With the grand final of Only Connect this evening it's a good time for a quick look back at its first series on BBC Two. Having cut its teeth in the wilds of BBC Four, many were worried the move to more populist waters would herald an inevitable dumbing down of 'Britain's Toughest Quiz'. As the Internet's premier (by which I mean, only) source of Only Connect data analysis, I had a look at the numbers.
While 'dumbing down' can take various forms, the obvious interpretation is that our beloved quiz was going to make things easier to suit the ruffians who watch BBC Two. My main interest, then, was the average total score: how many points were the teams putting on the board compared to their BBC Four predecessors? The plot below provides some immediate insight.
Series 10 came in at 42.7 points per game, which is a little above the BBC Four average of 39.5, but it's clear from the above that it's not really any sort of outlier. Series 4 has comfortably held onto the top spot (helped in part by some unusually long missing vowels rounds), while Series 10 sits just between Series 7 and 8 on this particular high score table. What's more, the BBC Four average includes the infamous Series 9, whose scoring was so low statistical testing identified it as an anomaly. (Excluding Series 9 the BBC Four average creeps up to 40.3, and you can see what the resulting plot looks like here.) No analysis is going to identify Series 10 as being particularly high scoring, then, and so on this measure at least we can be fairly confident Only Connect didn't decide to go easy on its new viewers.
I should acknowledge a couple of alternative possibilities, however. First, these numbers can't distinguish question difficulty from team quality: perhaps the questions were easier and the teams were just more rubbish. However, this series was the first to invite former contestants back for another go, so if anything we might expect an even stronger showing. Alternatively, it could be that the show was dumbed down, with its One Directioning here and Boom Boom Boom Booming there, and the scoring wasn't higher because its contestants don't get out much. As someone who has deliberately learned Harry, Liam, Niall, Louis and (now less importantly) Zayn for the purposes of pub quizzes I think it's safe to say us Only Connect alumni are cooler than that.
For the more data-hungry out there, I've included the round-by-round breakdowns below, but there's little of any particular note about Series 10 here either (although there are some mildly interesting trends in the earlier series).
As a final note, missing vowels continues to make less difference to the outcome than many of its detractors attest: Series 10 added three more 'missing vowels turnarounds' (where a team came from behind to win), taking the all-time total to 22 in 152 regular series episodes, or about 1 in 7.
1+ out of 11: Well done, you beat us! 3+ out of 11: We'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The left-fielder
The ones that got away 1) Name the song from the lyrics: "Now that the party is jumping/With the bass kicked in and the Vegas are pumpin'/Quick to the point, to the point no faking/I'm cooking MC's like a pound of bacon". 2) Which French explorer founded Detroit? (Surname suffices.) 3) In terms of population, which is the largest capital city in Central America and the Caribbean? 4) Da Vinci's The Last Supper is supposedly based on an account in which Gospel? 5) Who said "Oh, the places I've been and the things I've seen."? Was it Bugs Bunny, Joseph Stalin, or Hulk Hogan? 6) In terms of area, which is the largest four-letter country? 7) Who was President of the United States when the original Purple Heart was introduced? 8) Which of these companies was founded first: Reebok, Adidas, or Nike? 9)3 point question: In Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition, there are three properties corresponding to cities in Canada (Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver). Which other country is also represented in the game by three different cities?
1) Lyrics questions are almost never our bag, and while this is an incredibly famous song, it didn't ring any bells. That said, our guess of Pump Up the Jam (by Technotronic) was at least in the right-ish era. 2) A question that feels like a bit of a quizzing chestnut, but not one we'd encountered before. Unsurprisingly, the car brand is named after him (whose headquarters were based in Detroit). 3) I'll admit to getting a bit headstrong here and assuming 'Central America' included Mexico (with its famously populous capital). Had I realized my mistake Havana would have been the obvious choice: the next-largest capital in the area is Port-au-Prince in Haiti, with a little over half the population. 4) At worst a one in four shot, the doctor had a vague memory it was Luke. Not much more to say! 5) A pretty weird question, I thought. Usually with multiple choice you find yourself focusing more on trying to meta-game rather than the question itself, and here Stalin seemed the odd one out to us. 6) What seems at first like quite a fun question is actually pretty brutal when you check the numbers. Iran is the 18th-largest country in the world with an area of 1.6 million square kilometres, but Peru and Chad (the latter being our answer) come in fairly close behind at 20th and 21st (around 1.3 million square kilometres each), respectively. 7) I say this is a bit dodgy (or at least, a little bit trick-questiony) since it was apparently designed originally as the 'Badge of Military Merit' under Washington, with only three awarded at the time. The medal was 'revived' as the Purple Heart under Hoover, making our guess of Franklin Roosevelt not seem too ridiculous in retrospect. 8) We at least guessed the second-oldest option, but while this isn't a spectacularly fun question I'll give it credit for the three options being pretty far spread out. 9) A bit of a crapshoot, with USA seeming the most obvious answer. We did consider China, but weren't convinced there were three Chinese cities famous enough to appear in the game.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!
My alternative questions 1) Vanilla Ice has claimed he purchased the publishing rights to which song, saying it made more financial sense than paying out royalties? 2) What portmanteau nickname for the city of Detroit is also the name of an American record company? 3) Name the country whose capital, despite having a 'city proper' population of around 22 million people, contains fewer than 2% of the national population.
Question 4
4) Using the version shown here, can you pick out Judas? 5) Which British Overseas Territory, currently home to just a few dozen people, is largely inhabited by descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians who accompanied them? 6) The grape variety Syrah, used primarily to produce red wine, is also known by what name which it shares with an Iranian city? 7) Every US President from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom - except who? 8) Sometimes referred to as the 'Nike tick', what is the name of Nike's logo? 9) For one point each: identify these three Monopoly 'special editions' based on the least and most valuable properties, and the currency used. (You don't have to get the precise name of the edition, just the location/franchise.)
a) Arkell's Brewery and The Magic Roundabout (£)
b) Dagobah Swamp and Coruscant Imperial Palace (Credits)
c) Pumpkin Hill and Mad Gear Zone (Rings)
The answers
1) Under Pressure (heavily sampled in Ice Ice Baby) 2)Motown (from 'Motor Town') 3) China 4) He's fourth from the left, knocking over the salt and reaching for the same piece of bread as Jesus 5)The Pitcairn Islands 6) Shiraz 7)Richard Nixon 8) The swoosh 9) Swindon (this article about its launch is great), Star Wars, and Sonic the Hedgehog
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
The second semi-final saw a rather impressive performance from the Orienteers on what struck me as one of the best sets of sequence questions we've seen in a while. Question of the week was tougher than usual, but I'm giving it to Omitted in part 1, 2, 3, 4 (tennis tie breaks, etc.) for sheer mind-bending funtimes coupled with self-congratulatory smguness. (I particularly liked how the Wimbledon clue so strongly hinted at the answer, the 'Ladies' specification indicating it was something to do with the number of sets.)
What was your favourite? For the penultimate time this series, let us know below!
As my relentless schedule dooms me to only catching up with Only Connect on a Thursday night, I'm nevertheless here with the poll you've all been waiting for since Monday (maybe). I've handed over question of the week duties to a certain Dr. Karran who has this to say: "My question of the week is 'plastic recycling codes' because it's almost hilariously boring and shows how with Only Connect you both have to know about word puzzles, but also be dangerously obsessed with plastics."
If you agree, or if you can somehow make a case against that watertigh argument, let us know with the poll below!
We won this week, but could you have done even better?
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The DJ-woman 4) The DJ-man 5) The mystery woman 6) The mystery man
The ones that got away 1) In the 'board game' Guess Who? are there more characters with white hair or red hair? 2) How many slots are there in a standard Connect Four set? (By 'slots' we mean the number of possible positions for a piece to end up; i.e. how many circular holes are there?) 3) The clocks recently went forward in Canada, but what does DST stand for in this context? Be careful - one letter wrong and you'll not get the point. 4) How many cards is each player dealt in a game of Omaha poker? 5)3 point question: The largest Mediterranean island is Sicily. What are the second- and third-largest Mediterranean islands? You need both for 3 points (you get nothing if you only get one). 6)3 point question: Of what is ombrology the study?
The answers
1) Red (5 have red hair, 4 have white hair) 2)42 (it's 7 wide and 6 tall) 3) Daylight Saving Time (not 'Savings') 4)4 5)Sardinia and Cyprus 6) Rain
Our excuses
1) An obvious toss-up (especially given how close the options were). We figured white seemed more likely as it would include more senior characters (plus red hair is kinda rare to begin with). This was one of a multi-part question on Guess Who? characters, beginning with whether there were more women or men (a rather easier question given a previous furore). 2) I was pretty certain there were seven rows (remembering that four in a row from either corner would meet in the middle), so the only question was how many columns. My instinct was a 7x6 grid, and some sketching in my notebook looked reasonable, but then doubt crept in as other team members favoured a 7x5 approach. Ultimately I decided I'd be more annoyed if the answer was 35 and I'd insisted on 42, than vice-versa, and we went with the former. 3) The warning about 'one letter wrong' made the doctor and I assume that the answer was 'Daylight Savings Time', because we both thought it was 'Daylight Saving Time' and so it seemed a weird clarification otherwise. Good meta-ing from us. 4) The DJ-man reckoned the answer was seven, and for some reason this really rang a bell with me so I was quite happy with it. (I've tried some google-fu to see if there's another form of poker where each player gets seven cards which I might have been exposed to, but I can't seem to find any.) 5) We got Sardinia, but followed it up with Corsica to cost us a big three points. While Cyprus, somewhat embarrassingly, didn't even cross our minds, it's a moderately close-run thing between it and Napoleon's birthplace. 6) The similarity to 'umbra' had us thinking shady thoughts, but we never really came close, eventually going with 'colour theory' as a potentially topical subject.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!
My alternative questions 1) Which is the largest country (by area) whose flag comprises only white and red? 2) Assuming red plays first, how many possible positions are there in a game of Connect Four after each player has placed one of their discs? (Note: you don't have to simply work out every possibility by hand!) 3) A successor to Greenwich Mean Time, the primary standard by which the world regulates time is known as UTC. For what words do the letters UTC stand? You can answer in French or English, although amusingly the words do not follow the order UTC in either language. 4) In poker, what is the more common name of an ace-high straight flush? 5) Each of the following authors wrote a book (or books) with the word 'island' in the title. For one point each, name the book:
a) Robert Louis Stevenson
b) H. G. Wells
c) Bill Bryson 6) The answers to the following questions all begin with U, M and B. For one point each, what is:
a) An Italian region whose capital is Perugia?
b) A British sportswear brand, founded in 1942?
c) A brand of juice drink produced by Sumol + Compal, purportedly consumed in sub-Saharan Africa?
The answers
1) Canada 2) 49 (both players have 7 slots to choose from, so after one move each the total number of possibilities is 7x7 = 49) 3) Coordinated Universal Time (or Temps Universel Coordonné) 4) A royal flush 5) Treasure Island, The Island of Doctor Moreau (or Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island, or Æpyornis Island if you're feeling fancy), and Notes from a Small Island 6) Umbria, Umbro and Um Bongo
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
Quick post to let you know a contestant call has gone out for a new show (tentatively) called The Hive (email casting@saltbeeftv.com for an application form). From the press release:
"The series of 13x30min episodes is a smart, play-along quiz where the answer to every question is literally staring contestants in the face. The Hive is the quiz where knowing the right answer isn’t enough because all answers are hidden in a hive, testing players’ general knowledge and mental agility as they race against the clock to find the answer."
It's for BBC Four, so presumably will be at the, well, at the BBC Four end of the spectrum. Plus the flyer (below) spells 'crossword' with a hyphen, so you can already tell this a highbrow affair.
1+ out of 9: Well done, you beat us! 3+ out of 9: We'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor 3) The DJ-woman 4) The DJ-man
The ones that got away
Question 2
1) Which chocolate bar was originally designed to fit into a sports jacket pocket without breaking? 2) The Bank of Canada recently declared it wasn't illegal to draw what on the 5 dollar bill? (Pictured, in case you somehow don't have one to hand.) 3) According to Canada's Food Guide, you should eat one _____ vegetable and one _____ vegetable each day. For 1 point, fill in both blanks (and as asmall hint, each blank is a colour). 4) To within 10%, how many more calories do you need to burn than you consume to lose 1 pound in weight? 5) In what TV series did Leonard Nimoy play retired magician The Great Paris? 6)2 point question: Together they directed The Matrix trilogy, one is Lana Wachowski, but what is the first name of the other Wachowski? 7)2 point question: Which clothing company has embraced the recent 'normcore' fashion craze with their 'Dress Normal' campaign?
1) A chocolate bar I'd only ever seen in London corner shops (I'm not particularly observant, admittedly), and never even crossed our minds. We got a bit preoccupied with Kit Kats, thinking maybe the word 'Kit' was a clue to sports (the term does, of course, go back rather a long time). 2) Despite the Leonard Nimoy question later in the same round, and the fact that even UK friends had been sharing this story on social media, we still didn't come close. Instead, we went with the fairly boring 'moustache', thinking there was a lot of space to draw one on that particular note. 3) We got the green, but in a toss-up between orange and red went with the latter. This does seem rather obvious in retrospect (there are rather more orange vegetables than red ones), but no-one had a particularly strong opinion at the time. 4) A vague memory that "a can of soda a day will add 10 pounds in a year" and some very rough calculations got us surprisingly close (about 5,600), but then we got cold feet and went for a much lower 700 at the last minute. 5) Nimoy's recent death was the motivator for this question, of course, but this fact had passed us all by. A last-second scribble of 'Magic Circle' was my "hey, it's better than nothing" answer of the week. 6) I'll admit, I didn't even know the name Wachowski, so I was completely out of this one. 7) Frustratingly, I did contemplate the correct answer here (as Gap seemed the most obvious brand to be so boring) but never got around to suggesting it, possibly because I was distracted by working out how many calories there are in a can of soda.
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!
My alternative questions
Question 3
1) What name is shared by a chocolate bar in the UK which is similar to the 3 Musketeers bar in the US, and by a chocolate bar in the US which is similar to the Mars bar in the UK? 2) Which US President is the only one featured on Mount Rushmore but not on a standard US banknote? 3) While secondary colours are more commonly associated with supervillains, which superhero, resplendent in orange and green, is pictured here? 4) When we talk about calories in food, we are usually referring to the kilocalorie (kcal), which is equal to 4,200 of what unit of energy? 5) What does the 'MI' in MI5 (and other secret services) stand for? Hint: it's not 'Mission: Impossible'. 6) For one point each, according to oxforddictionaries.com, what are the two valid plurals of the noun 'matrix'? 7) Pictured below is a T-Shirt from Gap's UK website. How much does it cost (in GBP)? If you're within 20% you get 1 point, if you're within 10% you get 2 points. (I should point out that this was picked entirely at random from their collection, so don't waste time with any 'meta-game' thinking.)
Question 7
The answers
1)Milky Way 2) Theodore Roosevelt (Washington is on the $1, Jefferson on the $2 and Lincoln on the $5) 3) Aquaman 4)Joule 5) Military Intelligence 6)Matrices and Matrixes 7) £19.95 (so £15.96 to £23.94 gets you 1 point, £17.95 to £21.95 gets you 2 points)
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
1+ out of 13: Well done, you beat us! 5+ out of 13: We'd have won with you on our team!
The attendees 1) The statistician 2) The doctor
The ones that got away 1) In Norse mythology, half of those who die in battle go to Valhalla, ruled by Odin, whilte the other half go to Fólkvangr, ruled by who? 2) Emma Watson recently(ish) took to Twitter to quash rumours she was dating which famous redhead? 3) Who declared Defender of the Fatherland Day a state holiday in Russia in 2002? 4) The film Never on Sunday features one of three foreign language (i.e. non-English) songs have won the Oscar for Best Original Song. What language was the song sung in? 5) Canadian Chris Williams won an Oscar this year for co-directing what movie? 6) The last movie to win the Academy Award for Best Musical did so in 1984. Featuring a song called Sex Shooter, name the movie. 7) Name the movie in which Julie Andrews made her feature film debut in 1964 (winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in the process). 8)For one point each, name the first and (to date) last movies for which Jack Nicholson has been nominated for an Oscar. 9)2 point question: Which multi-platinum recording artist was born Marvin Lee Aday? 10)2 point question: Which martial art staple does Stephen Seagal promote?
The answers
1)Freya 2) Prince Harry 3)Vladimir Putin 4) Greek (the other two are Slumdog Millionaire, in Hindi, and The Motorcycle Diaries, in Spanish) 5) Big Hero 6 (which won Best Animated Feature) 6)Purple Rain 7) Mary Poppins 8) Easy Rider and About Schmidt 9)Meat Loaf 10) Aikido
Our excuses
1) Norse mythology is the doctor's domain, and his excuse is "Marvel comics are misogynistic and she doesn't feature much". So there you have it. 2) The only famous redheads we could think of were Chris Evans and Rupert Grint, and despite the former's prior proclivities for younger ladies, we decided Ms Watson's erstwhile colleague was the less bad guess. 3) While I presumed this question amounted to "who was President of Russia in 2002?", and I knew Putin was currently in his second stint at the job after his mid-term break as Prime Minister, I didn't think he went all the way back to 2002. On the other hand, I was also pretty sure our guess of Yeltsin had stepped down by then, so I was at least half right. Sort of. 4) With very little to go on (and having ruled out Spanish thanks to The Motorcycle Diaries) we thought Portugese seemed a reasonable stab. 5) We mistakenly thought that winning an Oscar for co-directing must mean the movie also won Best Picture. Relatedly, watched Big Hero 6 this week - The Lego Movie really was much better. 6) It's fair to say we'd have never got this, and instead were in a toss-up between Rent and Hair, going for the former as being 'more 80s' (despite it seeming rather early for a movie about HIV/AIDS). 7) I think for most this was a question of "do you know whether Mary Poppins came out before The Sound of Music?". Obviously, we didn't. (And there's just 1 year in it.) 8) Yeesh. No doubt a super fun question for the more movie-savvy crowd (i.e. almost everyone), but a very tough ask for us. We guessed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Departed, which are at least both movies Nicholson is in. 9) Nothing like a 'celebrity real name' question to remind you of a quizzing blind spot. We went with Bono, who was born Paul Hewson. 10) This seemed like a really weird question, but it turns out Stephen Seagal is a pretty serious Aikido-dude, and was (if the first paragraph of his Wikipedia page is to be believed), the first foreigner to operate an Aikido dojo in Japan. Fun!
How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (5 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!
My alternative questions
Question 3
1) Friday, of course, is named after Freya, but what is the only English day of the week still associated with a Roman god? 2) When invited to a handprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint left impressions of their hands, feet, and what other objects? 3) Doing the social media rounds this week, this photo shows a weasel 'riding' what type of bird? 4) What word/name links a Greek author, a cartoon character, and a play in baseball? 5) Big Hero 6 is the first Disney animated movie to feature characters from which comic book publisher? 6) The song 'Seasons of Love' from Rent contains the repeated line "five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred..." whats? 7) Which tune won Mary Poppins the Oscar for Best Original Song? 8) More boring (but essential) trivia you've probably heard before. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of just three films to win the 'Big Five Academy Awards': Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay (either Adapted or Original). Released in 1934 and 1991, and for 1 point each, name the other two. 9) Resisting the urge to scroll up: for two points, what was Meat Loaf's full birth name? 10) As is often the case, the Japanese term 'dojo' translates to "_____ of the _____". For 1 point each, fill in the blanks.
The answers
1)Saturday (Saturn) 2)Their wands 3)A woodpecker (and in case you're wondering, this is why this relates to Putin) 4) Homer 5) Marvel 6) Minutes (the number in a standard calendar year) 7) Chim Chim Cher-ee (and yes, I did ask this on my Disney quiz a few months ago - I hope some of you remembered!) 8) It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs 9) Marvin Lee Aday 10) Place (of the) way
How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!
A cracking contest this week, and I'll admit I'm a little sad to see the Gallifreyans go despite a spectacular comeback on the wall. As the series gets harder it becomes trickier to pick a favourite question (partly because we get rather more engrossed in the contest and less worried about such trivialities) but this week the honour goes to the pictures of Parts of a Book. Yes, it was pretty easy, but it was still quite fun. Just a shame they couldn't find a fourth body part to really complete the set.
