he stumbled into MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) correctly on the first try too at 8:00

He is a real dude.

Deytookour birkbeckmcmillan!

No more egg-laying :(

Hi, I'm Danny McMillan, I'm originally from Belfast, and I study for a Ph.D. in modern poultry history.

😅

Don't worry, we'll always have ... Cairo Station.

25:32

Mutual respect between intellectuals, old chap.

That was really classy. And apt too, considering it was a close match.

Poor Amol was left fumbling at his desk while the teams got together. :p

Well… when they lost, they (or “he”) reacted a BIT differently…

Seldom happened outside of the final in Paxman's time, as far as I can recall. But yes, very classy indeed. 🙂

yes, but even though I am a fan of Amol he is starting to sound like Paxman in that regard. They need bell to ring instead.

I cheered when he timed them out

Thems the breaks ..

One nice guy on that team

@@user-qq2bj5ix5n Whole team is nice imo

Certainly enjoyed this episode...the answer Abigail to the Bible story in 1 Samuel 25 in particular. "Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” And in the account of Abigail, we witness a woman who remained in an attitude of true humility before her enemies - even before someone who had the power to destroy family members, servants, her home, and her life as she'd known it" "Abigail showed great wisdom in acting quickly, swiftly, and speaking honorably to David. She took control of the situation that was potentially dangerous for them all. She didn't just sit around and blame her husband or remain stuck in fear. She sent food and her servants up ahead" Modern feminists can learn a thing or two from imitating this woman.

@@Zoomo2697Judith provides a rather different lesson, and she was no less honorable. Just bloodier. : )

Yeah……and they also one big asshole on their team

Very likeable team

@@user-qq2bj5ix5nif you have a personal problem with that person you should air it elsewhere. If it is just supposition then you should be ashamed and remember it takes one arsehole to recognise another. n.b. your spelling of the perforative term indicates you may be Nth American. collectively known as Jerks!

He seems like the loveliest fellow, constantly smiling and radiating positivity!

Guessing Handel surprised me. I thought she would easily be able to tell that the piece is from later than the baroque period.

@@slightlygrouchy he does seem to be relishing every moment of the contest doesn't he.

@@AlexEwan1 My initial guess is that under pressure she mixed up Händel and Haydn. They are similar names and I regularly mix them up so I wouldn't be surprised.

@@late8641 My initial thought was Ravel or Debussy then I realised it was from the Classical period so then thought Mendelssohn but it didn't sound right for Mendelssohn and I eventually settled for Haydn. Can totally understand mixing up Handel and Haydn though.

I counted 6 correct starters and one wrong answer that lost them points. And other than him, only Chadha got a starter right for them as far as I know.

He said right after, it's symphony 100

@@gooscarguitar Oops, I totally missed that. Thank you so much!

yep, that was ridiculous. And Amol was trying to hurry up Trinity at the end there. Thats why I fully support an introduction of a timer for bonus questions.

I thought the same, but later I wondered if perhaps it was due to the nature of the question. But even then, I still felt that the time given was too long - especially when compared to how he really seemed to be rushing Trinity in the bonus rounds later on.

They have to counter Trinity's conferring during the starter questions somehow, I guess.

They’ve been using this stalling tactic in every match

For any Irish person those are 3 obvious very well known figures if you paid attention in history class at all.

@@thescifiZipacnamy memory of Irish history is so dismal but Wolfe Tone is the first thing to come to mind at the mention of 1798, and anyone who has set foot in dublin would know O’Connell street hahah. Interesting that it was referred to as an avenue here.

I wish they would do that too. It would be so much fairer. Now one team or the other seems to get an advantage or disadvantage depending on the level of frustration or tension that is building.

I'd like to think it's because sometimes the conferring has the possibility to lead somewhere, and that is v enjoyable to watch, while other times it's just waffling nonsense, and ideally you'd like to give the former a bit of time. But quite often they let them waffle on with nonsense for an irritatingly long time.

It seems like it would be easier to have a timer rather than the arbitrary "COME ON!", especially when the early bonuses are given waaaayyy more time. But it seems karmic that the team that wasted all the time, ended up running out of time at the end.

In that instance, the Birkbeck team was chatting so amiably, it was like they were at a garden party. The merest hesitation in answering a starter-“Uh…”-is disqualifying but a team can go on interminably answering a bonus question. The show’s been going on for over six decades (since 1962) so, if some time limit hasn't yet been introduced, it probably won’t be. It might be that whoever decides those things is fine with a longer period to confer during most of the match but wants the flexibility to keep it brief near the end when time is short.

@@jeff__w​​⁠They can always implement a timer which gets shorter towards the end, which would be the best way of implementing that. But I agree they’re unlikely to. I wish they would though.

@@kittyswaning They _can,_ sure. The other “variable” thing is that they might want to give more allowance to teams that seem to be getting closer to the right answer, rather than ones that are just mucking about, but even if that’s the case (and I’m not so sure it is or should be), that’s very arbitrary and subjective. But, as we both say, they’re unlikely to institute any kind of uniform “time” rule.

@@jeff__wI think that if they pick a "closer to the answer = long time to answer" style, the teams will stall even more because they'd think they are closer to the answer so they'll end up "using" that time. EVEN if the style doesn't and can't be applied here, I'd like a "chess clock" style. So even if the winning team would stall a lot in the end, the main "fault" would be ON the loosing team for wasting even more time. O.O

He was preoccupied with his squash match later that afternoon.

@@ArthurKuntslerHe’s preoccupied with the genetics masters he “should” be doing lol.

i thought it was because there weren’t as many questions on his specialty

I think he was seriously thinking about it. Look at his face at 25:37

That would have been great fun to watch

Really don't know how he didn't get the answer though - the answer he gave isn't even really north-west of Busan and is less than half the size of the correct answer (which is the 4th largest city in the whole damn country).

@@PhatInAHat Happens to a lot of my friends who grew up abroad.

Thanks as always! That is a startling statline though, McMillan hat 11 out of 14 starter buzzes and 6 out of 7 correct one, wow! Not sure I've seen such a skewed team performance before.

@@whateverkatana more or less a single man performance for Birkbeck

Thanks! Was curious to see what the bonus conversions were considering Birkbeck took so much longer to confer, and it felt like they got a lot less of them too. I see now that that’s true.

Thank you Lindokuhle, as always, for doing a magnificent job with statistics. I really enjoy doing the statistics now, so I've included mine below. Incidentally, I got exactly the same statistics for each individual team member as you: 17 rounds (16 rounds completed; the game ended before any bonus questions could be asked in the 17th round) 22 starter questions (17 answered correctly + 5 additional starter questions on the occasions when neither side answered a starter question correctly) 48 bonus questions (16 rounds x 3; no bonus questions in the 17th round) 70 questions in total (22 starter + 48 bonus) 460 points available in total (22 x10, plus 48 x 5) 57.6% of the 460 points available were scored ((165 + 100)/460) Trinity 35.9% of the total points available (165/460); Starters 10/22; Bonuses 14/27 (51.9%): Penalties x1 Birkbeck 21.7% of the total points available (100/460); Starters 7/22; Bonuses 8/21 (38.1%); Penalties x2 TRINITY, CAMBRIDGE 165 POINTS (starters 95 points + bonuses 70 points) STARTERS 95 points Kang (Capt.) 3/3 = 30 points Henderson 3/4 = 30 points Banerjee 3/5 less penalties x1 = 25 points Jaksina 1/3 = 10 points BIRKBECK 100 POINTS (starters 60 points + bonuses 40 points) STARTERS 60 points Chadha (Capt.) 1/1 = 10 points McMillan 6/11 less penalties x1 = 55 points Mariner 0/2 less penalties x1 = Minus 5 points Huntley 0/0 = 0 points Sometimes a 'wild guess' pays off (23:58).

@@jamesmakey2792 Agreed, Lindokuhle, is magnificent, as are you. Thank you both!

Good idea!

Huntley had an uncharacteristically below par evening, repeating the subject in the question twice as a possible answer as in Gauguin and Jason and then over riding MacMillan who answered The Tempest correctly.

Deytookour birkbeckmcmillan!

​@@jameshogan6142 Mariner was still worse though - she's basically been a mascot in every game this season but today as well as seemingly not answering any questions correctly actually lost the team 5 points with an early incorrect buzzer.

If losing five points is in your book worse than losing fifteen points then good luck with that. I am simply saying that the team as a unit did not function in a coherent enough manner to defeat such an opposition as Trinity.@@PhatInAHat

He could be more consistent in applying this to both teams. On average, he seemed to give Birbeck a far longer time to confer than Trinity.

He was VERY inconsistent in this one and just wanted to keep the score close at the end

@@lookslikedavid Amol understands that only teams in the lead have an incentive to stall.

@@jamesr141It was impossible for Birkbeck to catch up by that point so it didn’t matter how long Trinity took. And Birkbeck stalled for much longer at the beginning of the match, when they had the lead.

​@@kittyswaning If you think recovery from a 20 point lead is "impossible", you haven't seen enough Uni Challenge. This is a play-off match to win a place in the SEMI-FINALS so the stakes are high. Stalling the lead is a time-honored tradition on UC, but it's a filthy move and Amol was right to call it out. There's a new Sheriff in town.

He is taking the show to a dramatic conclusion. Hence his speech also accelerates. That IS literally the shape of the prgramme.

@@andyb3712 I appreciate that, just saying he took it too far. Hardly allowing 4 seconds to confer on the Daegu question vs 16 seconds for the Medea question by Birkbeck

The only city I can readily name that is “northwest of Busan” (that isn't Seoul) is Daegu, so just by that alone I thought it was an “obvious” answer. (But, of course, the answers one gets right usually seem obvious.)

@@jeff__w All the major cities in SK are northwest of Busan so that doesnt really narrow it down LOL.

@@kittyswaning Well, the only other city I had in mind was Gwanju (not saying it’s a major city) which I would say is _west_ of Busan (rather than “northwest”). So, if the only cities I could name offhand are Busan, Seoul, Daegu and Gwanju-and it’s obviously _not_ Seoul and Busan isn’t northwest of itself-the only choice _for me_ is Daegu. (In other words, it was the obvious choice to me only because of the few cities I could name.)

@@jeff__wAh, that makes sense!

@@kittyswaning Thanks! 😊👍

I thought so too. It clear from Trinity’s reactions that Kang isn’t an SK expert. Plus he’s said in interview that he’s actually from Philadelphia, and then moved to SK. No one on the team really laughed at the joke except Sarah, it wasn’t funny. Not to mention he could have come to the answer if Rajan hadn’t yelled at him after a mere five seconds.

Disagree. The answer Kang gave isn't even really north-west of Busan. It shouldn't have required that detailed a knowledge of South Korean geography to get the answer, especially given it's the 4th largest city in the country (and more than double the size of the answer Kang gave)!

I had the impression that Amol Rajan was trying to reprise his gag to the Oxford team two episodes ago, serving up questions having to do with the history of astrophysics, about having an astrophysicist on the team (when Melika Gorgianeh _is_ a doctoral student in astrophysics), the difference being he said the gag _before_ she answered anything, rather than after she answered wrongly (which she actually did with one of the bonus questions). I’d be willing to give Rajan some slack for attempting a light-hearted jape but making a joke that (1) is in response to a serious answer that is not ludicrously, obviously wrong (which we can differ about here) and (2) is aimed at the contestant personally, i.e., _you_ should know that!, has its perils, e.g., it might come off as a cheap shot. Ryan Kang 25:35 doesn’t appear all that insulted, although one’s assessment doesn’t have to turn on the reaction of the recipient.

@@PhatInAHatChangwon is northwest of Busan.

@@kittyswaning It's mainly only West of Busan. Some bits of it are a tad north-west of some of the bits of Busan, and some bits of it are a tad south-west of some bits.The northern-most boundary of the two cities is basically identical in latitude and if anything Busan's northern border is about 1km or so further north. Most of it is basically just directly west of each other (as is their two centres). Wikipedia also describes it as "west of Busan". The two cities' boundaries are also basically directly next to each other (the cities are certainly not 80km apart as the question also stated).

at 4 minutes they take 20 seconds for a single answer, meanwhile later on Trinity are rushed after taking 8 seconds. Shouldn't happen like this! :( Still great though

@@ilyndThey had some bonuses that took 30+ seconds. Meanwhile Rajan refused to accept Trinity’s Joyce answer after only 9 seconds.

@@kittyswaningthe disparity is just too much to be fair. There really should be a timer for conferring.

@@enlistyExactly. The 9 seconds Rajan cut Trinity’s Joyce answer off after is the amount of time Birkbeck were taking on average… They only had three bonuses they answered clearly under that time.

@@kittyswaningit was wrong anyway though, and it was obvious he was guessing wildly, and at that point every second was precious if the other team were going to get one more chance at a starter

Doesn’t he always hurry the teams towards the end?

@@PS-vm3weyes, but I think it was really much too rushed this match, especially when compared to how he allowed Birbeck soooooo much time earlier that it bordered on the ridiculous.

@@enlisty It's been established that you have less and less time to confer as the episode progresses. He would have done the same had it been vice versa.

@@prestonage yes, but it happened that in this match, he really gave Birkeck A LOT of time to confer (almost 20 seconds per question?) while seeming to be rushing Trinity after barely 8 seconds? The disparity is just too much.

Competitive advantage, old chap. A tactical strategy.

They were so far ahead, it wouldn't have made a difference! However, I am in full agreement with you.

Trinity have done this all season, to the point that people are questioning whether time-wasting like that should be legal

Yes. You don't mind so much if they show some chance of answering correctly but it grates when they just sit there tooling around when it is obvious they haven't the faintest clue.

Mate the other team took so long on their questions in the beginning - shot themselves in the foot.

I’m not sure about starters but she definitely contributed to the bonus answers.

The whole series is finished before the first episode airs - except for the couple recent years where coronavirus restrictions delayed the filming of later rounds to the September/October

@@gooscarguitarSigh, I thought the episodes were like 2~4 weeks in advance... ='(