Semi-Final 2 University Challenge

Christmas University Challenge.

Asking the questions, Jeremy Paxman.

TRAIN TOOTS, APPLAUSE

Hello. Last time we saw the team from Sheffield University take

the first place in the final match of this seasonal series.

Whichever team wins tonight will join them.

Now, the lot from University College London beat Birmingham University

in the first match of this series by a comfortable margin of 155 to 80.

Back again tonight is scientist working in DNA sequencing who

is also former vice chair of UCL's Council.

In 2011, she received an OBE for services to the public

understanding of science.

With her are geneticist, journalist and prolific television

and radio broadcaster.

Their captain is a novelist whose also known for her nonfiction

writing on those peculiarly British obsessions - football,

rudeness and punctuation.

And their fourth the member has taught at UCL as well as having

graduated from there.

He is an architecture critic and presenter

familiar from The Culture Show and The Secret Life Of Buildings.

Let's meet the UCL team again.

Hello, my name is Vivian Parry.

I graduated in zoology sometime last century.

Hello, my name is Adam Rutherford and I graduated in genetics

and my PhD was also in genetics at UCL,

and that happened sometime this century.

And their captain.

Hello, I am Lynn Truss and I graduated in English in 1977.

Hello, I am Tom Dyckhoff.

I did an MA in architectural history in the mid-1990s.

APPLAUSE

Now, other than the list of suspects in an Agatha Christie whodunnit,

it's hard to imagine a group of people more disparate than

the graduates from Magdalen College Oxford,

who include a gardening correspondent, a classicist

and emeritus professor of New College Oxford

and a movie star, and that is all just one person.

With him, a neuroscientist, television presenter,

performer and academic.

Their captain has been behind bars,

rubbed shoulders with the ultra-right and dipped his toe in the world

of adult entertainment, all in the name of documentary film-making.

And their fourth member is a science writer, journalist

and conservative member of the House of Lords.

Let's meet the Magdalen team again.

I'm Robin Lane Fox.

I read classics, ancient history and philosophy

and graduated with a double first in 1969.

I'm Heather Berlin.

I graduated with a DPhil in experimental psychology in 2003.

And this is their captain.

I'm Louis Theroux. I graduated in modern history in 1991.

And I'm Matt Ridley and I graduated in 1983 with a DPhil in zoology.

APPLAUSE

OK. Let's not waste any time on the rules. Fingers on the buzzers.

Here's your first starter for ten.

Which British monarch's reign

saw the publication of Fielding's Tom Jones,

the establishment of the British Museum

and the Battle of Culloden?

George III.

Anyone like to buzz from Magdalen? One of you can buzz.

-George II.

-George II is correct, yes.

APPLAUSE

So, you get a set of bonuses, Magdalen College,

on novels that begin around new year.

In each case, I need the title and the author.

Firstly.

The first in the trilogy,

which 1996 novel is heavily influenced by Jane Austen's

Pride And Prejudice and sees its protagonist

making New Year resolutions, one obsessing about her love life?

Bridget Jones's Diary.

-By?

-By...

-Helen Fielding.

-Correct, yes.

Secondly, for five points.

Published in 2000, which novel begins on New Year's

morning in 1975 and centres around two North London families?

-White Teeth, Zadie Smith.

-Correct.

And finally, published in 2005,

which novel opens on New Year's Eve with four characters on top

of a London tower block planning to throw themselves to their deaths?

-A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE Well done.

Right, ten points for this.

To which composer's operas was Mark Twain referring with the words

"One act is quite sufficient. After two acts,

"I've gone away physically exhausted"?

He also quotes the humorous Bill Nye's remark that the

composer's music is "better than it sounds."

Mozart.

No. Anyone like to buzz from UCL?

-Puccini.

-No, it's Wagner. Ten points for this.

"He took pleasure in his writing using baroque language

"and long sentences, rich and sexual

"and scatological terminology to attack those contemporary

"practitioners of art whom he saw as derivative."

These words refer to which broadcaster

and critic who died in September 2015?

-Brian Sewell.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE

UCL, your bonuses are on

Hiberno-Saxon illuminated manuscripts.

Firstly, for five points.

The Chi Rho page introducing Matthew's account of the Nativity

is a much reproduced image from which illuminated work

produced around the year 800

and now on display in the library of Trinity College Dublin?

-Book of Kells.

-Correct.

Which cathedral in the Welsh Marches is noted for a chained library,

the collection of which includes an 8th century illuminated

gospel in the Hiberno-Saxon or Insular style

suggested to be of Welsh origin?

THEY WHISPER

-St Asaph.

-No, it's Hereford.

-OK, thank you.

Which tidal island off the northeast coast of Britain gives its name

to an illuminated gospel also in the Insular style

produced around 700 and now in the British Museum?

-Lindisfarne.

-Lindisfarne is correct. Ten points for this.

Dichtung und Wahrheit, or Poetry and Truth,

is an autobiographical work by which writer?

It describes...

-Goethe.

-Goethe is correct, yes.

APPLAUSE

These questions are on snowflakes, for your bonuses.

In his work Micrographia, Robert Hooke observed that

snowflakes have what order of rotational symmetry?

-I think six.

-Six?

-Six.

-Six is correct.

Born in south Germany in 1571,

which scientist wrote De Nive Sexangula,

or On The Six-Cornered Snowflake, in which he states,

"I do not believe that even in a snowflake

"this ordered pattern exists at random"?

-South Germany, 1571.

-Kepler?

-Kepler.

-Kepler is correct.

The fractal curve known as the snowflake is constructed

by the repeated subdivision of the sides of an equilateral triangle

and bears the name of which Swedish mathematician?

Mandelbrot?

-Is he Swedish?

-You think Mandelbrot?

-Mandelbrot.

-No, he wasn't Swedish. He was Polish-born.

It's Koch. Ten points for this.

It's a picture starter.

You're going to see a map of the world with two countries marked.

The two-letter ISO codes of those countries can be combined to

form a four-letter word.

For instance, the code for Somalia, SO,

combines with the code for Nigeria, NG, to give the word song.

Got it?

So, for ten points, give me the four-letter word that can be

made by combining the codes of the two countries shown here.

Suet.

No.

Anyone like to buzz from UCL?

-Is it lite?

-No, it's not. It's tree.

It's Turkey and Estonia - TR and EE.

So, picture bonuses in a moment or two.

Ten points for this starter question. Fingers on the buzzers.

The US computer pioneer Ted Nelson is usually credited with

the coining of what nine-letter term to describe electronic texts

embedded within links to other texts?

-Hypertext.

-Correct, yes.

APPLAUSE

So, you get the picture bonuses.

Three more maps, and again, on each, the two-letter ISO codes

of the countries or territories marked

can be combined to form a word.

Five points for each word you can work out.

All are somewhat seasonally themed. Firstly for five.

THEY MURMUR

Card? Could it be RD?

Card.

No, it's carols. It's Canada, Romania and Lesotho down at the bottom.

-Oh, we didn't see the third one!

-Secondly.

There's another one there as well. Don't miss that one.

Germany, India...

Oh, my goodness, there are four.

-What's that one down the side of Africa?

-Is that Eritrea?

This is a preposterous one.

LAUGHTER

-Is that Mauritius?

-I don't know.

It's Christmas themed as well.

We know Germany and India.

Is that D? Is that DE or something? What is Germany?

I think we better have it. We'll be here all night otherwise.

-Oh, pudding. We're going to say pudding.

-Pudding?

-Yeah, I don't know.

-How do you get pudding?

-We don't!

The little one off the coast of Madagascar there is Reunion.

-Of course(!)

-So there's that, India, Germany and Eritrea.

So it gives you reindeer.

And finally.

That was really hard. I wish we'd had Switzerland.

-Is that CH?

-Yeah.

And that's Greece.

Wait a minute, Switzerland, is that CH?

-Grin...

-Grinch.

Oh, Grinch.

Grinch is correct, yes. Right, ten points for this starter question.

"The British do not expect happiness.

"I had the impression all the time that I lived there

"that they do not want to be happy, they want to be right."

These are the words of which British author,

actor and raconteur born Charles Dennis Pratt on Christmas Day, 1908?

Around his 80th birthday, he began the subject of Sting's song,

Englishman In New York.

-Quentin Crisp.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE

Right, your bonuses are on last words, UCL.

Born in 1860 and dying of tuberculosis in 1904,

which Russian playwright and author's last words are reputed to have been,

"It's a long time since I drank champagne."

-That's Chekhov.

-Correct.

Born in 1899,

which US author was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954?

He died in 1961, his last words being, "Goodnight, my kitten."

-Steinbeck?

-Could be.

-Was this American? Oh. We'll try Steinbeck.

No, it was Ernest Hemingway.

It wasn't a real cat, of course, it was his wife whom he called kitten.

"Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough."

These last words are attributed to which writer

and political philosopher who died in London in 1883 at the age of 64?

Any political philosophers in your head?

That was...

Marx, that's a good one.

-Yes. Karl Marx.

-Correct. Ten points for this.

Originally served as a celebration of harvest

and now associated with Burns Night, which traditional Scottish...

-Haggis.

-No. You lose five points, by the way.

..which traditional Scottish pudding is made from toasted oats, fruit,

whisky, honey and cream?

No idea?

It's cranachan. Ten points for this.

From the Latin for footprint, what adjective is applied

to body structures such as the nictitating...

-Vestigial.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE

You've retaken the lead.

Your bonuses are on French-born sculptors, Magdalen.

What name is given to the large colourful

and curvaceous sculptures of the female form

made in papier-mache by the artist Niki de Saint Phalle,

born in 1930?

THEY WHISPER

-Maquet.

-No, they're Nanas.

Born in Paris in 1911, which artist lived for most of her life

in the USA and is noted for her large sculptures of spiders?

One of which crated in 1999...

-Louise Bourgeois.

-Correct.

And finally, born in Picardy in 1864,

the sculptor Camille Claudel was also

the muse, pupil, model, colleague and lover of which French artist?

-Rodin.

-Rodin is correct.

We're to take a music round now.

Your music starter, you'll hear a piece of classical music.

Ten points if you can identify the composer.

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

-Is it Berlioz?

-No.

-Tchaikovsky.

-It is Tchaikovsky, yes.

APPLAUSE

That was the battle between the toy soldiers and the Mouse King

in the Nutcracker. So, you get music bonuses.

Three more classical pieces written to evoke children's toys.

In each case, just identify the composer of the piece that

you are about to hear.

Firstly, for five points, this English composer.

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

-Erm, Britten?

-No, that's Elgar.

That was The Merry Doll from his Nursery Suite.

Secondly, this German composer.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

-Schumann.

-Schumann is correct.

That was The Knight Of The Hobbyhorse

or Ride A Cockhorse from his Scenes From Childhood.

And finally, this French composer.

-ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

-Oh, my God. That's Alfred Hitchcock.

That's from Alfred Hitchcock.

THEY CONFER

-Bizet.

-No, that was Gounod's Funeral March Of A Marionette.

Right, ten points for this.

What is the two-word common name of infectious mononucleosis,

often caused by...

-Glandular fever.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE

You get a set of bonuses, UCL, on the actor Sir Christopher Lee,

who died in June at 2015.

In an interview in 2004, Sir Christopher Lee stated

that his most important role was in the 1998 film Jinnah

about the founder of which country?

-I think it's Pakistan.

-Pakistan, is it?

-Pakistan.

-Correct.

In which film of 1973 did Lee play the pagan Lord Summerisle?

-The Wicker Man.

-Correct.

In the 21st century,

which character did Lee play in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy?

-Sauron?

-It's Saruman.

-Saruman?

Is it? Or is it Sauron. Isn't it Sauron?

-No, Sauron is the eye, isn't it?

-That's the place.

-Oh, God.

-Saruman.

-Saruman.

Saruman.

Saruman the White is correct.

Ten points for this. Identify the US poet who wrote these lines.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep..."

-Robert Frost.

-Indeed.

APPLAUSE

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

So, you get a set of bonuses, Magdalen, on words.

A pleasant smell accompanying the first rain after

a period of warm, dry weather is a definition of which word

introduced in the 1964 article in Nature?

It combines Greek elements meaning stone or a rock

and fluid in the veins of the gods.

Petros... Petra...

If there's some such thing.

THEY CONFER

Is it an adjective?

LAUGHTER

I haven't the faintest idea.

Bad luck because you've got the etymology absolutely correct.

-But...

-Lithichor. Lithichorus sounds better.

-No, it's petrichor.

-Oh!

I think it's a noun, actually.

And secondly, devised by the US graphic designer John Koenig,

the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows coined what word to mean,

"the strange wistfulness of used bookstores."

Formed by analogy with petrichor,

it begins with an element meaning a fine form of parchment.

THEY CONFER

INAUDIBLE WHISPERING

I don't know. I don't know.

Vellamitis.

No, it is vellichor, nearly there.

And finally, Koenig defines what neologism as

"wariness with the same old issues that you always had."

It's a combination of German elements meaning old and pain.

Altweh. A-L-T-W-E-H.

-Nominate Lane Fox.

-Well, it would be altweh,

A-L-T-W-E-H.

-You are right at the start, but it's altschmerz.

-Ahh.

Ten points for this.

"A work of private devotion that takes us to the heart of Richard II's

"intense, obsessive, solipsistic view of kingship."

These words of David Starkey referred to which

work of art in the collection...?

-The Wilton Diptych.

-Yes.

APPLAUSE

You get a set of bonuses, Magdalen College,

on people associated with Stockport.

Firstly, for five points.

Baptized in Stockport in 1602,

John Bradshaw was appointed

Lord President of the High Court of Justice,

set out to try which person in January 1649?

-Charles I.

-Correct.

Secondly, which radical figure was elected MP for Stockport in 1841?

Along with John Bright,

he was a leading campaigner for the repeal of the Corn Laws.

-Cobden.

-Cobden is right.

Born at High Lane near Stockport in 1904, which author's works include

Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye To Berlin?

Christopher Isherwood.

-Christopher Isherwood.

-Correct.

We're going to take a second picture round.

For your picture starter, you're going to see a painting.

Ten points if you can identify the artist, please.

-Bruegel.

-It is. Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

APPLAUSE

Hunters In The Snow.

Your picture bonuses are three more paintings on the same theme.

In each case, for five points, simply name the artist.

Firstly, this British artist.

-Landseer.

-Landseer.

Correct. Secondly, this French artist.

-I don't recognise...

-Do you know?

-Courbet.

-Courbet is correct, yes. The Death Of The Deer.

And finally, this artist.

THEY CONFER

-Hokusai.

-Hokusai is correct. Hunters By A Fire In The Snow.

Right. Ten points for this.

Misleadingly suggesting a restricted diet,

what is the two-word common name of the sea bird Larus argentatus?

-Herring gull.

-Correct.

APPLAUSE

These bonuses are on science in the year 1736, Magdalen.

In 1736, the French Academy of Sciences

organised an expedition to Lapland

to measure the length of a degree along the meridian.

This verified which scientist's contention that the Earth is

a sphere flattened at the poles?

HE WHISPERS

Basically it's Newton's. I think it's verifying Newton.

It's not the French scientist.

It's Maupertuis who does it but I think he's verifying Newton.

-You want the name of the scientist?

-The name of the scientist, yes.

-Newton.

-Correct.

In 1736, the Royal Society instituted an annual medal that has

since become regarded as its highest distinction.

By what name is it known after the benefactor whose bequest

originally funded it?

I think it's Copley.

-Copley.

-Copley is correct.

In his Fundamenta Botanica of 1736, which Swedish naturalist set out

principles for the naming and classification of plants?

-Linnaeus.

-Correct. Four minutes to go, ten points for this.

In their usual English spelling, what initial letter links

the Greek historian who wrote Anabasis and Cyropaedia...

Xenophon. X-E-N-O-P-H-O-N.

No, I'm afraid you lose five points.

..the wife of Socrates

and the Persian king whose navy was defeated at Salamis in 480 BC.

-X.

-X is correct, yes.

APPLAUSE

I'm sorry, Mr Lane Fox.

You did make the correct identification,

but you were just asked for the initial letter.

Right, you get a set of bonuses on the Mediterranean, UCL.

The longest river in Italy, the Po,

forms the border between the regions of Veneto and Emilia-Romagna

and empties into which Mediterranean Sea?

Adriatic? Adriatic?

-Adriatic.

-Correct.

Named after a Latin term for the Etruscan people, which sea occupies

that part of the Mediterranean between Sardinia and mainland Italy?

Ooh, what's another name for the Etruscan?

-Tyrean?

-Tyrrhenian.

-Oh, sorry. Tyrrhenian.

OK, I'll be kind to you. I think that's what you were being told.

It's the Tyrrhenian Sea.

And finally, which sea of the Eastern Mediterranean is named after

the mythical king of Athens, said to have thrown

himself into the water in the belief that his son Theseus had been killed?

-This is Aegean. Aegean.

-Aegean is right's, after Aegeus.

Ten points for this.

"If a man read little,

"he need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not."

These are the words of which English philosopher in the book

of Essays first published in 1597?

-Bacon.

-Francis Bacon is right, yes.

APPLAUSE

Right. You get a set of bonuses on

the author Elizabeth Longford, Magdalen.

Elizabeth Longford is particularly noted for biographies

of the Duke of Wellington and which British monarch?

Published in 1964, its title was the monarch's name

followed by letters RI.

-Victoria.

-Correct. Regina Imperatrix, of course.

Biographies of Oliver Cromwell and Mary, Queen of Scots

are among works by which of Lady Longford's children?

In 1980, she married the playwright Harold Pinter.

-Antonia Fraser.

-Correct.

Elizabeth's son, Thomas Pakenham, is the author

of an award-winning history on which conflict which began in October 1899?

The Boer War.

The Second Boer War is right, or the South African War.

Ten points for this.

Name any two of the three battles that are described in detail

in John Keegan's 1976 book The Face Of Battle.

Fought within 100 miles of each other in continental Europe,

their respective 600th, 200th and 100th anniversaries

fall in 2015 or 2016.

-Waterloo.

-I want one more.

-Oh, sorry. Oh.

-SHE LAUGHS

Sorry, I have to listen to the question.

No, I don't know another one.

-Waterloo and Agincourt.

-The other was the Somme, of course.

You get a set of bonuses this time, Magdalen College, on composers.

In each case, the 150th anniversary of their birth occurred in 2015.

Born in June 1865,

which Nordic composer wrote the autobiography

My Childhood on Funen?

His works include the so-called Inextinguishable Symphony

and the 1922 Wind Quintet.

-Sibelius.

-Sibelius?

Probably Sibelius.

I don't know.

-Sibelius.

-No, it's Nielsen.

The ballets Raymonda and The Seasons are works by which composer

born in St Petersburg the same year?

He was a prominent member of the group known as the Belyayev Circle,

alongside his teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Prokofiev?

Yeah, I think.

-Prokofiev.

-No, it's Alexander Glazunov.

And finally, with work strongly influenced by his country's

national folk poem, the Kalevala,

which composer was born in the town of...

GONG

That is the gong.

University College London, you have 100.

Magdalen College Oxford have 195.

APPLAUSE

Well, it's been a pleasure having you with us, UCL,

but we have to say goodbye to you.

Many congratulations to Magdalen. Another very impressive performance

and we should look forward to seeing you in the final.

Well done. Thank you.

I hope you can join us next time for the final,

but until then, it's goodbye from University College London.

-ALL:

-Goodbye.

-It's goodbye from Magdalen College Oxford. ALL:

-Goodbye.

And it's goodbye for me. Goodbye.

APPLAUSE