Phew, what a day! Went away for the weekend, and spent just under 8 hours on various trains getting back to the city. But I'm back now, in time to review tonight's match. And it was a good one!
Trinity College Cambridge was founded by Henry VIII in 1546, and alumni include Francis Bacon, Lord Byron, and Sean Blanchflower, owner of the unofficial University Challenge stats site, and part of the team that won the first BBC series in 1995; his colleague, Kwasi Kwarteng, is now a Tory MP. Tonight's foursome (including JOW contributor 'opaltiger') were:
Matthew Ridley, from Northumberland, studying Economics
Filip Drnovsek Zorko, from Slovenia, studying Natural Sciences
Captain: Ralph Morley, from Ashford in Kent, studying Classics
Richard Freeland, from Glamorgan, studying Maths
Christ Church Oxford was founded by Cardinal Wolsey in 1524 as 'Cardinal's College'; it won UC in 2008 and alumni include Lewis Carroll, and it also provided inspiration for the Harry Potter set, leading Thumper to claim tonight's four were picked by the Sorting Hat! They were:
George Greenwood, from Exeter, studying PPE
Andreas Capstack, from Belgium, studying PPE
Captain: Ewan MacAulay, from Hong Kong, studying Chemistry
Phil Ostrowski, from Poland, studying Cardiovascular Medicine
Off we went, and Trinity got off to a flying start, getting the first four starters, and the vast majority of the bonuses. Christ Church didn't get a look in until the first picture round, on places in Britain with a common name element, but they missed all the bonuses. Already, they looked in trouble, as they trailed 90-10.
And the trouble worsened, as Trinity kept getting starters quickly, and bonuses generally went with them. When we got the first dropped starter of the night, Paxo remarked that we'd finally found a chink in the teams' armour! The music round, on pop songs featuring a harmonium, Trinity led by 170-30, and victory already looked pretty certain.
A good starter asked how many possible different combos of four students (ie, one University Challenge team) could be formed from a group of seven. For once, Trinity slipped up, allowing Christ Church into the game. But Trinity just kept getting starters, and most bonuses went as well, leaving poor Christ Church well behind. IIRC, this is the third week in a row we've had about titles containing NATO alphabet words, as Trinity got one tonight, which provided the comedy moment of the week!
By the second picture round, on depictions of legendary couples, Trinity led by 220-75, and were almost certainly home and dry. An amusing starter involved the medals of Lance Corporal Jones; even for a Dad's Army fan like myself, they were too obscure for me to know! But Trinity did. And (what looked like) a complete guess of 'zinc' helped them raise their score as well.
But Christ Church were now reaching towards respectability, and, in the
final minutes, hauled themselves well into three figures, getting
starters, and all the bonuses that went with them.They actually finished off quite strongly, but were well behind Trinity. At the gong, Trinity won by 300-150.
A storming performance by opaltiger and co, who must be favoured to do well this series. But Christ Church did very well considering, and may well have done enough to reach the repechage. Ewan MacAulay got all seven of the Oxford side's starters, and they converted a very good 16 bonuses out of 21. Filip Drnovsek Zorko also got seven starters for Trinity, just ahead of Mr Morley's six, and the side managed a very impressive 30 bonuses out of 42. Great stuff that.
Next week's match: Durham vs Queens' College Cambridge
It's early days yet, but so far Christ Church are probably the second strongest team we've seen so far. And they were thrashed! I've had the pleasure of quizzing with and against Drnovsek Zorko and Morley, so I knew the result of this match, and how good they both were, but didn't expect this scoreline! First time a side has reached 300 since early in 2012 -- no-one managed it last season.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a storming performance indeed. Hope that they can keep it up.
'Zinc' was indeed a complete guess. I am still not quite sure how I got that, there are like a hundred metals to choose from. But I'm not complaining. :P
ReplyDeletePink Floyd, incidentally, are by some distance my favourite band and before the match I'd mentioned to one of the production staff how much I wanted a Pink Floyd question to come up. So that was nice.
As for my statistics - Christ Church got 243, we got 303.
It was either going to be zinc or tin, I thought, so 50/50.
DeleteDid that MacAulay ever come and quiz at Cambridge in the Varsity quiz, I seem to remember him but it might be my imagination.
I think so. I've definitely played against him before.
DeleteFilip, Ewan was on the Oxford A team that managed to beat John's KCL team at the BSQC last year. He's a seriously good player, so well done on your outstanding performance.
ReplyDeleteWhat a brilliant match. Well done to both teams for managing such terrific bonus conversion rates. Paxo’s “chink in your armour” remark said it all, really.
ReplyDeleteTrinity, Cambridge is my grandfather’s alma mater, so when I was up at the studios and heard about their team’s 300-point score, I knew that we would be in for a fascinating series! As I’ve mentioned over on LAM, when I first became aware of this score, I was suddenly under no illusions that we had our work cut out for us – and so did every other team in the competition!
The questions in this match would have fallen much better for me than those in the last two games – although I would have struggled to reach my buzzer quickly enough to gain access to them! We probably wouldn’t have been allowed back to Southampton if we hadn’t got the first picture starter, so I’m glad we didn’t come up against it.
The NATO phonetic alphabet’s recurring appearances in bonus rounds this series have provided plenty of intriguing questions, but this theme of “common bonus round subjects” is nothing new. Last series, there were at least four bonus rounds connected to the Shipping Forecast, three of which featured in the last six episodes. I couldn’t help noticing that because while I was brushing up for my own appearance on UC, I became interested in the hypnotic tones of the Forecast!
Here's hoping for an equally exciting/high-scoring match next week, preferably with some more questions tenuously linked to the NATO phonetic alphabet.