Cambridge

Above:
Some members of CUQS after Varsity 2023

The University of Cambridge in England has a quizbowl team known as the Cambridge University Quiz Society (CUQS).

History

In June 1999, Sean Blanchflower and Robin Bhattacharyya of Trinity's 1995 winning University Challenge team founded the Cambridge University Quiz Society. Cambridge has had a long-running rivalry with Oxford, playing an annual Varsity Match against them; in 2014, University Challenge winner Alex Guttenplan inspired Cambridge to its first ever Varsity victory. Cambridge emerged as a very strong contender on the UK student quizbowl circuit, placing in the top three at the British Student Quiz Championships (BSQC) every year since 2015, and winning in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.

Performances

Cambridge has secured four wins at the British Student Quiz Championships (BSQC), most recently winning in 2024 where a Cambridge A team consisting of Harrison Whitaker, Sam Foo, Agnijo Banerjee and Oscar Despard defeated Imperial A in a one-game final by 270-265.

Cambridge teams have been successful in ACF tournaments in recent years. A Cambridge A team consisting of Oscar Despard, Rachel Bentham, Krishnan Mulholland and Rhys Lewis won ACF Fall 2022 after a half-packet final against Birmingham A, winning 160-105. At the online mirror of ACF Winter 2022, a team of Harrison Whitaker, Liam Hughes, Abigail Tan and Krishnan Mulholland defeated Oxford B 330-280 in the last game to win the tournament. Cambridge A and B placed joint 2nd and joint 5th respectively at ACF Regionals 2023.

Cambridge saw additional success in the 2022-23 season by winning the 2023 Varsity Match against Oxford for the first time since 2019, with an A team of Abigail Tan, Harrison Whitaker, Liam Hughes and Oscar Despard defeating Oxford A 310-280 to decide the Varsity outcome for that year. In addition, a B team of Sam Foo, Agnijo Banerjee, Linus Luu and Oliver Church also won their 2023 Varsity match, winning 270-190 against Oxford B.

2023-24 Season

Under the presidency of Rhys Lewis, Cambridge enjoyed many successful and nerve-wracking moments. Cambridge hosted the 2023 UK mirror of ACF Fall, which, despite starting an hour late due to train issues (which will become a recurring theme), ended in a scintillating final, which saw a Cambridge A team of Arvin Boraghi, Ben Richards, William Deacon and Rose Conway defeat a strong Oxford B team consisting solely of Elliot Cosnett and Paige Crawley 300-265, in a match where the lead changed hand seven times. In doing so, Cambridge won ACF Fall for the third year in a row. A very impressive performance from Ben LaFond and Alessandro d'Attanasio in their debut quizbowl tournament saw Cambridge C finish as high as third, with Cambridge B putting in a strong performance as well, finishing 7th out of 16.

Subsequent tournaments in the first term saw Cambridge send a team to CREEK+ in Sheffield consisting of Andrei Hui, Ben LaFond, Rachel Bentham, Rose Conway and Rhys Lewis, which saw them make it to the final in which they unfortunately lost comprehensively 500-105 to a very strong Edinburgh team. At ACF Winter in Oxford, Cambridge A finished 4th, Cambridge B finished 6th (finishing bottom of top bracket, which will unfortunately be another recurring theme for the year), and Cambridge C finished 10th out of 12.

At the Southern Mirror of British Novice, a Cambridge A team consisting of Alessandro d'Attansio, Theo Sinclair, Rebecca Neely and Ben Atchison made it to a (disadvantaged) final against a Southampton team consisting of Zosia Mikolajczuk, Cormac Stephenson, Christian Sherrington and Zayyan Mahmood, and despite winning the first match 405-205, they couldn't repeat the feat in the rematch, losing 400-170, and Cambridge finished 2nd at a tournament for the second time in three weeks. Out of a field of 14 teams, Cambridge B and C finished 8th and 10th respectively

After British Novice came ARCADIA, which saw Cambridge A finish 3rd and Cambridge B finish 8th.

At ACF Regionals, after some intense protest drama in a match where Cambridge A lost by 5 points against Edinburgh, they narrowly missed out on the play-in game. Cambridge B continued their streak of finishing bottom of top bracket, coming 8th out of 16, despite nearly pulling off an upset against previous holders Imperial A, winning before yet more protest drama reversed the result. Cambridge C put in some good performances in bottom bracket, finishing 14th.

At DMA, a Cambridge A team consisting of Rachel Bentham, Shelley Yang, Rhys Lewis and Percy Yuen once again showed Cambridge's prowess at coming 2nd at 1.5 dot tournaments, finishing in that position behind a very strong Warwick A team. That day also saw Oxford's Liam Fowler pull off a stunning statline of 7/1/1 in a match against Cambridge A. Cambridge B had a good day at the tournament as well, finishing 5th out of 14.

After Cambridge hosted COOT, then came BSQC, the highlight of the year, and a tournament that Cambridge looked to win for the fourth even-numbered year in a row. Their A team consisted of Harrison Whitaker, Sam Foo, Agnijo Banerjee and Oscar Despard, with the former looking to be the first Cambridge player to win the tournament more than once. The day started well, with Cam A winning every match in the prelims, including a narrow 255-245 win against Edinburgh A. After lunch, they beat Oxford B before coming face to face with Cambridge B. Cambridge A are no stranger to losing matches to lower-ranked Cambridge teams at BSQC, and this time, Cambridge B triumphed over Cambridge A. Well, almost. A protest from Oscar on the biochemistry (which, according to TD Evan Lynch, was even more deranged than the protest he lodged the previous year) saw the result reversed and Cambridge A came out as victors. After losses later in the day to Durham A and holders Imperial A, Cam A ended the day on a 5-2 W/L record across the top bracket, which just so happened to be the same as Edinburgh A, Imperial A and Durham A. So the ties were settled by semi-finals, which saw Cambridge narrowly beat Edinburgh 320-270, which saw them face holders Imperial A, consisting of Justin Lee, Adam Jones, Michael Mays and Enoch Yuen, in the final. In order to win BSQC for a fourth time, Cambridge would have to do something they've never done before: win a final that was recorded. And it certainly did not start well. Despite getting the first tossup, Cambridge found themselves 225-70 down at the half. But after a flurry of five gets in a row, they found themselves only 220-210 down after 15. The next five tossups reportedly left Rhys on the verge of a heart attack: on 16, Sam negged the classical music. On 17, Justin negged the mythology and it went dead. On 18, Harrison powered the British History. On 19, Justin got the European Literature. It left the scores 265-250 in Imperial's favour. Tossup 20 was biochemistry. Oscar himself studies biochemistry, which was a good thing, but Justin also does chemistry so it would go down to that. Oscar got it, leaving Cambridge needing only one bonus part to win. The bonuses - ancient history, arguably Cambridge's one weak spot since losing history specialist Abigail Tan. They luckily managed the first bonus part, leading comments along the lines of "I don't care. We've won." from the team on the next two parts. The score finished 270-265 to Cambridge, and they, by the skin of their teeth, scraped their fourth BSQC title. Also at BSQC, Cambridge were the first institution to send a D team to a tournament for many years. Cambridge B, consisting of Brendan Bethlehem, Linus Luu, Maxwell Ye and Andrei Hui once again finished 8th, bottom of top bracket. Cambridge C, consisting of Ben LaFond, Rachel Bentham, Oliver Church and Rhys Lewis finished 13th out of 24, including a shock win against Oxford B. And Cambridge D, consisting of Arvin Boraghi, Shelley Yang, Sam Hutton and Percy Yuen, finished 20th; incidentally, that was the first team Cambridge have sent to a tournament since ACF Fall 2021 that did not feature a maths student.

Unfortunately, the curse of Cambridge finishing 2nd at tournaments still hung in the air. The following week was the inaugural WaShBowl mirror, which saw Cambridge A (Social Media Influenzas) lose a very narrow final against Southampton A (Southampton Gaslight) 300-280, in a tournament which saw Oliver Church finish with a statline of 20/62/4, finishing as top scorer overall on 82PPG.

The curse looked like it would strike again the following weekend at ILLIAC. A Cambridge team consisting of Sam Foo, Agnijo Banerjee, Maxwell Ye and Percy Yuen once again found themselves facing off against Imperial A in the final; this time consisting of Justin Lee, Enoch Yuen and Justin Keung. And once again, they found themselves down at a seemingly unassailable deficit at the half, 225-95. However, they managed to once again claw it back, this time doubling their win margin two weeks ago to win 335-325. It seemed Cambridge pulling off dramatic comebacks was a bit that was here to stay.

That was it for term two, however there was still time for the annual Varisty matches between Cambridge and Oxford. For the first time, each university fielded four teams. Oxford D beat Cambridge D, but Cambridge won the B and C matches. So, as always, the result of Varsity hinged on the final match. Cambridge were unchanged from their BSQC win, and Oxford A consisted of the same team they sent to BSQC: Omer Keskin, Jacob Robertson, Paige Crawley and Oliver Hargrave. Another slow start from Cambridge saw them down 195-130 at the half. But they've come back from worse. And indeed they did again, this time winning by 15, finishing 310-295, although they didn't take the lead until after tossup 18.

After Varsity and exams, came Booster Shot at Imperial. A Cambridge A team consisting of Sam Foo, Rachel Bentham, Andrei Hui and Rhys Lewis cleared the field and won. Cambridge B finished 10th and Cambridge C finished 14th out of 15.

Former Players

2024-25 Players

Cambridge

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History

Performances

2023-24 Season

Former Players

2024-25 Players

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