How are they cheating? They answered the starter which gives them the right to give their fullest consideration to the bonuses which incidentally score less for this very reason.

In any case, it may have felt like ages, but I've just taken another look at the programme and Jeremy never gave them more than 20 seconds before intervening in the closing stages.

They might not try to cheat but all the deliberation screamed dodgy tactics to me.

They were lucky St Andrews were pretty useless. Should the scoreline be close there would be a scandal.

one is hesitant to introduce a new rule to an age old format, but a 10 sec. time limit on the dithering discussions on each of the 3 question bonuses would weed out strategic time wasting by many teams.

Much of the time they were not even 'deliberating'. i.e. discussing different possible answers. It was more a case of thinking in silence.

Absolutely not! This is a bad solution to a non-problem. As an avid viewer for many years, I simply don't recognise this 'strategic delays' phenomenon. Yes, teams dither, over-discuss, delay...but I really don't think they do it 'to run down the clock'. And for any that might be tempted to try, the programme doesn't need any new rules: it already has the Grump of Jezza, which is all the preventative it needs.

I have to say that while I realise it all adds to the excitement (well not in my view but that's just me) I do find it frustrating that Paxo allows them to witter away for ages at the beginning and middle of the programme but by the end is shouting "come on" the second he finishes the question allowing no time for conferring whatsoever.

I find myself shouting at the screen "stop wasting time" when on occasion, he feels it necessary to give his own opinions/extra details .

Warwick have this in the bag

one sided that's for sure.

Rudd seems permanently confused.

Very one-sided unfortunately. Even so I'm amazed no-one got either William Tell or Paris.

East London sent their mums instead

Paxo taking the piss out of EO....plenty of time ha

And they're in.

Poor East London getting trounced.

She's like Oscar Powell sister

The captain of the losing team this evening was absolutely USELESS!!! Spent far too long farting about when her team was miles behind. And what was with wasting all that time nominating a team member when she could have said the answer herself. Shocking performance - not that it would have made any difference to the result I suppose.

Blimey, don't say that on Twitter, currently the Lefties are doing what they are best at on Twitter, being perpetually outraged.
Their weapons of choice this time are 'bigot' jibes and 'homophobic' taunts.
When will these silly people realise they are being wound up like someone deliberately disturbing a wasps nest or ringing on a door and running off.
The so called ignorant Twitter users got the result they wanted tonight.........many indignant Lefties !

Striker - I think you misunderstood that comment. Lenitive was merely commenting on the confused look she gave with some of the questions.

Although I agree it would be deliberately misconstrued on Twitter.

Which is probably what you meant all along.

And why are they "lefties"?

Many philosophers have mused that if we knew the answer to that question we would know a great deal more about the Universe!

Poor UEL. They never had the chance.

Probably because they're rising to the bait of 'rightie' trolls.

Rudd was excellent - she carried the team. Very knowledgeable indeed.

Poor show from the other side - they were not great at all.

I thought the questions were really hard last night. I only got 2 right

what do philosophers know about anything ?

Nothing, but at least they know they don't know!

SOAS

but at least Emmanuel is fun to watch