Gathering Swallows

In my neverending bid to increase the number of subscribers to this blog, I have been planning on cross-posting to the University Challenge Reddit, which has become quite active this series. However, as I came to this decision during the quarter-finals I have been reticent to share a post just yet. I fear that the silliness of mining my old reviews for content would prove too baffling and inaccessible to new readers, and I don't want to turn people off before they've had a chance to understand my style. I could of course stop this nonsense and do a normal review, but I was never going to do that, so I'm going to have to wait until the semi-finals before invading the subreddit.

This week we are taking a trip back to 2023, Paxman's final series.

Unfortunately, for those who might have been hoping for a sentimental trip down memory lane, the only reference I can find in the quarter-finals was one in which I chastise him for his lack of precision when calculating averages.

Paxman begins the episode by saying that UCL have an average score of 180 from their previous three matches. My ears prick up at this, because I would surely have remembered if that were the case. Famously (at least in the eyes of this blog), they won their first and second round matches by a score of 180 to 170. If they were to maintain the 180 average then they would have had to have scored 180 in their first quarter-final too. Which is something I would have definitely commented on, having made such hay out of the fact they'd had a pair of identical results. But they scored 185 last time out, giving them an average of 181.67 (182 if we want to go to the nearest integer). Decidedly not 180, though.

And fortunately, for those who might have been hoping for a sentimental trip down memory lane, here is another excerpt from my intro to the 2023 Grand Final.

Another season would have pushed him over a thousand (episodes), but he decided that it was time to go. For nearly three decades he has been popping up on Monday evenings to pepper the brightest young quizzing minds in the nation with questions on the most baffling, obscure and arcane minutiae that science, history and art have to offer. He has done so with a caustic wit that has softened over the years; where previously he would harangue a poor, unsuspecting first year for guessing the wrong decade on a starter question, now he earnestly congratulates sides for losing in the quarter finals. He has been a fixture in my life in the same way Bamber Gascoigne was for Brian Jackson, the protagonist of David Nicholl's novel Starter for Ten, and I'm sure its been the same for many of you.

For now, Paxman has retired, and it is Amol Rajan who serves up tonight's first starter for ten - here it is.

Darwin's Whitaker kicks us off with 3D printing, picking up from where he left off in his previous match. They take one bonus on Norse mythology before Warner gets Bristol going with incident, and he gives his team the lead with Final Fantasy on the next starter.

No one gets Dion Warwick's Do You Know the Way to San Jose on the picture starter. Darwin win the bonuses thanks to McClelland, a rare non-Whitaker starter. This is followed by a rare Whitaker mistake, as he loses 5 points for an incorrect guess of The Valkyries. Immediately, and unsurprisingly, he makes up for it on the very next question, and the one after that, too.

Warner keeps Bristol within touching distance, but Whitaker is irrepressible and takes another.

No one takes the music starter, but Bristol manage a lucky hat-trick on the bonuses, much to the chagrin of one YouTube commenter, who thought that they shouldn't have been able to guess them.

All three answers were members of Les Six, so Bristol simply guessed three members, so they were undoubtedly fortunate to get them all right, but they still had to know who Les Six were in order to have a chance.

Trochlea gives Rogers her first starter of the match, and Bristol were only ten points behind. This became five thanks to a McClelland neg, allowing Warner to give them the lead with Cocktail Party Problem.

Whitaker doesn't like being behind and Richard II ties the game, but Flanagan beats him to the buzzer on the picture starter. No matter, because Leotard allows him to tie the game once again.

A neg from Warner hands another starter to Whitaker, and Darwin are in pole position to make the semis. They forget the specifics of the third bonus though, giving Bayonette instead of Bayon, and when Bristol take the next starter this looks like it might come back to bite them.

They can't take any bonuses, leaving them ten points back, but Watts comes up clutch with tea ceremony, tying the match with just over twenty seconds to spare. They try for a bonus which would send them through, but don't manage one before the gong.

Tiebreak. Again.

Two weeks in a row.

What a game!

Which John Keates ode... gathering swallows twitter in the skies...

Guess who buzzes?

Ode to Autumn.

Rajan pauses for dramatic effect then announces the winners.

You guessed correctly.

Darwin 160 - 150 Bristol

Another stone-cold classic. Whitaker cheers loudly when Rajan gives him the signal, delighted with the victory. Solid effort by Bristol, who will return for another shot.