Evening all, and welcome to Week 3 of this year's University Challenge, which, much like the Premier League, began as usual, and will end behind closed doors. I'm assuming. Does this mean Liverpool are going to win this series of UC as well? Tonight, two teams of maturer students fought for a place in the second round or, failing that, a play-off place.
Linacre College Oxford is appearing on UC for only the second time (of the BBC era at least), its only prior appearance being a first round exit in 2006-07, where they narrowly missed out on a play-off place on having heard more questions than two others. This year's team were:
Alex Blandford, from Cambridge, studying the Anthropology of Civic Technology
Josh Dorrington, from Windsor, studying Atmospheric Physics
Captain: James King, from Fordingbridge in Hampshire, studying Climate Science
Claudine Tinsman, from Switzerland, studying Cyber Security
The Open University won UC in 1984, and again more recently in 1998-99; after the latter win, it vanished from the show for fifteen years, before re-appearing in 2014-15, and have made two further series since. This year's foursome were:
Beverley Randle, from Bristol, studying the Roman Empire
David Lamb, from Stockport, studying Philosophy with Psychology
Captain: Jill Taylor, studying Riddlesden in Yorkshire, studying Engineering
Chris Macklin, from Manchester, studying Law
Off we set again, and Ms Randle opened the scoring with a fairly straight forward answer of 'children', the first clue a pretty obvious allude to the Railway Children; no bonuses on composers went with it. Linacre followed them off the mark, and had two from their first set. Then the tables turned: Linacre got nothing from their second bonus set, and Open a full house from the first picture round, on locations of academic botanical gardens; after that, they led 35-30.
The contrasts continued, as Open took the next two starters, and got nothing from the first bonus set, before sweeping clean the second set, though Paxo was maybe a touch lenient to allow Ms Taylor to correct 'Buckmeister' Fuller to 'Buckminster'. They settled down a bit after that though, maintaing a steady lead over Linacre. After the music round, on operas notably staged by the late Jonathan Miller, during which Linacre mistook 'Three Little Maids' as being from HMS Pinafore instead of The Mikado (must've been watching that Simpsons episode), Open led 90-60.
Then two starters in a row for Open and five bonuses out of six gave them a large lead and probably enough points to come back win or lose. What looked like a guess of 'Charles Dickens' allowed the Oxonians to pull one back, but Open pulled another back to maintain their lead. The second picture round, on Grade I listed structures built after the First World War, gave Linacre their first full set of bonuses, and reduced the gap to 155-105.
Still either team's game just about, and two successive starters and half the bonuses that came with them saw the Oxonians pull back to within 15 points. A dropped starter added to the late tension, but Ms Taylor took the next and a full set of bonuses gave them one foot in the second round. And when Mr Macklin took the next, that was game over. At the gong, Open won 210-140.
A good contest between two solid teams, good on both the buzzers and, after a back and forth start, the bonuses too. Well done to Open, deserving winners, but Linacre a fine team as well, and hopefully their score will be good enough for the play-offs.
The stats: Mr King was the best buzzer of the night with six starters, just beating Ms Randle's five for Open. On the bonuses, Linacre converted 12 out of 24 and Open a good 21 out of 30 (with a late penalty for a buzz just as the question was finishing).
Next week's match: Imperial vs Strathclyde (they've met in the first round before)
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