Reverting to the Time Domain

Darwin vs Sheffield

Darwin made it through to the quarter finals by making a mockery of my round two predictions and knocking off the number two-rated Merton College, so I won't be making the same mistake and ruling them out again.

Sheffield came through a play-off to reach round two, but smashed Strathclyde by 290 points to 60, so they come into this match looking like contenders. You could say that they should have won their first round match too, having given up a 115 point lead to Warwick. You'd be wrong to say that, because the match ends at the gong, but you see the point I'm making.

Rajan (who has recently left the today program in order to 'unleash [his] inner entrepreneur’ with a business in the creator economy) congratulates the contestants for applauding each other, and we're off. Little side note to Amol if you're reading - what better place to kick off your creator economy business than with a blog about University Challenge. Something to mull over...

Here's your first starter for ten.

Dobbie, who is always pretty solid on art, kicks things off with Gustave, on a question about Moreau, Caillebotte and Dore. Sheffield take two bonuses on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, before Price extends their lead with Austria-Hungary. Two more on Brazil put them 40 points clear.

No one knows that Spain produces tonnes of olive oil, nor the material which is used to make false teeth (celluloid).

Cameron gets Darwin up and running with chronicles, earning a bonus set on integral transforms. The first of these is the Laplace transform, which was the harbinger of my worst-ever exam result at uni. On a paper which was almost exclusively Laplace transforms, I forgot to convert my answers back into the time domain having converted them into the frequency domain. The moment I realised this outside the exam hall was absolutely brutal (as evidenced by the fact I can recall it so clearly nearly ten years later. Perhaps an even more brutal fact is that this happened nearly ten years ago, a few months before I started this blog).

Darwin didn't even know about Laplace transforms, though, so I'm one up on them.

Dobbie wrests back the momentum for Sheffield with the ICC on the first picture starter and they take a hat-trick on logos from UN special tribunals.

La Belle Dans Sans Merci from Cameron keeps Darwin in it, and he closes the gap further with Inherent Vice, before his opposite number Price hits Baku for Sheffield. He follows this up with Patti Smith on the music starter. A single bonus brought up their century at the halfway mark.

Half-time score: Darwin 40 - 100 Sheffield

Price completes a starter hat-trick with magnetic monopoles, and his teammate Lewis follows this up with Don Revie, putting Sheffield 95 points clear.

Elsisi narrowly misses the next starter with ethics, allowing Cameron to steal the points with medical ethics. Darwin need to capitalise on this blunder if they are going to make a match of this. They miss the full set of bonuses, but another starter from Cameron - Citizen Kane on the picture starter - keeps them rolling.

The Battle of Evesham, courtesy of White, brings Darwin back within 50. A timely non-Cameron buzz for the Cantabrigians. Another neg from Elsisi hands them a golden opportunity to close the gap, but Cameron guesses Holmes and Watson rather than Holmes and Moriarty. Strachan is dreaming on the next starter through, and the gap is down to 30.

However, making up for his earlier mistakes, Elsisi comes in very early with Never Let Me Go, keeping Sheffield narrowly clear.

Velt continues an MVP performance from Cameron, but he can't quite bridge the gap to Sheffield, and when Elsisi takes his second starter the game is iced.

Darwin 115 - 155 Sheffield

A valiant effort from the Darwin skipper wasn't enough to swing it for his side, who struggled on the bonuses. Sheffield win despite three negs from Elsisi in the second half, but lead for the whole contest and looked reasonably comfortable.

Next week sees Imperial take on Warwick in the last of the first set of quarter-final matches. See you then.