Good evening again friends, and welcome back to the new slightly bigger Quizzy Mondays! For Brain of Britain returned this afternoon for its 70th(!) series, so recaps of that coming from now on too (except next week, where I won't be able to listen, so double recap in two weeks' time). Anyway, the new era of UC continues to motor along nicely; the repechage board is now full and, given the higher scores of this series, Southampton's score last week may well not be enough for a return. Tonight, the first Oxbride derby of the new era...
Emmanuel College Cambridge was a fairly irregular sender of teams for most of the Paxo era, but following our friend Bobby Seagull's team's run to the semis in the 2016-17 series, it has appeared in a further three of the six series since, reaching at least the QFs each time. It's best team, though, was Alex Guttenplan's series winning team of 2009-10. This year's foursome were:
Jerry Chen, from Glasgow, studying Medicine
Alex Sutton, from Reading, studying Biological Anthropology
Captain: Jay Alagar, from Pennsylvania, studying Population Health Sciences
Alexander Harrison, from Cardiff, studying Chemical Engineering
Jesus College Oxford is another relatively infrequent sender of teams to the BBC era, with six so far, its best performers being the team that reached the QF play-offs four series ago; the second best, ironically, lost to Alex Guttenplan's Emmanuel in the 2009-10 QF prelims. It also won the penultimate ITV series in 1986. This year's quartet were:
Andy Deng, from Croydon, studying Physics
Andy Schweber, from Birmingham, Alabama, studying History and Politics
Captain: Ben Biggs, from Southend-on-Sea, studying History and Politics
Meg Groundry-Napthine, from Bishop Auckland, studying History and English
So, off we set once again then, and Mr Harrison, who was to have a most impressive night, started as he meant to go by taking the first two starters of the game; four bonuses from six gave the Cambridge side a decent head start. But Jesus responded well with two starters of their own, including the first picture round, on graphs of trigonometric functions, after which the teams were level on 40-each. But after that, Emmanuel began to run away with it, with Mr Harrison in particular dominating the buzzer race, and a steady bonus race saw them quickly pull away into three figures. Neither side got the music starter; Mr Deng did the right thing and had an early buzz on the replacement starter, but was wrong and lost five. Mr Harrison swooped and Emmanuel got the music bonuses, on symphonies known by the names of cities; one bonus took their lead to 135-35.
And the lead was just getting bigger, as Ms Alagar took the next starter, which pushed their score to 150. Mr Deng was most unlucky on the next starter as he offered 'Vienna School' when AR wanted 'Second Viennese School' (having specified he wanted three words), losing another five to boot. Emmanuel duly resumed their buzzer dominance and, despite Mr Harrison incurring the first penalty for a 'just an' interruption of the AR era, were well on their way to the biggest win of the series so far. Jesus did take the second picture round, on buildings featured in World Heritage Sites dedicated to a single architecht; one bonus took the scores to 180-45. Just a question of how much both teams could score in the final minutes; Mr Chen ensured all four Emmanuel players had answered at least one starter as he took the next starter, and two bonuses took their score past 200. Two further starters pushed them close to a 200+ lead, but Jesus did take the final starter, thus avoiding becoming the first Sub-50 Club members of the AR era. They took the one bonus there was time for; at the gong, Emmanuel won 240-60.
A one-sided contest (that I guess we were due), but still as enjoyable as the rest of the series has been so far. Well done Emmanuel, an impressive performance, from Mr Harrison in particular, that marks them as a team to watch in the second round; best of luck in that! Hard lines to Jesus, who are almost certainly a better team than that and would've fared better on another day; thanks for playing!
The stats: Mr Harrison was, easily, the best buzzer of the night with (another) NINE(!) starters, while Mr Biggs was best for Jesus with three. On the bonuses, Emmanuel managed 23 out of 39 (with one penalty) and Jesus 6 out of 10 (with two penalties).
Next week's match: King's Cambridge vs U.C.L.
Only Connect entered the second
half of its first round with the Isotopes, Matilda Makemson, Angus Eady and captain
Sanjay Boor, playing the Academicals, Yvonne Corbishley, Chris Jackson and captain
Tom Kelly. The former led 4-3 after the first round, but the latter turned it round
to win 11-6 after the second. A better wall for the Isotopes put the teams
level on 13-each going into Missing Vowels, and they fared better on that too
to win 22-17.
Brain of Britain returned this afternoon as I meantioned earlier; Jason Butler was the first winner of the series, winning with 12
points to the 9 of joint second placed Jude Child and Susannah Croft and the 4
of Akin Yilmaz.
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