Showbiz

11 of the best University Challenge moments ever

1. This week, Ted Loveday was hailed as the "best ever contestant" after taking less than three seconds to answer a question with the answer "Hapax legomenon".

2. Another contestant famously quick on the trigger was Hugh Binnie from Magdalen, Oxford, who used modular arithmetic to work out which day it would be 100 days after Monday.

3. Many people's favourite contestant ever was Alexander Guttenpan, who calmly stood up to Jeremy Paxman after he told him his answer about WH Auden was a "good guess". Alexander coolly shot back by saying "it wasn't a guess".

4. Then there was that contestant who thought the character Inspector Clouseau was created by Charlotte Brontë.

5. Another thought "cheese-mongers, cherry-pickers, the Emperor's chamber-maids and the immortals" were all nicknames for gay people (the correct answer is regiments in the British army).

6. Stephen Fry very nearly fluffed it when he appeared in 1980.

7. The BBC once received 44 complaints about Paxman's "acerbic" comments, which led one contestant to repeatedly apologise for getting a question wrong.

8. Of course, Jeremy Paxman has freely admitted he failed to get on to University Challenge when he was a student at Cambridge.

9. Romeo and Juliet had to be the right answer to at least one question about Shakespeare's plays.

10. The questions were too easy for Ralph Morley, who answered well before Paxman had even finished his question.

11. And finally, let's all remember when Magdalen, Oxford and Downing, Cambridge struggled to recognise the work of Grandmaster Flash.

Did we miss anything? Less us know in the comments.

More: [The 10 most complained about library books]3

More: [Just George RR Martin doing what he does best, infuriating Game of Thrones readers by hinting at a massive plot twist]4

The Conversation (0)
x