2016/17, Episode 31 - Edinburgh vs Wolfson

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

Eric Monkman, the impeccably eyebrowed hero of Twitter and breaker of more eardrums than any other contestant in the history of University Challenge returned tonight, for what would remarkably be only his fourth appearance on the show, given the fanaticism he has generated. Rarely has someone yelled their way into the soul of Twitter with such gusto in a mere ninety minutes of screentime. But his is the appeal of a man without age, it feels now as though he has always been here, and that here he shall eternally remain.

Hoping to banish him back to Canada were the wholesome foursome from the University of Edinburgh, fresh from a commensurate thrashing of Birmingham. Monkman may be my greatest source of hits on this page, but I would never betray my own institution for the sake of a few clicks, so this evening I hoped for a momentary halting of his thus far impregnable crusade. And once again I watched the episode with a room full of more than fifty of the Edinburgh faithful who were all hoping for the same thing.

Straight from the off, we got what we wanted. Monkman, maybe a little too hyped up on this occasion, even by his standards, fluffed his lines on an acronym, and Smith, the nine starter paladin of the previous match, darted in with the cool, composed nature of an assassin, and pried the ten points from the Canadian’s cold hands.

For the second match in a row they got a question on David Hume, in whose namesake Tower the University Quiz Society hold their weekly sessions, so it was perhaps not surprising when they interrupted The Pax before he’d even got halfway through reading it out, much to his vexation. It seems that both getting a question easily and failing to get it at all irk our quizmaster in equal amounts.

Monkman, unphased by his slip up on the opener, redeems himself with an early buzz of ‘Stonehenge’ on the next starter, and teammate Chaudri follows suit on the next, answering ‘comedy’, with trademark boredom and disgust to edge the Wolves into a narrow lead. Edinburgh aren’t having any of that though, and go twenty points clear heading into the first picture round.

At one point in the round, on languages spoken in Indian states, Monkman goes a little bit rogue and suggests Portuguese. I thought it might have been me being silly, but I checked Wikipedia and Portuguese does not rank in the top sixty languages of India, which is a lot of languages to be ranked below.

However, as this is a blog written in real time, further Wikipedia-ing has revealed that the state of Goa was a colony of Portugal and the language was formerly spoken there, so he could have been thinking of that. However (again), this ended in 1961, so he was still off by 56 years, if I did indeed catch his train of thought.

Paxman then allows a blatant mispronunciation of ‘Marathi’for some reason (*cough* Oxbridge bias *cough*) which ties the score.

Quite rightly this angers Edinburgh, who had up until this point been having a jolly old time, joking amongst themselves like their glasses of water had been spiked with laughing gas (indeed later on Paxman, bemused, questions their merriment), and they steamroll the next four starters. Their fortunes on the bonuses were slightly mixed, missing all three on matrices, to the great amusement of the local crowd, and then taking eight of the following nine.

Wolfson now found themselves eighty points behind, and an uncharacteristic blunder on the music starter from the Smith let them back into the game, but they could only close the gap to fifty, even with the next to starters too.

Edinburgh zip out to a comfortable seventy point advantage, and the mood in our Quiz Stadium relaxes, the Cambridge Wolves wouldn’t have the time to get back into it now, and we’d surely reach our first semi final since 2002. But you can’t write off a man as tenacious as Eric Monkman that easily, and his pack snarl up to within 10 points. One question. The mood sharpens. A question on larvae. Wolfson take the lead. Tension drips as condensation from half a century of anxious mouths.

Smith, having picked up so many starters dropped by the opposition throughout the match, fails to steal one on the abdication of Edward VIII and it remains a five point game. But you can’t write off the Aberdeen Machine either. He takes the next starter outright, combines with his team for all three bonuses, and then, to wrap the match up in a lovely circular narrative, snatches the following one from Monkman. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Monkman to Smith…

With the game lost, and driven to exhaustion by the tiny Monkmen running around inside his brain, frantically opening tiny encyclopedias like neurons firing back and forth, Eric finally loses control. He screams out ‘sand’, as if his whole body is on fire and this is the only was to put it out, then corrects himself to ‘salt’, but it is too late, and he hangs his head apologetically as the Pax chastises him.

Final Score: Edinburgh 195 - 160 Wolfson, Cam

Yet another rip-roaring match, and Edinburgh finally break their semi-final duck of fifteen years! Can they go one further and make a final for the first time in thirty seven? As for Monkman, he shall rise, don’t you go doubting that. And as for you, thanks for reading