Friday 14 October 2016

Mastermind: First Round: heat 14


I’ve had a better week, ladies and gents, I know that you’ve been worrying about that. So I will try to be more objective tonight than in previous weeks, although I will make an observation when we get to the GK rounds about something that struck me this time out.

If you twisted my metaphorical arm behind my back, then I would have to admit that for me pop music pretty much ended in about 1986- or that’s when I stopped taking a great deal of notice of it, anyway. So Nirvana were a little after my time. This meant I was glad to take the money and run with the two points that I managed on Mohan Mudigonda’s round on them. Mohan set a good pace and a high standard for the others to follow, putting on 11 points before the end of the round.

It looked like we were in for another good round for the first few questions of Peter Young’s round on the Empress Elizabeth of Austria. He rattled them off without much hesitation, and I know just enough about the Empress Elizabeth to know that these were not gimmes. However  - and this is pure speculation on my part – I think he was thrown by his first wrong answer, and this robbed his round of all momentum. It’s a cruel thing, if that is what happened, and there’s precious little you can do about it. Nothing prepares you for the experience of being in the chair – other than actually being in the chair, if you see what I mean. My experience was that coping with the experience got easier each time that I did it.

My eldest daughter never missed “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and I’d guess that the same was true for Cathy Gibbons. You had to feel sorry for Cathy, since, as John made a point of saying, she was actually rather close on a number of her incorrect answers. The fact of the matter was, though, that she ended the round with 5 points.

A fellow teacher, Simon Rule, offered us Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. Now, I have nothing against the Lake District – how could I, since the only time I’ve experienced any of its delights first hand was from a railway carriage. So I have absolutely no idea whether Simon’s questions were hard, easy, fair or whatever. But I do know that this was another double figure round, and in fact I’d go so far as to say he was unlucky, since he was probably only a fraction of a second off John starting to ask another question once the buzzer went. Nonetheless at only 1 point behind at the halfway stage at least he was in a very handy position.

Right, the GK rounds. If you’ve been with me for any length of time in this particular series you’ll possibly have noticed my theory that the GK rounds have been noticeably easier this time around. Well, something happened tonight. I felt that the level of the GK rounds served up tonight were far more like the previous few series – and I’m not just saying this because some of the contenders’ GK scores were lower than the average we’ve come to expect this time around. Now, as a viewer I’d far rather watch rounds of at least this level, rather than the getting on for sleb-Mastermind level of the GK rounds we’ve seen so far this series. It would have been a bit hard lines on the contenders in this show if they’d been in with a realistic shot at a repechage score, though.

As for those GK rounds, well, Cathy managed to smile after taking her score up to 11. Peter Young managed a double figure score of 11 to set the bar at 17. In any of the other shows of this season so far that wouldn’t have necessarily seemed that daunting a target. However, as I said, there was a funny feeling about this set of GK rounds.

Simon Rule needed 8 to take the outright lead, and in normal circumstances this year you wouldn’t have bet against him getting them. Yet tonight was a funny old show, especially in the GK, and what followed was something of a grim old struggle. You sensed that Simon knew a couple which he just couldn’t get to leap off the tip of his tongue. This meant that he managed just the 7 which put him level with Peter, although he was ahead on pass countback.

Needing just 7 himself in order to win, Mohan could have approached the chair again with confidence, and he certainly showed no nerves as he breasted the tape with time and questions to spare in the round. Indeed he went on to set the best GK total of the show with 12, for a comfortable win on a total of 23. Well played sir, and best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Mohan Mudigonda
Nirvana
11
1
12
3
23
4
Peter Young
The Empress Elizabeth of Austria
6
3
11
4
17
7
Cathy Gibbons
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
5
0
6
1
11
1
Simon Rule
Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells
10
1
7
3
17
4


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