2022/23, Episode 3 - LSE vs Univ, Ox

If you haven't already you can watch the episode here before reading my review (spoilers abound):

It is raining, and it took me forty five minutes to get back from Tesco after work, and I have no idea how I usually start these. I’m trying to think about the opening paragraph from any of the hundreds of such posts I’ve made over the past five years, but I genuinely don’t have a clue. I know I don’t usually start by talking about the weather, or the duration of my commute, though I may well have done that at some point.

Surely it's really simple and I just talk about the teams, but I tried typing out ‘University College, Oxford are two-time winners of University Challenge’ and it felt far too formal for some reason. However, my mini-meltdown appears to have obfuscated that formality as far as I’m concerned, so I’ll press on from here and say that they were also beaten finalists on two occasions.

All four of these appearances in the Grand Final came with Bamber Gascoigne as host, making them the most successful team of that era. A bunch of other teams also won two trophies, but no one else came so close to winning a further two on top of that. Even more impressively, these four finals came from only five appearances. The only blot on their record is that University College is an objectively silly name. No one is going around calling their higher education institution College University, so why are these jokers getting away with the opposite. And before you say, UCL is different. I don’t know why, it just is.

And speaking of initialised institutions, University College are up against LSE tonight, with their London rivals having also reached the final in 1996. A semi final followed two years later, before a barren spell which has seen them make the quarter finals only once in the past twenty four years. I was about to write a whole spiel about how this was remarkably poor form from one of the countries biggest Unis, but I thought I’d check exactly how big it was and found that it was in fact pretty tiny, ranking 89th on the list of largest enrollments. So its a good job I checked that, or I’d have made a right fool of myself.

Just above them on the list in 85th is Roehampton University, which has never been on the show, although it did feature on the recent University Challenge documentary, with a former contestant training up a prospective team. And delightfully, when I just searched this on Twitter, I found a tweet from one of the members of their team, confirming that they made it onto the show this year!

I really hope that wasn’t revealed on the doc, because it feels sort of like a scoop, and its very rare I get to make scoops with this blog. So look out for Roehampton when they’re on at the end of November!

Anyway, that’s quite enough award-winning investigative journalism for one night - here’s your first starter for ten.

Off we go then, and the first thing to note is that LSE counterparts Ede and Balt are both wearing the same top, although Ede appears to have ripped the sleeves off of their one. The second thing to note is the presence of Wallop on the Univ team - we are well and truly off and running with both funky names and funky garb. An auspicious start.

Univ are the youngest team in the competition, with an average age of 19, and their inexperience shows on the opening question as Hassan is able to snag ten points for LSE with Holmes and Watson. A bit before Univ’s time, that. Bless them. Two bonuses on tall structures followed for LSE, though they mixed up Lincoln and York cathedrals for the hat-trick.

Their lead doesn’t last for long though, and Wallop wallops Univ right into the game with a starter of their own. Bonuses on the use of ukuleles in movies follow, giving us a brilliant bit of phraseology from Paxman and the question setters - ‘woos a lady with his ukulele’. Both sides then miss a relatively easy starter on golf, before Cunanan hears the word orangutan and buzzes in instantly with Borneo.

No one gets the first picture starter either, though Hassan gives the same answer I did. To be fair to us both, it kinda did look like a picture of the Black Sea. Cunanan gives Anne of Cleves to get the picture bonuses, and despite being told that all of the answers are gulfs they somehow contrived to give the Adriatic Sea as a guess. We’ve all been there.

The Oxonians have a thirty point lead at this stage, but Balt slices this up with Brighton Pavilion, pausing for exactly the same length of time as I did between the two words. We all associate the Green Party with Brighton, but it does just seem a bit silly for an entire constituency to be contained within a pavilion, doesn’t it? The bonuses have a question about a King Charles, but not the same one who has been in the news recently, and LSE are back within ten points.

However, this was the closest they would get for the rest of the game. Both sides missed a starter which mentioned tofu - Ede, who looks pretty vegan, buzzed in with a guess, but got the wrong salt - then Cunanan came in with his third starter of the night (and not to pat myself on the back too hard, but at this point in my notetaking I wrote ‘Cunanan is giving quiet Monkman vibes’. He would go on to take eight over the course of the match, so I think I can count myself a decent talent spotter. It's not quite a second scoop of the day, but it comes pretty close).

There is talk of a board game called Wingspan which sounds absolutely fantastic, but no one gets the question it relates to. Another for Cunanan brings up the music round, which is on trombone solos. I’m always a bit disinterested by the classical music questions, because I usually only get them via guesswork, but I played the trombone for many years and recognised the Rimsky-Korsakov bonus like an old pro. Finally my decade of practice comes into its own. I can only bemoan the lack of Guilmant’s Morceau Symphonique... (a real deep cut, that, for all you bone fans out there).

A rare slip up from Cunanan offered LSE the chance to get back into the match, but they couldn’t capitalise and the Univ skipper was able to make up for his mistake on the very next starter. He’s delighted by the second picture round, which is on dinosaur skeletons, and has a little fist pump to himself before the bonuses come up, but sadly it's an incredibly easy set (diplodocus, allosaurus and stegosaurus) so he isn’t able to showcase what I presume is his immense expertise on the subject.

Quick sidebar on the topic - my gf and I won a tub of hot chocolate mix from a pub quiz last Wednesday for drawing a gang of velociraptors at a concert. We may not have won the quiz, but by golly did we draw some weird looking velociraptors.

Some more points find their way to LSE courtesy of a rapid buzz from Ede on trigonometry, but like the ugly step-sisters trying to fit into Cinderella’s slipper after she’s already been discovered by the Prince, it's too little too late (I’m not sure if that actually happens at the end of Cinderella, but I’m too pleased with the simile to change it).

Final Score: LSE 110 - 175 University, Oxford

Had a lot more fun writing this one than the last two - I’ve even forgotten I was stuck in traffic for an age on the way home - so I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. As ever, if you did, you can subscribe in a clicky-box somewhere on this website to ensure you’ll never miss an episode! If you’re reading this on Tumblr then the website I’m talking about is quizposting.com, and I’d be delighted to see you over there too. Thanks.