We arrived at MediaCityUK with plenty of time to go before
we were due to take to the studios, and one of the ways that we passed the time
was to watch the Clare – Christ Church match from backstage. Between us, we couldn’t predict a winner with
any confidence, but even so, the sense of disbelief among us when the game went
to a tiebreaker was palpable! I don’t
think I’ve ever been so close to the edge of my seat when watching UC –
probably because the two teams involved in this tiebreaker were teams that I’d
got to know personally! “Beat that,” I
thought to myself thereafter. “How can
we possibly top that game for sheer spectacle?”
The battle of wits between Clare and Christ Church was
certainly a very tough act to follow.
Nevertheless, when we took to the studio for our second-round game
(accompanied by Susu the cat, as ever), I felt much more at ease with the whole
thing than I had done in our previous games.
Maybe I was finally starting to get used to it. Or maybe not.
My pretence of a steady nerve fell to pieces as soon as Paxo unveiled
the first starter for 10.
Before the cameras started rolling, I’d noticed at least two
members of last year’s Bangor team sitting in the audience, giving heavyweight
backing to our opponents. When Anna
Johnson bagged the first starter and her quartet proceeded to sweep the board
on a lovely bonus set about statues of fictional characters, a convincing
victory for Bangor looked like a clear and present danger! (We were fully aware that they could be a
fiery team on the buzzers because they impressively snared one of the pre-show
warm-up starters in double quick time.)
An early intervention from Bob on the starter that followed
meant that we were able to tick off another entry on the “list of things that
you have to do while you’re on UC”, namely to go into negative points! Our stay in that most ignominious of regions
didn’t last long, though, as Matt, Bob and David grabbed one starter each in
quick succession to pull us out into the lead.
The “colours of the year” bonuses that came our way were delightful,
especially “Tangerine Tango” – we deciphered the two clues that led us to that
name, but it sounded so implausible that we were slightly reticent when
declaring it as our answer! Who thought
the power of guesswork could get us so far?
Well, you certainly wouldn’t get that question on a National Lottery
quiz…!
With the first picture starter, depicting 5th
Avenue in New York City, Matt established himself as a force to be reckoned
with on the buzzer. I was pleased that
we got to deal with the NYC picture bonuses – I’ve only visited the city once,
and that was nearly a decade ago, but my younger self was mesmerised by his
experiences there, so I hoped I could call on my travel log to beat the
bonuses. Alas (or thankfully, depending
on which way you look at it), my teammates identified Times Square and Broadway
almost before I’d had a chance to look at the pictures!
Following on from NYC was a starter question that couples
nicely with the Dvorak episode from last week’s match, in a slightly morbid
manner of speaking. Paxo asked us to
spot the next country in a clockwise sequence after Ethiopia that borders Sudan,
and I buzzed in on a knee-jerk reaction and said “South Sudan”. Our esteemed chairman paused before saying
no, which led me to fear that I’d made a disastrous mistake. Apparently, I had, because the answer on his
card was Kenya… but close inspection of an accurate world map reveals that
since the partitioning of Sudan in 2011, Kenya shares a border only with South
Sudan! We should have got 10
points! (Surprisingly, and perhaps
disappointingly after the Dvorak situation, the Daily Mail hasn’t got all fired
up about this South Sudan question…)
I don’t regret not challenging the call in the studio,
however. It would only have disrupted
the flow of the episode at a time when I was really focussed on moving forward.
Matt narrowly beat me to the buzzer on a starter about the
cathode ray tube thereafter, and this was not the last time he would do that in
this game! The resulting bonuses were on
20th century history, which made my eyes light up somewhat, although
I was ultimately less helpful than I would have liked.
A starter about the coat of arms of a European country fell
very nicely into David’s pocket, gaining us some bonuses on graphic novels –
the subject promised little for me personally, but the bonuses turned out to be
quite gettable. When we abruptly said
Watchmen instead of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I realised our
mistake precisely half a second too late – and this was not the last time that
this would happen in this game!
Following my second narrow defeat in a buzzer race by Matt,
on a starter about the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, we
failed to deliver on a bonus set about the Orange Prize, which inevitably led
to some mockery from Paxo! It was
surprisingly enjoyable being on the receiving end of one of his insults,
primarily because nobody can expect to take part in UC without being in that
position, but also partly because we had it coming after the Margaret Atwood
moment!
The music starter fell to Matt in the space of about one
second, in which time I hadn’t even worked out what was playing! Now that I’ve watched the question in the
broadcast, I can just make out the word “firestarter”, but even then, I
wouldn’t be able to buzz any faster.
What followed was an intriguing series of bonuses on songs that were
banned by the BBC, which was a subject that I know has been employed before on
UC. Perhaps that’s why I had a feeling
that Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax would not be turning up in this
round. Instead, we got Walk Like an
Egyptian by The Bangles, which I recognised, although I had no idea that those
over-paranoid lefties at the BBC had banned it during the Gulf War. Matt’s George Formby impression helped me to
recall the name George Formby on the last bonus. That incident speaks volumes about the merits
of teamwork on UC: I didn’t recognise Formby from the song, but Matt did, only
he couldn’t recall the name, and it was thanks to his Formby impression that we
were able to drag it up. As a result, we
were ahead by 145-20.
Two starters were quickly dropped, including one featuring a
line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I
was disappointed not to have recognised the line, because when I was back in
school, several of my friends and peers acted in a short production of this
play, which I absolutely loved watching – and which I almost auditioned for
before chickening out, much to my severe regret later on!
Following on from them was a good starter about the average
kinetic energy of gaseous molecules; I recalled some A-Level physics knowledge
and identified the expression as “3/2 kT”, prompting Paxo to correct my
“three-halves” to “three-over-two”, for reasons best known to him! The bonuses that this unlocked were also
beauties, all about crystal lattices.
Polonium was an old quiz chestnut, but the latter two were only gettable
thanks to the chemistry teaching that I received during my first term at
Southampton. That’s what I go to
university for!
Catriona Coutts tried “Queen Anne Fund” on the next starter,
but she was wrong; she’d narrowly beaten me on the buzzer race, and I would
have said exactly that, so I didn’t know what to say when we had a free
go. I did know what to say for a
subsequent starter about how many decades separated the first manned
spaceflight and the last Space Shuttle mission – suddenly, I had reason to be
very thankful that I’d been so intrigued by space exploration when I was much
younger!
When a starter about the notorious Oxford comma came up,
Matt beat me to the buzzer for the third time (and quite a few other
contestants, according to the broadcast), unlocking some bonuses on national
trails, during which my tentative guess of “Devon” did us no favours.
Bangor took the second picture starter, giving them a shot
at a great bonus set involving military/political figures. Our chain of 12 starters had ended, allowing
us to rest our voices for a while!
Taking stock at this point, I didn’t quite believe what the scoreboard
was telling us. Having been silenced by
SOAS for much of our first game, and struggled to shake Loughborough off our
tails in our second, we had somehow built up a 200+ lead in the first
three-quarters of this match. I had
never thought that this was possible – all four of us have decent all-round
knowledge, but we’re no David Stainers or Kevin Ashmans (I certainly have no
right to call my general knowledge fantastic), and we knew that Bangor had
secured a good victory in their first round.
If anything, the moral of this story is that split-second victories in
the buzzer races really can add up to something spectacular, and a set of
questions that fall very nicely for one team over another can make all the
difference, especially if both teams are competent.
In the final quarter, we suffered from two major embarrassments! The first was when Matt answered a cell
biology bonus (a favourite area of his!) with hemi-desmosomes, only for Paxo to
stop the recording and have a long consultation with the adjudicator upstairs,
who eventually declared that hemi-desmosomes was not correct… the correct
answer being desmosomes. The second came
in a bonus round on “isograms”, which are defined as names in which no letter
is repeated. I think we all know that
Liechtenstein is not an isogram. On the
plus side, one of the other isograms in question was Scunthorpe, which just so
happens to be my dad’s place of birth, and where many of his immediate family
still reside!
Bangor grabbed another starter and swept the board on some
bonuses about the UN, but we were very much on full speed ahead, and Bob, David
and I swept up the remaining starters, taking us over the magic 300 mark. The oxidation state starter was a home
question for a chemist – I clearly remembered when my A-level chemistry teacher
identified hydrogen peroxide as an unusual molecular species, in that it
contained oxygen in the -1 oxidation state (as opposed to the more usual -2),
so I was able to pull that out of my hat on cue.
My second consecutive starter, the last one of the whole
game, was definitely my finest hour on the buzzer. “Cape Fear,” said Paxo – at which point I was
thinking “Which one? There are two films
of that name!” – “The Age of Innocence” – I saw the only answer that he could
possibly be after, and went straight for it on the buzzer. They were connected by their director, Martin
Scorsese, and nothing else that I was aware of.
I thereby accomplished a feat that Ronnie Corbett accomplished
off-screen in 1980 by “answering the question before it was asked”! With this answer, my nine-year-old self’s
fascination with films and film credits finally became worth something, so it
was my favourite buzz-in of the game for that reason.
The gong interrupted the bonus set that followed, leaving
the final score at 335-60. “You guys are
on fire,” said a dumbfounded Paxo – but he was not as dumbfounded as us! Bob’s delightfully unexpected “I won’t do a
Guttenplan” remark said it all. I’m
relieved that the editors didn’t cut it out!
What I half-wish they had cut out was my “goodbye from Southampton” moment
– for the second time in a row, I managed to do a Corporal Jones by saying
goodbye distinctively behind cue!
Commiserations to Bangor, though; as I’m not the first to
observe, they’re a much stronger team than the scoreline suggests, with a
strong first-round victory under their belts, and a bonus conversion rate in
this game of 77%, which is undeniably very respectable. It just goes to show that we certainly
focussed our resources in the right area between our first and repechage
matches, namely buzzer prowess. They
always say there’s no smoke without fire, and if starter questions and buzzing
in constitute fire, bonuses are analogous to smoke. Bangor had the smoke in this game, but we had
the fire (which The Prodigy started!), and that was what made all the
difference.
After the cameras stopped rolling but before we left the
set, Paxo asked Anna Johnson to elaborate on what her studies constituted. The private lives of dogwhelk were then
explained in great detail, which provided our chairman, the audience, her
teammates and our quartet with great amusement!
When I headed back to the Manchester hotel that evening, I
took stock of the day’s highly dramatic proceedings. We were official quarter-finalists. That was the stage that I’d really hoped we
could get to. Of the five Southampton
teams that have tackled the show before us, none of them made it past the
second round. We were the first team
from our university to get to the quarters.
That was quite a thought to end on.
I also discovered that night that The Saturdays had achieved
a long-overdue No.1 on the UK Singles Chart.
That was the icing on the cake of an amazing 24 hours!
Thanks once again to Cromarty(IV) for these thoughts!
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