Mastermind - Half Term Report

Apparently that's it for mastermind 2009 until 2010 - Gardener's world takes over next week, I believe. So its probably an opportune time, halfway through the first round, to look back over what we've seen so far this series.

Name - Subject - SS score - GK score - Total score - Total passes

Chaz Early - Bill Hicks 18 – 0/ 11 – 0/ 29 - 0

John Cooper - Handel 16 - 1/ 13 - 2/ 29 - 3

Mike Court - Ocean Liners 14 - 1/ 14 - 0/ 28 - 1

*Andrew Warmington - Ancient Greece 14 - 0/ 14 – 3/ 28 - 3

Will Salt - Robespierre 15 - 2/ 13 - 2/ 28 - 4

Tony Esau - Greeks in Sicily 14 - 1/ 13 - 1/ 27 - 2

*Mark Grant - Manet 17 - 0/ 10 - 2/ 27 - 2

Ian Orriss - Latin kingdom of Jerusalem 16 - 1/ 11 – 3/ 27 - 4

Ian Scott - Massie Paul Nash 14 - 0/ 12 – 2/ 26 - 2

* Barbara Thompson - Female Cabinet ministers 14 - 2/ 12 - 1/ 26 - 3

* Les Morrell - Clement Atlee 16 - 0/ 10 - 3/ 26 - 3

Gavin McEwan - Germanic Languages 14 - 0/ 12 – 4/ 26 - 4

Chloe Stone - Cazalet novels 14 - 5/ 12 – 3/ 26 - 8

Colin Wilson - World Heavweight Boxing champs 16 - 0/ 9 - 0/ 25 - 0

Keith Pottage - History of the NFL 14 - 0/ 11 - 2/ 25 - 2

William de’Ath - Kurt Vonnegut 15 - 1/ 10 - 3/ 25 - 4

Brian Allerdyce Apple Records 12 - 3/ 13 - 4/ 25 - 7

* Frances Gregory - Graham Greene 16 - 1/ 8 - 1/ 24 - 2*

Susan Sworn - Richard III 19 - 0/ 5 – 3/ 24 - 3

Richie Venner - Henry VII 14 - 2/ 10 - 2/ 24 - 4

Ian Speed - Indie Music 16 - 1/ 8 – 3/ 24 - 4

Euan McCulloch - Architecture of Aberdeen 16 - 0/ 8 - 6/ 24 - 6

Vishal Dalal - Akiro Kurosawa 16 - 0/ 7 - 4/ 23 - 4

* Tom Hutchings - Thomas Arnold 15 – 1/ 8 - 4/ 23 - 5

Joe Docherty - New Wave Cinema 14 - 0/ 8 - 5/ 22 - 5

Dave Taylor - Paul Dirac 10 – 0/ 11 - 1/ 21 - 1

Philip Smith - Morehei Ueshiba 11 - 1/ 10 - 2/ 21 - 3

Roy Watson - Davis - Basil Rathbone films 15 - 1/ 6 - 3/ 21 - 4

Adam Lister - Groucho Marx 13 - 3/ 8 – 2/ 21 - 5

* Mike Hely - Battle of Britain 10 - 0/ 11 – 5/ 21 - 5

Bernadette Turner - Twilight novels 12 - 1/ 9 - 6/ 21 - 7

Penny Billyeald - Dorothy Whipple 10 - 5/ 11 – 4/ 21 - 9

Julie Duff - Mont Blanc 10 - 0/ 10 - 2/ 20 - 2

Mike Wilkin - Jazz Music 13 - 0/ 7 – 3/ 20 - 3

Lisa Hermann - George Cross 14 - 1/ 6 – 2/ 20 - 3

Abigail Maher - Louis Wain 15 - 1/ 5 - 3/ 20 - 4

Shaun Deehan - John Hume 9 - 2/ 11 – 4/ 20 - 6

John Higgins - Birdcage Novels 12 – 3/ 7 - 5/ 19 - 8

Paul Tucker - Chartism 11 - 0/ 7 - 4/ 18 - 4

Katie McCorkindale - Paul Auster 11 - 1/ 7 - 3/ 18 - 4

Mike Gradone - The Stone of Destiny 13 - 1/ 4 - 8/ 17 - 9

* David Porch - The Ascent of Man 10 - 0/ 6 – 1/ 16 - 1

Sarah Dakin - Tim Burton 11 - 2/ 5 – 2/ 16 - 4

John Grasham - Leonhard Euler 9 - 2/ 5 – 5/ 14 - 7

Ron Ragsdale - Egyptology 8 - 4/ 6 – 4/ 14 - 8

Maud Robinson - Oscar Wilde 8 - 6/ 6 – 4/ 14 - 10

Evan Williams - Isaiah Berlin 3 - 10/ 8 - 4/ 11 - 14

Michael Burton - Angels 2 - 7 /5 - 8/ 7 - 15

Bold denotes a heat winner
Bold and italic denotes one of the current six highest scoring runners up - although I have also included Brian Allerdyce. Mr. Allerdyce came third in his heat, and its not clear to me whether he will take one of the six slots or not.
* denotes that the contender has played in a previous series
For the sake of brevity , I have shortened the titles of some of the specialist subjects.

The table above shows the details of the contenders in the first half of the series. I don’t really know that it proves anything in particular, although its worth noting that at the moment, John Cooper, who leads the runners – up board, has the second best score of the whole series, being only beaten on passes by Chaz Early. Bad luck on being in that heat, Mr. Cooper, but surely you’ve got a runner up spot in the bag.

So what has caught the eye in the first half of the first round ? Well, Susan Sworn’s brilliant specialist round on Richard III was something of a Hall of Fame performance. Alas, her 5 on GK gave her the unenviable achievement of having the greatest gap between her SS and GK performances, a difference of 14 points. In the same way my favourite weird and wonderful subject was Angels, taken by Michael Burton, but he too made an impression for the wrong reasons, having the joint lowest ever total score in regular MM.

In terms of specialist subjects, Historical and Biographical subjects have been quite fruitful providing us with 6 semi finalists or potential semi finalists, while popular culture has provided us with just one semi finalist so far. If you take the Arts and Literature as one category, that has provided us with 5 semi finalists, or potential semi finalists.

Its also worth noting that only 8 of the contenders so far have been on the show before, which makes 1/6 of the this first half.

Anyone who is still in the competition is a potential winner, and so my comments have to be viewed in this light. So with this caveat, I would say that the top 13 contenders in the table could potentially win. All of them scored double figures in GK. A lot of it will come down to a couple of factors –
1) How well will they cope with learning a second subject ?
This is one thing which stops me from coming out and tipping Chaz Early at this stage. He scored a massive 18 on Bill Hicks – he’ll have to go some to repeat this in the semi. 11 on GK makes him look a little vulnerable. I may of course be wrong. On the other hand, both Mike Court and Andrew Warmington scored 14 on their GK rounds, to go with 14s on their specialists. That’s the kind of performance which makes you look like a serious contender.
2) How well with they cope with harder GK in the semis ?
OK, I’ve no actual proof that he GK gets harder in the semis, but I kind of have a sneaking suspicion that it does. Everyone who gets to the semis has pretty much already shown that they can learn a specialist subject, and so this makes GK all the more important in the semis.

So working on this, I think Mike Court and Andrew Warmington definitely look like potential finalists, as do Will Salt and Tony Esau. However bubbling just underneath these we also have former runner-up Mark Grant, and this year’s best chance so far for another female champion, Barbara Thompson, both of whom have the wherewithal to make a serious challenge in the semis.

A pat on the back for Jon and the production team as well. A body of public opinion has been calling for the return of highest scoring runner up semi final places, and an end to the inter-round chat for some time now, and this season has brought both of them. I think that the filmed inserts are in the right place, and as a result the pace of the show has dramatically improved. Well done !

Facts and figures

Highest score – Chaz Early – 29 – 0
Highest specialist score – Susan Sworn – 19 – 0
Highest GK score – Mike Court 14 – 0