2018/19, Grand Final - Edinburgh vs Teddy Hall

Nine months. Eighteen hours of televised quizzing. More than two thousand two hundred increasingly complicated questions, like Russian dolls on a Mobius strip. Twenty-eight teams. Only two remain. Those are some statistics, but what of the people. These numbers tell part of the story, but they omit the crucial humanity that make this show unlike any other; the high fives and the fist-bumps, the hearts in the mouths and on the sleeves, the hopes and dreams that bloomed and ballooned, the lampooned and the festooned (a bit of a tacky end to the sentence, I know, but I was on a roll. You can count yourself lucky I didn’t try and get marooned in there, too).

For the first time in thirty-five years, Scotland has an institution in the Grand Final. Edinburgh, having fallen to the Champions Elect at the semi final stage in each of the past two series, finally made it one step further by beating Durham, who had earlier bested them in the quarter finals. They had previously swept aside Sidney Sussex in their opening match, before beating UCL on the final starter of their second round match, with captain Max Fitz-James sealing the victory.

It was Fitz-James who was the key to Edinburgh’s chances going in, with his twenty-six starters twelve clear of their next best buzzer, local lad Robbie Campbell Hewson, although RCH came up with some huge answers at vital times in their semi final. Fitz-James however, also leads the team, and the tournament (and is possibly the all time leader) in Negs, with ten incorrect interruptions to his name. He was also the go-to-guy for guesses, with a further fifteen non-penalized buzzes in his fingers. If he could get the balance right between reckless abandon and the pulling of rabbits from hats then his side might well have a chance. And they would go in knowing that caution would not serve them well given the man in the opposite captain’s chair.

Freddy Leo, described by the Times this week as “having drawn comparisons to Cristiano Ronaldo” (which, while perhaps not unlike analogies I myself may have drawn, coming from a national media which only ever covers the final, smacks of the kind of laziness eschewed by someone describing the Marvel Cinematic Universe as being ‘somewhat of a cultural juggernaut’ only in the leadup to the release of Avengers: Endgame), has amassed forty-one starters in one fewer game than Fitz-James, so the Frenchman will have gone in one hundred percent ready to flex those buzzer fingers at even the merest whiff of a guess, being fully aware that if he hesitated just the slightest moment, his German counterpart would be there to steal the points. Leo had already seen off this series’ other Big Bee (because they buzz so much, get it?) in his own semi-final, with Teddy Hall beating Darwin College despite Jason Golfinos’ best efforts and eight starter questions. He’s also shown that he has steel and nerve, with a comeback from a hundred points down against Bristol University (Bristanbul, maybe, for football fans) perhaps the grittiest performance in recent years.

But even he could not be a team by himself, with Agastya Pesharody and Marcelline Bresson popping up at important moments in their semi final victory. Completing their quartet was Lizzie Fry, and were they to win they would become only the second side in the Paxman Era (beginning in 1995) to do so having been less than 75% male.

Anyway, let’s not bother with the rules, here’s your first starter for ten.

As predicted, it was Fitz-James who was first out of the blocks, but not unsurprisingly, his speculative buzz of Maypole Dancing (not Maple dancing, as I’d originally thought he’d said) put Edinburgh in the not-unfamiliar territory of negative points. Fry, who would double her total for the series with three in the final (truly a player for the big occasion, rather like Cristiano Ronaldo in that sense) opened her account with Morris Dancing. One bonus on paperclips followed, with Leo dismissing the Netherlands as the country who had worn such items in their lapels because he knows that if they had, then the Dutch Bresson would have said so already. A sign of a team that trusts and is in sync with one another.

Leo claims his forty-second decimal of the series on the next starter, with his arm-cocked buzzer-stab technique deployed with trademark verve. Bonuses on the ever-relevant subject of ‘Persistent Courtship in the Nineteenth Century (specifically in novels)’ serve them better than paperclips, although Leo is perhaps fortunate to get the points on the first of these, forgetting to add the author of Far From the Madding Crowd to his answer (though to be honest requiring both seems pretty needless, given that the two pieces of information would never come uncoupled in the mind of a University Challenge finalist. They would know both or neither in this context). The third he pulls from the ether after a period of intense concentration, startling even his teammates with his sudden remembrance of David Copperfield’s Peggotty. Teddy Hall are forty-five points clear.

Neither side manages to guess what is essentially a ‘guess a number’ question, before Malusa bursts into life and fires Edinburgh back above zero. Paxman delights in delivering the bonus description in the manner of a stand-up comedian, ‘questions on the periodic table *pause for effect* in Chinese’. Cue laughter. This doesn’t trouble the Scottish quartet, who rattle through the hat-trick with little more than a ‘hmm, is it bromine or iodine? Its probably bromine’ (reader, it was bromine).

Wearing a burgundy jacket (and hailing from Burgundy, France, but not, presumably, having drunk any burgundy wine beforehand), Fitz-James gets his evening going at the third attempt (having also guessed on the ‘guess a number question’) with the Picture starter, a Shakespearean Venn diagram. He would also take the second Picture starter (little bit of foreshadowing for you there). With two of the bonuses, Edinburgh are level. Deuce.

A second starter of the night goes to Leo, and when Fry picks up another Fitz-James fumble it looks as if the game might be starting to get away from Edinburgh. But Pesharody is unlucky in forgetting that his answer on the next starter required two parts, and isn’t allowed the time to grasp for the second when he realises. Campbell Hewson, Edinburgh’s vulture, takes his correct morsel and completes it. Alpha and Omega. Romping through another hat-trick, this time on Iron Maiden, put the Scots firmly back on track.

The music questions came in three parts, with four sets of three tunes relating to the colours of the horizontal bands on national flags (if you’re not with me we’re about halfway round the loop of that Russian Doll mobius I was on about earlier, and yes, I have no idea what I’m trying to infer by that phrase either). No one gets the starter, for which, as well as containing three difficult clues, the answer was Armenia (the kind of question that makes a Queen of she who makes it), but Edinburgh manage to decipher Estonia and take the lead for the first time in the contest.

Now it is Teddy Hall who seem lost, and Edinburgh who have all the luck, Fitz-James throwing away the correct Aggripina with misplaced resignation and the assertion that he is wrong. Malusa, who had only five starters to his name before the final, then takes his second of the night, and a full set on Elizabeth Catlett completes a hat-trick of hat-tricks on the bonuses. All of these trebles meant that they had opened up a fifty point lead.

At this stage of the game most teams would have been beaten by such a margin, but Teddy had come back from twice that already in this competition, and the next hat-trick is completed by Fry as she steals a third starter from under Fitz-James’ over-eager nose.

Pesharody makes up for his earlier mistake (like Cristiano Ronaldo when he scored a hat-trick (oh look, another hat-trick) in the second leg of Juventus’ Round of 16 match in this year’s Champion’s League versus Atletico Madrid, having scored what looked suspiciously like an own goal (although it was credited to Diego Godin) in the 2-0 reverse of the first leg) with yet another pick-up from an ill-considered Fitz-James guess. It almost looks as though his (Fitz-James’) second picture starter of the night won’t matter, as first Leo, and then Bresson (with the speed and conviction of five-time ballon d’or winner Cristiano Ronaldo) buzz in decisively to swing the lead back down to Oxford with only seconds remaining by the slimmest of margins.

There would only be time for one more starter. Nine months. Eighteen and a half hours of televised quizzing. More than two thousand two hundred increasingly complicated questions. Only time for one more…

Answer as soon as your name is called. What two digit number…

If Fitz-James had the gumption he could have gone for a one in ninety (note: ‘How many two digit numbers are there? would be a good starter question) wild guess, but he doesn’t. Wise.

…is equivalent to the Roman numerals that form the first three letters of the city that was the birthplace of…

This is such a classic University Challenge question that its almost like they planned for it to be the deciding question in the final.

…William Gladstone…

No one has the faintest.

…Beryl Bainbridge…

Some cogs start to whirr.

…And Wayne Rooney…

By now everyone knows it, but they’re frantically trying to convert LIV into a two digit number. Leo launches downwards, but Campbell Hewson has beaten him to it. Elbow perpendicular to the desk, with his hand curled and a few inches from his face as if he wants to lapse into the classical philosopher pose but knows it would be too meme-able, he frowns, but does not hesitate.

Fifty-four.

Fifty-four is correct.

They can be pretty sure they’ve won it now, but they add two more bonuses before the gong sounds to confirm them as University Challenge champions.

Final Score: Edinburgh 155 - 140 St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Max Fitz-James, Marco Malusa, Matt Booth, Robbie Campbell Hewson. The first non-Oxbridge institution to claim the trophy since 2013. The first Scottish winners of University Challenge since 1983. Congratulations, gents. You sent Proud Edmund’s army homeward, to think again.

What a match, and what a series it has been. Leo and Teddy Hall have to be immensely proud of their achievements, and were unfortunate that they came up against an Edinburgh side who had the quiz of their lives.

Novelist Sebastian Faulks came on to present Edinburgh with the trophy, and he echoed the sentiments of many viewers when he said he found the questions staggeringly difficult. Comedian Ed Gamble recently said that he’s watched almost every episode of Only Connect and never got a question right. To some, that might seem nonsensical, being as an observer so far away from the level of the players, but people watch football knowing full well that they would be unable to tonk one in from thirty yards (yes, like Cristiano Ronaldo), and the joy of University Challenge, like all sport, comes from the thrill of the competition, and from watching people who are exemplary at something being exemplary at it.

Until next time, goodbye.