Warwick
won comfortably over my local uni, Aberdeen, in their first match, with 175
points to 100. The team were unchanged:
Sean Quinn, from Derry in Ireland,
studying Classical Civilisation
Sarah-Jane Bodell, from Western
Kentucky, studying the History of Medicine
Captain: Andrew Shaw, from Ipswich,
studying Maths
James Wheatley, from Sudbury in Suffolk,
studying Chemistry
King’s
College Cambridge, lest we forget, came through the repechage, narrowly losing
to St George’s College London in the first round, before defeating a very good
team from Homerton College Cambridge in their play-offs. They were also
unchanged from their two previous outings:
Curtis
Gallant, from North London, studying Classics
Amber Ace, from Crieff, studying Classics
Captain: Fran Middleton, from Chorleywood in Hertfordshire, studying Classics
James Gratrex, from Leeds, studying Physics
Amber Ace, from Crieff, studying Classics
Captain: Fran Middleton, from Chorleywood in Hertfordshire, studying Classics
James Gratrex, from Leeds, studying Physics
Naturally,
given that Mr Gratrex has been posting on here on a regular basis, King’s had
my support tonight. But I really had no idea who would win.
At
first, King’s had the momentum, and were building up a strong lead and buzzing
Warwick out of the game. They were mainly relying on buzzer strength, as not
many bonuses seemed to be following suite. Soon, they were ahead by 70-0.
But
Warwick soon got going, and began to claw away at the deficit, and were soon
back in the hunt. By the music round, on film scores co-composed by women, had
reduced the gap to 90-55. Warwick then began a run of momentum, which saw them
take the lead and begin to pull away. By the second picture round, they now had
the lead with 125-90.
Enter
the final phase. James [Gratrex] tried to get King’s back into the game, but
got ‘supersonic’ and ‘hypersonic’ mixed up, something his namesake Mr Wheatley
didn’t do, and Warwick lead rose again. But James made up for his mistake with
a buzz on an interesting maths question on the sum of all whole numbers from 1
to 1,000.
This
seemed to wake King’s up, and they began to buzz their way back into the match,
and had soon levelled the scores at 145 all.
So,
with surely not much time left, it was time for a buzz-off. Andrew Shaw struck
first for Warwick, and the side took one bonus. James struck back for King’s,
and one bonus for them levelled the scores again. Amber Ace took King’s back
into the lead, but, again, just one bonus followed. Our man James took the next
starter, and that was it! King’s took the match by 185-160!
What
a great match. Very hard lines to Warwick; you played brilliantly, and it’s a
shame to see you go so early; James Wheatley got five starters, which helped
the side to 14 bonuses out of 27. But very well done James and co for a well-deserved
victory; our man James answered six starters correctly, and the side managed 15
bonuses out of 33, with two penalties. Very best of (hypothetical) luck for the
quarter-finals!
Next
week’s match: St George’s College London vs Lancaster
Tonight’s
Only Connect, the second semi-final, started off close, but one of the teams
ran away with it in the Missing Vowels round, and took a comfortable victory.
Next week is the third place play-off (something University Challenge is sadly
lacking), and then the final.
I might be sending a more complete set of my thoughts to Londinius for his LAM blog later. For now... oh my god phew!!! I chanced my arm too early on super/hyper-sonic (even while I said it I knew it was wrong) and then almost collapsed into a heap on the floor. Came good after that, though.
ReplyDeleteQuarters here we come!
Well done James et al- my favourite match of the series so far! A very difficult set of questions too I thought, certainly at the beginning, with only some 40 points scored between you by the first picture round. I was impressed by the Warwick captain's music knowledge too though - to get Les Six on the most obscure two members is pretty impressive!
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm guessing Andrew Shaw is many times more passionate and knowledgeable about classical music than I am - seemed that he got most of the music-related starters. Les Six, Parry's Jerusalem, Britten's Young Person's guide. In that middle phase we were just locked out of the buzzer. A fun match afterwards but horribly tense in the middle.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to James and the rest of the Kings team - can only echo the sentiments expressed above about what a terrific match it was! Some extremely fast buzzes from both sides. (Middleton getting Levi-Strauss from "structuralist" and "1962" standing out).
ReplyDeleteI was very impressed with how quickly you did the sum of the numbers from 1 to 1,000 as well, even using the formula :)
I'm always amazed at people who can get any of the maths questions on UC; I just switched off whenever Paxman started asking them. Our whole team pretty much did; our "strategy" was just to guess 1 or 0 for any of them. A big weakness for our team I suppose, but not really one we could do much about as Bangor doesn't have Maths or Physics departments (a legacy of our previous VC who was very keen on closing departments).
ReplyDeleteI think a Maths student is the only subject you wouldn't want to do without on an ideal UC team; everything else will be "general knowledge" to someone. If that makes sense.
Yeah, as a maths student myself I definitely agree with you on the last point - you can't really take even educated guesses at maths questions in the same way that you can with areas such as literature (not maths-student snobbery on my part I should point out, just an observation :))Although on the downside, maths questions are often under-represented on UC, I think, maybe for this reason.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing is the time pressure, I would imagine; anyone who's studied maths to A-Level or beyond could answer the sum (1-1000) question, but doing it in a fairly pressurized situation, in your head, in under 10 seconds is very impressive!
Finally, that's ridiculous that your uni doesn't have Maths or Physics departments :(
Is this a bad time to mention that I, uh, didn't actually solve that problem -- though it comes out very fast, I was too panicky at the time even to be able to work out the answer (which is given by 1000*1001/2, or 500*1001), and just decided to shove a few zeros in to the answer to 1+2+3+...+10 = 55. I think maybe when I opened my mouth the answer came to me, but when I buzzed in I was just going to make something up...
ReplyDeleteStill, it worked, eh?
People are much more likely to know about literature, music, history etc as a hobby, wheras few people are likely to know the maths questions as a hobby (meaning no disrespect to anyone whose interests lie that way!). Case in point: me; given that you NEVER get questions on translation studies nor Welsh (language) literature, my course is basically useless for University Challenge and the only questions I do get are stuff I know outside it. (Half my undergrad was in English literature but I often don't get those because they tend to be on canonical writers, while I did a lot on contemporary ones).
ReplyDeleteI don't think not having departments, even in a subject as important as maths, is that unusual, certainly not for universities like Bangor which aren't in the top (~50?) on the league tables... very few universities have Modern Languages or Music departments, both of which we have, and we're not missing any other "core" university subjects. Unfortunately, people have to bow to financial pressure and a whole new department is much more expensive to run, while netting you no more cash, than simply expanding another department.
Welshguy, have you played any independent quizbowl? Even the American version of the questions usually has something Welsh every few rounds, and I would assume that the Briticised version would have more. Also, there is usually either one starter or one bonus on linguistics in each round. Also, there tends to be a significant amount of contemporary literature. If this sounds interesting to you, you should go to the British Quizbowl page on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteLondinius has kindly posted my more detailed commentary on the match and it's availble here:
ReplyDeletehttp://lifeaftermastermind.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/james-gratrex-on-that-2nd-round-match.html