Sep 10, 2023 4 min read 2023-24

Open Sesame

This week I attempted to walk the West Highland Way.

I say attempted because my knee (that old nemesis) gave out a quarter of the way into day six (of seven), leaving us stranded by the side of the road. Fortunately a kind young Glaswegian couple stopped after only five minutes of trying to flag down unsuspecting cars to drive us the half hour to Fort William for a bus home.

We did the walk with a friend of mine who displayed a wealth of knowledge, none of which would be useful in a quiz, but which is probably a lot more useful to know in real life. Lots of stuff about forestry management, mostly

Like how to tell whether a forest was planted by human hands (the uniformity of the gaps between the trees).

Or the fact that the guards which are routinely placed around saplings to stop deer eating them were until recently all made of non-biodegradable plastic. And that these guards were never collected when the tree became big enough to break them off.

And the idea that a wide open vista may not have naturally been so wide open, because when we (humans) killed all of the wolves and large predators it allowed the deer population to boom, and the deer ate everything in sight (this in the days before non-biodegradable guards).

I've been trying to come up with questions that could allow someone to display this knowledge in a quiz setting, but all I can come up with are ones to which the answer is 'deer'.

Which is ironic, because despite the supposed prevalence of them in the Highlands, we didn't see a single one.

Anyway, onto last week's episode, which I didn't watch because I was enjoying a delicious cassoulet at the Inversnaid Bunkhouse, who had kindly given us a tent pitch even though I'd accidentally made the booking for July.

This first round match was between Hertford College, Oxford and The Open University.

Last Apperance

Hertford - 2R (2022)

Open - 1R (2023)

Best Apperance

Hertford - 2R (2019, 2022)

Open - W (1984, 1999)

This is Hertford's 4th appearance of the BBC era, with two second round exits the best they have to show so far. Open had success in the mid-nineties, with five consecutive appearances culminating in victory in 1999, but haven't made it to the quarters since then.

Here's your first starter for ten.

It goes to Keskin, with Alonso Church.

And so do the next two, with his buzz on male gaze coming before I've even worked out what the question is asking for.

He misses a starter on chartreuse, for which I would probably have answered buckfast, but so do Open, and Hertford have a hearty 75 point lead going into the first picture round.

The starter is missed by both teams, so Sourbut (whose name is pronounced exactly as it is written, which must have resulted in some rough days at school) wins the bonuses with chicken pox on the next. The bonuses, requiring knowledge both of a location on a map and the author of a book named after it, are very tough, and they take none.

Keskin loses his streak, negging with cyberpunk, which allows Open to claim their first points of the day with steampunk. Another neg from Keskin gives Open the chance to continue their fightback, but they can't take it, and the Hertford man soon seizes back the initiative with his fourth starter.

Two more for Sourbut put Hertford firmly in the driving seat ahead of the music round. Gavaghan, wearing the largest pair of glasses I've ever seen, along with a sweatshirt depicting Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, takes the starter and then strolls through the bonuses for a hat-trick.

She takes the next starter too, on David Bowie, though it feels like an age before anyone buzzes on what is surely one of the easiest ten pointers of the series (Moonage Daydream is a biopic of...)

Davidson, draped in a shirt comprising three different animal prints, steals a question on Greek mythology from Keskin, but they can't make any deep inroads into the deficit because Keskin immediately hits back with a starter on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.

The second picture round, on sacred mountains, goes to Hertford, courtesy of Balakrishnan Raju, and probably seals the game for the Oxonians.

Romans, Gavaghan and Romans again make a go of it for Open, but the gap remains too large.

Keskin has his third incorrect interruption, though he is quite unfortunate this time, thinking that the question referred to Zeno of Elea rather than Zeno of Citium. Easy to get your Zenos mixed up.

Rajan tries to hurry Open along as they dilly-dally on late-game bonus questions, thinking that they may have a decent chance of reaching the play-offs with a few more points, but to no avail. They may yet survive, but its going to be close.

Hertford 230 - 155 Open

A hugely impressive performance from Hertford, who have a pair of excellent buzzers in Keskin and Sourbut (though the former may want to iron out the incorrect interruptions in closer games).

Open are on the cusp of the high-scoring loser spots, ranked in 3rd with 8 games left to play.

If I had to bet I'd say they don't make it, but they were an entertaining team to watch and gave a good account of themselves.

There is a chat at the end about Hertford's mascot, which apparently represents the college cat, who is not quite as round in real life, according to skipper Whittle.