2016/17, Episode 25 - Wolfson vs Balliol

If you haven't already you can watch the episode here before reading this post:

We’re six months into this series and things are only going to get crazier. All of the second round matches have been dealt with and eight more teams have been sent home to watch on the sofa, shouting the answers they wish they’d had the wherewithal to say when they still had the chance. For the eight who remain, immortality is perhaps only ninety minutes away. But that’s half a lifetime in quizzing minutes, and lives can turn in an instant, like an angel pirouetting on the head of a pin.

Returning today for their third appearances were Wolfson College, Cambridge and Balliol College, Oxford. Wolfson scraped through the first round on a tiebreak against SOAS, then romped local rivals Jesus to reach this stage. Balliol meanwhile have yet to be challenged at all, barely breaking sweat in their stunning routs of Imperial College London, and Robinson, Cambridge.

It is Wolfson though, who edge the Social Media stakes going into this match, with the megasonic exploits of their captain, the one and only Eric Monkman being discussed far and wide in all four corners of Twitter (and yes, there are four corners of Twitter. Four and only four, but thats a topic for another time). Balliol captain Goldman, who has shot Paxman some glares so sour they’d make a lemon look like a plain cheese cracker, has shown some potential, but he’ll need to do more to oust Monkman from his newfound throne. The man has his own hashtag for Monk’s sake!

And as he introduces himself, still shouting, but with a wry smile on his face this time, its like he knew even at the time of filming all those months ago that he would become the poster boy of this series, and is subtly playing up to his position a little bit. It is a knowing yell on this occasion.

Paxman still seems convinced that the format of the quarter finals is too complicated for most PhD students to grasp, despite the fact it should be understandable to people who can’t spell PhD, but you’ve got to let him have his fun, don’t you.

Balliol’s Lloyd negs (incorrect interruption; and this is the last time I’ll explain it. This is the quarter finals, its getting pretty darned serious) on the opening starter, and Monkman sweeps in with a remarkably restrained leonine purr of ‘poetry’ to put Wolfson up (you may be starting to notice that I’m running out of ways to describe someone who speaks very loudly, so I apologise for the increasing tenuousness of my analogies). This would become a trend as the match wore on - a wrong buzz from Balliol and Monkman gliding in to clean up the mess.

However the trend wouldn’t manifest itself immediately, and the next time it is Monkman himself who messes up on the buzzer, gifting Balliol the points with a hesitation followed by a misremembering of the decade Shakespeare died in (a rookie mistake, and he should have known better). It was Goldman’s turn to tear, vulturine, the points from his limp brain.

It was his turn to neg on the next question though, and Monkman gladly obliged with a second correct answer. It wasn’t until the fourth starter that we got a question right without a five point penalty being dished out lovingly from old Jez.

Its obvious to see why there were so many negs though. That old adage about playing the player not the game rings true here. Both teams knew that they were up against dangerous opponents, and you have to take risks against people who are dangerous, or else they’ll just eat you alive.

The match progressed rapidly in much the same vein as the opening four questions, with both teams whacking the buzzer furiously like it had said something mean about their mothers, and occasionally getting an answer or two correct.

A bonus round on football left Wolfson utterly perplexed, with the uncharacteristically stumped Monkman nominating teammates seemingly at random to spout out the only clubs they could think of, the kind of guesswork tactic which might have worked for them on particle physics, but not on sports.

Goldman found himself equally bemused when his answer of ‘absurd’ was rejected, holding his hand out as if he thought if he stared at Paxman with enough disdain then it might miraculously turn out to have been right all along.

The highlight of the match came with the main man’s identification of the Dwarf Sneezy from the French ‘Atchoum!’, which Paxman complimented enthusiastically at the end (”Imagine knowing Sneezy! Haha lol”) presumably because he has never heard anyone sneeze, which would make the 1 in 7 guess fairly obvious.

That was one of 8 correct starters from everybody’s favourite canorous Canadian (and yes, I googled synonym’s for ‘loud’ so I could get some alliteration on the go - things are getting pretty tight in the thesaurus department), which meant that they edged out Balliol in the end, despite converting a measly 39% of their bonuses.

Final Score: Wolfson 165 - 135 Balliol

So for Wolfson, one more win and they reach the Semis. Balliol will have to come back twice if they want that honour. Monkman marches on. Next week we’ll see Bristol take on Corpus Christi. Till then adieu, thanks for reading.