TWO DUBLINERS CAPTAINING opposing teams on the BBC’s University Challenge battled it out to land a place in the final earlier this week.
University Challenge is a long-running quiz show in the UK in which teams made up of current students from a university compete against one another. The questions are notoriously difficult.
Oscar Despard, the captain of Cambridge’s Christ’s College team, and Kevin Flanagan, the captain of University of Bristol’s team, competed in the semi-final of the show. Ultimately, Christ’s College won out.
Despard’s team will now head into the final, where they will be up against the winner of next week’s deciding semi-final – either Darwin’s College, Cambridge, or the University of Warwick.
This quiz contains ten questions – some of the more attainable ones – that featured in the semi-final between Despard and Flanagan.
Described by Samuel Johnson as ‘the only book that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I wished to rise’ and by Anthony Burgess as one of the great comic works of the world, an encyclopaedic work of 1621 by Robert Burton has the title: ‘The Anatomy of BLANK’
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The Hindu festival Kumbh Mela takes place four times in a 12 year cycle. Its occurrence is determined by astrological positions of the sun, moon, and which planet that orbits the sun once in about 12 years.
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Born in New Zealand in 1914, which economist wrote the 1958 paper ‘The relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the United Kingdom 1861 to 1957’?
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In ‘Love and Justice as Competences’, Luc Boltanski discusses the social value of love that is present-focused, desireless, and unconcerned with consequence or reciprocity.
What Greek term does he use to denote such love? In the New Testament, it is the word used for God’s love for humanity.
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Which film of 1963 begins with a dream sequence in which the main character starts off stuck in a traffic jam in a tunnel, out of which he then floats and flies up into the clouds before being pulled back to earth by a string tied around his ankle?
This character being Guido Anselmi, a film director experiencing a bad case of creative block.
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Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Its name deriving ultimately from a Greek word, meaning hollow of a vessel, what percussion instrument found a regular place in the orchestra by the time of Beethoven having earlier featured in opera scores by Gluck and Mozart?
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US Presidential Elections: From the 18 states that chose electors by popular vote in the 1824 election, Andrew Jackson won a plurality.
However, the election would be decided by the House of Representatives in which politician’s favour?
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In Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is the first of the seven deadly sins dealt with in purgatory, with those guilty of it described as carrying large boulders on their backs forcing them to bend over double?
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In a study conducted by Irish neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire in 2000, which part of the brain was found to be larger in London taxi drivers than a control group due to the taxi drivers’ extensive spacial navigation expertise?
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Extending from the Grand Chaco to Patagonia and meaning ‘flat surface’ in Quechua, what is the name of the grassland that extends over much of Argentina?
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Answer all the questions to see your result!
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You scored out of !
Scholar
You’ve outdone yourself
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You scored out of !
Star student
A phenomenal result
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You scored out of !
Graduate
You gave it your best go, and have to be commended for that
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You scored out of !
Dropout
(It’s understandable, given the circumstances)
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