In the Thick of It

For the final round, things are very different: it’s a quick fire round. This round is all about thinking on your feet, so you can’t really prepare for it.

You will be presented with a series of topics, and you’ll have to start talking about a possible solution to that problem that is as good or as ridiculous as you can make it. Your aim is to talk for 1 minute each time.

Here’s an idea of the kinds of things that might come up:

• What should we do to make slow-moving people hurry up?
• What should be done about smartphone addiction?
• What should we do to stop anti-social behaviour?
• How should we fix fake news?
• How do we make cyclists better?
• Is there anything we can do to end “Blue Monday”?
• If you could introduce a new tax, what would it be for?

(It’s not an exhaustive list.)

Scoring

The scoring for this round works a little differently. You will be asked to respond to 4 problems in the quick fire round.

You gain a point for each second that you keep talking without hesitation or repeating yourself, up to 60 additional points per problem.

You can gain up to an additional 10 points for each problem if you come up with an interesting, funny, or very practical solution to the problems you’re presented with.

There are 280 points available in this round.