Weaver's Week 2009-07-26

Accumulate! begins with pictures of a spinning question mark over some mildly pompous original music. Goodness, didn't that title sequence turn up a few weeks later on BBC2's A Question of Genius? So it did. Any confusion between the two shows ends with the first sight of the host. While Kirsty Wark was pictured in the middle of the dot at the end of a question mark, Accumulate!'s host Daniel Peake is shown against a plain white wall. After a quick introduction to the teams, the quiz gets under way with only a little fuss.

Round One consists of five questions on a subject. In the sample final we saw, the questions had something to do with the London Underground, and something to do with people who appeared on banknotes. The latter, in particular, is a surprisingly rich vein of trivia that we hadn't thought of tapping. The first question is worth one point, the second is worth two points, and so on until the final question is worth five points. Incorrect answers aren't handed across to the other team, just to spite them for choosing the wrong category.

If the team can get the top answer (for instance, August was the most popular month, thanks to having five weekends), they'll earn one point; if they can get the second most popular answer, they get two points, and so on. Readers might recognise this scoring system as being a bit like that used on Topranko! back in the day. What Anthony Wilson never offered was a fake answer: one that was plausible but simply doesn't belong on the list. There are no points for correctly spotting the red herring.

This column's non-resident cat took an instant shine to this round: not only is she brilliant at trivia, but she can build a cup-and-plate tower so high that it requires planning permission. Humans aren't quite so good at this challenge, so the host gives them one point for the first layer, two points for the next, and so on until they reach the top. But if the building is less good than our cat's, it's liable to fall over, and what's the point of a toppled tower? There's no point in a toppled tower, so there isn't so much as one point awarded.

Almost inevitably, the quick-fire final round comes at the end. Super Accumulate! is a series of ten questions, each on the buzzers. The first question is worth one point, the second is worth two, and so on until the final question is worth ten points. However! There's a super catch for the speculative accumulator: an incorrect answer will cost a team that many points, and the other side gets a crack at the question. It's possible for a side very far behind to answer the last four questions correctly, scoop 38 points, benefit from a few incorrect interruptions, and glide to a most unexpected lead. Whichever side has the more points at the end of the round is declared the winner, and wins the week's mystery prize. Which, in the episode we saw, wasn't a mystery at all.

There may be a few technical limitations in the presentation of Accumulate! – the sound balance was all over the place, with the host far louder than the teams, and we might have liked to see some sort of backdrop behind the host and teams. Do students not pin curtains up on their walls for decorations any more?

All of this is knocked into perspective by three observations. First, the show doesn't outstay its welcome. Accumulate! is a twenty-minute game, and it's completed in about twenty minutes. There's no needless dragging out of proceedings so that the television company can fill hours and hours of airtime with the least amount of content. The show comes in, makes its point, and leaves. It's not rushed, nor does it outstay its welcome.

And the final observation: everyone involved is clearly having a lot of fun. It's obvious when someone's heart isn't in their production – just watch some of the late episodes of Totally Saturday, when even the channel controller had said the show wasn't up to much. Though Graham Norton was as good as ever, there was just that certain little something missing from his performance. Not so for Accumulate!, where host and contestants are quite obviously enjoying themselves. The tower round, in particular, is an idea that is so obvious it's the sort of thing we'd expect from comedy geniuses like Dick and Dom.

The show's website tells us that Accumulate! will return for a new series in the new academic year. We're rather looking forward to it. Interested readers may view the entire series via RUON's website.

Loughborough gets off the mark with the second starter; they claim to be the first technical university in the country, and is perhaps best known for its sporting prowess – the side has won many trophies, and produced such graduates as Paula Radcliffe and Lord Sir Sebastian Coe. They're also very good at the biology of Alice in Wonderland. UCL gets a set of bonuses on famous people whose deaths were eclipsed by even more famous departures. It's a phenomenon known as "Solti", after the conductor Georg. The visual round goes on Wisden cricketers of the year, and UCL has a 70-45 lead.

A question on web comic XKCD is answered by the mathematics student, and though it's still early in the second half, everyone has collected at least one starter. Loughborough aren't doing that well on the bonuses, but they're bettering UCL on the buzzers, and that puts them in touch, then in the lead. The second visual round is on David Cohen prizewinners, and the game is tied at 145-145.

Remember the last Young Musician of the Year? We're impressed that anyone does. Loughborough gets the starter, the bonuses finally fall for them, and the side begins to pull away. We're impressed that Jack Grahl for UCL simply knew that "nighest" became "next". Loughborough's quality on the buzzer proved the key factor, and they win the game by 205-175.

Next match: Clare Cambridge v Jesus Oxford

Instead, let's point and titter in the general direction of the mathematicians, who convince themselves that "Kojak" is a palindrome, reading the same forwards as back. However, they do get definitions of the mathematical constant pi, and neither side gets the audio round on songs re-written from German – we can honestly claim three points there. The mathematicians could also have claimed three on a question about things with three lines, but a little timidity cost two points. It's 3-1 after the opening exchanges.

Round two turns out to be pivotal: the mathematicians take a plunge on common road names, and not only are they happy to confess their knowledge of Thomas the Tank Engine to the millions viewing, but they say they were rehearsing just this question on the trip to The OC's sun-drenched studios. The wordsmiths strike back with vitamin deficiencies, but zig with "era" when the geological timeframe is "period". The mathematicians also ride their luck on international dialling codes, to lead 10-3.

The final round falls further in the mathematician's favour – Victoria suggests this might be because they're used to sending SMS messages, where (apparently) the elision of vowels is commonplace. Quest objects goes their way 3-1, famous newspaper headlines 2-0, peace prize winners 2-1, and social dances ends in a 0-0 draw. The mathematicians have a clear win, 20-9.

But we're interested by the very last question, in which "STCSTSWNG" is "East Coast Swing", and not "West Coast Swing". Now, if we're being so pedantic as to win the trans-national prize for pointless pedanticness, we might point out that the "W" in "West" is making the vowel sound, "weh". But then we think a bit further, and find that the "Y" in "Only" is making the vowel sound, "ee". That it's taken seventeen editions to spot this proves just what an unimportant point it is; that it has come to our attention means we should mention it, get it out of our system, and move right along.