QUICK STARTER FOR 10
University Challenge contestant stuns with rapid-fire knowledge
UNIVERSITY Challenge rarely lacks for clever contestants. But all the brains in the world are no use if you cannot hit the buzzer fast enough.
That, however, has not been a problem for history undergraduate Frederick Leo who has dazzled with his forceful two-handed reaction when he knows an answer.
And knowing the answers is what young Frederick is spectacularly good at. On Monday’s show, he got 28 questions right – helping Oxford’s St Edmund Hall rout Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and winning rare praise from presenter Jeremy Paxman.
Frederick, from Berlin, nailed questions from nuclear fission to ontology as well as identifying paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Eugene Delacroix, plus a symphony by Bedrich Smetana. But it was the turtleneck wearing undergraduate’s showboating which won over BBC2’s viewers.
One wrote: ‘Do you think they have to replace the button every time St Edmund Hall Leo has been on? Never seen anyone hit a button with such gusto.’ Another said the contestant’s ‘intensity’ was ‘scary in a good way’.
Frederick, who describes himself as a ‘snowflake’ on Twitter, follows in a distinguished tradition of University Challenge characters. In 2017, the gurning Eric Monkman, of Wolfson College, Cambridge, became a cult hero as he helped his team to the final.