17th: Bristol vs Leeds
Result: Leeds win, 140-135
Participants I had already heard of: Alistair McGowan, the Leeds captain, and the names Ruth Lea (Bristol) and Jay Rayner (Leeds) I was also familiar with, even though I didn't know who they were.
This was a good close match to start off the series. The lead constantly changed hands throughout, with Bristol pulling out a lead with not much time left. But Leeds fought back, and took a small lead. Bristol got another starter to reduce the lead to 5 points, but the gong went, handing Leeds a narrow victory.

Tuesday 18th: Newcastle vs Loughborough
Result: Dead-heat, 110 all; Newcastle win on tie-break.
Participants I had already heard of: Peter Gibbs the weatherman, for Newcastle, and Tanni Grey-Thompson, the Loughborough captain.
Loughborough started off stronger, but Newcastle never allowed them to pull out a big lead, and kept them well in check. Lawrie Sanchez, playing for Loughborough, twice got a laugh when he buzzed, and then paused, prompting Paxo to shout 'Speak!' at him. (He wouldn't have let the students get away with that!) And then, later on, when he got a starter, and looked pretty fed up when he said it, prompting Paxo to quip 'Never has anyone looked so miserable after getting a starter right!'. Peter Gibbs also got a laugh when he said 'Kimono Dragon' instead of 'Komodo Dragon'! (He was not given the points!)
The match ended a dead heat, and, what appeared to be a complete guess from Newcastle on the tie-breaker gave them the victory.

Wednesday 19th: New College Oxford vs the LSE
Result: New College win, 240-160.
Participants I had already heard of: Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris, for New College, and Loyd Grossman ('David, it's over to you!'), who captained the LSE team.
This was perhaps the best match of the week. I missed the first half, so missed Loyd Grossman's very impressive first half performance, which saw him get six starters correctly, single-handedly keeping his team in the game. But New College had a good collegiate team, with several of their players contributing. This proved crucial when Mr Grossman fell silent in the second half, as, though his colleagues tried, they couldn't take the slack. But New College continued to put on the points, and emerged victorious, and will definitely be back for the semis in the new year. Shame that the LSE team have to go so early; against another team, they could have won quite comfortably.

Thursday 20th: Liverpool vs Cardiff
Result: Liverpool win, 165-140.
Participants I had already heard of: The two captains: Stephen Bayley the design guru, for Liverpool, and Bill Turnbull the newsreader, for Cardiff.
This was another good close match between two evenly matched teams. The two captains got laughs early on, when Mr Bayley buzzed, answered incorrectly, then corrected himself. He was not allowed the points, and Cardiff weren't allowed to answer, which annoyed Mr Turnbull, who claimed he knew the answer; Paxo told him he should've buzzed then! Paxo said he preferred the students, as they are 'much more docile'!
Mr Turnbull got another laugh later on when he said his team didn't know the answer to a bonus, then, when Paxo tried to move on, protested that they hadn't been given enough time to think! Following his early mistake, Mr Bayley seemed to do quite well for the rest of the evening, getting most of his side's starters. And that was enough to get his side victory, and with a high enough score to guarantee them a place in the semis.

Friday 21st: Newnham College Cambridge vs Nottingham
Result: Newnham win, 155-110.
Participants I had already heard of: Only Diane Abbott MP for Newnham.
Another close match to finish off the week. The lead stayed mainly with Newnham throughout, but it never really stretched out into a big lead. Nottingham provided some humour in a bonus round on Chinese cities ending in 'zhou' (there's a good idea for a round of Pointless!); unable to think of a third, they made one up, and ended up with 'Londonzhou', which got a huge laugh!
Then, in the final five minutes, Newnham began to pull their lead out into a strong position. Though Nottingham did recover to three figures late on, they were too far behind to catch up.

So, overall, a very good first week for the series. The standard of the celeb teams seems to be a bit higher than last year, where the only truly strong teams were those with former UC contestants. There also seem to be a lot of festive-themed questions, notably a set from Friday's show on physics relating to Santa going up and down the chimney! (Unsurprisingly, all were dropped!)

So, after the first week of matches, New College and Liverpool are definitely through to the semis in the new year, and Newnham could have done enough to be back too. We'll have to wait and see what the remaining four teams do when the series resumes on New Year's Eve.