Mastermind Round One - Heat 10

You wait all season for a former finalist to come along. . . Alright, we’ll come to that shortly. First of tonight’s contenders was Stella Traynor, who was answering on the band Crowded House. I only really knew two of their songs, and I love both of them. Stella, I dare say, knows all of them, and she gave a highly competent display, grabbing a haul of 11 points by the end of the round. Good performance.

My supposed banker subject for this evening was Super Middleweight Boxing, courtesy of Lawrence Cook. You may recall that Lawrence is a semi finalist himself, having reached the 2014 semis, where he was defeated by our own Daniel Adler. In his first round that year he answered on Heavyweight boxing, and I did well, although not as well as Lawrence did. Well, unfortunately I failed to get more than 4 on this round. My excuse is that Super Middleweight has only been around for about 3 decades, a lot of which you’ve had to pay to watch boxing, and I’m too cheap to do so. Lawrence’s 10 looked like a pretty good return on a fairly tough round.

I have a history of arriving at parties after everyone else has left. Or let me put that another way – I often don’t discover a TV show until everyone else has already been watching it for years. I still haven’t discovered Parks and Recreation for myself yet, and have never knowingly watched an episode. So managing to guess the answer to which state its set in quite impressed me. That was the only point I managed on this round, mind you. Kyle Hobman did considerably better, managing a good 12 and no passes to take the lead.

So to our third former finalist in 2 shows. Didier Bruyere reached the final of Aidan McQuade’s 2013 series. In fact, he was actually the series runner-up. So to say he has a serious Mastermind pedigree would be no less than he deserves. Didier this time round was answering on Claude Monet, or ‘show me the’ as his mates called him, and I was rather surprised to find that this was by some distance my best specialist round of the night. Didier didn’t do badly either, scooping 12 and no passes to take a share of the lead. 

So that was a good, competitive first round. All the contenders had prepared their subjects, so gold stars all round and not a detention to be seen. 

With all to play for Lawrence was first to return to the chair. In his semi final Lawrence managed an 11 from a minute and a half, while in his first round he managed 12 from 2 minutes. So this was a seasoned GK performer. And he gave us a decent GK round again this time. Lawrence added 12 to take the target to 22. This didn’t necessarily look like a winning score, but it did mean that all of the other three contenders would need double figure scores, and that’s enough o put you in the corridor of doubt. 

Stella Traynor did not look as if she would manage that when her round began. But she did what you must do, keeping her head despite a couple of answers that just would not come, and allowing the momentum of her round to pick up as she started picking off correct answers. In the end she didn’t quite get there, but her combined total of 21 is the kind of score which means she can be pretty happy with her evening’s work.

Kyle Hobman started his round At a tremendous clip, picking off correct answers with unerring accuracy. He was put to the test, mind you, as a couple of incorrect answers stopped him for a moment or two in his tracks. Never mind, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and had raised the target to 24 before the blue line of death started it’s circumnavigation of his score. He could have maybe added another 3 or 4, but the questions didn’t fall that way for him. Nonetheless, 12 and 0 passes meant that this was the least that Didier would need from his own round.

I can’t imagine having to tackle a GK round in a language that was not my first language, and yet Didier has done it, and very successfully, several times. You can’t say there was anything drastically wrong with his GK round tonight, either. In today’s money, though, 12 is a pretty decent score, and all it takes is a couple of stoppers pulling you up in your tracks, and it can become a challenging target. Let’s be fair too – Didier did get there. However, he incurred two passes on the way. In the end, that was what it took to give Kyle the win.

Congratulations Kyle – that is quite a scalp you have taken tonight. Very bad luck Didier, but at least let’s salute young talent.

The Details

Stella Traynor	Crowded House	11	0	10	3	21	3
Lawrence Cook	Super Middleweight Boxing	10	0	12	1	22	1
Kyle Hobman	Parks and Recreation	12	0	12	0	24	0
Didier Bruyere	Claude Monet	12	0	12	2	24	2