Weaver's Week 2026-02-01

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5ks won the toss, and begin with the Hornéd Viper. Staging Duncan's death on the dance floor: something to do with Macbeth and a lyric? Something to do with songs?

Welcome to

The grand final, the 20th name on the trophy. Our competitors are the Pitchers and the 5ks. Neither of them appeared in the movie 8 Mile, but Victoria's going to talk about it anyway.

After neither team scores in the Cluedo question, it's into the pictures. Approximations of the shape of countries and their national flags; the hexagon of France, the circle of Sierra Leone, and that propels the Pitchers a point ahead. 5Ks bite back with people who don't shake hands, such as Eliva Svitolina and Victoria Azarenka at the tennis recently; the team moves 2-1 ahead.

The Lithuania '92 basketball team, Life of Brian, Moderna's Covid vaccine – hey, they were all funded by musicians, including The Grateful Dead, George Harrison, Dame Dolly Parton, and a mention of George Michael being utterly lovely to a Deal or No Deal player. That'll be 3-2 ahead for the Pitchers. A count of syllables in the abbreviation and expanded acronym (such as Nato 2, 11) give the Pitchers an equaliser.

Then it's the dreaded music question: songs based on Pachabel's Canon in D are clear to the Pitchers, and propel them into a 6-3 lead. Jack's Online Writings noted that the music question tended to be left till late in this opening round, and it's a good spot – tonight's was the 8th time the music question was last in Connections, and it had been last-but-one seven times. More than half the shows, music is still to find at the last meaningful choice.

On the host's right, the Pitchers are Alexia Jarvis, Jonathan Gibson, and captain Paddy Pamment. They came out of Group C of Death, beating the Benchwarmers in that absurd 30-24 game at the end of August, the Worker Bees in the progression round, Sorcerers in the quarters, and the Worker Bees again in the semi-final. All of their wins have been by huge margins, all have featured very strong Missing Vowels performances. Highlight of their series was Paddy's guess that there were 1.4 bikes per person in the Netherlands, which turned out to be precisely spot on.

Back to the quiz, and what do we have in the sequences? "Is it 31/03?" ask the 5ks, incorrectly. "Maybe it's 31/03…" begin the Pitchers, still wrong. No, it's the first time in the year when four digits change, which is still some months away. Events that moved in the modern Olympics is the next sequence, and it's in order of distance – from Melbourne to Stockholm is shorter than Paris to Tahiti for the surfing in '24. Pitchers extend their lead by two.

The 5ks are rather good at anagrams, and spot that their next sequence is anagrams of the highest mountains in the world – even though they cannot think of an anagram for "Everest" at speed, that'll be two back. A tricky triple-set next, spelling out STAR, then TREK using people's names in that show, and WARS using people in that show. Both sides come close, neither of them got on the right hailing frequency.

"I'm gonna throw you a bone, it was Jeremy Hunt." Cabinet ministers in the turbulent year of 2022: one defence secretary, two interior ministers, three primes minister, and a University Challenge team full of finance ministers. Two to the 5ks. Then pictures of double-acts beginning D&A (Dido and Anaeas), C&B, B&C, so obviously it's Ant and Duck. After the round, it's 10-7 to the Pitchers.

5Ks are Fiona Titcombe, Thomas Carey, and captain James Haughton. They came out of Group B, and began with a loss to the pub singer team Showstoppers. They came back to beat the Grapevines, then extracted revenge on the Showstoppers. The quarter-finals saw a win over Oh No They Didn't, the semi accounted for the Metrophiles. Only one team has successfully shot the Five Point Cannon this series, and it's the 5Ks; with the arrangement of Braille dots.

Wall time, and the Pitchers pick a wall full of people's names. Some very good play here, first picking out politicians nicknamed iron, then people who wear deerstalker hats, people whose names begin with awards, and Robert Downey Jr characters. They made that look easy, and evaded a nice little false connection – three of the politicians were at Oxford University, but Vitaly Klitchko did not study or serve as president.

The 5ks also knock their wall off in very little time. Characters played by Gary Oldman, people whose first name is a NATO codeword, people who wear bowler hats, and people whose nickname includes "The Great". Lovely to see Oscar the Grouch and Charlie Chaplin put in turns on both walls, and that was a very fair pair of high-quality walls. 20-17 to the Pitchers.

So it comes to this. Pitchers have had it close going into Missing Vowels, and that is not a round where 5Ks traditionally do well. "Two sitcoms" has the 5ks giving half of an answer each, and a 2-2 draw. Novels after a unit conversion falls to the 5Ks, 2-1. A wine, a woman, and her song, the one point goes to the Pitchers. Our head hurts even thinking about these stumpers, bravo to the players for even getting one!

All of which means, with a 24-21 win, the Pitchers take the crown and the title and a starring role in the magnificent closing ceremony. Like every episode this series, it's introduced with an apposite quote from "Paradise Lost", a very dull book by Milton Jones that might get his series cancelled and replaced by Only Connect.

Back in 2008, the BBC made a double-bill of quizzes testing the way the brain really works. We rather enjoyed Brain-Jitsu for the younger viewers, and were quite sniffy about the shoulder-peak programme Brainbox Challenge. But it's the older folks' show that has meandered its way back to the top of the BBC bran tub and into the daytime Trivia Triple, and perhaps it's worth another look.

Host for the programme is Clive Anderson, and it quickly becomes clear that he thinks this is the Clive Anderson show: the man just will not shut up. The format requires contestant chats to be brief, there's quite a lot to squeeze in to each episode. The format does not require contestant chats to be 90% Clive Anderson, asking rhetorical questions to which he thinks he knows the answer. We're not here to watch Clive Anderson, we want to hear Johnny tell us about his love of rugby, or Alisdair to explain the idea behind live-action roleplay.

The programme also has a narrator, Sarah Parnell. She went on to appear in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society film, and does the announcements for London Underground's subsurface lines. Sarah gives a scripted introduction for each contestant, explaining their strengths and weakness in about fifteen seconds, and voices some of the rounds.

Brainbox Challenge also had a set, because filming programmes against a black background was not the done thing in 2008. It's a chrome and curves design, a few arches interlock above the main playing area. There's an illuminated drawbridge over a dry moat for the contestants to walk along, but only after they've passed through a brightly-lit corridor. Although the contestants all gaze at a giant video screen, it's made invisible in most of the beauty shots. Chris Webster's design was doubtless to the producers' brief; viewed twenty years later, it very much looks like an attempt to predict the sci-fi future via the set of Top of the Pops circa 1990, and it's had even less staying power than Adamski.

All of the challenges are displayed on a video screen, there are no physical games or tests of dexterity. Unlike the subsequent House of Games, there's not even a tablet computer to write down answers; the tablet computer had not yet been invented in 2008.

Each show begins with a look at the contestants, anonymous faces appear on rotating cubes. There's also a counting game, along the lines of "will more yellow or red flowers fall into this animation of Clive Anderson's big head?"

Brainbox Challenge is one of those winner-stays-on shows: the winner of each individual duel stays on to face the next opponent. Or they can walk away with the money they've won. Starts at £100 for a single win, then £250. Play and lose, and you'll go with nothing. But three wins nets,£500, and that money is safe if you play on. Then it's £750, £1000, £1500 and that much is safe. Next levels are £2000, £2500, £3000, and a safe level of £4000. The final run was £5000, £6000, £7000, £8000, and the maximum of £10,000. Nobody ever played for the top prize, though one player did retire with £8000 from the main game and £2000 from the bonus round.

For the first time, let's look at each of the games they played.

Symbol Solution, ten letters are replaced by shaped symbols, and three or four words are written out with these symbols. Decode the symbols to work out a word relating to a big picture.

Space Hoppers, identify the word hidden in a sentence. The words are always of at least four letters, and cover at least two words (and hence hop across a space). Each word matches a simple clue, like "documents" or "sporty". Unlike on House of Games, the sentences do not contain a further clue to the word. Best of nine in this round.

Vowel of Silence, a word appears with all of its vowels removed. A single word with all its vowels removed. By 2008, Only Connect was nearly complete as a format, and would quickly make this round its own; all these years later, it's quite strange to see something as simple as RNFLL and not RGH TSR NFLL TPCS.

Letter Link Four four-letter words appear, each with a letter missing. The same letter is missing from each word, buzz in to identify the letter.

Word Matrix A set of core letters is given, and other sets of letters fly by. Identify the correct words formed by the core letters and those flying by. Words can be joined at the start (buf-fer) or end (fer-ried). Each player has their own individual matrix, with seven possible correct answers. More right answers win; if there's a tie, fewer incorrect words takes priority.

Fading Figures, a set of simple sums appear on the screen, and are whisked away by a tornado. Only when the last sum has vanished can the contestants buzz in with all the correct answers. This is less a test of mathematics or memory, and more of a test of reflexes.

Code Nine, work out the answer to a simple numbers problem. Except that each digit is coded by taking the nines compliment, and the answer is again recoded. For instance, we see 3+5; that decodes to 6+4, which is 10, and then that re-encodes to 89. Clive's explanation makes more sense than we have space, and viewers also get to see the full working out on screen for a moment. Fittingly, this game's best of nine.

Five a Day Fruit are coded into numbers from 1 to 5. Then we see a sum involving between three and six of the fruit, and give the numerical answer. The fruit and their values are shown at the start of the round, and gently reminded through the early questions.

Double Trouble See one sum, hear another, and add the two answers together. The spoken sums are given by Sarah Parnell.

Answer Wall Twenty seconds to memorise a board of twenty answers – all of them nouns, mostly discrete nouns of things you can drop on your foot like "stapler", "gnome", or "aeroplane". This game's the best of nine.

Animal Magic See eight animal pictures, each associated with a sound it wouldn't normally make. Then see the animals again, and buzz in by naming the correct noise.

Total Recall Remember the order in which a sequence of things flash at you. Played like a penalty shoot-out, with first error effectively losing. Each player attempts a sequence of four things, then if they both get it right, then a sequence of five, and so on.

Pairs in Squares Match pairs of sounds behind numbered squares. Just five pairs to find, which generally keeps the game quite short. We didn't see any of the players presage Alison from Genius Game and use the anti-social method of repeating squares they'd already heard.

Third Dimension A representation of a solid shape appears on the big screen. The aim is to work out how many faces each has. The shapes will rotate and twist to show all of the detail to the contestants, and to us at home. As the round progresses, the shapes get more and more complex.

Compass Confusion See a compass, and rotate through the most important points as instructed. Clive claims that they make the round more complex by rotating the compass so that north is no longer at the top; while it's true that visual cues are broken, it doesn't alter the mathematics that West then 5 clockwise will always end up at South-East. Best of nine.

Sphere and Now Two circles of rotating letters, each letter in various colours. Clive calls out a word from the left-hand sphere, and the contestants find a word on the right-hand sphere that matches the unique colour sequence. So if the sequence on the left is blue-yellow-red-white, the contestants need to find a word on the other sphere that's also in blue-yellow-red-white, and buzz in with that word. Fiendishly difficult to explain, much simpler to play, and possibly our favourite of all the challenges. Three spheres are used each time, and it's the best of nine.

Picture This Bits of the outline of an object appear on the screen, each light traces out a small fragment of the object. This column found Picture This the most difficult game – we had to let our eyes de-focus and almost fill the gaps between the lights.

Shaping Up A set of ten shapes is shown. Three or four of them combine to make up one big complex shape. The contestants are challenged to identify which little shapes make up the bigger shape – and it disappears from the screen as soon as someone's buzzed in. The shapes can be larger or smaller, but nobody ever attempts to rotate the shape. Celebrity Puzzling is taking notes.

The Brainbox Challenge ends each show. This basically revolved around contestants seeing a sequence of shapes, and calling them out after some more shapes have passed by. So you might see circle and square, but say nothing. Then see a triangle, say circle. See a diamond, say square. The round stops when you get one wrong. £50 for each correct answer, and a full chain of 16 correct answers earns a bonus to take to £1000.

The precise rules changed each week through the series. First week, name the shape two ago, but this proved far too easy and they gave away about £4600 in five shows. Yikes, that's the budget vanishing! Second week, numbers appear on the shape, and players are asked to recall shape and number from two ago. This proved a bit more challenging. For the third week, the challenge was to name the shape from three earlier, and that seemed to be the right mixture. And for the final week, it was number and shape from three earlier.

All contests are best-of-seven unless we say otherwise; ties are broken by extending the round. As well as the Brainbox Challenge itself, each episode generally featured one game from each of the categories, plus a fifth from somewhere. We generally didn't see a game more than twice a week, which made each show quite refreshing to watch.

Matt Katz and Richard Webb wrote the music for the show, a frantic electroclash burble for the title, a similar but less busy drone during the main games. The brain challenges were consulted by psychologist Doctors Colin Cooper, Donna Lloyd, and Ellen Poliakoff.

If they were to re-make Brainbox Challenge today, we suspect that two contestants would be there for the whole episode, with a decent cash prize for the winner, and perhaps the bonus round as it stood. Winner stays on would work, but we suspect players would be retired after three episodes, just as in the original. That should keep the prize budget around £2000 per episode, which is actually a bit less than they ended up giving away in 2008.

And the most important change: get a host who knows when to shut up. Our abiding memory of Brainbox Challenge is of Clive wittering on as though every last millisecond of silence was a personal insult. We like a host who can talk to the contestants, but not one who talks over the contestants as Clive often did.

The examples from earlier? Vowel of Silence: "Rainfall" in the original, "Right As Rainfall To Pieces" in the modern challenge. Word Matrix: Popular.

Sheffield won on University Challenge, beating Darwin Cambridge by 155-115. Sheffield had by far the better of the first exchanges, at one point leading by 135-40. Darwin came back in the second half, and by the gong they'd answered only one starter fewer than the opposition. Darwin's loss came from poor performances on the bonuses, 8/24 is never going to be a winning performance. Sheffield were 63% on their bonuses, though four penalties for incorrect interruptions dragged their overall performance down to 53%.

Sheffield will need to beat next week's winners (Imperial or Warwick) or the winners from Manchester -vs- UCL. Sheffield are exceptionally strong on physics and maths, great at languages, and the strongest side on history. Darwin's path goes through next week's winners, then the losers from Edinburgh -vs- Merton Oxford; the Cambridge side are the weakest on Literature and physical sciences.

Griff Rhys Jones absolutely bossed the House of Games round where you have to recall all of the other answers in the round so far. Didn't win him the day, that went to Jon Kay from Breakfast Time. Alexandra Mardell also won a day, and Tasha Ghouri was not a great quizzer but great entertainment. One of those weeks that creeps up on you and leaves you thinking, that's really very good.

Prue Leith has stepped out of the Bake Off tent. She issued a statement:

"After nine series and judging more than 400 challenges, I have decided to step down as a judge on The Great British Bake Off. Bake Off has been a fabulous part of my life for the last nine years, I have genuinely loved it and I’m sure I'll miss working with my fellow judge Paul, Alison and Noel and the teams at Love Productions and Channel 4. But now feels like the right time to step back (I'm 86 for goodness sake!), there's so much I'd like to do, not least spend summers enjoying my garden. Whoever joins the team, I'm sure they'll love it as much as I have. I feel very lucky to have been part of it."

Prue Leith stepped into the shoes of Mary Berry, and has been an integral part of Bake Off and its success on Channel 4. She'd previously been on competition shows My Kitchen Rules and Great Local Menu. Prue originally made her name as a successful restaurant chef, opening the restaurant Leith's in 1969; she subsequently founded a cookery school. She also worked on the board of British Rail, turning its much-derided Traveller's Fare into something almost worth eating.

The replacement will be Nigella Lawson, who used to be the one person on television who would force Only Connect to move and interrupt Quizzy Monday. Channel 4 viewers will remember her from The Taste, that show with people cooking a spoonful of food. Other names suggested included Caroline Waldegrave, who stepped in for Prue on last year's celebrity series; Ravneet from Junior Bake Off, and former Bake Off contestants Candice and Nadiya. It's thought likely that the producers vetoed – on the grounds that it would upstage the other judge – a sentient 45-year-old British Rail pork pie.

The Traitors is coming to the London stage. The play – produced with Neal Street Productions, and written by comedian John Finnemore – will be put on at an un-named theatre next year. Studio Lambert promise that it's a "bold and surprising theatrical performance", and we're promised "an intense, joyful night out".

Our thoughts are with Rachel from this year's series, after her mother died this week. Rachel spoke on the show about how her mother had dementia, and her memories were going, and they wanted to make as many good memories as they could while there was still time. Very best thoughts to all the family.

Poll of the Year 2025 results are out. Our lovely readers voted Destination X their favourite new show of the year, with The Inner Circle the format most in need of improvement. The streaming section was won by Last One Laughing on Amazon. Best show of the year remained Only Connect (2), with The Traitors dropping back to second place. Credit also to Celebrity Puzzling, which had the most net positive votes after discounting negative votes.

Coming up this week: Secret Genius (C4, Sun, Mon) with Alan Carr, Susie Dent, and brain tests. Mock the Week returns (TLC, Sun) with Dara Ó Bríain. Aussie show Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee comes to our screens (BBC3, Fri). Terry Wogan Night (BBC4 and Radio 4 Extra, Sun) on the tenth anniversary of his death. And we've a new run of Just a Minute (Radio 4, Mon).

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