It’s game two of the Bother Series of Poker this evening and it’s open to anyone who is happy to stake the required $5.50 entry, regardless of league ambition. That’s at 8pm. JOIN THE FUN.
In other news: it’s Superbowl Sunday! Regrettably there is no full episode of Channel Four’s Quiz Bowl on Youtube, although there is an advert for it (it’s about 3m into this junction clip). Fighting Talk listeners may recognise host Will Buckley:
It strikes me that QB is a take-off of sixties classic quiz Quizball. Frank Skinner piloted a modern version of it about ten years ago. That’s not on Youtube, but here’s a clip of the sixties show:
The current series of University Challenge really hasn’t been a classic – and I, for one, am seriously hoping that changes during the quarter-finals, which begin tonight.
Why hasn’t it been a classic? Well, of the 24 matches so far, only two have really been exciting – Manchester’s improbable win over Lincoln Oxford in the first round, and Bangor’s narrow and surprising victory over Durham last week.
A few others, like King’s Cambridge v Warwick and UCL vs Jesus Oxford (both second-round matches), have been fairly good but really nothing too special.
And the rest? Either too one-sided, or too low-scoring, or indeed both (like Warwick’s 175-100 win over Aberdeen in the last first-round match), at least for my liking.
Indeed, the highest score of the series thus far is UCL’s 260 against Exeter in the first round, and there has only been one other 250+ score – Pembroke Cambridge’s 255 against Bath at the start of the second round. Also, three of the four repechage teams progressed to this stage with scores of less than 150 (the exception being the aforementioned Lincoln Oxford).
And, of course, there were no less than three winning scores of 125 or less in the first round (all achieved by teams whose names begin with B, funnily enough). When you consider that 125 was the lowest winning score in the Paxman Era before this series began, that’s quite remarkable.
Bristol broke that record when they scraped 120 against Wadham Oxford, in a match that I, for one, consider to be one of the worst in Paxo’s time – a painfully high amount of dropped starters, very poor bonus conversion rates, and it must be said (even though this match aired nearly six months ago) that both teams were rather cheerless throughout. JP must have himself thought that the whole thing was a bit shit, as he didn’t sneer at any answers that may have been a bit silly.
Compare it all to last year, when at this point there had been two triple-century scores (Durham and Clare Cambridge both achieving 325 against Plymouth and Leeds respectively), and seven in all of 250 or above. Plus, all four repechage teams scored at least 155 (and Homerton Cambridge even scored 200 when losing to Balliol Oxford), and in all 24 matches, the winning score was at least 170.
And a good few of those 24 matches had been really good, too – Homerton v Balliol, Homerton v Durham, and Worcester v Queen’s in an all-Oxford affair, among others.
The current series also hasn’t really been helped by two big omissions among the institutions taking part. And if Edinburgh missing a series for the first time since 1998/99 isn’t big enough, then the absence of a 1992 university for the first time in the Paxman Era certainly is.
Quite why there isn’t a former polytechnic this year, I don’t know. My best guess is that a smaller number than usual applied, and the producers decided that none of them were good enough or fun enough for the televised stages…
Finally, none of the eight teams in the quarter-finals have seriously looked like series-winning material so far, IMHO. Pembroke Cambridge, New Oxford and Imperial have all not yet been seriously challenged, Bangor have been a bit fortunate, and Manchester followed up that impossible win with a rather-too-easy victory over Magdalen Oxford.
King’s Cambridge (which came through the repechage), St George’s London and UCL have all been involved in fairly-good-but-nothing-special matches, and are probably the best bets for the title at the moment – but there really isn’t that much between them and the other five.
OK, now my rant is over.