University Challenge (also featuring Only Connect and other BBC quiz shows)

I mean, I also find him offputtingly smug, and would never actively choose to watch HoG, but the books are pretty decent.

lots of football questions this week have boosted my score no end

<quietly>i don't like House of Games</quietly>

Aside from the aforementioned small handful of genuinely good rounds, its appeal mainly lies in feeling like you're much smarter than minor celebs.

someone keeps a list of every single round and all the scores and some of the top names are surprising.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kIJ9TYm2SFDN0UCibSCw01_KqkZH9tMDLwzJs6bCq3g/htmlview#

Angela Barnes
Natasha Raskin Sharp
Ed Gamble
Rob Deering
Simon Hickson
Glenn Moore (R)
Steve Pemberton
Mike Bubbins
Shaun Williamson
Justin Moorhouse

i think that is slightly skewed by the fact that some games score more than others but Angela is the only person so far too win every day. everyone else there is 4 wins and a second assist from glenn who is 4 wins and a 3rd

(actually i think i was pleasantly surprised by Natasha being up there, and not really surprised by Angela)

its appeal mainly lies in feeling like you're much smarter than minor celebs.

And, whoah! Some of them are very minor, aren't they??? Sometimes wonder if their definition of 'comedian' is 'did stand-up once'.

One time only, I'd heard of all four contestants on HoG. Almost fell off the sofa. Usually, first job on hearing the music: press the 'i' button on my remote. Second: Google names.

Angela is the only person so far too win every day

Yeah, apparently the protocol is that you're not supposed to do this, and if you find yourself storming ahead too far, you throw at least one day in order to give someone else a chance.

And, whoah! Some of them are very minor, aren't they??? Sometimes wonder if their definition of 'comedian' is 'did stand-up once'.

Having said that, you'll often see them on Taskmaster two years later.

The recent Dave reboot of World's Most Dangerous Roads is 'someone off taskmaster + someone you've never heard of' half the time.

there's a new series of that on Sundays and first episode was Angela and Rhod (2nd episode is Joe Swash and Seann Walsh)

And, whoah! Some of them are very minor, aren't they???

I like it when House of Games dig up someone you haven't seen on tv for years, like Simon from Trevor and Simon. I thought I remembered seeing Bob Carolgees on there, but he's not on the spreadsheet; maybe I was thinking of Pointless Celebs.

Osman is always saying that stand-up comics do well on the show, which makes sense, a lot of the rounds require you to think and speak quickly and make connections between things, these should theoretically be things that a stand-up comedian is good at

We were watching Challenge the other day, and an episode of The Chase comes on. Jen immediately said "I think this is a really early one", and we checked and it's season 1, episode 1!

No chatter with the contestants, no intros to the Chasers, because there's just Mark (which is good, can't stand the intros usually), and the standard of contestants are a lot better than in future.

I'm not alleging anything, but if you were to design an intro to The Chase, you couldn't get much better than this:

First contestant has an okay cash builder, goes for the middle offer, goes out - that's how the show works
Second contestant gets 7k, takes the high 20k (also the high amount offered to the other contestants, they're not doing the progressive offers yet), takes it home with Mark one step behind most of way - you can get a lot of money in the pot - it's exciting!
Third contestant gets 8k, takes the middle offer, goes out - being smart won't guarantee you the money if you get bad questions.
Fourth contestant gets 9k, takes the low £200, takes it home - you can do that, too, but the other team member might be a prick about it (and Bradley might encourage him to be)
And then they rack up 18 on the final chase, and Mark just tears through it, but slows near the end - 3 questions to go at 42 seconds, still 3 seconds to go at 17.

The lack of teamwork is also hilarious:

In the final chase, the fourth contestant buzzes in on nearly everything, racks up a decent score (18), including a few where he got it wrong and it looked like the second contestant was going to punch him.
On the first pushback the second contestant's answer is immediate, confident, and wrong and it looks like the fourth one is going to punch him instead.
And in one of those bobbling-around-the-three-question-mark pushbacks, the question is about a theme tune to which Bond film, and four says "From Russia with Love", and two says "but it's not" then "Casino Royale" - neither of them are right, but you can imagine someone jotting down "Get Bradley to only accept the first answer".

<about Bradley>(watch old ones to see how much better he's got at it over the years)

ailsa otm as usual, he was just tongue tied a few times in the questions when he really never does that recently.

I don't think we've mentioned his Cash Trapped, from his own idea - I've never seen a show from the start but it seems weirdly overcomplicated, never really clear whether something is a good strategic move or not. But also I might be (I probably am) missing something, but I don't think there's been a UK gameshow reliant on the continuity of seeing it every night, one with a returning champion in the same way as Wheel of Fortune? Which we're getting another bloody version of, weith Graham Norton, by the way.

Oh and also there's a lot more interrupting before the end of the question in the first one, contestants and chasers, though this might just be both sides wanting to prove themselves.

Because Jen's smarter than me, she pointed out that they'll have filmed them in a block and probably picked the most impressive one to go first.

The afternoon reboot of Jeopardy obvs has returning champions but is also full of Twitter chumps going "I wish Emma/Michael/whoever would lose, I hate them, they think they're so clever". It's very weird and part of the reason I'm glad I didn't go for it.

They could have done with 500 Questions, a very good format, but chose instead to cast characters and make it a last-man-standing standalone per show thing, where you could theoretically go through the entire show answering everything then get knocked out on the second last question and someone just rocks up and takes all the money you earned for doing sod all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Questions

Also chose the odious Giles Coren as a host, urgh

That was a great match!

Was Henderson's answer for the London Zoo question really not specific enough? I thought that was ungenerous scoring.

What annoyed me was when the Cambridge team captain put up his finger in a way that appeared to signal that he was going to answer the starter question. Surely that counts as conferring?

The question ultimately asked for the organisation and specified it was what ZSL stood for, I thought, which is wider than just the zoo.

xpost

was that Jenny from the Chase on OC repeat this week?

Haven't seen it yet but it was Mark from The Chase last week. He sure is tall.

Also it was from series 2 with the greek letters, not hieroglyphs.

Yeah, that was Jenny on this week's repeat

i missed last week's because the epg had it as a different series id from the previous specials 8( don't think i've seen an episode with greek letters.

the personal facts at the start of oc in 2013 were dull

caught the end of the one with the beast on it and that was quite the drubbing, highest score i think I've seen.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/mar/06/tory-peer-jacqueline-foster-pays-damages-university-challenge

I hope Gorgianeh got handsomely compensated for the disgusting abuse she suffered.

Was it on here we talked about the UK rebooting The Genius? Anyway, David Tennant!

https://www.itv.com/presscentre/media-releases/david-tennant-front-itvs-genius-game

So that's one way to confirm I didn't get through the sift.

Good to see people know Borges. Is that a constant? Not sure how I discovered him could it be Colin Wilson or Martin Esslin or something. But seemed the guy knew him pretty thoroughly.
May need to reread Labyrinths etc.

David Tennant? Jesus, there's no hope for the mid-tier lads if that's the kind of talent they're recruiting. Oh well.

was that the final of UC last night? I've just deleted it from the pvr by accident...

No, next week

Final of Mastermind though.

and last of the OC specials (which is what i should've deleted)

Exciting semi-final. IMO the show feels a lot pacier since Rajan joined: it's more like a contest between two teams, instead of nerds in parallel play. Rajan's interactions tend to goose that up - they are occasionally cringey, like a slightly-too-loud parent at a school sports event, but that's fine.

Questions this week varied between exceptionally easy (I got an unusual number of 4 out of 4s) and no-amount-of-reading-could-prepare-me-for-this impossible.

Was that "Beatles songs that mention places" the easiest round ever?

> and last of the OC specials

this isn't true. it said 4/4 in the epg but that was 4th of the series 18 specials and next Monday they are showing part 4 of the series 14 specials, QI Elves v Inquisitors

That was a bit of a shellacking. At least UCL rallied and made 3 figures.

My poorest score of the series too, with only 6 right.

ucl made some basic errors (answering "rome" when that was mentioned in the question) and then seemed to lose all confidence. ucl were very strong though, lee especially.

*imperial* were very strong

Lee was brilliant. Also I'm genuinely astonished at how quickly Amol Rajan has established himself as a very good host of this. He's had some huge shoes to fill and has comfortably just made it his own thing.

My only issue was with the second semi-final, where he rushed through the last set of qestions for the losing team so fast that I felt he panicked them. But otherwise, yes, he's really good. I was very amused by UCL all dressing up in their good suits for the final. Bless them.

after a certain point did Imperial realllly need any more points. I mean, like surely they had nowhere to put them.

The ending was very odd. Amol Rajan presenting Imperial with the trophy in the studio and then cutting very suddenly to the roof of Imperial for them all to meet Tom Stoppard, rather than having Stoppard come into the studio to present them with the trophy.

There was an interview w/Amol where he was asking if anyone knew anybody that would be suitable to present next year's trophy. I wondered why, and now I know. (ish)

So, was it that Stoppard was meant to present the trophy in the studio and then didn't show up then for some reason?

Maybe he got COVID?

I've never seen a grand final where the presenter was like "well, here this is yours I guess..."

venice, urea, parker, ai wei wei, spline, thailand, aspiration, fric(a)tive, psyche, proton, frank lloyd wright, keep the aspidistra flying, bildungsroman

couple of guesses included there and there were a couple more that i might've got given time (son of odysseus...) or a second attempt. i think i'd've gotten away with the mispronunciation of ɸ

but, yes, quite a drubbing for something so late in the competition

Not sure I have warmed to Amol Rajan…he always has a ‘too cool for school’ air…much preferred the detached schoolmasterly distain of Paxman…maybe I’ll be proved wrong