University Challenge

Jalapeno

Either my natural hoover for trivia or general knowledge has got better with age, or the overall difficulty of UC questions is declining .....

EricTheWeary

hassleham said:

EricTheWeary said:

octatonic said:

How do you do with Only Connect?

I haven’t watched last night’s yet. I like it when I get something low brow ( like Pokemon names) which are a complete puzzle to the people on the show. If I’m in the groove I can do really well ( from my sofa) at missing vowels. On the other hand I don’t think I’ve almost ever guessed anything right in round 2. 

Only connect is great but I’m not very good at it. Have you tried the game on the bbc website? There are loads of extra questions there.

Last time I looked you needed Flash which, IIRC, won't work on my iPad. Although failure to be able to work the website might be a strong indicator of how well I am likely to do at the actual questions. 

boogieman

I didn’t get the Springsteen one either. It’s rather a sad endictment of Cambridge students though that one of them knew a Berlioz piece but couldn’t identify Stairway. Maybe mumsy and papa didn’t own any of those nasty rock recordings.  

Funkfingers

boogieman said:

Maybe mumsy and papa didn’t own any of those nasty rock recordings.  

Some households genuinely only listen to *classical* music. For such people, sinful modern rhythm music is verboten - either because of its licentious lyric content or the fact that it is derived, in part, from Afro-American origins. 

boogieman said:

I didn’t get the Springsteen

Adam Raised A Cain dates back to the 1978 album, Darkness On The Edge Of Town. It is unlikely to be well known to listeners who were not around when the track was originally released or who have not investigated the less lauded sections of Springsteen's back catalogue.

Kids of twenty can hardly be expected to identify a nondescript, less than virtuosic, guitar instrumental section from a record that they have almost certainly never had cause to listen to, regardless of their upbringing.

boogieman said:

It’s rather a sad endictment of Cambridge students though that one of them knew a Berlioz piece but couldn’t identify Stairway.

How so? Mocking posh white kids for their ignorance of old Rock/pop standards is no better (or worse) than if they were to mock you for not recognising orchestral favourites. 

"We are dumb all over and maybe even a little ugly on the side."

UnclePsychosis

boogieman said:

I didn’t get the Springsteen one either. It’s rather a sad endictment of Cambridge students though that one of them knew a Berlioz piece but couldn’t identify Stairway. Maybe mumsy and papa didn’t own any of those nasty rock recordings.  

-There's one music round per week and it's based on classical music 9 weeks out of 10. The teams who take it seriously do loads of preparation work so unsurprisingly they'll swot up on classical music. Its not a sad indictment of anything. 

Philly_Q

boogieman said:

I didn’t get the Springsteen one either. It’s rather a sad endictment of Cambridge students though that one of them knew a Berlioz piece but couldn’t identify Stairway. Maybe mumsy and papa didn’t own any of those nasty rock recordings.  

I was initially dismayed that they didn't know them, but to be honest why should a bunch of students in their early 20s know 40 year old rock music?

It's only like me not recognising Pat Boone or Ronnie Hilton.

Funkfingers

There were strong clues in the wording of the three music bonus questions. The answers could have been guessed without ever hearing the audio.

Philly_Q said:
old rock music

Here, if anywhere, lies the indictment. For the yoof of today, Oasis is considered old. (In a way, it is precisely that. Just recycled elements from music of the Sixties and Seventies.)

Jonathangus

Philly_Q said:

boogieman said:

I didn’t get the Springsteen one either. It’s rather a sad endictment of Cambridge students though that one of them knew a Berlioz piece but couldn’t identify Stairway. Maybe mumsy and papa didn’t own any of those nasty rock recordings.  

I was initially dismayed that they didn't know them, but to be honest why should a bunch of students in their early 20s know 40 year old rock music?

It's only like me not recognising Pat Boone or Ronnie Hilton.

Any more reason why they should be able to identify a piece from a classical composer who died nearly 150 years ago?

The Springsteen one was a bit obscure, I feel - you'd need to be a fan to recognise it - but You Shook Me All Night Long is one of the best-known tracks from the second biggest-selling album of all time, and Stairway is just a bit famous, too.

Of course, as we're largely a bunch of middle-aged white blokes on a guitar forum, most of us probably spotted those two from the first string bend...

DaevidJ

I would have thought they might know Stairway due to the copyright trial if nothing else...

Philly_Q

Jonathangus said: 

Any more reason why they should be able to identify a piece from a classical composer who died nearly 150 years ago?

The Springsteen one was a bit obscure, I feel - you'd need to be a fan to recognise it - but You Shook Me All Night Long is one of the best-known tracks from the second biggest-selling album of all time, and Stairway is just a bit famous, too.

Of course, as we're largely a bunch of middle-aged white blokes on a guitar forum, most of us probably spotted those two from the first string bend...

To your third point... exactly.  We're a bunch of middle-aged blokes on a guitar forum, not a bunch of kids on University Challenge. 

I really don't think four 22 year olds should be criticised for not knowing music made by blokes old enough to be their grandfathers.  And on top of that, most young people don't relate to music in the same way we did - it's just one of the many forms of fleeting entertainment they access through their phones.

As for them knowing classical music, it's a totally different mindset.  It's "old" to everyone.  And I doubt they listen to it for pleasure, they probably just swot up on it because they know it'll be on University Challenge.

Funkfingers

Philly_Q said:
I doubt they listen to it for pleasure, they probably just swot up on it because they know it'll be on University Challenge.

It is not as if the contestants are being asked to quote catalogue numbers for the works. Usually, it is sufficient to be able to spot the general style and make a semi-intelligent guess.

e.g. Sounds a bit Baroque. Choose randomly between Haydn, Mozart or Purcell. Should score five points. Opera, sung in German, not Der Götterdämmerung. Probably, Tristan and Isolde.

Gagaryn

Funkfingers said:

There were strong clues in the wording of the three music bonus questions. The answers could have been guessed without ever hearing the audio.

Philly_Q said:
old rock music

Here, if anywhere, lies the indictment. For the yoof of today, Oasis is considered old. (In a way, it is precisely that. Just recycled elements from music of the Sixties and Seventies.)

Oasis albums are now almost as old as the Beatles albums were when Oasis were popular.

vasselmeyer

Gagaryn said:

Oasis albums are now almost as old as the Beatles albums were when Oasis were popular.

Bloody hell...you just made me feel old.

BigLicks67

I take issue with "Darkness on the Edge of Town" being described as obscure or unknown, it's certainly my favourite of his albums and regularly is rated by critics as his best album after "Born to Run".

Regards, the classical music questions if you said Berlioz to every question you would get one right every other week, as a composer he comes up nearly as often as JS Bach.

Phil_aka_Pip

Funkfingers said:

e.g. Sounds a bit Baroque. Choose randomly between Haydn, Mozart or Purcell.

Of those only Purcell was a Baroque composer. The other two were Classical.

robinbowes

Philly_Q said:

As for them knowing classical music, it's a totally different mindset.  It's "old" to everyone.  And I doubt they listen to it for pleasure, they probably just swot up on it because they know it'll be on University Challenge.

Wank.

Why do you say that? Because people can't possibly like classical music?

robinbowes

Funkfingers said:

boogieman said:

Maybe mumsy and papa didn’t own any of those nasty rock recordings.  

Some households genuinely only listen to *classical* music. For such people, sinful modern rhythm music is verboten - either because of its licentious lyric content or the fact that it is derived, in part, from Afro-American origins. 

boogieman said:

I didn’t get the Springsteen

Adam Raised A Cain dates back to the 1978 album, Darkness On The Edge Of Town. It is unlikely to be well known to listeners who were not around when the track was originally released or who have not investigated the less lauded sections of Springsteen's back catalogue.

Kids of twenty can hardly be expected to identify a nondescript, less than virtuosic, guitar instrumental section from a record that they have almost certainly never had cause to listen to, regardless of their upbringing.

boogieman said:

It’s rather a sad endictment of Cambridge students though that one of them knew a Berlioz piece but couldn’t identify Stairway.

How so? Mocking posh white kids for their ignorance of old Rock/pop standards is no better (or worse) than if they were to mock you for not recognising orchestral favourites. 

"We are dumb all over and maybe even a little ugly on the side."

Wis'd.

I was going to go on and say I think we'd get on very well, but then I saw you're a bass player  

R.

mudslide73

I got them all but it helps that Darkness is the only Bruce album I own. As an aside Stairway and YSMANL both sounded absolutely majestic in isolation to these ears.

UnclePsychosis

Funkfingers said:

There were strong clues in the wording of the three music bonus questions. The answers could have been guessed without ever hearing the audio.

Philly_Q said:
old rock music

Here, if anywhere, lies the indictment. For the yoof of today, Oasis is considered old. (In a way, it is precisely that. Just recycled elements from music of the Sixties and Seventies.)

-Oasis *is* old. 

The summer of britpop was 1995. "Blur vs Oasis" is now literally older than the majority of graduates!

Sporky

octatonic said:

How do you do with Only Connect?

Only Connect is excellent. I have good weeks and bad weeks but usually get a couple right in the first round, one or occasionally two in the second, bit variable on the walls, but monster the missing vowel round.