Two questions about University Challenge

[iwouldgoouttonight]

I'm probably being dim but why are some people 'studying' a subject and some people are 'reading' it. It doesn't seem to be linked to the subject, some say they study history and some read history.

And my second question is more of a musing, I wonder why there tend to be more male contestants than female. There is a team with three women on it tonight and that is unusual.

I have always wondered this. It seems to be places like Oxbridge where they say "read" rather than study. No actual answer though

They mean the same thing, but 'read' is just more old fashioned.

Thank you, I thought maybe you were only allowed to say you were reading a subject if you were at oxbridge.

I saw a programme a few weeks ago about what goes on at universities prior to the programme, and the teams were selected (in various degrees of formality) from those who applied to participate. Many more male applicants than females, so the teams did reflect that. But as to why so few females apply, I don't really know!!

Men tend to be - TEND to be - more confident in speaking their answers out loud. Women are SOMETIMES more worried about saying the wrong answer.

One of my friends was captain of the Manchester team this year. The application process is tough and the preparation they all do is immense but I have no idea why so few women apply. I think I recall my friend saying neither reading or studying but 'doing'! Sadly, although they were pretty good they lost their round.

'Reading' is just trad. Oxbridge idiom for 'studying'. Possibly in some other institutions too. I was never on UC, but when a friend was on our college team, there were simply fewer women applying. I considered it, but the preparation is hugely time-consuming and there was the awkward fact of my degree...

I can imagine there is an awful lot of preparation - I congratulate myself if I get one or two right! Interesting about fewer women applying. I wonder if that applies to all TV quiz shows. I watched Only Connect afterwards and that had more men than women too.

And here ends my intellectual television viewing for the week. I'm back to Bake Off and Would I lie to you for the rest of the week!

Women are very often slower on the buzzer than men so they can know as much but still not get picked for a team.

They are also put off taking part by the misogyny women can get if they are clever in public - cf all the shit that Gail Trimble got.

There's a UC team culture that is hard for women to break into. A couple of my guy friends were on my Uni UC team, but they were very much of the intellectual laddish, back-slapping, ale-drinking type, and ripped the piss out of women constantly. I imagine this goes on a lot.

So far this series there has been a team who wore the four Wiggles coloured jumpers and a team that looked exactly like the characters from Scooby Do. I wonder if this is a coincidence. Both teams won by the way so i look forward to seeing them in later rounds.

I was on the UC team but we weren't selected for the TV rounds. I'm a woman btw, the other three were blokes.

According to my mum "study" is terribly non-u (not exclusively Oxbridge) so I always said it to wind her up.

I applied to be on my uni team when they were applying for the show. We did a preliminary round to decide on the team and gave up as the highest score was 9 out of 80.

Interesting PortBlack so if I were to cobble together a team of people who looked like Peppa Pig's family we may stand a chance. Assuming they would allow someone who was at university twenty years ago.

Stupid question from me but why is there lots of preparation? Seems mad. You can't possibly know whether what you're preparing will come up.

The teams are picked by the producers according to a secret formula that combines "being quite good/not being totally crap", "one Welsh, two Scots, six Oxbridge, two London, four ex-Polys, one weird miscellaneous one", and "makes good telly".

The general assumption is that if two teams, say Cardiff and Swansea have roughly the same score on the pretests and Cardiff has four men in the team but Swansea has three men one woman then Swansea will be picked.

Dates of monarchs and the Periodic Table are always worth revising for a quiz. And if you do a lot of tests then something may well crop up that the UC setters will use in a different context.

Well that's sort of what I mean. I know most of the monarchs and 5 mins refresh would do but I could swot up on the periodic table until kingdom come and not be any less useless at it.

A friend of mine was dating someone who was one of those people-who-know-everything-on-a-winning-team and she recalls him saying 'My botany isn't very secure.'

I think if I was swotting up I'd go through my old GCSE science stuff. A lot of it is actually that level.

Really Baffled? Surely remembering a list of names and numbers is the same task whether you call it dates of kings or atomic numbers of elements?

My DH was on the Edinburgh team a few years ago. They're laid back compared with most unis, just a test to pick the team. It was all male. Apparently not many women turned up to the test.

When we got there I saw that they were up against Warwick so I knew it wouldn't go well. Warwick takes it VERY seriously. Lots of practices.

You'd think. But I cannot remember anything about it at all. Makes not the slightest dent in my memory. I think Potassium is first? And that's all I have a clue about. Chemistry is a black hole in my brain. Other science stuff is fine.

Once upon a time I did win a national quiz thing but fortunately not much chemistry was needed!

Pretend the names are books of the Old Testament and you're remembering them in order.