Friday 6 October 2017

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

8 comments:

Dan said...

I just knew Lawrence looked familiar ...

Unknown said...

I don’t know if you follow the GP circuit, but Didier has won six of the last eight and was second place at the last WQC, so he’s probably got the best pedigree of any contestant since at least Jesse Honey. And he played well, so huge congratulations to Kyle Hobman. I hope he decides to get more involved in quizzing.

Kyle H said...

Dear Londinius

Silent fan of your blog for about a year or so.

I knew exactly who I was up against that day and I didn't think I stood a chance. To be honest, Didier had a set of long specialist questions and a very tough set of GK questions that I would have struggled with. But thank you for your kind words. I quiz in a local league just outside York and would like to do more quizzing.

Kind regards
Kyle.

(P.S. It's Hobman not Hopman)

Claire Slater said...

For the uninitiated, what is GP and WQC?

Kyle H said...

Grand Prix and World Quiz Championships.

Londinius said...

Thanks for your comments Dan and Hugh. Kyle - so sorry about that - I Will correct as soon as I've finished writing this response. You should be justly proud of what you achieved. As everyone else has pointed out, Didier is a quizzer of the highest stature, and you beat him fair and square. I don't know if you have already filmed your semi - my guess is that you probably have - but if you haven't, then you need fear no one.

Playing in a quiz league is, I think, an excellent way to improve as a quizzer. Have you ever played on the Grand Prix circuit? If not, then I think you'd love it. Best of retrospective luck for the rest of the series.

Kyle H said...

The name is no problem. The people running the official Mastermind Twitter got it wrong too and John Humphries called me 'Kylie'.

I want to do more quizzing but transport is a big issue. I know they held one in York earlier this year but I couldn't go.

Mycool said...

Kyle, wash your computer out with soap and water! It's Humphrys! But, very well done to beat Didier. With 10 episodes broadcast out of 24, he is 5th in the repechage, and so you may meet him again, although 24 does not normally get you into the semis.