Good evening again my friends, and welcome to Week 3 of Quizzy Mondays! Once again, in my new look blog, I'll be summarising the events of this evening's three main quizzes, and also Brain of Britain, which is now very much an honourary QM quiz given that it now airs on Sundays. Good timing on its retur too, as Mastermind is taking a short sabbatical for the next few weeks. Anyway, let's do this...
Beginning, as ever, with UC, which featured two institutions we last saw two series ago. Gonville & Caius College Cambridge narrowly went out in the first round of that series, a far cry from their previous appearance, in 2014-15, where they were champions, of course. They were represented by:
Isaac Tompkinson, from Derby, studying Medicine
Rachel Bentham, from Cambridge, studying Physics
Captain: Declan Noble, from Sydney, studying Law
Faris Qureshi, from London, studying French and German
Bristol were, of course, the beaten finalists of that series, which was nonetheless easily their best performance of the BBC era, having previous never been beyong the QFs. Their team consisted of:
Ted Warner, from Wiltshire, studying Biology
Bridie Rogers, from Brighton, studying Medicine
Captain: Kevin Flanagan, from Dublin, studying AI
Olivia Watts, from York, studying Organic Chemistry
It was a close game at first, with the sides swapping starters in the first phase of play; after the first picture round, Bristol led 70-45. The Avonsiders then ran away with the game, taking all the starters and generally taking the bonuses that came with them. After the music round, Bristol led 170-45.
Their impressive bonus rate slowed a touch in the next phase, but their continued buzzer dominance meant it didn't exactly matter. It picked up again in time for a full house on the second picture round, after which they led 250-45. It had long been game over, now just a question of how high both teams could go. Caius did pleasingly get a couple more starters late on, taking them to a respectable score, while an incident where two Caius players answered a starter at the same time (they got the points) saw Mr Tilling get named during the actual contest for the first time! At the gong, Bristol won 325-80.
Spectacular stuff from Bristol; they'll go far in the series if they can maintain that form. Unlucky Caius to run into a team that good, as they looked quite decent when they did get in, they'd have beaten another team; thanks to them for playing, and good luck Bristol next time!
The stats: Mr Warner was the best buzzer of the night with six starters, while Mr Noble was best for Caius with two. On the bonuses, Caius managed 8 out of 14 (with two penalties) and Bristol a mightily good 34 out of 48(!) (with one penalty), and, for the second week in a row, all eight players got at least one starter right.
Next week's match: Warwick vs East Anglia
On to Only Connect, which was contested tonight by the
Four Opinions, Jacob Epstein, Aron Carr and captain Rafi Dover, and the Bean
Farmers, Furo Cookey, David Todd and captain Pippa Woolley.
I claim two points on the music
question in the first round and the Ed and planet questions in Round 2; the
Opinions led 5-4 at the end of the former, and 11-7 after the latter, though
VCM was maybe a touch lenient to allow one of their three point answers.
Two perfect walls meant it was as
you were, the Opinions led 21-17 going into Missing Vowels, and they had the
better of that to win 29-22. (In a ruling identical to that of Paxo on UC many years ago, VCM accepted Ayn Rand's first name being pronounced 'Ann'). Well done both teams, best of luck in your next games.
Next week's match: Harmonics vs Cat Cows
Mastermind was opened by Chris
Devine, a member of the UEA team I talked about in my Sliding Doors blog a few
weeks back; he scored 8 on the novels of Zadie Smith. Cathryn Gahan would then
take the lead with an impressive 12 on the Sweeney Todd musical, and Charlotte
Hope just fell short of equalling it, scoring 11 on the history of Shetland hand-knitting.
Ronny Cheung completed the round with 10 on the sitcom Spaced.
Chris returned for GK first, and
made a good go of it, starting well before fading a bit, and finishing on a
respectable 17. Ronny and Charlotte would fare similarly, starting well, hitting
a tough run in the middle, before rallying to score 10 each, taking their scores
to 20 and 21 respectively.
Cathryn thus needed to at least
equal that score to win, and for a long time, it looked like she wasn’t going
to make it, her early questions not falling for her. But they did later on and,
with the very last question, which was but a split second away from being too
late for CM to start so he’ll finish, an educated guess of ‘Liechtenstein’
meant she just made it over the line, finishing with 22 points! Congrats to
her, a hard earned but deserved victory!
No Mastermind next Monday, or the
week after if the continuity man is to be believed; the show will return on
September 16th.
Brain of Britain returned yesterday
afternoon, though I waited until this afternoon at 3 to listen to it as I’m
used to, with its triennial Brain of Brains special. Sadly, 2022 winner Sarah
Trevathan was unable to attend due to illness, so that series’ runner-up
Marianne Fairthorne took her place on the panel, alongside reigning champ Dan
Adler, reigning runner-up Eleanor Ayres and 2021 champ Karl Whelan.
Mr Whelan would take 5IAR and a
bonus in the first round, and then topped it by doing it again in the second,
meaning he was already 10+ ahead of the rest of the panel and the game was as
good as over already. Just to make sure, he did it again on the third round, a
superlative performance that must surely go down in the annals of the show’s
history. He ended up winning with 23 points, 15 ahead of Dan and Eleanor with 8
and Marianne with 7.
On accepting his trophy, Karl stated
that he’d been lucky to know all his questions on those rounds. Indeed, I’ve
seen quite a few quizzers online, notably UC winner James Devine-Stoneman and
OC 4th-placer Ailsa Watson, express unsatisfaction with the BoB format,
specifically how reliant players are on knowing their own questions, and how a
stumper just one or two questions into a round can end your turn ‘prematurely’.
Probably goes some way to explaining why BoB hasn’t fully captured the public’s
imagination the way the three TV QM quizzes have.
Anyway, that's the now stouter Quizzy Mondays round-up for tonight. It won't be this full for another few weeks until Mastermind comes back, but I'll definitely be carrying on with Brain of Britain as well, albeit probably not this thoroughly in future weeks. Thanks as ever for reading, and I hope you will again next week; see you then...
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