University Challenge

Yeah, they're pretty keen on mentioning the average age for each new team. There are no solid rules against entering a team of mature students, but the producers are highly unlikely to pick such a team. I guess they got sick of the letters from irate viewers.

Out of interest, is it unlikely for a first year student to make a UC team?

I always imagined that it would be.

One of the Birmingham team is a first year

I suppose you just have to be pretty knowledgeable for your age? Presumably gappies have more of a chance? It would be great to try and get on it, i think i am going to have a go!

The thing with UC is that "general knowledge" in the traditional pub quiz/Who Wants to be a Millionaire sense isn't really that useful!

I suppose you just have to be pretty knowledgeable for your age? Presumably gappies have more of a chance? It would be great to try and get on it, i think i am going to have a go!

I suppose you just have to be pretty knowledgeable for your age? Presumably gappies have more of a chance? It would be great to try and get on it, i think i am going to have a go!

Are you serious?

Let's examine the typical questions: being able to identify pieces of popular and classical music, and their composers and performers; being able to identify countries, their locations, their size, demographics and their flags; knowing about historical figures and events; knowing about science and maths; knowing about works of fiction and their authors; knowing about famous artists and theri works.

That sounds very much like general knowledge to me. The emphasis is on slightly more obscure concrete facts rather than the more popular trivia, but it certainly isn't anything more.

I think people like the BBC's Eggheads team would flounder on UC simply because the emphasis on UC, in my opinion at least, seems to be on a level of comprehensive understanding rather than memorising lists of trivia facts.

Unless they ask questions on lash, drugs or obscure sexual positions I don't think a gap year is going to help that much...

I don't know about the gap-year thing, I was really not very good at the try-outs! And he's a physics student so I doubt he took a gap year anyway (AFAIK not many physics students take gap years).

But definitely have a go, when they went through the answers this year I had made some silly mistakes that cost me a few marks so hopefully I can improve on that.

I doubt that. The Eggheads would beat most UC teams hands down. Few UC questions call on a need for understanding, and almost all are susceptible to an informed guess. I normally achieve an individual score of around half the combined scores of both teams when watching UC, but I would typically lose to the Eggheads.

Well, take your "know about science and maths" example.

Would you consider the kinds of maths or science problems pitched on UC, which almost always include complex formulas, to require a "trivia level" of understanding of mathematics?

I doubt that. The Eggheads would beat most UC teams hands down. Few UC questions call on a need for understanding, and almost all are susceptible to an informed guess. I normally achieve an individual score of around half the combined scores of both teams when watching UC, but I would typically lose to the Eggheads.

What did you get wrong? A profound knowledge of flags appears to be utterly essential, along with the ability to instantly recognise buildings and paintings of the world from rather second-rate photographs.

I answered that in post 611, but those questions are atypical, and maths questions certainly don't "almost aways include" such formulae.