University Challenge – The Professionals
This is something I wrote for the house magazine of the Press Association. It appeared in Today @ PA on 15th November 2007
This summer, a team of Puzzle Compilers based in PA’s Bristol office put in a bid to take part in the upcoming BBC2 series University Challenge – The Professionals.
Starter For Ten
When the idea was first floated around the office there were a lot of enthusiastic takers, and for a while it looked as if competition for the four places would be fierce. Then the application forms arrived. They included a series of thirty sample questions designed to establish people’s range of knowledge, and suddenly competition became less of an issue…
We were encouraged to do the test under show conditions, that is, as a team. But for various reasons this couldn’t be arranged, so in the end we all did the test individually, then met up to pool our answers. The final four chosen to represent the company were editors Robin Seavill and Richard Colfer, dispatcher Adrian Tuttiett, and freelance contributor Sarah Bradley.
(l to r: Sarah B, Richard C, RAS, Adrian T)
No Conferring
A good mix of youth, experience, glamour and modesty, we felt we had every reason to be confident, and that confidence received a boost a few weeks later when we were invited to an interview at a local hotel. There we found ourselves in wary competition with another local foursome, the Institute of Physics, and the sole representative from the Society of Authors team, noted historian Antony Beevor. This time the test was rather less cosy. There was no conferring allowed, and the forty sample questions they set us were stinkers (far, far harder, I contend, than the soft balls they actually bowl at the celebrity professionals who generally end up on the actual programme). However, nervously comparing notes on the way back to the office afterwards, we found to our surprise that between us we seemed to have got the majority right. So, given that we’d done well in the test and had managed to give a good account of ourselves in the informal chat part of the interview – amazing how intrigued people get when you tell them you compile puzzles for a living – we thought we’d be in with a good chance of travelling up to Manchester in early December to do battle with the irascible Mr Paxman.
Come On!
Alas, it was not to be. The letter of rejection came a week later, and the reasons given, though meant to be encouraging, were scant consolation. There had been a big response, they told us, and only eighty teams had been chosen for interview, so to have been selected at all was a good sign (they said). But they were also looking for the most interesting mix of chosen teams, and apparently Puzzle Compilers have no natural counterparts. Sometimes there can be a down side to having such a unique job. However, having come this far once, we now know what to expect and next year, with a bit of luck, a professional guild of crossword solvers may apply which would be a win-win for everyone. Either way, the world has not heard the last of the Puzzle Compilers. We’ll be back!
PS
I lied. We didn’t come back any damn where. This was the last the world was to hear of the Puzzle Compilers. Some of us would get together again to go into battle under the guise of the Press Gang on Only Connect a couple of years later, but that was an even sadder tale of might-have-been, mainly due to our useless tosser of a captain bottling the tie-break question at the last minute in our second and final appearance. It was the same useless tosser who at one point, when the name of rapper Flo Rida came up, asked in a stage whisper “Where does she come from?” As the useless tosser in question, I can only reiterate once again my apologies to my gallant team mates, Emily P and Richard C, who I led with unwarranted cockiness into such a pointless travesty of embarrassment, ignominy and personal shame.
The only bright spot of that experience (apart from briefly rubbing up against the inestimable Victoria Coren-Mitchell, of course) (not rubbing up against her literally, of course) came during the audition with the sparkling production team, which I remember as being a riotous affair of unique hilarity, fuelled by strategic platefuls of Haribo sweets. My team mates were each twenty or thirty years younger than me, and as we were leaving, one researcher asked if I was their boss. My colleagues were scandalised at such a notion and firmly pointed out in stereo that we were equals in every way and pay grade. “I am nobody’s superior,” I replied, brokenly, “I’m just old.” And I groped my way, finding the stairs unlit…
A transcript of our first appearance on Only Connect can be found here
…and our second appearance is transcribed here (sob)
Only Connect, October 2013