University Challenge is hard. Like really, really hard.
However, high drama is not what one expects to see. We tune in for the one time that we get a question right, or to see Jeremy Paxman pile into an expensively-educated cardigan wearer for not knowing enough about Foucault.
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One Newcastle University student, however, managed to turn a recent episode into a thrilling spectacle to put Edgbaston 2005, Round 11 of Joshua-Klitschko and Aguerooooooooooooooo in the shade.
Let us set the scene: Newcastle University's crack boffins were facing up against the nerds of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, when they received possibly the hardest question in the history of the show.
On an academic level, it was the equivalent of a Shane Warne flipper, an AJ uppercut and a scything Joey Barton tackle - though he'd actually already been sent off when Sergio Aguero won that particular title, but let's not let that get in the way of my tenuous metaphor.
Anyway, the question was a bastard and, for the sake of posterity, here it is: "If 1,1 is the second row of Pascal's Triangle, what is the seventh row?"
Newcastle were understandably flummoxed, but one Jonathan Noble - a teacher training student - came up with the answer of his life: "1, 6, 15, 20, 15, 6, 1." I, we don't know either, but Jeremy Paxman said it was right so it must be.
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In fact, Paxman was mightly impressed that anyone got it at all - and not in his usual way, when he acts like he knows the answer to every question but he only does because someone wrote it on a card for him, but in a genuine, 'well done, aren't you clever, good effort sunshine', kind of way.
Now, the interesting part: I'm going to attempt to explain Pascal's Triangle.
It's basically a maths table in which the number below in a pyramid is the product of the two numbers above: so if it starts with 1, then row 2 is 1 and 1, row 3 is 1, 2, 1, and so on until infinity or whichever row Paxman wants you to know.
Featured Image Credit: BBCTopics: newcastle, TV and Film, UK Entertainment
