Queen’s Knock Out Reigning Champions Imperial On University Challenge

By Heidi Kidd

On Monday 17th March, a QUB team consisting of Sarah Carlisle, Jason McKillen, Daniel Rankin and Sam Thompson defeated Imperial College London in the quarter-finals of BBC 2’s quiz show University Challenge. [1] Now this is an impressive feat, considering Imperial College has a solid 5 wins of University Challenge under their belt (the record number of wins), and the champions of last season. Thanks to our guys in the limelight (and the potato mascot that no doubt provided morale), QUB’s future hopes of winning are perhaps highest in decades.

A Historical Challenge

University Challenge was created in 1962, and has survived (or thrived) through a variety of changes, including 3 different presenters throughout the show’s life. With Bamber Gascoigne as host until 1987, a 7-year hiatus occurred until Jeremy Paxman’s hosting from 1994. The presenter transfer in 2023 was quite emotional, with Jeremy Paxman’s exit of his role due to a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. Since last season, the BBC’s Amol Rajan has taken the chair as quizmaster. As we can tell from the longevity of the presenters, University Challenge is an iconic show, with a sense of loyalty surrounding the attitude of its avid watchers.

The premise of the show is that there are two universities as teams of 4 competing against each other; first on the buzzer for starter questions of 10 points (reliant on the quickest to buzz), followed by conferring of the correctly-buzzed team for 3 bonuses, 5 points each. After about half-an-hour of uninterrupted quizzing, the gong rings, and the highest score wins.

The series starts with a first-round level of 28 teams (including a bonus playoff of 4 highest-scoring losers), followed by a second-round stage of 16 teams, and subsequently 8 teams going to the quarter-finals. The winners of the first leg of quarter-finals go head-to-head in the second leg, with the losers of the first leg also going head-to-head. The winners of the second-leg of first-leg winners go straight to the semi-finals, while losers go to a final, third-leg quarter final. Queen’s and Imperial, having both lost their first-leg quarter-final, are thus competing to stay in the competition, and reach the last six – the third-leg – before qualifying for the semi-finals.

Imperial are the most successful team in the competition’s history, with five titles – including last season’s. Coming into this series as reigning champions, they beat Manchester 310-75 in the first round, and thoroughly won 345-25 against Wadham College, Oxford in the second, before losing their first quarter-final against Christ’s College, Cambridge by 180-160.

QUB’s best result was winning the competition in 1981 [1]. The 2013-2014 series and this episode’s victory mark the furthest Queen’s have been since then; the last six of the show. Queen’s won their first match in August with a 240-125 victory against Liverpool, followed by a 180-70 win in January against Cardiff. However, they were comfortably beaten by the University of Warwick by 215-95 in their first quarter-final on 17th February.

As above, this quarter-final was the second for both teams after losing their first; as a knockout game, the losers go home, whilst the winners must win their next match – a third quarter-final – to reach the semi-finals.

A Royal Battle: Queen’s vs. Imperial

The game was a constant back-and-forth between both teams. The first picture round was on inspiration for Disney locations – including Mont Saint-Michel (Disney Castle) and New Orleans Cathedral (The Princess and the Frog) – answered correctly by the Imperial team.

By the half-way point, it was Imperial 60-80 Queen’s. QUB’s Sarah Carlisle buzzed in correctly on the music round, answering enthusiastically with “The Waterboys”. Queen’s managed two of their music bonuses, with correct answers on Phoebe Bridgers (from Thompson) and Mac DeMarco (from McKillen).

Following 120-75 in Queen’s favour, Imperial managed 4 correct starters in a row. After correct buzzes on AI, pizzicato, a picture round on British athletes, and RNA sequencing, the score was eventually brought to 155-120 in Imperial’s favour, with less than 4 minutes left.

However, QUB’s Jason McKillen buzzed in swiftly and correctly on the question about Peshmerga – “Kurdistan”. McKillen and Rankin worked together on questions about nationalism – the former getting “imagined communities” and the latter “George Orwell”. Imperial 155-140 QUB.

Sam Thompson then came in with a correct starter with “Lullaby” – particularly drawn from the example of a song by The Cure – before Queen’s took three bonuses on “words that relate to the sharpness of an image”; despite guesses, the team got zero, bringing the score to a still-tight 155-150.

However, it was QUB’s Sarah Carlisle who brought the team into the lead. Following an incorrect interruption by Imperial’s Jaime Salamanca Camacho with “glass panes” (thus dropping them by 5 points), Carlisle answered correctly with the architectural term “Tracery” with less than two minutes left. The bonuses were then Wikipedia abbreviations for languages of Western Europe (e.g., “DE” for German). McKillen swiftly identified “EU” as Basque (Euskera), followed by an incorrect guess on “FY” as Faroese (it was Frisian), and then Rankin’s answer of “Welsh” for the question “CY” (Cymraeg).

With QUB in the lead 170-150, Imperial’s Mattia Elkouby correctly answered “Anomalous” to the middle of NASA’s acronym UAP. With a handful of seconds left, the team rightly answered 2 questions on works by Richard Dawkins – “The Blind Watchmaker” and “The Selfish Gene”.

The gong then rang with the scores level at 170-170. Amol Rajan calmly carried on with the announcement of a tiebreaker. If interrupted incorrectly by a team, the other team wins and, being a knockout game, the incorrect buzzer would go home. Rajan asked, “Which British monarch was born in the same decade as the composers Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel, and J.S. Bach?” After a long pause, Rankin answered with “George II”, which, following a further pause by Rajan, was announced by the host as correct, with Queen’s winning the game 180-170.

Team insight and future

As put by Carlisle “I was shaking like a leaf the entire game – it was such an intense match”. Like Carlisle, I found myself shaking from apprehension and pure competitiveness while writing up the account of the game. Team captain Daniel Rankin related to that description: can you imagine not only being intellectually questioned under extreme time pressure, but also being filmed? Not to mention representing the very establishment you study at!

After hearing the great achievements of the University Challenge team, it is also notable that this experience was not only beneficial for the reputation of QUB’s students’ intellect, but for the team players themselves. As said by Thompson “I had such a good time hanging out with the team”, clearly showing how the challenge itself is a way for strong teamwork. Carlisle described that element; “We really clicked as a team, we got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and the craic was great as well.”

QUB will next appear in coming weeks to compete for the semi-final stages of the competition.

References

[1] Sean Branchflower (2025). University Challenge – Results. Branchflower.org. https://blanchflower.org/uc/results.html

[2] University Challenge S54E30 – Imperial v Queens, Belfast. BBC IPlayer. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00293sf/university-challenge-202425-30-imperial-v-queens-belfast