Good evening my friends, and welcome to the new season of Quizzy Mondays! And the start of a new, experimental era for this blog, as I devote less words to University Challenge and more to Only Connect and Mastermind. This is definitely going to take some time to fine tune, so they'll probably be a great deal of 'Early Installment Weirdness' before I find a way that works. Some things will stay the same; I'll still do detailed line-ups for UC in the first round at least; maybe not the later rounds. Anyway, lets try this, and here are the events of tonight's Quizzy Monday, in reverse order for old time sake, beginning, as ever, with UC...
First match of the new series pitted Queen's University Belfast against Liverpool. Queen's are appearing for the 13th time in the BBC era; their last appearance was a second round exit to eventual runners-up Bristol two series ago. They were represented by:
Sarah Carlisle, from Ballynahinch in County Down, studying English with Creative Writing
Jason McKillen, from Belfast, studying Artifical Intelligence
Captain: Daniel Rankin, from County Down, studying PPE
Sam Thompson, from Limavady, studying Physics
Liverpool have appeared in 11 previous BBC series; its last appearance, somewhat to my surprise, was back in the Monkman and Seagull series of 16-17, where they lost to Warwick in the first round. They were represented by:
Joyce Sajit, from Derby, studying Chemistry
Isabel Day, from the Lake District, studying Veterinary Medicine
Captain: Neil Williams, from Formby on Merseyside, studying Philosophy
Harry Ashworth, from South Cerney in Gloucestershire, studying History and Politics
So, off we set for another series; Queen's took the first starter of the series, indeed the first three, and all but one of the resulting nine bonuses. Liverpool got going with the fourth starter, and took all three bonuses too, but after the first picture round, they trailed 95-25. The teams were more matched in the next phase of play; after the music round, Queen's now led 140-60.
Queen's continued to press ahead, taking starters and doing very well on the bonuses too. Liverpool managed to keep ticking over too, but remained well behind; after the second picture round, they trailed 205-105. There would be no great comeback from Liverpool in the final phase, but they certainly didn't disgrace themselves. They were easily second best to an impressive Queen's team though. At the gong, Queen's won 240-125.
A great start to the series; well done to Queen's, who look a very impressive team who could go very far this series, and hard lines to Liverpool, who sadly won't come back in the repechage I doubt and would've done better against another team. Thanks for playing.
The stats: Mr Thompson was, easily, the best buzzer of the night with SEVEN(!) starters, while Mr Williams was best for Liverpool with four. On the bonuses, Queen's managed a very impressive 27 out of 33 (with one penalty) and Liverpool 13 out of 24 (with four penalties).
Next week's match: Open vs U.C.L.
On to Only Connect, which returned for its 20th
series, and we kicked off the Al Frescans, Tom McKechnie, Mel Gibbons and
captain Danielle Cope, against the Midlanders, Andrew Mearman, Erica Hiorns and
captain Dominic Rayner.
The teams were tied on 3-each
after the first round, from which I claim two points on the first rules question
and one on another, but I don’t remember which. Don’t think I got any right in
the second round, but the teams got plenty right; at the end of it, the Al
Frescans led 10-7.
They went first on the Walls, and
very quickly solved it for a perfect 10, while I was too busy being annoyed for
not noticing the Ghosts link! I did see the pop songs link on the Midlanders’ wall,
but they didn’t; two dropped sets meant they scored five points, and so trailed
20-12 going into Missing Vowels. The Al Frescans had the better of that,
however, and increased their lead, eventually winning 28-18. Excellent start to
the new series overall though, and good luck both teams when they come back!
Next week's match: Hopsters vs Sprouters
Mastermind began its 22nd series
of the modern (John Humphrys onwards) era with, what Clive M rightly said at the end, was a high scoring contest. Claire
Reynolds opened the series with a subject very much to my liking, Dad’s Army;
we both got questions right the other got wrong, but we both finished with 10
points. Aaron Casanova went one better on his subject, Liverpool FC under Jurgen
Klopp (thought I spotted a mistake in one question, but probably just misheard
it), scoring 11.
Nancy Braithwaite, answering on a
good old school Mastermind subject, the Life and Work of Jane Austen, matched
Aaron’s score, before Danny Lardner, UC alumnus with Sheffield two series ago, concluded
the first round with Shania Twain, and he matched Claire’s score, giving us a
very well-balanced field.
Claire returned first for GK, and
scored a very respectable 13 to set a solid benchmark of 23. Danny went next,
and started well, but hit a dry patch midway through and never recovered,
finishing with a still very decent 19. Aaron’s round, sadly, never really got
going for him, and he ended up with an also still OK 17, leaving Nancy needing to
match Claire’s round to win.
She ended up beating it, scoring
14 to win with 25 points! Congratulations to her, and well done the others on a
fine start to the series. Sad to see their sticking with the same ‘just the
winner goes through’ format though.
So, that's the first week done. Hope that was OK for everyone; as I said earlier, expect a lot of fine tuning in the coming weeks until I finally get the hang of this new format. I also need to go back and update a couple of my old collection posts, my UC index and list of people who've been on both UC and OC, which both really need bringing up to date. Anyway, thanks, as ever, for reading; feedback on what I could do better would be much appreciated.
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