Hello my friends, and welcome to another Quizzy Monday! You find me in a bit of a quandary at the moment, partly over a series of online purchases, but mainly because I'm considering scaling back my weekly blogs so I have more time to focus on the afore-mentioned project I've started. In short, don't be surprised if Mastermind suddenly vanishes from these summaries at some point in the coming weeks. Business as usual tonight though, so let's begin with UC, and the last first round match, with both teams knowing 165 or more will bring them back win or lose.
The School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS as it is now universally known (even on Wikipedia), has appeared in seven previous BBC series, reaching the QFs in 05-06 and the semis in 13-14; its last two appearances, in the last two series, have both seen it bow out in the repechage. This year's foursome consisted of:
Josephine Newcombe, from Wells, studying Korean Studies
Seb Lawson, from Guildford (originally New Zealand), studying Arabic
Captain: Lola Finch, from Redhill in Surrey, studying Liberal Arts
Aidan Langston, from New York City, studying Linguistics
Edinburgh has appeared in 24 previous BBC series, only Durham has had more, winning the 18-19 series and coming second to Manchester last series, plus a further five semi-final appearances, but has also bowed out unluckily early on several occasions. This year's quartet, the last team to introduce themselves this series, were:
Daniel Bloom, from Golders Green, studying Linguistics
Caitlin Tambini, from Oxford, studying History and Politics
Captain: Fred Whibley, from Warwickshire, studying Linguistics
Siddhant Kumar, from India, studying Maths
SOAS took the first two starters of the night, including Mr Lawson, with the first of many tonight, getting 'Wimbledon' as soon as '1988 FA Cup' was mentioned! (Don't be so shocked Mr Chairman, anyone with a half-decent knowledge of British football knows they won that!) Edinburgh kicked off with the third, but then lost five of the acquired points. After the first picture round, SOAS led 60-10. And onwards and upwards the Londoners went as the starters kept falling for them and they generally took at least two bonuses of each set, a record which finally fell when they took just one of their sixth set. Edinburgh did the right thing in keeping on buzzing in, but only managed to reduce their score back to 0. They finally got some more points on the board with the music round, after which they trailed 135-15.
The Scots side took a couple more starters to pull out of the Sub-50 Club, but a further penalty dropped them back in and allowed SOAS to ensure they'd be back win or lose. Edinburgh did take the second picture round, after which the scores stood at 175-60. Long over as a contest, just a question of how high both teams could get. Edinburgh took a few more starters to pull within sight of three figures, but further penalties dropped them back. SOAS in contrast broke 200, with Mr Langston producing possibly the best buzz of the round to boot, and just about managed to hit the second highest score of the round. At the gong, SOAS won 240-80.
A good end to the round despite once again before pretty one sided. Well done SOAS, Mr Lawson especially, a top performance; best of luck in the second round! Hard lines to Edinburgh, who, as the chairman said, are a better team than that and had an utter nightmare on the buzzers; thanks to them for playing!
The stats: Seb Lawson was the best buzzer of the night with NINE(!) starters, while Daniel Bloom was best for Edinburgh with four. On the bonuses, SOAS managed a pretty good 22 out of 39 and Edinburgh 9 out of 21 (with SEVEN penalties).
Next week's match: the first play-off, featuring two of Queen's Belfast, St John's Cambridge, Bristol and L.S.E..
Only Connect’s second
qualification match saw the returns of the Frenemies, who defeated the Marvins
in the first round, and the Sinistrals, who won against the Merseyside Eyes first
time out.
My Mum claims two points on the
musicals question in the first round; the teams were tied on 4-each at the end
of that. I claim FIVE POINTS(!) on the Best Animated Picture Oscar question in
the second round, and the same two points as the Frenemies on the Canadian PMs
question; the Sinistrals led 12-6 after that.
On to the Walls, and the Frenemies
got two groups very quickly, then took their time and worked the last two out
for a full ten. The Sinistrals also worked out one group quite quickly, but then
got a bit bogged down before finally getting a second and weren’t able to get
the last two in time; they did get three connections, so five points, which
meant their lead had been cut to 17-16 going into Missing Vowels. They fared
better on that though and won 27-20. Well done them, and best of luck in the
QFs, and best of luck to the Frenemies in the play-offs!
Mastermind was a very high scoring
and close match indeed, and finished with Kieran James and Lydia Dias tied on
24 and one pass each! Kieran won the resulting tie-break 4-3 to go through to
the semis! Mark Hamid (the forgotten member of Gail Trimble’s Corpus Christi
team on UC) and Joe Gellman completed the line-up with 17 and 19 respectively.
Yesterday’s final Brain of Britain
first round heat was won by Sean Drury, who won it in the second round, taking
five in a row and a bonus point on his own Spotlight round and picking up all
three of his opponent’s dropped answers. He finished with 25 points, way ahead
of second placed Zack Rosen with 9; Alex Pills and Gemma Miller completed the
line-up with 8 and 3 respectively.
Which means the line-up for the
semi-finals is complete, and Chris Ducklin has indeed hung on to take the final
highest scoring non-winners place, along with Ailsa Watson, Ellie Mackin and
Paddy Moore. We’ll be hearing them and the twelve heat winners again over the
coming weeks.
And that's it for another week! Thanks as ever for reading; now to sort out the various quandaries I find myself in at the moment. Watch this space to see if I do indeed decide to streamline my blog in future weeks. Don't worry though, I will still be posting every Monday, just maybe not covering all three(/four) shows in future; we shall see. Back next Monday as usual with however many shows, so, see yous then...
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