2022/23, Episode 4 - Coventry vs Cardiff

In last week’s review, I mentioned that I had erroneously thought LSE to be one of the largest Universities in the UK, when in fact it ranks 89th in terms of student population. I had been going to make the point that they were underperforming relative to their size, but it turned out that that wasn’t the case.

What I found out instead was that Coventry ranks 4th on the list of biggest institutions, but in the previous twenty six years of Paxman’s quizmastery they had not made a single appearance. So I was going to slag them off for this, before deciding that it would have been needlessly mean, because there will be any number of reasons for this, not least the fact that Oxford and Cambridge get five slots a year each, and also because who really cares. And it's a good job I didn’t end up writing that hatchet job, because look who we had on the very next week!

If you haven’t already, you can watch the episode here before watching the episode:

Coventry’s opponents, Cardiff, have appeared on the show seven times, with two quarter-finals under their belt, the last of these coming in 2014.

I watched this with my gf on Monday while nursing a Bottomless Brunch hangover, so I have no notes unlike the last few weeks, meaning that I’m going to have to do this old school and watch the whole episode again - what a terrible thing to have to do.

Anyway, let's get on with this, Coventry’s first ever starter for ten.

Coventry’s first member Buratti is studying automotive journalism, but you can’t see him as a presenter on TopGear anytime soon. His name is one letter away from Bugatti though, which would have at least given him a fighting chance.

The rest of the team are studying more common subjects like Ancient Greek, English and Environmental Science and they are mascotted by an elephant. Cardiff, meanwhile, are represented by a red dragon, who is called Dylan, and who reached the final of the 2020 World University Mascot Rankings (the winner being Wolfie from the University of Limerick. I’m not sure how global this vote actually was though, because the finalists were all British, and the vote was conducted by the Twitter account Bantshire University, which I’m pretty sure isn't even a real county)

Balkwill-Western misses the first starter for Cardiff, giving Coventry the chance to pick up their first ever points, but Harrod doesn’t get it either, and the question goes begging. Buratti, perhaps unsurprisingly, gets the next starter - on trains - and Coventry are up and running. Choo Choo!

Two bonuses on Cycle Route 1 follow, before a wrong answer from Goel allowed Balkwill-Western to get Cardiff involved with South Korea and they tied the game with a pair of bonuses on scientific theories.

One of these is spontaneous generation, the idea that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter, which was apparently held as fact for two millennia, and was supposedly disproven in 1668 by Francesco Redi, who put some meat in a jar and observed that it did not generate maggots, as had been the theory. This certainly disproved the 'maggots from meat' part of spontaneous generation, but it doesn’t disprove the 'mice from mud' part, or the 'barnacle goose from goose barnacle' part (though I suspect those have been disproven more comprehensively since. Either way, the Wikipedia page, where I got those facts, is a fantastic read, and just distracted me for around fifteen minutes).

Harrod gives meteor speed for the next starter when the answer on Paxman’s sheet is meteor showers. Initially I thought this was perhaps a bit too lenient, but he did say the word showers in the question, so I can see why Harrod would have thought that it wouldn’t be in the answer also. Usually, questions like that wouldn’t give a clue to the term used in the answer.

Another two bonuses followed heading into the first picture round, which goes to Cardiff, who take two of their own on the flags of capital cities. This ties the game at 40-40.

The rest of the game would not be so tight. Nowhere near in fact, as Cardiff took charge and routed the newcomers by a score of 190-10 over the remaining questions. Balkwell-Western grabbed six starters as Coventry were well and truly outclassed, but they shouldn’t be too disheartened - they’ve made it further than any team from their University ever has.

Final Score: Coventry 50 - 230 Cardiff

This seemed like it was going to be a close contest after the first few minutes, but the Welsh side became dominant pretty quickly. I don’t think Coventry are going to be making the high-scoring play-offs, but they can pride themselves on making it to 50 points, which I generally consider to be the threshold of an ignominiously low score.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week for episode 5 - subscribe on here if you never want to miss another post again.