Brendan Bethlehem
| Brendan Bethlehem | |
| |
| Noted subjects | Ancient History, Classical Music |
| Current college | Cambridge (2023-) |
| Stats | HDWhite • NAQT |
Brendan Bethlehem, aka bweb[1], is a quizbowl player who studies Linguistics at Cambridge and is the incumbent President of the Cambridge University Quiz Society. From North London and educated at the extremely posh Westminster School, he is noted for being able to buzz well on almost all the distribution and for having a humourous surname.
University Career
Brendan took an unorthodox approach to the start of his quizbowl career by playing the 3-dot Penn Bowl as his first tournament. At that tournament he posted a characteristic statline of 6/6/8. Throughout the rest of the 2023/24 he played various tournaments on both Cambridge A and B, most notably leading Cambridge B to the top bracket at the 2024 British Student Quiz Championships. He was also the top scorer of the team that won the 2024 Cambridge Intercollegiate Quiz, and was elected Vice-President of CUQS.
It was one of the most impressive debut seasons in UK quizbowl history, with Thomas Hart stating that Brendan was "the best new player to have come onto the circuit in my four years on it" and Andrew Fisher describing him as "the best new quizbowl player the UK has had since Seoan Webb". In the 2023/24 UK Player Poll, Brendan placed 16th on the overall ranking and dominated the newcomers ranking, being ranked 1st by 62% of the voters.
In the midst of all of this quizbowl, Brendan was filming the 2024/25 series of University Challenge, where he represented Christ's College alongside Anniko Firman, Linus Luu, and team captain Oscar Despard. The humourous combination of his college and surname was much remarked-upon online. Christ's comfortably defeated Exeter College, Oxford in their first-round match and their second-round game against St Edmund Hall, Oxford will be aired on the 20th of January.
At the beginning of the 2024/25 quizbowl season, Brendan received two promotions. After Rhys Lewis was unable to stay at Cambridge for his masters year, Brendan became President of CUQS and due to Harrison Whitaker's graduation, Brendan replaced him on Cambridge A. As part of that team, he cleared the field at the UK Mirror of ARCADIA. He also had success at open tournaments, being on the winning team at the open mirror of WaShBowl (El Otoño del Pop Cultura) and the UK mirror of ARGOS (Cien Años de Quizboledad).
Notes
- ↑ The concatenation of his initials, Brendan William Evaristos Bethlehem, which has been noted for its humorous sound. He sometimes goes by B. W. E. Bethlehem.