Emmanuel College Cambridge beat Manchester University on Monday to reach the finals of this year’s University Challenge.

The Emmanuel College team, consisting of Alex Guttenplan, Andy Hastings, Jenny Harris, and Josh Scott, answered questions on such diverse topics such as The Smiths, Zeno, and web comics to reach the finals. Another question required them to translate the Latin mottos of premier football clubs.

Taking an early lead in the semi-final, Emmanuel had already attained 90 points before Manchester were able to get their first starter question. The team continued to dominate the remainder of the match, accruing an outstanding 315 points to Manchester’s 120.

According to team captain Alex Guttenplan, “I was especially pleased by the way we came together as a team as the series went on.” He credits this as “the reason why we've gone from losing our first-round match to reaching the final.”

Despite losing out in the first round to Regent’s Park College, Oxford the Cambridge team stayed in contention with one of the highest losing scores. Since then they have gone on to beat Christ’s College, Cambridge, University College London, as well as Jesus College, Oxford and Imperial College London.

As Jeremy Paxman noted in the semi-final, such victories required “a familiarity with everything from Machiavelli to smoked haddock”.

Though Emmanuel’s success has been a combined effort, team captain Guttenplan has stood out as the sensation of this year’s University Challenge, drawing comparisons with last year’s star Gail Trimble, who was described as the “human google”.

Much like Trimble, Guttenplan too has been the target of much media attention, and has been profiled by national media outlets including the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.

Guttenplan has also stimulated interest online, and has inspired numerous Facebook groups. One such group, titled,  “alex guttenplan; very clever. very nice”  boasts over 1,300 “guttenfans”.

Guttenplan has brushed aside the hype. Speaking to Varsity last term, he said, “I have the memory for remembering interesting but useless facts. That, and a lot of time procrastinating on Wikipedia.”

Emmanuel is scheduled to play St John’s College, Oxford in the grand final on Monday, April 5th. If successful, Emmanuel will become the first Cambridge College to win University Challenge since Trinity College won in 1995.