As you know, University Challenge consists of two teams from different universities competing against each other in a general knowledge quiz, chaired by the impatient and acerbic Jeremy Paxman.
You may not be aware that in fact there are three teams, and the third team is you, at home on your sofa, watching University Challenge religiously every Monday, as everyone does.
The deal is that the teams on the telly score ten points for each main question, and if they get a question right, they can go on to score five points each for three bonus questions. They lose five points for interrupting a question. They can only confer on the bonus questions.
If the home team has one or two players:
The team at home gets ten points for every question they get right, including bonus questions; and they are allowed to answer the bonus questions even if they didn’t get the main question right.
Each member of the home team is allowed to give an answer, but if all members give the right answer, the team will still only score ten points.
If the home team has more than two players:
Play as for one or two players, but only score five points for bonus questions.
This scoring system has been rigorously calibrated and is proven to be fair and equitable, taking account of the fact that the home team has been out of the educational system for quite some time, and their brain is cluttered up with more important things like doing laundry and working for a living.
Last Monday, this particular home team was unusually good, trouncing University College Oxford (135 points) and Jesus Cambridge (165 points) with a masterful score of 260. Tonight we hope to go through to the quarter finals.

The observant among you, or those without any better entertainment, will remember how, a little over two years ago, Pete and I met in a comments box on Hydragenic, in an exchange about the deistic properties of Jarvis Cocker. Occasionally we bring it up, still wondering at such a fortuitous coincidence.
Two weeks short of our second anniversary, we went out on a date last night and one of us mentioned a blog we had been reading – something to do with a girl in a coffee shop – and the other said oh! yes! I’ve been reading that one!, and it turns out to be the only site either of us clicked on from Mike’s Bloggers’ Disco post, simply because andre has nominated Pulp’s Disco 2000.
So if we hadn’t met on Hydragenic, we would have found each other on Troubled Diva anyway. It was meant to be.
And to the person who recently referred to us as the Posh & Becks of blogging [you know who you are]: a hard stare.

Hey, do you remember FEEA?
Well, I decided that it was about time that I re-evaluated. So I turned to a fresh page in my notebook, swatted the hummingbirds away from around my head, and set to work.
Three main points were apparent.

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