Last year, in a nail-biting finish which provoked anguished cries from the region of the Shannon Estuary, DCU beat UL by a mere five points to win the final of Challenging Times for the first time. It was, quite frankly, a controversial final, marred by a disputed last question, but it signified the intense rivalry that has grown among the colleges participating in the quiz competition.
Challenging Times is a joint Irish Times/ RTE endeavour, hosted by Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers. Now entering its eighth year after more than 100 programmes, its has taken its place beside the Irish Times Debate as one of the pre-eminent competitions for third-level students. Three colleges - UCC, UCG and Maynooth - have won the competition twice, while the RTCs and DIT have yet to make their mark. UCD and TCD are also notable by their absence from the list of winners, a situation which TCD attempted to rectify last year by holding their own final to select a team - an idea marred only by the fact that the buzzers delivered a small electric shock each time a player pressed one.
Last year, the finalists each took away crystal trophies and a set of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica for their respective universities, while the winners also received £2,000 from The Irish Times to spend on something interesting for the benefit of students in their college. The DCU team spent the cash on benches. That's crazy, fun-loving DCU for you . . .
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