2016/17, Episode 17 - Edinburgh vs Open

If you haven’t already you can watch the episode here before reading my review:

Its taken us sixteen weeks, and forty eight heartbroken Challengers, but our quizzing cruise liner has finally pulled into the harbour of round two.

The Second Round is a beguiling land, full of even more gruelling questioning than round one, and with no life rafts for high scoring losers. If you lose, you go home, regardless of whether you’ve been pipped on a tiebreak or pulverised by an unflinching Oxbridge college. Its a land full of danger and intrigue, and we will lose thirty-two more passengers to it before our ship sets sail to the quarter finals.

The pioneering octet tasked with leading us into these new climes are the two teams from Edinburgh and the Open University, who both posted impressive victories in the previous round. The former with an accomplished dismantling of Durham and the latter with a brutal crushing of Salford. But the second round is a place where only the strongest of the strongest survive. Let the battle commence.

As I stated last time Edinburgh played, I am currently a student of same said establishment, so if I get a bit partisan I can only apologise again. However, a larger apology may be needed on this occasion as I watched the match with the team and a crowd of over thirty diehard Edinburgh fans. This was a new experience for me, I’ve seen many sports performed live, swimming, baseball, beer-drinking, bridge - but never anything quite like this…

The venue is the Potterrow Dome, which for those of you not acquainted with Edinburgh Uni might sound like a rather lovely, quaint piece of classical architecture. It is instead the location for the wildest student night in the city, known in French as Le Grand Fromage. In English? The Big Cheese.

To give you an impression of just how wild it is - the last time I went, I dislocated my knee. But none of the drunken frivolity and semi-serious injury of a standard VK filled Saturday night compares to the scenes witnessed as we watched a half hour quiz show*

*This may be slight exaggeration

Answering the first question with now-trademark nonchalance to continue his excellent second half of the first round match the “Aberdeen Machine” Euan Smith got the first points of the night for my beloved Edinburgh. After a couple of Open buzzes he swooped in again with ‘Macbeth’. The difference between my viewing of this and their previous match being that I was not the only one cheering the answers, as a quizzical camaraderie flowed through the room. And Smith, who recently finished as the second overall player in a University Quizbowl tournament would prove even more valuable as the match wore on.

Luke Dale chipped in after a while to ease the strain on Smith’s buzzer finger, and I have never heard such rapturous applause follow the word ‘Manatee’, I expect you’d have to go to the manatee version of University Challenge for anything to come close.

A laptop started being passed round about half way through, and it turned out that the tastiest tweets about each team member were being circulated for their enjoyment. A favourite being Dale as the proprietor of a “Jazz Lair”, in which he held hostage Boyle, whose freedom could only be gained by winning the title.

However back to the serious business and it turns out our gang of quizzers aren’t totally foolproof, a flash of fear passing across all four faces as the words ‘bonus questions on physics’ were spoken. They got none of the three.

And for all I’ve been prattling on about the home team, they couldn’t afford to dilly-dally, as the lead was changing hands more often than Theresa May has said the phrase ‘Brexit means Brexit’ in the past hour (I’m firmly of the belief she mutters it to herself under her breath at every waking moment, so you’ll understand now that the title of ‘provisional winner’ swapped in abundance)

As both Edinburgh and the Open passed the hundred point mark it was very much an individual battle, rather than a team one, as Crawford and Smith dragged their teammates behind them with tightly wound intellectual rope.

But sleeping dogs don’t stay sleeping for too long if they’re smart sleeping dogs, and the other six players woke up after the halfway stage to help the two MVPs along the way.

The Open were let off with initially answering ‘the 16th century’ for a question which required a decade, which they were then allowed to guess correctly. Paxman warned them that he wouldn’t be so chivalrous in the future. These words would come back to haunt the Open captain Banks as she mis-relayed ‘Rurik’ as ‘Bulrik’ and the Pax, with the remorse of a trained killer, declared that he could not accept it.

And not only that, the haunting would come back to haunt her a second time. With the scores at 185-165 in Edinburgh’s favour The Open’s Mitchell claimed the final starter of the day with an early buzz of ‘Ghana’. 2/2 for the next bonuses and the scores were tied going into the final bonus. Umami is mentioned and Banks sees redemption in the lights.

Smiles, breathes. Monosodium Glutamate.

But wait, the crash of the gong comes before she can atone and we find ourselves in Monkman territory, the second tiebreak of the series.

The audience loudly exclaimed ‘Noooo!’ as the tie was announced, and commentators on Twitter have been proclaimed the Open were robbed. However, and without any of my partisan feelings coming into play, the gong was clearly sounded long before (as in at least half a second) she started answering. So unless the sound has been edited to change that fact I don’t think they can have any complaints, and with Donald Trump investigating the rigging of the US Presidential election I don’t think its high on the list of conspiracy theories to be looked in to.

(And if I were going to inject some partisanship into this adage I’d say that this was perfect retribution for the fact they took an age dithering and discussing each bonus question)

But hark, we are yet to have a winner.

A question on Finnish folklore. No one daring an early buzz. But then…

Tolkein!

The “Aberdeen Machine” himself snatches it at the death for the lads. Go on my son! John Ronald Reuel couldn’t have been prouder himself. Victory to Edinburgh, commiserations to The Open, who have been abandoned on a desert island by the great ship University Challenge.

Final Score: Edinburgh 195 - 185 The Open

Another high scoring, exhilarating match. If we continue like this I’m going to need several new hearts. As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.