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A new chapter in the history of Anglo-Scottish rivalry has been written with the broadcast of this year’s University Challenge final. After 36 episodes featuring 28 institutions, only Edinburgh and Manchester were left standing (giving the northernmost average location of any final pair since Bamber Gascoigne hosted the show in the 1980s!). Given their equal average score across their previous matches, the final was set to be a tense and thrilling affair.
It began cagily, as both teams waited until Amol Rajan had read the entirety of the first question before guessing, incorrectly, the dedicatee of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (in fact it was the French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord). That dead question was a rare exception, though. Rajan had barely begun the next starter – on the largest time zone difference in a single land border – before Manchester captain Kai Madgwick buzzed in with the correct answer (China and Afghanistan). Edinburgh responded immediately; Rayhana Amjad named Indian theoretical physicist SN Bose as the author of a 1924 paper on light quanta, while the ever-dapper Johnny Richards identified a donkey as the animal star of 2022 film EO. An entertaining picture round – on flags criticised by the Good Flag, Bad Flag guide – yielded a starter but no bonuses for the Mancunians, who trailed by 30 points to 45.
A mistake from Edinburgh’s Parthav Easwar on the Nestorian church let Madgwick in again and, with two out of the three bonuses, Manchester regained the lead. They expanded their margin with the next two questions, though their momentum was halted when neither team identified the finale to Wagner’s Die Walküre. (Their failure to answer this straightforward music question surely owed to their expecting a trickier answer in the final.) Both teams also played up to University Challenge stereotype by failing to correctly answer a question on the 2017 video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (an ignorance I shared, but that probably had teenagers all over the UK screaming at their televisions).
Knowing speed was of the essence, Easwar was soon urging his captain, Alice Leonard, to answer bonuses as quickly as possible to give Edinburgh time for a comeback. For a period, that looked as likely as not. Kirsty Dickson’s answer of “Argyll and Bute” instead of just “Bute” was, harshly yet inevitably, penalised by Rajan; Amjad correctly answered that question and the next to bring Edinburgh within 20 points. Another agonising near-miss by Dickson – giving “stereoisomerism” instead of the more precise “enantiomerism” in a chemistry question – meant Edinburgh were just 15 points behind at the three-quarter mark, 95 points to 110.
That was as close as Edinburgh would get to their rivals. Lacking chemical expertise, they failed to capitalise on Dickson’s incorrect interruption. Madgwick then correctly interrupted the subsequent two questions to give Manchester a substantial margin over their rivals. At the gong, the final score was 145 points to 105.
Manchester’s victory was well deserved: they answered two starters more and had the superior bonus conversion rate, too. Miriam Margolyes, who presented the trophy in thoroughly charming fashion, rightly singled out Madgwick for praise; the Manchester captain provided all nine of the team’s correct answers to starters in the final. The victory marks a welcome return to form for Manchester, who have now equalled Imperial’s record of five University Challenge titles.
“We do have winners,” Rajan remarked at the end. He said it almost with regret. Beyond the competition that is at the heart of University Challenge, it is also a great deal of fun, for those who watch and, perhaps even more, for those who take part. Whether it was the glint in Margolyes’ eye as she recollected her own experience on the show more than six decades ago, or Madgwick’s beaming smile when accepting the trophy, what shone through most was the great joy given by this perennial celebration of human knowledge. Bring on the next series!
