Friday 21 October 2016

Mastermind 2017: Round One: Heat 15


Well, yes, before you ask, I really did enjoy having a really competitive set of specialist rounds in tonight’s show. I couldn’t fault any of the contenders’ preparations for their rounds. I’ll say more about that afterwards.

So let us really begin with Loretta Waters. Loretta was offering us the films of Ewan McGregor. I surprised myself by managing half a dozen of these, since I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m a Ewan McGregor fan. Oh, don’t get me wrong, a good actor, but not one to make me stir from the Clark sofa when one of his films is on at the Odeon, if you know what I mean. I venture to say that Loretta Waters is a lot more enthusiastic about him since she managed a double figure score of exactly 10. Barring a truly amazing round from one of the three contenders yet to come, she was going to be in contention at half time.

As was John Cockerill. John was offering British Race Courses. Now, sometimes you can tell when a contender is well prepared, has confidence, is is going to tear their round up. I felt that within three or four questions during John’s round. If you play in a range of quizzes it can be quite useful to know a little bit about racecourses, and I knew enough to know that John’s questions were certainly not all sitting ducks, and this made the round of 12 even more impressive. If he could put on anything like as good a performance in GK, I fancied we’d be seeing a high score from him.

If Sree Kanthamneni was at all daunted by the round which he had to follow he didn’t show it. World Heritage Sites provided him with 11 points of his own, and once again this was a subject that I know enough about to vouch for the fact that you’d really have to know your stuff to get into double figures on it. So far we’d had three double figures rounds, and three rounds with no passes. Were we about to make it a full house?

Well, almost. We certainly had another double figures round from Ruth Russell-Jones, who answered questions on the Shardlake novels of CJ Sansom. I have to admit that I have never read any of these, although I did find that a general knowledge of Tudor History was enough to bring three or four points as it was. However her 11 points was also accompanied by a single pass, but not to worry about that.

So to the General Knowledge. Sadly Loretta Waters’ challenge evaporated during her GK round. She never really managed to get any momentum going, but never lost her cool, and finished the round in one piece with 6 points for a total of 16. Sree Kanthamneni managed double figures to take the target to 21. I have to say that sometimes you watch, and when a contender gets an answer wrong, they are often very wide of the mark stabs in the dark. What Sree didn’t know, by and large he made very intelligent guesses on, and I felt he was a little unlucky not to post a few more.

Ruth Russell-Jones set about her task, and it was by no means clear whether she would fall short of, or exceed the total. In the end she did neither, equalling Sree’s GK score of 10 and 1 pass for a score 21. However Sree had just the one pass overall, while Ruth had too, so if it went to countback, Sree would still have come out on top.

However, there was the little matter of John Cockerill’s round first. I won’t lie, I do enjoy it when a contender sits down in the chair in a businesslike manner, and sets about showing exactly how it’s done in a GK round. Yes, John passed on a couple, but he did it quickly, and never lost momentum in his round. Quick, concise answers and what looked like some good sensible guesswork allowed him to pile up a score of 16, thus giving him a commanding win by 7 points. That was a good performance, Sir – best of luck in the semi finals.

The Details

Loretta Waters
Films of Ewan McGregor
10
0
6
4
16
4
John Cockerill
British Race Courses
12
0
16
3
28
3
Sree Kanthamneni
World Heritage Sites
11
0
10
1
21
1
Ruth Russell-Jones
The Shardlake Novels of C.J. Sansom
11
1
10
1
21
2

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