Student brainbox gains national hero status, but fails at the final hurdle

Eric Monkman of Wolfson College, Cambridge, during the British television is University Challenge last week. PHOTO | AGENCIES

What you need to know:

  • Last week’s final pitted Oxford University’s Balliol College against Wolfson College, Cambridge.
  • University Challenge has been running for 55 years and its fans include the famous Professor Stephen Hawking, who presented the trophy to the winning team.
  • With his starched collars and arched eyebrows, Monkman, a 29-year-old Canadian, became a media sensation.

One of the most popular programmes on British television is University Challenge. Each week two teams of four students from university colleges across the UK struggle to answer some of the toughest questions you will hear on any quiz show.

Last week’s final pitted Oxford University’s Balliol College against Wolfson College, Cambridge. Interest was high because Wolfson’s captain, Eric Monkman, caused a sensation earlier in the competition when his lightning fast answers secured 120 points of his team’s winning 170 total.

With his starched collars and arched eyebrows, Monkman, a 29-year-old Canadian, became a media sensation. People who spotted him in the street rushed to take selfies while social media went viral, with “Monkmaniacs” describing him as everything from a superhero to a god.

Since graduating, Monkman has been job hunting in Canada (no problem there, surely) and admits to being taken aback by the media attention.

DISTINCTLY HUMAN

Alas in the final, the superhero proved to be distinctly human. Several missteps by Monkman in the later stages, for instance a fumbled answer about Latin, cost his team points, and Balliol ran out winners by 190 points to 140.

University Challenge has been running for 55 years and its fans include the famous Professor Stephen Hawking, who presented the trophy to the winning team.

He said, “It is not clear whether intelligence has any long-term survival value … but it is one of the most admirable qualities, especially when displayed by such young minds.”

Here are four questions which Balliol answered correctly. Answers at the foot of the column:

1. In which city of the Eastern Roman empire did Hypatia teach philosophy?

2. Associated with the philosopher Plotinus and the supreme principle known as the one, which late school of Greek philosophy did Hypatia espouse?

3. Which German philosopher applied Newtonian principles to the Nebular hypothesis in his 1755 work, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens?

4. In Earth science, what four-letter term denotes the zone that separates the earth’s crust from the mantle?

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Another sort of challenge was one which lots of people just couldn’t resist. When the Bank of England issued a new plastic £5 note last year, they said it would be almost indestructible.

So naturally everyone, at least everyone with a fiver to spare, started attacking the poor thing to prove the bankers wrong.

On the whole, the modest blue note bearing Her Majesty’s head stood up to all the ripping, twisting, flaming and crunching – until Professor Martyn Poliakoff came along from Nottingham University.

First, he poured a flask of liquid nitrogen over the note, which rendered it brittle. He then pounded it with a blunt-headed hammer.

The professor said, “You had to get the orientation just right and hit it just the right way and then it broke into two or three pieces.”

Professor Poliakoff stressed that the note came from his own pocket. “You can’t spend university money on things like this.”

But isn’t it illegal to deface a bank note? Indeed it is, but no law says you can’t destroy one.

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Bit by bit, Stewart Caygill stole £26,000 (Sh3.3 million) from his dying mother’s bank account, but decided he wanted a lot more. So he forged her will and made himself the beneficiary of her estate.

The scam was exposed when his brother Philip read the will and noticed that his name had been spelled with an extra “l”.

“I knew my mum would never let any document out of her sight that wasn’t correct,” Philip said.

Letters he had kept from his mother also showed that the signature was fake.

Stewart Caygill, aged 53, from Horden, Country Durham, was found guilty of forgery and jailed for four years.

“I have got no feelings for my brother,” Philip said. “He’s cold-hearted and blindingly greedy.”

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They call him the Grammar Vigilante. Using a broom handle with attachment, the anonymous night prowler admitted on television that he goes round Bristol after dark, fixing apostrophes on shop signs. And he’s been doing it for years.

He takes them out where they don’t belong, as in “Orange’s and Apple’s For Sale” and puts them in where they’re missing, “Gentlemens Hairdresser.”

Commas are a punctuation problem, too, but that is probably too big a job for him. People sprinkle them like confetti, but where they go is critical. For instance, there is a big difference between, “Let’s eat,

Grandma” and “Let’s eat Grandma.” Rather similar is “Some people enjoy cooking, their families and their dogs” and “Some people enjoy cooking their families and their dogs.” The Cat and Comma rhyme might help: “A Cat has claws at the end of its paws and a Comma is a pause at the end of a clause.”

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Answers to University Challenge: 1. Alexandria. 2. Neoplatonism. 3. Immanuel Kant. 4. Moho.