University Challenge.
Asking the questions, Jeremy Paxman.
Hello. The gloves are about to
come off, metaphorically speaking -
at least we hope it's a metaphor -
as Cambridge and Oxford meet
in a bout to decide another place
in the second round.
While the winners
go through automatically,
the losers could earn the chance
to compete in the play-offs
if their score warrants it.
Now, Clare College is
the second oldest in Cambridge,
and is named after
the granddaughter of Edward I,
Lady Elizabeth de Clare, who, after
the death of her third husband,
took a vow of chastity,
and channelled her energies
into higher education,
the sensible woman.
What was originally a foundation
for 20 fellows and ten poor scholars
is now a college of around 650,
who in the past have included
the poet Siegfried Sassoon,
the novelist and biographer
Peter Ackroyd,
and the naturalist and broadcaster
David Attenborough.
The average age of tonight's team
is 22. Let's meet them.
Hi, I'm Anish Naik,
I'm studying for a PhD
in Astrophysics,
and I'm from Enfield
in North London.
Hi, I'm Matt Nixon,
I'm from Belfast,
and I'm studying for
a Masters in Astrophysics.
This is their captain.
Hello, I'm Andrew Gurr,
I'm from Basingstoke in Hampshire,
and I'm reading Law.
Hi, I'm Elijah Granet, I'm from
sunny San Diego, California,
and I'm reading for
a Masters in Politics.
APPLAUSE
Hertford College, Oxford,
traces its origins
to a 13th century institution,
and now houses around 600 students.
Alumni include John Donne,
Jonathan Swift and Evelyn Waugh,
who while a student, claimed,
"I do no work here
and don't go to chapel."
He did, however, create
one of the most enduring images of
student life when,
in Brideshead Revisited,
he placed Charles Ryder in Hertford
and had Sebastian Flyte
initiate their friendship
by vomiting into his rooms,
which are now occupied by
the college bursary.
With an average age of 21,
let's meet the Hertford team.
Hi, I'm Steffi, I'm from South
London, and I'm studying Biology.
Hi, I'm Pat Taylor,
originally from Warwick,
and I'm studying Physics.
And this is their captain.
Hi, I'm Richard Tudor, I'm from
Stourbridge in the West Midlands,
and I'm reading History.
Hi, I'm Chris, I'm from
Orpington in South London,
and I'm studying
English Literature.
APPLAUSE
Well, the rules are
the same as ever.
Starter questions are solo efforts
and are worth 10 points,
and bonuses are
team efforts worth 15.
Right. Fingers on the buzzers.
Here's your first starter for 10.
Which US city is the setting
of television drama series
developed by David Simon
and Bryan Fuller...?
Baltimore.
Correct.
APPLAUSE
You get a set of bonuses
on words with a shared suffix.
Firstly, from a Latin term,
the sense of which is
"that spoken by the gods",
what term describes a person
who believes that all things
happen by inevitable necessity,
undetermined by human action?
Determinist? Yeah, that sounds OK.
Determinist.
No, it's a fatalist.
From the Latin for a person
who fights with their fists,
what term means a practitioner of
the art of boxing?
Pugilist.
Originally applied to the writers
of the four Gospels,
what term is now commonly used
to describe a zealous advocate
of a cause or promulgator
of a doctrine?
Evangelist.
Correct. 10 points for this.
What three letters
begin words meaning
a component of an engine
that blends air and fuel,
a flexible tissue and the
articulating surfaces of joints,
and an eponymous cycle...
CAR?
Correct.
APPLAUSE
Start of "cartilage" and so on.
So you get a set of bonuses
on physics, Hertford,
for your first outing.
In each case, give the single word
that completes the extract
from a Nobel Prize citation.
Firstly, to Lord Rayleigh in 1904,
for his investigations
of the densities
of the most important gases,
and for his discovery of
which noble gas?
Not sure, actually.
Not argon?
THEY CONFER
Helium?
No, it's argon. Secondly,
to James Chadwick in 1935
for the discovery of
which subatomic particle?
Was it the... 1935.
Electrons?
No, no... Electrons
were long before that.
Maybe... Subatomic particle,
proton, neutron...
Maybe muon? Let's try that.
OK. Muon?
No, it's the neutron.
And finally, to Ernst Ruska in 1986
for his fundamental work
in electron optics
and for the design of
the first electron what?
Microscope?
Microscope, probably, yeah.
Microscope?
Correct. 10 points for this.
Which of TS Eliot's poems
is prefaced by a short note
explaining that its title
refers to a small group of rocks
with a beacon off
the north-east coast of...
The Waste Land?
No. I'm going to fine you
five points too.
..with a beacon off the north-east
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts?
In 1943, it was published with
three other poems
under the collective title
Four Quartets.
Little Rock?
No, it's The Dry Salvages.
Right, 10 points
for this starter question.
FitzEmpress was a byname of
which King of England,
sometimes described as
the father of English common law?
His reign was marked by
quarrels with his sons, his wife,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Thomas Becket.
Henry II.
Correct.
APPLAUSE
Right, your bonuses are on
a philosophy now, Hertford.
Its name derived from
the Greek for delight,
in which doctrine of ethics is
one's own pleasure regarded as
the chief good or
the proper end of action?
Hedonism?
Hedonism?
Correct. Described as
a psychological hedonist,
which English philosopher
claimed in a 1789 work
on morals and legislation that pain
and pleasure determine what we do?
THEY CONFER
Paine?
No, it was Jeremy Bentham.
And finally, in a work of 1821,
which English essayist wrote,
"Gentlemen, I am a hedonist,
"and if you must know why I take
opium, that's the reason why."
Coleridge. Loved opium, so...
Coleridge.
No, it was Thomas De Quincey.
We're going to take
a picture question now.
For your picture starter, you'll
see three Old English kennings.
That is, metaphorical compounds
used poetically in place of
simpler words,
such as "life liquid" for "blood".
For 10 points, I want the short,
modern English word
that's conventionally used
to translate all three.
Sea.
Sea is correct, yes. Well done.
"Fishes bath" was the key.
Right, you get a set
now of bonuses.
Three more sets of kennings,
and again, in each case,
you need to work out
the single modern English word
that would conventionally be used
to translate each set.
Firstly, I need
a four-letter word here.
THEY CONFER
Head?
No, that's the body.
"Bone house" is the clue.
Secondly, another
four-letter word, please.
THEY CONFER
Boat?
Correct, yes.
And finally, a three-letter word.
THEY CONFER
Sun.
Sun is correct, yes, well done.
APPLAUSE
Right, 10 points for this.
Submitted in 1900, Albert Einstein's
first scientific paper was on
the subject of what phenomenon,
described as...?
Brownian motion?
No.
..described as the rise or
depression - you lose five points -
rise or depression of a liquid
in a small passage
such as a tube of
small cross-sectional area?
Capillary action?
Capillarity is correct, yes.
APPLAUSE
Your bonuses are on creative works
of the 1990s
cited by the journalist Samira Ahmed
as examples of why it was
a brilliant decade
to be a young woman.
Firstly, together with
Annie Lennox's Diva and
Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour,
it put female desire at the heart
of mass popular entertainment.
These words refer to Ingenue,
an album by which Canadian
singer-songwriter?
THEY CONFER
Alanis Morissette?
No, it's k.d. lang.
Cutthroat Island and
A League Of Their Own
starred which actor? In 2004,
she founded an institute
to investigate
issues of gender in media.
Pass.
It's Geena Davis.
"The female agent was the calm,
rational sceptic,
"and the bloke was
the superstitious, emotional one."
These words refer to
which television series,
first broadcast in 1993?
THEY CONFER
Sorry, pass again.
It's The X-Files.
10 points for this.
Give both the title and
the author promptly if you buzz.
Which memoir of 2017 opens with
the author's admission
that she imagined herself to be...
What Happened, Hillary Clinton?
Correct.
APPLAUSE
Right, your bonuses are on poems
collected in the Exeter Book,
the largest extant codex of
Old English poetry.
The poems, firstly,
known as Juliana and The Ascension
are generally attributed
to which Anglo-Saxon poet?
He's one of a very few
to be known by name,
having signed his work
using runic characters.
THEY CONFER
Hill.
Hill?!
No, it's Cynewulf.
Secondly, what two-word Latin term
is often used to describe
the poems known as Deor,
The Ruin and The Wanderer,
which share a theme of transience?
The term refers to a rhetorical
device whereby a speaker asks
what became of past heroes.
THEY CONFER
Nominate Naik.
Quo vadis?
No, that means something completely
different. It's "ubi sunt".
And finally,
The Lament for the Rohirrim
is an ubi sunt verse that
closely paraphrases The Wanderer.
Give the precise volume of
the 1954 work in which it appears,
along with the author.
The Return Of The King.
No, it's The Two Towers
by JRR Tolkien. Oh, no!
Right, 10 points for this.
What single word links
the English name of a gulf
in the Sea of Okhotsk,
the comic opera by
Gilbert and Sullivan
subtitled Bunthorne's Bride,
an album of 2004 by George Michael,
and an alternate name
for the card game Solitaire?
Patience?
Patience is correct.
APPLAUSE
Your bonuses are on
an Australian state. Firstly,
crossed by the thousand-mile-long
Canning Stock Route,
the Great Sandy Desert lies largely
within which Australian state?
THEY CONFER
Western Australia?
Correct. In metres,
how high is Mount Meharry,
the highest point in
Western Australia?
It's lower than Ben Nevis,
but higher than Snowdon.
You can have 100 metres either way.
THEY CONFER
1,100.
I can't accept that.
It's not quite close enough.
It's 1,250.
And finally, Mount Meharry
is in the Hammersley ranges,
the site of major mines
of which metal?
The ore is transported by rail
to ports such as Dampier.
I think there are gold mines
in Western Australia.
Gold.
No, it's iron.
10 points for this.
In the title of a 1993 book,
the US sociologist George Ritzer
coined what term
to describe
a process of rationalisation
involving the principles
and characteristics
of an eponymous fast-food restaurant
coming to dominate society?
McDonaldisation.
Correct.
APPLAUSE
These bonuses, Clare,
are on an immunological reaction.
What type of reaction results in
the formation of a visible aggregate
after a soluble antibody is mixed
with a particulate antigen?
Do you have any idea?
Histamine response?
That sounds...
Histamine response.
No, it's agglutination.
And secondly, using dead bacteria
as the antigen against the serum
of suspected patients,
the Widal agglutination test
aids in the diagnosis of
which highly contagious fever?
It's usually spread by
contaminated food or water.
THEY CONFER
Cholera.
No, it's typhoid fever.
The agglutination properties
of which cells are used to
determine a person's blood type?
THEY CONFER
Red.
Red blood cells is correct,
erythrocytes.
Right, we're going to take
a music round.
For your music starter, you'll hear
a piece of popular music.
10 points if you can give me the
usual two-word title of the song.
# And I'm gonna be high... #
Rocket Man.
Rocket Man is correct, yes.
APPLAUSE
That featured on the personal
playlist that Tim Peake made
for his Principia mission,
as revealed by
the European Space Agency.
Your music bonuses are
three more songs from that playlist.
This time, I want the name
of the band in each case. Firstly:
# When your world is full of
strange arrangements
# And gravity won't pull you through
# You know you're missing out
on something...
Duran Duran?
No, that's ABC, The Look Of Love.
And secondly...
# I can see for miles and miles
# I can see from miles and miles
# I can see for miles and miles
and miles and miles and miles... #
The Beach Boys.
No, that was The Who.
And finally...
# If you believe they put a man... #
REM.
REM, Man On The Moon, yes.
Right, 10 points for this.
The Oddball's Oddball
was an appellation
given by Time magazine
to which prolific mathematician?
Born in Budapest...
Erdos.
Paul Erdos is correct, yes.
Right, you get a set of bonuses,
this time on the deaths of
Roman emperors, Hertford College.
Which emperor died in the Danubian
provinces,
possibly in modern-day Vienna,
in 180?
The last of the Five Good Emperors,
he was a prominent
Stoic philosopher.
Yeah.
OK. Marcus Aurelius. Correct.
Which Roman emperor died at York
in 211?
He came to power
during a civil war
and founded a dynasty that
lasted until 235.
Yeah, I was thinking that as well.
Septimius Severus. Correct.
And finally, having undertaken a
major reorganisation of the empire,
which emperor abdicated in 305
and died near Split on the Adriatic,
11 years later?
Diocletian. Correct.
Ten points for this.
Nine years before the Great
Fire of London,
the Great Fire of Meireki
devastated which major city
with great loss of life?
In 1923, the same city suffered
in the Great Kanto Earthquake.
Tokyo. Tokyo is correct, yes.
Your bonuses this time are
on indie rock bands, Hertford.
In each case, give the band's name
from the clue or clues.
Firstly, the name of which band
might also refer to the second
and fourth horizontal bands
of the flag of North Korea?
The White Stripes?
Yeah. The White Stripes. Correct.
The director of the films
Nixon and Snowden
and ornamental plants
with numerous cultivars
including Rabelais, Rubens
and Rosie O'Donnell?
Stone Roses, because
it's Oliver Stone... Yeah.
The Stone Roses.
Correct. And finally,
the region between 67.5
and 90 degrees north
and mammals whose species include
the langurs and the marmosets.
Arctic Monkeys. Arctic Monkeys is
correct. Ten points for this.
Prompting much speculation over the
writer's true identity,
under what pseudonym...
Ferrante. Full name?
Elena Ferrante? Correct.
APPLAUSE
Right, your bonuses, Clare College,
are on the 16th century Indian
poetess and mystic Meera Bai.
Meera Bai was born a princess
and was married in 1516 to Bhojraj,
the Crown Prince of Mewar
in which modern-day state
of north-western India?
Rajasthan. Rajasthan. Correct.
According to legend,
which Moghul ruler described himself
as a commoner
in order to hear Meera Bai sing?
Akbar the Great. Correct.
Meera Bai is best known for her
lyrical devotional songs
to which popular deity, a
prominent figure in the Mahabharata?
Rama, isn't it?
No, he's not in the Mahabharata.
Try Arjun. Arjun.
No, it's Krishna.
10 points for this.
Named after a Swedish anatomist
and sometimes
likened to growth rings on a tree...
Linnaeus.
No, I'm afraid you're going
to lose five points.
..the striae of Retzius are found
on which parts of the human body?
Muscles?
Heart muscle? No. They are found
on the teeth. 10 points for this.
Its name meaning "our land"
in the local language,
what became the newest, largest
and northernmost Canadian territory?
Um, Nunavut.
I'll accept that,
but only because I'm being kind.
APPLAUSE
A set of bonuses for you on names
in the solar system
associated with
the idea of heaven or paradise.
One of the largest impact features
in the solar system,
the Valhalla Crater is
on which moon of Jupiter,
the planet's second-largest?
Ganymede, Europa?
I think Europa's the next largest.
Europa. No, it's Callisto. Unlucky.
After a paradise in ancient Egyptian
mythology,
the geologically diverse
region of Aaru
is on which large moon of the
outer solar system?
Triton?
Triton. No, it's Titan.
Finally, Elysium Planitia
and Elysium Mons
are a plain and
an extinct volcano on which planet?
Mars. Mars is correct.
We're going to take another picture
round. For your picture starter,
you're going to see a painting
by a French artist.
10 points if you can identify the
artist.
Cezanne? No, anyone like to buzz
from Hertford? You may not confer.
One of you can buzz.
Manet? It is Edouard Manet's
Monk In Prayer.
Right, Hertford, you get the picture
bonuses.
That painting was believed to be
inspired
by De Zurbaran's Saint Francis
In Meditation.
Your bonuses are three more
paintings by Manet
that closely reference well-known
Spanish works.
This time, I need the name
of the artist
whose work is being referenced.
Firstly, this is modelled
on a portrait by which artist?
Manet described the original
as perhaps the most astonishing
piece of painting
that's ever been made.
CONFERRING: Velazquez? Velazquez.
Velazquez? Velazquez is correct.
Let's see the whole thing,
the original. There it is.
Secondly, as suggested by the critic
Theophile Thore,
whose work inspired this painting?
Goya? Might be El Greco.
THEY CONFER QUIETLY
I'll go with El Greco, yeah?
El Greco?
El Greco is correct.
His Holy Trinity,
as you can see there.
Finally, this borrows heavily in
both theme and composition
from a work by which artist?
That's Goya.
Goya.
It is Goya, yes,
The Third Of May 1808.
Right, 10 points for this.
What alphanumeric designation
links
the Messier number
of the Crab Nebula,
a major road that runs near
Luton, Leicester and Leeds
and the rapper born Lavonne Alford?
M11?
Anyone want to buzz from Clare?
13?
No, it's M1.
Ten points for this.
First published in 1855
and revised many times,
which collection of verse includes
Song Of Myself and I Sing...
Leaves Of Grass.
Leaves Of Grass is correct.
Clare, you get a set
of bonuses on an SI prefix.
Expressed in metric tonnes,
what is one gigagram?
THEY CONFER
A million.
No, it's a thousand.
Rounded to the nearest integer,
how many decades is one gigasecond?
Decades?
THEY CONFER
30?
Three decades, 30 years. Correct.
Finally, which body of the solar
system
has a diameter of
about 1.4 gigametres?
Probably Jupiter?
Jupiter. No, it's the sun.
Three and a half minutes to go
and ten points for this.
The name of which Roman god
is the origin of terms for musical
compositions
depicting wild or hedonistic scenes
such as in Wagner's Tannhauser
and Saint-Saen's Samson and Delilah?
Dionysus.
Anyone like to buzz from Hertford?
Bacchus? Bacchus is correct.
You get a set of bonuses on literary
oxymorons, Hertford.
In each case, name the poet
who wrote the following lines.
First, from a 17th century work,
"Yet from those flames no light,
but rather darkness visible".
Donne? Yeah, it does sound like
Donne.
Donne?
No, it's John Milton
describing hell.
Second, from an 18th-century work,
"Damn with faint praise,
assent with civil leer,
"and without sneering,
teach the rest to sneer."
Yeah. Pope's from that era.
Pope. It was Alexander Pope.
Finally, from
a mid-19th century work,
"Faith unfaithful kept him
falsely true".
Come on.
Browning. No, it's Tennyson.
10 points for this.
Cervus and Dama are among the
genera of what ruminant animal?
Native British species
have the common names red, roe...
Deer. Deer is correct.
Two questions on the events of 1918.
In which present-day country
is the city of Brest,
formerly known as Brest-Litovsk?
It saw the signing of two peace
treaties
in the early months of 1918.
Belarus. Correct.
The monarch of which country
granted asylum to
Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1918?
The UK?
No, it was Holland.
Also in late 1918, an assembly
of delegates at Alba Iulia
proclaimed the union of
Transylvania and which country?
Romania? Romania.
Romania is correct.
Ten points for this. Listen
carefully and answer promptly.
With triangle PQR where angle R
is equal to 30 degrees,
what is the value of sine P
cosine Q plus cosine P sine Q?
One?
No, anyone want to buzz from Clare?
Zero.
No, it's half.
Ten points for this.
What two-word English name denotes
both a waterway around
1,800 kilometres long
linking Beijing
with south-east China
and a thoroughfare
of Venice spanned by...
Grand Canal.
Correct.
You get a set of bonuses.
They're on a shared term.
Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie
are the members of which
New Zealand musical comedy duo?
Flight of the Conchords.
Correct.
The Flight of the Earls is often
regarded as a turning point
in Irish history and occurred in the
first decade of which century?
The 18th...sorry, the 19th century.
19th. No, it's the 17th.
The Flight Of The Bumblebee
is an orchestral interlude
in the Tale Of Tsar Saltan,
an opera of 1899
by which Russian composer?
Rimsky-Korsakov. Correct.
Ten points for this.
What common surname links
a paramour of the future
King George IV nicknamed Perdita,
the US author
of Housekeeping and Gilead,
and the Irish president...
Robinson. Correct.
GONG
CHEERING
Well, it couldn't have got much
closer than that, Hertford.
Just on the last question, it went,
but you had a convincing lead
for most of the contest.
We might see you back as one
of the highest scoring losers,
but thank you very much for joining
us.
Clare, you left it about as late
as you possibly could leave it!
But congratulations to you
and we look forward to seeing you
in the next round of the contest.
I hope you can join us next time for
another first-round match.
But until then, it's goodbye from
Hertford College, Oxford. Goodbye.
And it's goodbye from
Clare College, Cambridge. Goodbye.
And it's goodbye from me. Goodbye.
