University Challenge

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Blimey! What a blistering performance from Southampton tonight - for the first half, it looked as if Cardiff would have lost by fewer points if they'd not turned up at all!

[Richard Tarleton]

What a team! All-round knowledge, decisive - one to watch!

[teamsaint]

Blimey! What a blistering performance from Southampton tonight - for the first half, it looked as if Cardiff would have lost by fewer points if they'd not turned up at all!

You sound surprised.
it was only a matter of time........
( I may have to start watching again.........)

[cloughie]

Blimey! What a blistering performance from Southampton tonight - for the first half, it looked as if Cardiff would have lost by fewer points if they'd not turned up at all!

yes but they didn't know about the Paris symphonies.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

yes but they didn't know about the Paris symphonies.

No - and Chopin stumped their progress, too. The "millennium whoop", on the other hand ... ! (Architecture and Literature held no fears for them, either.)

[Serial_Apologist]

yes but they didn't know about the Paris symphonies.

To be fair, neither did I. I think one would need to be a bit of an "early symphony" nut to have known that much about Haydn.

(I do know about the London symphonies, though!)

[Serial_Apologist]

What a team! All-round knowledge, decisive - one to watch!

TBH I don't find the kind of television where one side just walks it enjoyable to watch at all. It seems designed to satisfy the social Darwinists. Didn't this quiz once have a rule that if the team pressing the button got the answer wrong, it was presented to the other side, who if they then knew the answer were able to continue? That way gives a fairer opportunity, and also for the second team to demonstrate knowledge in areas only open to the team that can press the button fastest, which would seem to encourage a kill or be killed mentality. I suppose if you're bringing up a new generation hardwired in readiness to the more brutal capitalism now really starting to show its ugly face, then such walkover competitions are grist to our rulers' intentions.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Didn't this quiz once have a rule that if the team pressing the button got the answer wrong, it was presented to the other side, who if they then knew the answer were able to continue?

Yes. It still does - and did last night. Sadly the Cardiff team didn't know the answers to most of the (few) questions Southampton got wrong.

That way gives a fairer opportunity, and also for the second team to demonstrate knowledge in areas only open to the team that can press the button fastest, which would seem to encourage a kill or be killed mentality. I suppose if you're bringing up a new generation hardwired in readiness to the more brutal capitalism now really starting to show its ugly face, then such walkover competitions are grist to our rulers' intentions.

I think you're getting into the realms of fantasy here, Jones.


(Incidentally - I hope that somebody has a "little word" with Jones on the Southampton team; watching him look slightly startled every time he got an answer correct lost its attraction rather quickly!)

[Richard Tarleton]

TBH I don't find the kind of television where one side just walks it enjoyable to watch at all. It seems designed to satisfy the social Darwinists.

Who are you calling a social Darwinist?

I only meant one to watch in future rounds. Walkovers like this verge on the downright embarrassing. Paxo trying desperately to think of something nice to say at the end - praising a contestant's bow tie definitely clutching at straws. I much preferred the high-scoring near-dead-heat we had a couple of weeks ago.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes. It still does - and did last night. Sadly the Cardiff team didn't know the answers to most of the (few) questions Southampton got wrong.

I obviously wasn't paying sufficient attention then, because to me, it seemed that whenever the button fastest-pressing team (eg Southampton) got their answer wrong, Paxo delivered the right answer, then went on to ask them the next question, leaving me shouting, "Hey, but what about the other side?" at the telly. Perhaps I just don't understand the rules.

I think you're getting into the realms of fantasy here, Jones.

Nah - not me; it's the others!

[underthecountertenor]

I obviously wasn't paying sufficient attention then, because to me, it seemed that whenever the button fastest-pressing team (eg Southampton) got their answer wrong, Paxo delivered the right answer, then went on to ask them the next question, leaving me shouting, "Hey, but what about the other side?" at the telly. Perhaps I just don't understand the rules.

The other side isn't given the opportunity to answer the bonus questions, only the starters. Perhaps it was on the former that you noticed Paxo delivering the right answer immediately.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The other side isn't given the opportunity to answer the bonus questions, only the starters. Perhaps it was on the former that you noticed Paxo delivering the right answer immediately.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Nah - not me; it's the others!

[Serial_Apologist]

Who are you calling a social Darwinist?

I only meant one to watch in future rounds. Walkovers like this verge on the downright embarrassing. Paxo trying desperately to think of something nice to say at the end - praising a contestant's bow tie definitely clutching at straws. I much preferred the high-scoring near-dead-heat we had a couple of weeks ago.

The praiseworthiness of being possessed of General Knowledge skills is a very strange thing, when one comes to think about it. It always seems to prioritise facts over the relationships between them. Which is partly what I meant in claiming that the ethos involved in competitions of this kind is such as to encourage a race of people possessed of facts, ostensibly merely for their own sake, but in actuality for creating a compliant mass mentality. I'm sure the mind can be more usefully trained, not by creating some kind of back-slapping team-built milieu based on individual capacity for reiterating abstract information, but maybe by knowledge-instillers questioning the fragmented decontextualised information imparted thus in the first instance. The latter has of course proved useful for the Google! retrievalists who would doubtless do away with even General Knowledge as no longer necessary. But I can also see that this is not what a world in which powerful overpaid people are in charge of all the decision making on which everyone's fate depends, and the remainder have to accept this like it was the weather.

[Serial_Apologist]

The other side isn't given the opportunity to answer the bonus questions, only the starters. Perhaps it was on the former that you noticed Paxo delivering the right answer immediately.

Perhaps you're right!