Episode 36 University Challenge

APPLAUSE

Asking the questions, Jeremy Paxman.

Hello. Tonight is the penultimate match in this year's competition,

because last time, we saw Manchester University

beat Worcester College, Oxford to take their place in the final.

Tonight, we'll find out who they will be playing.

Pembroke College, Cambridge have been on consistently strong form

throughout this contest and are the only team among the semifinalists to have made it this far

without losing a match. They've beaten St Anne's College, Oxford, Nottingham University,

Balliol College, Oxford and Clare College, Cambridge so far.

Let's see if they can maintain their form

as we meet them now for the fifth time.

Hello, my name's Edward Bankes, I'm from Sevenoaks in Kent

-and I'm reading English.

-Hi, I'm Ben Pugh,

I'm from North London and I'm reading German and Russian.

-And their captain.

-Hello, I'm Bibek Mukherjee,

I'm from Canterbury in Kent and I'm reading economics.

Hi, I'm Imogen Gold, I'm from London and I'm reading engineering.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

University College, London are here having beaten the universities of York, Warwick and Manchester,

but a defeat against Worcester College, Oxford

in their second quarterfinal meant they had to play a third

against Balliol College, Oxford to secure their place here tonight.

They tend to alternate unerring accuracy

with completely random outbursts like booby or Uranus.

Still, it works for them. Let's meet them again.

Hi, I'm Hywel Carver from East Devon,

and I'm doing a PhD in the modelling of blood flow.

Hi, I'm Patrick Cook from the Texas Hill Country and I'm reading history.

-And their captain.

-Hello, I'm Jamie Karran from London,

and I'm working towards a degree in medicine.

Hi, I'm Tom Andrews, I'm from North Somerset and I'm studying genetics.

APPLAUSE

OK, you all know the rules. Fingers on the buzzers. Here's your first starter for 10.

Quote, "You may not doubt that this object,

"unwanted even in commercial America, is the deflowering of our capital."

This statement concluded a protest by notable figures,

including Zola, Gounod and Dumas...

-The Eiffel Tower.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE

Your first set of bonuses, UCL, are on red hair.

"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair.

"People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is."

In which novel of 1908 do those words appear?

-Er... Gone With The Wind?

-Gone With The Wind.

No, it's Anne Of Green Gables.

"Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black,

"Thracians that theirs are pale and red haired."

These words are attributed to which pre-Socratic philosopher,

a native of Colophon in Ionia?

I don't...

Heraclitus? It could be Heraclitus.

-Heraclitus.

-No, it's Xenophanes.

"Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air."

These are the final words of Lady Lazarus,

a work by which poet who died in 1963?

-Sylvia Plath.

-Sylvia Plath.

-Correct. Another starter question.

-APPLAUSE

Used since the eighth century to refer to jesting or entertainment,

what short word became associated with a state of joy or delight

but was revived with its original meaning in the 18th century

in the names of clubs formed for the practice...?

-Glee.

-Glee is right, yes.

APPLAUSE

Your bonuses this time, UCL, are on fact recall.

Which German terrorist group gives its name to an Internet meme

and phenomenon in which, having heard an obscure fact for the first time,

one encounters it repeatedly in other contexts?

-Baader-Meinhof.

-Baader-Meinhof.

-Who's ever heard of that on the internet? Trolling is a thing.

-No!

-Baader-Meinhof complex is the only thing...

-OK, Baader-Meinhof.

-Baader-Meinhof is right.

Named by the US psychologists Roger Brown and David McNeill,

what phenomenon involves the recall of certain attributes of a fact, such as the first letter of a name,

without being able to recall the fact itself?

it's on the tip of my tongue.

Association? Selectivisation?

Selective memory is the best I've got, but I don't think it's right.

-Selective memory?

-No, it is tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

LAUGHTER

It's on the tip of your tongue! There we are.

Five points for this one. From the story of Cinderella, what name denotes

a common tip-of-the-tongue experience in which one becomes aware of an unrelated fact

which impedes access to the required memory and is hard to dislodge?

THEY MURMUR

-Glass slipper?

-Glass slipper? I'm thinking pumpkin,

something to do with pumpkins.

Um... Glass slipper sounds more realistic than pumpkin. Glass slipper.

No, it's the ugly sister effect.

10 points for this.

The cities of Dushanbe in Tajikistan, Katowice in Poland,

Donetsk in Ukraine and Volgograd in Russia

were all formerly known by names derived from that adopted...

-Stalin.

-Correct.

-APPLAUSE

-Right, Pembroke, you're off the mark.

Your bonuses are on astronomy and Shakespeare.

"But I am constant as the Northern Star."

Which of Shakespeare's title characters describes himself

-with those words?

-Othello.

-Othello.

-No, it wasn't, it was Julius Caesar. In Act I of Hamlet,

the soldier Bernardo points out, "Yond same star that's westwards from the pole,"

thought by some to be a reference to what phenomenon

occurring in the constellation of Cassiopeia observed in 1572?

-Halley's Comet?

-No.

-Supernova?

-It could be.

-We might as well guess.

-Go for it.

-Supernova?

-Supernova?

-Correct.

"But like a comet I was wondered at.

"That men would tell their children, 'This is he.'

"Others would say, 'Where? Which is Bolingbroke?'"

Which title character says those words?

-Well, Bolingbroke is Henry IV.

-It's not Oswald, is it?

He's not a title character.

-Henry IV.

-I'd go Richard II.

-Richard II.

-No, it was Henry IV.

10 points for this. From the Greek for a mast or web,

what name is given to a graph consisting of continuous rectangles,

each having a width proportional to the size of a range of numbers...?

-Histogram.

-Histogram is correct.

APPLAUSE

Your bonuses are on signal processing.

Firstly, for five, what term can mean both varying an electromagnetic wave

in order to impress a signal on it and a change of key in a piece of music?

-Modulation.

-Correct. From the Greek for "different power",

what term refers to the generation of beat frequencies by the combination of two waveforms?

THEY MURMUR

Hetero...mixing?

I thought that was different.

-Hetero mixing?

-No, it's heterodyning.

Including Hannibal Lecter among its devotees,

and notably used in the theme music for Midsomer Murders,

what instrument, named after its Russian inventor, uses the heterodyne principle

to generate tones based on the movement of the musician's hands near the two antennas?

-Theremin.

-Correct.

-We'll take a picture round.

-For your starter,

you'll see a diagram of a chessboard.

10 points if you can

give me the two-word term

which denotes the particular form of

checkmate by which white has lost.

-Fool's mate.

-Fool's mate is right, yes.

APPLAUSE

Picture bonuses. Three more chess boards, this time

showing the state of play before the final move in three famous matches.

For five points, I want you to tell me what the winning move was.

For example, white queen from D1 to A1.

Firstly, the winning move

for white from this 1858 game.

-Umm... So castle down to E1.

-No.

-Yeah, castle down.

-Down to E1.

No, no, no, no!

LAUGHTER

-E3, I think, maybe.

-No...

-Go.

No, wait...

Rook down to E1.

-From?

-Er...

-Wherever it is now?

-From E8.

-Correct, yes.

The winning move for black from this 1948 game.

Is that the queen?

Wait. We want the king.

Oh, no, is that the king?

OK, no, I think it's...

It's knight from G4 to E2.

Knight from G4 to E2.

No, it's black knight from G4 to H2.

-H2, OK.

-Bad luck.

Lastly, for five,

either of the winning moves

for black from this 1956 game.

-We've lost the king.

-Is the top one

-the king?

-King's the crown.

-Not that one.

-Which one?

-It's this one.

-The top one.

-Knight to D5?

-From where?

-Wait. From where?

-C3.

Knight from C3 to D5.

No. It's black rook from A2 to C2

or black bishop from B4 to A3.

Right, 10 points for this.

The English counties of Cheshire, Durham and Lancashire,

whose lords had royal privileges, the medieval rulers of Hungary

and several counts of Germany and Burgundy all shared what name

with that of the hill on which the original city of Romulus was built?

-Palatine.

-Palatine is right.

APPLAUSE

Your bonuses, UCL, this time are on women in the ancient world.

In the words of the author Charlotte Higgins, in each case

identify the mythological figure from her description.

In Sophocles' play, she gives her brother, who died a traitor,

his proper funeral rites. A standard bearer for courage

in the face of brutish male authority.

-Antigone.

-Correct.

When her husband leaves her for a younger model,

she delivers a speech on the lot of married women culminating in the line,

"I'd rather stand in the battle line three times than give birth once."

-Medea.

-Correct. In the Odyssey, she turned visiting men into pigs.

-What more can I say?

-Circe.

-Circe is right.

"He is of no age nor of any religion or party or profession.

"The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable

"depths of his own oceanic mind."

These words of Coleridge described which figure?

-Shakespeare.

-Shakespeare is right, yes.

A set of bonuses on the former East Germany. Firstly for five.

Subtitled Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall,

which 2003 book by Anna Funder recounts personal histories

-of some who lived under the threat of the GDR state security?

-Stasiland.

-Correct.

Which academic wrote about the dossier the Stasi

kept on him in his 1997 book The File?

His other works included, in 2009,

Facts Are Subversive,

Political Writing From A Decade Without A Name.

-Timothy Garton Ash.

-Oh, yes. Nominate Pugh.

-Timothy Garton Ash.

-Correct.

A work of 2010 by Kai Schluter reveals the efforts

made by the Stasi to spy on which Nobel prize-winning author,

code naming him Bolzen, as in bolt?

THEY WHISPER

But he was West German.

Gunter Grass?

Who was the one in...?

-Can we have an answer, please?

-Gunter Grass.

-Correct.

Another starter question.

Popularised by the Hungarian Marxist Gyogy Lukacs as a means

of generalising Marx's Theory Of Commodity Fetishism,

what term refers to the process by which abstract concepts

are treated as if they had tangible, material objects?

It derives from the Latin for thing.

-Pragmatism.

-No.

Anyone like to buzz from Pembroke?

-Rarification?

-Rarification is right, yes.

Your bonuses are on economics, Pembroke College.

Frictional, structural and classical, the latter caused

by excessively high wages, are three distinct types of what economic problem?

-Unemployment.

-Correct.

Which law takes its name from the US economist who discovered

that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate, when above 4%,

was associated with a 3% drop in the ratio of actual GNP

to potential GNP?

-Okun's law.

-Correct.

Named after an economist born in 1883, what type of unemployment

results from insufficient aggregate demand in the economy

to support all those who want to work?

-Keynesian.

-Correct. That gives you the lead.

A starter question.

What surname links an Australian poet born in 1833

and honoured in Westminster Abbey, the 19th century

Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen and one of Lytton Strachey's eminent

Victorians who died in 1885 at the end of the siege of Khartoum?

-Gordon.

-Gordon is right, yes.

You retake the lead and your bonuses are on square numbers.

The next year that is a perfect square will be 2025, 45 squared.

The last year that was a perfect square saw

three monarchs on the throne of Great Britain. What year was it?

What was the one with Edward VIII? When was Edward VIII?

-I thought it was like 36 or 37.

-37, it's got to be.

But which would make sense in terms of squares?

THEY WHISPER

-37.

-Bad luck, it was 1936, 44 squared.

Which year, a perfect square, saw the denunciation

of Martin Luther by the Diet Of Worms,

the death of Magellan and the fall of the Aztec capital to the Spanish?

It's got to be in the 1400s.

THEY WHISPER

Sorry.

-It's not easy.

-1456?

No, it's got to be after 1492, when Columbus discovered America,

so it has to be 1500s. Try mid-1500s.

-Let's have an answer.

-1550, I don't know.

-1556.

-1521, that's 39 squared.

Which year, also a perfect square, saw the deaths of Edgar Allen Poe, Frederic Chopin

and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising?

-1956?

-Chopin died that late? No. Chopin did not die that late.

-The Hungarian uprising.

-Different Hungarian uprising.

-OK, fair enough.

-Sorry.

-That's all right.

-1856 or something?

-Come on, let's have it, please.

-1844.

-1844.

-No, it's 1849, 43 squared.

We're going to take a music round now. For your music starter,

you'll hear excerpts from two very different pieces of music.

10 points if you can tell me

the names of the composers of each piece.

So listen to both before you answer.

PIANO

SYMPHONY

# New York, New York!

# It's a hell of a time! #

-Debussy and Bernstein.

-Yes! Well done.

OK, the connection was that Debussy died the year that

Bernstein was born, which was 1910.

For your bonuses, music by three more pairs of composers,

the first in each case died in the year the second was born.

So I want both names for each set of five points.

Firstly, the composers of these two pieces.

SYMPHONY

Where you think it's from?

-No, that's Bernstein.

-Oh, that's Bernstein.

SYMPHONY

Stravinsky or something? No, that's...

-Are we guessing anything?

-I really don't know.

-OK. We have no idea.

-What are you saying?

-I don't know.

-Go Benjamin Britten and Bizet.

-Benjamin Britten and Bizet.

-Bizet and Ravel.

Bizet was the first one. Ravel, the second.

Secondly, the composers of these two works.

La Donna E Mobile is by...Verdi!

Verdi and...OK.

# Muta d'accento e di pensiero

# Sempre un amabile...#

GUITAR

Umm...I think it's Rodrigo. But...

-Yeah, go.

-OK. Verdi and Rodrigo.

-Correct.

-The year of birth and death was 1901 in that case.

-And finally...

ITALIAN OPERA

-Puccini.

-Puccini and...? Wait for the next one.

-So it'd be 1920 something.

In the 1920s.

-Bernstein?

-No, we've already had that one.

SONG: The Pink Panther Theme

-Oh, Mancini, isn't it?

-Mancini. OK.

-Mancini and Puccini.

-OK. Puccini and Mancini.

Mancini. That's right. 1924. Right, 10 points for this.

What two words have in their English spelling the letter A

as every second letter with no other vowels?

One denoting a Greek dish of fish roe paste the other a Turkish...?

Taramasalata and Galata?

No, I'm afraid you lose five points.

The other, a Turkish football team based in Istanbul.

-Taramasalata and Galatasaray.

-Correct.

Sorry, it was just on the tip of your tongue, wasn't it?

But you get the bonuses, UCL. They are on exotic materials.

What term refers to artificially engineered materials

with optical or electromagnetic properties not found in nature?

-Semiconductors?

-No.

-Paramagnetic.

-Yeah?

-Paramagnetic.

-No, they are meta-materials.

Referring to a Soviet scientist, what two-word term indicates the blue glow associated

with nuclear reactors caused by a charged particle moving through

a dielectric medium faster than the local speed of light?

This might be from Star Trek,

-but I think it might be the Cherenkov effect.

-Go for it.

-The Cherenkov effect.

-That's correct. Cherenkov radiation.

Occurring when Cherenkov radiation is emitted behind the particle travelling through the medium,

the reverse effect has been observed in meta-materials with which optical property?

THEY WHISPER

-Like polarized light?

-Really?

-I don't know.

-How does it bend?

-What bends light? Like, I mean...

I don't know.

-Things that can polarize light.

-No, it's the negative refractive index.

10 points for this.

It could be said that these two words had more influence

in shaping the emotional attitudes of the English governing class

between the two world wars than any other single phrase

in the English language.

-The working class' smell.

-Uh, no.

It's Orwell.

-I'm afraid you lose five points.

-Two words.

The question is here referring to which two-word literary epigraph?

No, none of you going to buzz?

-Semper fidelis.

-No, it's "only connect."

EM Forster's remark. Right, 10 points for this.

The Greek-derived term ochlocracy indicates rule or domination by...?

-The mob.

-The mob is right, yes.

You're in the lead. Your bonuses are on French cinema.

Which French director made Zero De Conduite

and L'Atalante before dying in 1934 at the age of 29?

Um...

-Cocteau?

-Cocteau?

-No, that was Jean Vigo.

Secondly, shot in Nice and Paris during the Nazi occupation, which film

by Marcel Carne is set in the world of 19th century Parisian theatre

and centres on the courtesan Garance and her lovers?

Courtesan? Um... Maybe Gigi?

Gigi?

No, that's a very different kind of film. Les Enfants Du Paradis.

Finally, the son of a noted artist who directed the 1939 film

La Regle Du Jeu, or The Rules Of The Game?

-Jean Cocteau?

-Could be, I don't know.

-Jean Cocteau?

-No, that was Jean Renoir.

Another picture round now. For your picture starter,

you'll see a painting showing a scene from the New Testament.

10 points if you can tell me the specific event being depicted.

-The Last Supper?

-No. UCL, one of you may buzz.

-Water into wine?

-I'll accept that, yes.

It's more commonly known as the Wedding At Cana,

but that's where it happened, yes.

So, following on from that painting by Boscoli, three more paintings

depicting the wedding at Cana, all by artists

of the Italian Renaissance.

I want the artist's name in each case. Firstly, for five.

I'm thinking Caravaggio.

-It's Giotto.

-Giotto.

-Correct. Secondly.

-That's Carravagio.

-No, it's...

-It could be Titian.

-Not very colourful.

-I thought Titian... Yeah.

-Go with Raphael then.

-Let's have an answer please.

-Raphael.

No, it's by Veronese. And finally...

-Is that Caravaggio?

-No. It's early Renaissance, I think.

-No, it's not...

-Bellini?

-Bellini is a person.

-Yes, it's a person. He's a bit late, though.

-I guess it could be.

-Bellini.

No, that's by Tintoretto. 10 points for this.

Recent holders of which cabinet office share surnames

with the authors of Treatise On The Law Privileges, Proceedings

And Usage Of Parliament, The History Of Rasselas,

Prince Of Abyssinia and Not Waving But Drowning?

-Home Secretary.

-Correct.

You retake the lead there.

On science and mountains, Pembroke College, which mountain in

central Italy gives its name to the large particle physics laboratory

within it, which holds an experiment searching for dark matter?

Etna?

No, that's a mount.

-Mount Fernie?

-No, it's Gran Sasso.

Which peak in the Harz mountains in Germany

gives its name to the phenomenon in which an elongated shadow of the observer,

often bearing a halo, is cast on a layer of cloud?

-Mountain. Um... Zugspitze.

-I nominate Pugh.

-Zugspitze.

No, it's the Brocken. On which mountain in California is the 100-inch

Hooker telescope used by Edwin Hubble to reveal the expansion

of the universe?

-I don't know about Hubble.

-I don't know.

-OK, pass.

It's Mount Wilson. 4.5 minutes, 10 points for this.

From the word mass and an old English word meaning loaf,

what name is sometimes given to...?

-Lammas Day.

-Correct.

Your bonuses this time are on the Arab world.

Also that of a city in Saudi Arabia, what name is given to the ancient quarter

in various North African cities and derives from the Arabic for town?

-Medina.

-Correct. From the Arabic for citadel,

what word is used for an area of the city of Algiers

and more generally for an old and often walled section of a city?

THEY WHISPER

-I nominate Bankes.

-Metua?

-No, it's Casbah.

What short Arabic term denotes an open air marketplace or bazaar,

for example, El-Hamidiyeh in Damascus?

-Souk.

-Souk is right. 10 points for this.

Deriving from the Latin,

what term is used for air or other gases that have been thinned

or have had their density reduced and is used figuratively

for anything considered particularly fine or exalted?

-Rarified.

-Correct.

These bonuses will put you on level pegging, they're on a French scientist.

The unit of optical frequency equal to 10 to the 12 hertz,

or one terahertz, is named after which French physicist?

-Becquerel?

-No, Becquerel is radiation. Dioptre is like a thing.

-Yeah, but that's like...

-Come on, let's have it.

-Dioptre.

-No, it's Fresnel, Jean Fresnel.

Also named after Fresnel, what method is used

in crystal optics to represent the doubly refracting properties

of a crystal?

-Fresnography? It was named after him.

-Fresnography.

No, it's a Fresnel ellipsoid.

Finally, a Fresnel lens used in lighthouses to concentrate

the light into a narrow beam

is characterised by a surface consisting of what?

Sort of concentric rings.

Sort of ridges making up concentric rings.

That's correct, yes. 10 points for this.

One of the most treacherous stretches of sea in the world,

attributed to Lord Nelson, these words describe which Strait

bridged by Thomas Telford in 1826 and Robert Stephenson in 1850?

-The Devon?

-No. Anyone want to buzz from UCL?

Gibraltar?

No, it's the Menai Strait. 10 points for this.

The harbour of Port-en-Bessin, in the Calvados department,

and the island of La Grande Jatte on the outskirts of Paris...

-Seurat.

-Seurat, correct, yes.

Your bonuses on surnames that begin with the letters ZA.

Name the person from the description. Firstly,

the Russian writer whose 1920 novel

We was an influence on George Orwell's 1984?

-I nominate Pugh.

-Zamyatin.

-Correct.

The Polish born philologist, who from 1870s devised

the constructed language Esperanto?

-Oh, God. Um...

-You don't know, do you?

No, but... No, I can't think of it.

-Pass.

-That's Zamenhof. Finally,

the US musician who noted that rock journalism is

people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk

-for people who can't read?

-Zappa.

-Correct. 10 points for this.

In astronomy, what term denotes a system of two stars

that revolve about their common centre of mass?

-Binary?

-Binary star is correct, yes.

Your bonuses this time are on children's charities.

Which organisation was founded by the Austrian Hermann Gmeiner

in 1949 and is the world's largest charity

for orphaned and abandoned children?

Barnardo's?

-Let's have it, please.

-Barnardo's?

-It's SOS Children's Villages.

The plight of starving children after World War I prompted

the sisters Eglantyne and Dorothy Jebb to found which charity in 1919?

-Come on.

-Save The Children?

-Correct.

Which Irish doctor founded the East End Mission for destitute children in Stepney in 1867?

-Barnardo.

-That was Barnardo. 10 points for this.

Familiar on UK high streets from the 1930s onward,

what word derived from the Greek meaning song

and originally meant a hole in which poets and musicians contended

for prizes in Ancient Greece and Rome?

-Odeon.

-Yes, you're right.

Your bonuses are on the analysis of colour.

What component of HSI colour space is defined as the angle from red?

-Pass.

-That's hue. What is the SI unit of luminous intensity?

-GONG

-And that's the gong.

University College London, with 125,

and Pembroke College Cambridge, with 185.

There's no embarrassment losing in the semifinal,

and you've been a most entertaining team.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Pembroke, we look forward to seeing you. Another storming performance.

We look forward to seeing you again in the final, which takes place on the next occasion.

-I hope you join us. Until then, it's goodbye from University College London.

-Bye.

-It's goodbye from Pembroke College Cambridge.

-Bye.

-And it's goodbye for me. Goodbye.

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