Hall team takes on University Challenge

St Edmund Hall is once again competing in University Challenge, the long-running quiz show hosted by Amol Rajan, with the first-round match airing on Monday 11 November 2024.

Captained by Sophia Bursey (2022, English Language & Literature), this year’s team includes Jeffrey Liu (2023, DPhil Politics), Daisy Pendergast (2021, MBiochem Molecular & Cellular Biochemistry), Robert Elkington (2018, Modern Languages & Linguistics), and James O’Neill (2022, PPE; in reserve).

The Hall team took on SOAS University of London in the first round. After a closely contested game, we are delighted to report that they won the match with a score of 195-155. Many congratulations to the team – the whole Teddy Hall community looks forward to supporting their progress in the second round!

Captain Sophia comments on this round:

I actually applied to Teddy because I saw them on University Challenge, and my only past quizzing experience was watching the show every week, so to actually appear on it was amazing! It took a few minutes to find our feet but we got lucky with the bonuses in this match, and when we started to pull ahead of the other team I couldn’t quite believe it. They run a pretty tight ship in the studio, but they did give us a lot of free salad and Amol was such a lovely guy. Very surreal but an awesome thing to have done!

Team member James describes the atmosphere from filming the first match:

It was great to meet the production team, including Amol Rajan and the person behind the famous voice, Roger Tilling. The game was tense, but Teddy’s team fought well against SOAS, demonstrating knowledge of a wide range of areas. Sophia, our captain, ensured the team worked well together and could draw on the specialisms of each of its members.

If you missed Monday’s broadcast, you can catch up via BBC iPlayer.