Having missed last week's episode, I'm sure to catch tonight's University Challenge in my ongoing attempt to improve my personal weekly score. The last time I bothered to record the score I managed 13, a small improvement on the previous two week's back-to-back twelves. They're all above the acceptable level of ten, yet resolutely unspectacular. I suppose a good score is one made by grabbing correct answers in the gaps between the hardcore maths and science rounds (especially when Paxo starts offering up puzzles based on prime numbered prime ministers or chemical compound classical composers), usually made up of geography and basic history – but in my case it's normally educated guesswork based on an odd aptitude for etymology.
Tonight's quiz is another quarter final game between Downing College Cambridge and Magdalen College Oxford – and it starts off really tough. I struggle to get anything right in the first half of the programme, apart from a slightly fortunate answer about eels (bloody, bloody eels) and happening to know, from uni, that Walter Benjamin wrote the Arcades Project. Later a handy round on hip hop pops up and gifts me Grandmaster Flash and Beastie Boys, but I miss an open goal on De La Soul.
By the end I've managed a feeble eight points – below the golden point of ten and, I think, the lowest I've scored since I've been obsessively recording my University Challenge score. It's pretty gutting – but then maybe they make it harder when Oxbridge colleges are playing each other? They probably should – a UEFA-style seeding system based on past results and reputation seems fair to me.
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