There is a breed of quiz show that enjoys reminding you of your own gasping stupidity. Shows such as Eggheads and The Chase, which literally employ people to intimidate their audiences into believing that they’re sloping-foreheaded subhumans who lack the basic intellect to put a peg in a cup.

And yet, despite this, Only Connect stands alone. It is, without question, Britain’s hardest quiz show. It doesn’t exist to point out how stupid you are; it already knows that. No, if you’re a viewer of average intelligence, Only Connect is determined to utterly alienate you.

Quiz show Only Connect reaches its fiendish conclusion in BBC2 final Read more

Everything about Only Connect seems designed to make you feel uneasy. Its theme tune is muffled by nondescript rustling, as if it accidentally pocket-dialled you halfway through a hike. Each episode begins not with the sound of warm applause, but with a howling silence of withering judgement. Conservatively, 90% of each episode is made up of indecipherable muttering. Even its title is aggressively abstruse. “This isn’t for you,” Only Connect says. “Maybe come back when you’ve read a book.”

And this is precisely its appeal. Only Connect is 11 series old now, and it’s only growing in popularity. There are those who see it as a palate-cleanser; a small oasis in a television desert of Celebrity Big Brother and Paul O’Grady’s For the Love of Dogs. There are those who desperately attempt to play along in a doomed bid to justify their own self-worth. If my Twitter followers are any indication, there are those who just enjoy being barked at by Victoria Coren Mitchell. Me? I tend to let Only Connect wash over me, floored by how completely impenetrable it is.

Take last night’s grand final, for example. Participants were asked what linked Uralic, Slide Mountain, Paleo-Tethys and Panthalassa. They were offhandedly presented with a series of backward portmanteaux as if the concept of this alone wasn’t enough to throw the majority of the population into weeping fits of frustration. They were expected to complete a sequence based on both the atomic number of noble gases and the British-language derivation of their names. Meanwhile, on The Chase, Bradley Walsh says the word “gusset” out loud and then makes a fart sound with his mouth.

Despite sporadic charity one-offs, there will never be a full series of Celebrity Only Connect, because who the hell would go on it? Show Arg from Towie a bank of hieroglyphs and his brain would explode. No question. He’d try to describe the one that looks like an eye with a shoe coming out of it, and then there’d be a dull popping noise, and blood would seep from his mouth and nose. Then he’d flop over on to the desk and Chanelle Hayes from the 2007 series of Big Brother would start screaming inconsolably, and that would be it.

No, Only Connect is a show for people who don’t usually get to appear on TV. It’s for the nervous and ungainly, for people who’ve never quite managed to fit in. It’s for shy glances and problem hair. It’s a safe space, where a very specifically talented group of people get to show off in their own understated way for an audience of their peers. And this is what makes it so brilliant.

At the end of last night’s grand final, there was no big prize. Nobody went on holiday or got to pay off their mortgage. Instead, in the background as the lights dimmed and the credits rolled, Victoria Coren Mitchell simply handed the three winners a solitary slab of perspex and then just stood there for a bit. It was difficult. It was awkward. It was very Only Connect.

• This blog was amended on 19 January 2016. The word “obtuse” was mistakenly used instead of “abstruse”.