University Challenge Final. St John's - Cambridge v Merton - Oxford. S47 E37. 2017/18. 23 Apr 2018. Jeremy Paxman. It's the grand final of the quiz, the winning team will be presented with the University Challenge trophy.
She did have troubles at the beginning: studies German but does not know the difference between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and Engels in 1905...but yeah, she was very good!
One of the things that cost Merton the victory is that, like most teams, they relied too much on Wiberg. Wiberg may have been their MVP and most teams have one; but sometimes the MVP becomes an OVP.
Well my favourites won, relying largely on McKeown. The look of joy on her face lit up the studio at the end! A bit tempered for me though by the distress on the face of Woodland (who I thought was going to burst into tears) and Peplow. They were worthy finalists and very unlucky I thought. Also noticed Hazell has the manners - he started clapping for Merton (richly deserved) and got Devine-Stoneman to hand Rosie the trophy.
Agreed, I get the feeling of a top lad! They all are although one or two do strike me as being candidates for a Private Eye 'modesty blaze', a bit expected for such universities though...
Once the McKeown machine slipped into a reasonable gear, the end was nigh for Merton. A great series this year with the 2 best teams in the final, full credit to both but the correct Champions in the end.
Thank you for the upload! Sigh, now Monday nights will be dull again until Fall. Wonderful final, I enjoyed both teams so much all year. I was stupidly happy to get one and almost two, Cassatt and Weber, needed an extra minute or five for the second one...
Woodland was terrific too. And Paxman (taken for granted though he may be ;) It was lovely to see the music field represented at the very end as well. Thanks for sharing.
Just opened a cnn notification on my phone about researchers at oxford finding some correlation between handed ness and verbal skill. The first name mentioned in the article was Akira Wiberg! Happy to see UC alumni doing big things!
Gabriel Constantinides Seriously?!?!? By knocking out ALL the all-male teams before the semis, BBC2 was sending a message. McKeown happened to be the Twitter fave of the remaining 4 women and so she was chosen to be the heroine of the series, though the question-setters were a bit overzealous and made the other 5 (sorry Thomas & Hazell) amazing contestants look dumb. Disappointing finale as slowed down to just 15 Qs so Merton didn't have a fair chance to catch up. Not Merton v. St. John's but Quiz v. Ratings, guess who won? Totally fcuked up! Now I head off to shoot myself ... or Paxman, will decide on the way ...
Uncle Roger Likewise. At least mine is a REACTION to bullies who give me sh*t for having a different opinion always backed up by facts. You on the other hand always jump in with trollish personal abuse and ignore the argument, methinks u go online to vent personal issues on women online, coz this isnt the first time u have trolled me out of the blue. Im guessing other women on other boards too? Just another geezer watching the young females on UC Lol
Sandroid I do wonder if they should make the final 1 hour long for a larger sample of questions!! I have no idea whether or not BBC would have rigged the final a bit, but I would not think so because it would be plain unfair and they did not do anything like that for Monkman last year who was very very popular. Please note I am not saying you are wrong by any measure, I just reckon it is unlikely but that is my opinion.
19:44 the only question that I could answer correctly since 3 days watching this series. In the Chinese Classic Novel Hong Lou Meng, Hong means Red. I'm from Vietnam and our culture is very close to that of Chinese.
As a Swede cheering for Wiberg, I was quite disappointed at first. Nonetheless, both teams were amazing and it could have ended either way. Behind in score, Merton hade to take risks by buzzing early, something that did not always turn out great. Feeling a bit hollow: what are you supposed now? Mondays just went back to being the worst day of the week.
both my favourite teams however, upon seeing Merton fall flat I sided with them throughout the episode only to feel crestfallen at the end. Nonetheless, they are a brilliant team and could've won perhaps with a different mix of questions. Also, the total sum of Merton's score beats that of St. John's which just comes to show how both teams are of equal strength. Maybe pressure took a toll on their performance? what with the look of pessimism on their faces... that said though, many congrats to St John's! Truly an excellent and awe inspiring set of team members.
Rosie McKeown joins Gail Trimble and Alex Guttenplan as a legend of University Challenge. I wonder when she will appear on Only Connect, as they both have?
Hello, White Knight. You think the best 3 people ever on University Challenge are Gail Trimble, Rosie McKeown and Alex Gutenplan?? Well good luck to you. I was born in the 20th century, so I don't kow-tow to feminism and political correctness. YOU seem to be somewhat different.
My faves won! St. John's, Cambridge team---all four members were nothing short of amazing from start to finish. And finally, Levin gives a shout out to Ojai. I have to say though---and I don't mean this in a negative way just an observation---they look to me like they're inspired by late 70's to early 80's fashion. Retro cool!
Sandroid: *imagine a speech bubble here* Are you blind?! The quiz was obviously rigged in her favour! So rigged in fact, that she became the next Stone!"
I think it is interesting that McKeown got all the questions except the one on linguistics considering that she is studying two foreign languages. Congrats to the winning team. Wiberg was good as well, Peplow was a bit impatient and not on his best day.
I noticed McKeown went straight in with that afterwards. I'm sure I read on one of these review blogs that the match was actually stopped whilst the producers decided what to do. You can almost see the edit in the episode..
That's interesting. I suppose they had to rule that they could only accept what had been given as the first answer, especially in the case of an interruption. Now had Peplow just run it all together as "St Anselm's ontological argument" that could have made all the difference. Competitors might be wise to give as full an answer as possible when interrupting.
Starting with Lord Reith when JP mentioned " Sponsored Advertising" and including among others the " Carousel" answer all before the finalists I think this Boy from The Elephant and Castle did rather well :)
Always reassuring when you get a few yourself, and beat them to it. I was shouting "Carousel" like they could hear me! (suppose it helped that I had been in an am-dram production of same! )
Rosie is amazing. Lovely to look at and incredibly intelligent. I see there is mention of bullies/trolls. The curious thing about bullies is that I have never known any bully to be any good at anything !! It is true, seriously,all the ones I have known have been totally hopeless at everything they do and are complete losers , presume that is why they are bullies, to mask their inadequacy. Really people should not mention them as they are irrelevant
ahhh on that Hong Lou Meng question they were so close but missed it on a technicality - they were completely right that "Hong" in Hong Kong means "fragrant" but Hong Kong is spelled in Cantonese (the Mandarin spelling of Hong Kong is Xiang Gang), whereas Hong Lou Meng is spelled in Mandarin (the Cantonese spelling is completely different)
Good end of the season, but not as good as the last one imo. Not the best performance by either team but I felt like the questions were really, really difficult. Great start by Merton, but then they seemed to be nervous as they got penalised a few times. Wiberg looked deflated. Good work St John's, especially McKeown. Can't see a major slant/favouritism with questions. Had more questions been physics/science orientated (say, to the advantage of Woodland, who's reading physics), who's to say Devine-Stoneman wouldn't have been in a good position to answer those too? Does anyone else keep a track of how they do? I marked correct answers for 34 of this year's episode, got 469 right, 13.79 on average per episode, max was 20, worst was 4 (the final). :D
McKeown is in her second year so basically, we almost have the same age but I am not nearly as bright as her. And the other members of the teams in general.
I wasn't there, but I got that one because my dad had "Manwatching," and for some reason, I found it extremely interesting when I was a child in the 80's, so I became very familiar with Desmond Morris.
1. A team of four solid players defeated a team of three solid players. 2. Merton's somewhat irritating habit was taking too much time in discussion. 3. I enjoyed the cool stoicism of this year's teams compared to the some of last season's players.
When will they do an international Uni challenge?! Imagine Harvard, Yale, BC, La Sorbonne, Heidelberg, ANU, etc. Or they could do a US version and then create national teams of the best 4 contestants in the US and UK. Trimble, Loveday, Guttenplan, Fry is my UK team.
McKeown was great but as a Germanist she should have got the Gemeinschaft question. There was a very similar question during the 2015/16 series. Gemeinschaft v. Gesellschaft. The 'mein' bit always suggests 'community'. I'm being a Besserwisserin
Since Merton started 55-0 up, and then were passed by while losing 15 points, it's no wonder they looked pig sick at the end. To be given such a hint that they were going to win, and then have it remorselessly taken away from you - it's not just like being beaten, it's much more crushing. "What might have been!"
He was not fined 5 points as it was a music round. If you incorrectly answer a question early you may interfere with your opponent's focus so a 5 point loss makes a lot of sense, and this is sort of also the case with music rounds but to less of an extent I suppose.
Jennelyn Natividad if it’s a starter question you get a 5 point penalty for interrupting the question if it’s a picture or music starter you don’t get a 5 point penalty for the music starter Jeremy gives the other team the remainder of the music starter to listen and guess
Thanks for the clarification Sam P. New American viewer here.Your bit of info will come in handy for sure when viewing the following seasons. Again, your feedback is much appreciated.
Still think Merton are the better team, and one of the best ever. Not convinced Thomas was anywhere near as strong as his three teammates. Questions just fell for St John's imo.
Paxman accepted an incorrect answer from St Johns in the Opera questions( at approx 29 min 30 secs): I'm not sure what McKeown murmured, but Devine-Stoneman clearly gave 'Circe' as the answer when it was in fact 'Xerxes' - they are two completely different characters, and the two names are not pronounced the same. Handel's opera was Xerxes. It wouldn't have made a difference to the final score here, but that sort of slip up could cost a team the winning position. I wonder if Judith Weir noticed! (Mrs L)
My name is Wiberg, and I don’t know where the f@#& I’m from, so I’ll say I’m from Sweden and Japan. My name is Woodland and I always have that worried as f%-+ look on my face. Oh and was that Michael Palins son sat at the end?
Questions tailored as usual for McKeown, sadly, not so much this time for Woodland as it was during the semi and earlier rounds, maybe if Woody had smiled a bit more? Lol Merton may have won if Paxman had been fair and kept up the pace so at least 18 questions, like last season's final, had been answered instead of just 15 this time. Wise Wiberg still the Series MVP in my book.
Oh dear Sandroid. If, for example, both teams fail to answer a starter, as with the music question, then the order of all remaining questions changes. Given this, the team which will be asked a specific question is indeterminate, so how could the questions be tailored for McKeown?
Good lord Sandroid why don't you give your conspiracy theories a rest. First Stone and now Woodland and McKeown. They just happen to know the answer that's all. You do realise that your logic can be applied to every other contestant regardless of their gender?
Victoria Cheung? Good lord (who says that anymore?) u do realize that u r telling me that I shouldn't have an opinion that is different from yours? Argue with the facts, not me, like the astounding 70 art points up for grabs when Courtauld was on, and other 'coincidences' detailed on the episode forum, cant be bothered to repeat them if u cant be bothered to read them. Sometimes I do wish I was such a dumbo like u and the many on here that jump up and down and clap happily believing everything they see on TV Lol
Victoria Cheung Oh, and when was the last time there was a female on each semifinal team? 'They just happen to know the answer, that's all' ?!?! How dumb are u? Ok don't answer that, it's pretty clear :P Btw, google' all male final university challenge' and educate yourself about the stick the BBCs been getting, then read my comment above again. Or don't.
