Calm down dear, not really.
I fear the questions are just as tricky but the contestants aren't up to the task.

The small pool of OCD/savant/nerds has been used up in the original series so now we are left with run-of-the-mill Pub Qiuizzers and professional TV Quiz show-offs who can name all the US State Capitals but can't see a convoluted but simple connection .

Can we remind the Viccy groupies, Poker champ or not, that she would be presenting sod all on the BBC if it wasn't for her famous Dad.

It is impossible to know, she had done quite a lot by the time she got on TV. Perhaps her family background helped her or inspired her to getting a good education etc but that can be said of many people.

I suspect lots of people end up in similar industries to their parent or a family member but it is only in TV, or the BBC in particular, that they are accused of nepotism. You often don't hear Michael Grade being accused of only getting where he is because of his name though it is obviously even more the case than with Victoria Coren, it is just taken for granted.

Actually, I think having an arts degree from Oxbridge is a far faster ticket to a job at the BBC than having a famous Dad. Place is stuffed with 'em.

Got that. Wikipedia.

ooof, red herring!

What a coincidence.

Apple!

If there're any BBC2 viewers watching this quiz for the first time, I'd imagine they'll have already given up in frustration...

golfers

ALL the people watching it are BBC2 viewers aren't they?

WWE wrestlers and Lanes.

I think there's a 'lane' group in there. And is that a 'drugs' reference? Horse, line...

Well yes. But most of us are forced converts...

Tennessee Williams

We're just slumming it

Blimey, she's good at the missing vowels...

A slight easing of the difficulty of the connections in the first two rounds I thought..

Congratulations to simonk01 and the Felinophiles.....24 is an extremely respectable score.

Yeah, they've definitely dumbed it down now- I got 20 points.

In the second round, I'm sure the quiz setters messed up the question.

You should be able to guess the missing 4th square in the connection, but it went...

Suriname .... Mexico...... Costa Rica. ..... .??

The connection is that the countries start with the last two letters of the previous answer.

So how on earth could you predict the last one started which a CA?

You needed clue three, so it was utterly impossible to get 5 or 3 points on this question.

When that group came up I was nowhere near. I was actually desperately trying to think of Sex and the City.

I think you could have got it with two answers as Costa Rica is the only country that starts with CO so if you got the connection between Suriname and Mexico, you could get to Canada. I don't think you could get full marks with anything other than a lucky guess, but that's true with that round a lot of the time.

True, one would need to be pretty good at geography to come up with countries beginning with CO in 30 seconds .

Colombia doesn't work, not sure if Congo is an actual country, so Costa Rica seems the only one.

I think perhaps Simon was a little more excited than the rest of us as it seems he was actually on the programme?

(and I think it's fair to say that he and his team were up to the task! )

Were the first two rounds slightly easier than usual? I managed to get several right and actually out-guessed the contestants on a couple. Perhaps they were easing the BBC2 newbie viewers in!