Mastermind - Round One - Heat 19

There are, dearly beloved, certain specialist subjects which I’m sure go down on more application forms than others. Such a subject was offered by our first contender last night, Madeline Grant, in the shape of the Harry Potter novels. Last time out was in 2015, when Barbara Flaherty scored a perfect 15 from 15, and before that in the 2012 Sleb series, and the 2011 series proper. Madeline produced a perfect round, and you cannot do better than that. I’ve read and enjoyed all of the novels, and I have to say that these were as testing a set of questions as you’d get on any subject – put it another way, you really had to know your stuff to have a chance of a good score on this.

Burdened with support from the Clark sofa last night was teacher Peter Stiles. He offered us The Battle of the Bulge as a subject. Now, twice during the specialist rounds last night I was struck by the way the effect of the black chair can sometimes make contenders miss out on one of the simpler questions. In Peter’s case it was Robert Shaw Von Runstedt, which I bet he would normally answer without a second thought. 9 was a perfectly respectable score, but with a 6 point lead to overhaul I couldn’t see him progressing to the semis.

Now, Allan Cook produced another excellent round, his subject being Juliet Stevenson Rosalind Franklin. For the uninitiated, Rosalind Franklin was the X Ray crystallographer who played a vital role in the discovery and final confirmation of the structure of DNA. Allan answered very accurately, but his technique was an interesting contrast to Madeline’s. Madeline gave her answers as quickly as possible, while Allan’s answers were built for comfort rather than speed. I don’t blame him for this – an accurate 12 is far better than a lightning fast 10. Still, at least he had given himself a shot.

Finally Nick Gunatilleke, who gave us the Waterloo Campaign, and the second example of missing out on the relative sitter. I bet you that Nick has never failed to answer the name of Christopher Plummer The Duke of Wellington’s horse before, and never will again. He did rally after this nervous start though, and produced a respectable round of 9. Sadly, though, this meant that that at the turn around we were really left with a two horse race, and one of those horses was a long shot. 

Peter, then, returned to the chair for his GK round. I’m always glad to see a contender reach double figures on GK. If you can manage that, then you’ve got nothing to beat yourself up over, and Peter did manage 10. With the best will in the world though this was never going to win this show. Nick gave it a lash, but he finished with 16 overall. 

Allan Cook actually produced the best GK round of the night. In my heart of hearts I felt that he needed at least 13 to really give himself a chance and to put Madeline into the corridor of doubt. His 11 was perfectly respectable, but it did leave Madeline needing just 9 for an outright win. I do think that there’s quite a big psychological difference between the prospect of needing 9, and the prospect of needing 10 – it’s only 1 point, but double figures are a lot more daunting than single figures. 

Madeline left little doubt that she was going to win after her first minute. She looked a little nervous as she sat back down in the chair, but her performance belied that, as she ripped through the first 90 seconds or so of the questions. In the last minute she did run out of steam a little, as the incorrect answers started to accrue, but in the context of this heat this was immaterial to the outcome of the show. 10 correct answers gave her a winning total of 25 and no passes. A good performance, and best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Madeline Grant	The Harry Potter Novels	15	0	10	0	25	0
Peter Stiles	The Battle of the Bulge	9	0	10	2	19	2
Allan Cook	Rosalind Franklin	12	0	11	2	23	2
Nick Gunatilleke	The Waterloo Campaign	9	1	7	5	16	6

University Challenge Catch Up 1: St. John's, Cambridge v. Corpus Christi, Cambridge

Round 2 Heat 2 – St. John’s Cambridge v. Corpus Christi Cambridge

One of the more impressive teams of the first round, St. John’s were represented by John-Clark Levin, Rosie McKeown, Matt Hazell, and their captain James Devine-Stoneman. Their opponents were Corpus Christi Cambridge, and they were Tristram Roberts, Kripa Panchagnula, Benedict McDougall and skipper Joseph Krol.

Off we went, then. Matt Hazell took first blood for St. John’s , recognising early that a type of deer and a type of star could both be red. Good shout. A full set on Zavodovski island, part of the South Sandwich islands gave them the best possible start. Tristram Roberts struck back equally quickly for Corpus Christi, knowing that Fermat didn’t have enough room in the margin to write the solution to his last theorem. I’ll be honest, the only one of their bonuses that I knew on choreographers was the one that they got on Bob Fosse – whom I also though was the subject of the film Gorillas in the Mist. Rosie McKeown knew that Prayers and Meditations was written by Catherine Parr – good shout again. Thermodynamics bonuses followed. In the words of Ultravox, thie means nothing to me, but provided another full house for St. John’s. John-Clark Levin had a speculative punt that the European capital described in the next starter would be Stockholm, being 7 degrees further North than London, and he was right to do so. Once again, St. John’s took a full house on bonuses, this time on Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Never read that myself, but I read the Oryx and Crake trilogy over the summer and rather enjoyed them. Again Tristram Roberts hauled Corpus back into the game, knowing that the result of the meeting of particle and anti particle is annihilation. One bonus on mutinies followed to take us up to the picture starter. An abridged set of first lines from a famous poet appeared. In the middle, “Let us go then, you and I” was the big clue that this was TS Eliot. Rosie McKeown snapped that one up. For the bonuses St. John’s had to supply both poet and title of collection, and yes, they did have another full house. This meant that every question that St. John’s had answered up to the 10 minute mark they had answered correctly. Corpus Christi, with 30, were not playing at all badly. But to this point St. John’s, with 100, were playing brilliantly.

It really paid to wait with the next starter, as all of a sudden it became clear that the answer required the word longhorn, supplied by Rosie McKeown. The Geography bonuses saw them wavering on a couple of questions, but still they supplied the answers to a full house of bonuses. The impressive Rosie McKeown showed no mercy towards poor, shell shocked Corpus, knowing the Cuban dance, the Habanera for the next starter. Finally they showed just a little vulnerability on a set of Geology bonuses, not knowing the term orogeny. Is that where orogenous zones come from? Mind you, they still took the other two bonuses. Again, Tristram Roberts interrupted the run of St. John’s starters, knowing the definition of the metre squared. Sadly they only managed one of a gettable set on Edouard Manet. It was Rosie McKeown again who knew that the Iolani Palace is in Honolulu. Again they missed out on a full house, but staphylococci bacteria still provided two correct answers. So to the music starter, and for once St. John’s supplied an incorrect starter answer.Neither Corpus nor I recognised the work of Weber. The St. John’s skipper was very quickly in to win the dubious honour of the music bonuses, knowing all about particles and spin. The bonuses did nothing for any of us. Matt Hazell correctly identified sparrows as being one of the four pests, the eradication of which was one goal of China’s 1958 Great Leap Forward. Bonuses on works of European Romanticism brought a further two correct answers, and I did wonder if JP was about to administer the coup de grace to Corpus by telling them that there was plenty of time left to come back. Rosie McKeown edged her team through the 200 barrier, recognising various writers with the Christian name Elizabeth. A single bonus on capitalism followed. Joseph-Clark Levin knew that Stalin was criticised in the work The Cult of Personality and its Consequences, which brought up an excellent UC special set on nationalities whose name appears when a certain combination of words are entered in Google – eg – cheese and army knife for Swiss. 2 correct answers meant that on the cusp of the 20 minute mark St. John’s led by 230 to 45.

Nobody recognised the work of Delacroix for the 2^nd picture starter. Tristram Roberts knew the acronym DDS in computing terms, and received the picture bonuses for his pains. The team could only recognise the work of JMW Turner. Rosie McKeown knew or guessed that the 1930s was described poetically as a low, dishonest decade, and bonuses on Shakespeare provided 2 more correct answers. Matt Hazell knew that in biological terms NK stands for Natural Killer. 5 letter cricketing terms only provided one guessed answer, but so what? St. John’s were through, and poor old Corpus were over 200 points behind. One had to feel for Tristram Roberts. HE took another starter knowing Confucianism, and his personal total was a good one, but sadly none of the rest of his team had been able to find their range with the buzzer. I’ll be honest, when JP announced that they had won a set of bonuses on Norwegian writers, I would have blamed them for saying ‘you’re having a laugh, aint yer? ‘ – my answer to each was Ibsen, and was wrong. This left Corpus becalmed on 70. James Devine-Stoneman guessed that cetane rating applies to diesel fuel, to stretch the gap to over 200 points again. 10 points on chess terminology put St. John’s within striking distance of the 300 barrier – one visit to the table could be enough. Yet it was the Corpus Christi skipper who recognised the 2 St. Bernards (humans, not dogs) in the next starter. Sadly there was no time for them to find a correct answer to the set on Archbishops of Canterbury, and at the gong the score was 285 – 80 in St. John’s favour.

I’m glad that JP said nothing to rub it in to Corpus Christi. Yes, maybe they might have thrown caution to the wind a little more with the buzzer, but let’s give credit where it’s due. The margin was heavy because St. John’s played so well, and displayed good and at times great knowledge across a very wide range of disciplines. Nobody will fancy playing against them in the quarters, and they need to be taken extremely seriously. A very fine performance.

Jeremy Paxman Watch

Nothing to see here. Get on with your lives, citizens.

Interesting fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

Both Temple Archbishops of Canterbury, father and son, died in office. 

Mastermind 2018 - Round One - Heat 18

What an interesting show that was, dearly beloved.

Now, the first SS subject on offer was Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I kind of feel the same way about the Discworld series as I feel about the work of Anthony Trollope. Put the shotgun down and I’ll explain. Whenever I’ve read a novel by Trollope I’ve never been really disappointed, but on the same hadn I’ve never been moved to run down the street shouting – I’ve just read a fantastic novel!, if you know what I mean. It’s the same with Discworld. I haven’t read all of them, and of the ones I have read, while I have ones I prefer, I’ve never read one and felt that it wasn’t up to scratch. Coming back to the show, Michael Benbow put on a bravura performance to score 14 and only 1 pass. That’s the kind of score which will put you in the lead when the half time oranges are passed round in most heats.

Mahatma Gandhi was last a specialist subject back in 2011, I believe. A great and important subject, and Suraj Anad had obviously prepared well and knew his stuff. I’ll be honest, he did look a little tense and nervous to me, and maybe this meant that he jumped in on a couple of questions and possibly missed out on a couple of points. Maybe. Whatever the case he scored a good 11. He was in contention, but he was going to have to make up ground on the GK if he was to win.

I love watching athletics, so it is with some shame I admit that the round on which I scored least was Tony Fleat’s round on the history of the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon is the oldest and still one of the greatest and most prestigious city marathons, and a very interesting subject. Tony did very well to score 12 and 1 pass I thought, and I did think John’s comment on Tony’s last answer ‘you’re right, and I can’t pronounce the name either’ was an unnecessary attempt at a cheap laugh. John, I’ve seen you work an audience, and you’re better than that.

Finally Pam Poole. Now, her subject is the sort which can cause controversy. Top 10 singles from 1963 – 1973 might seem like a relatively short period to have to learn, nonetheless, I should imagine that there were many hundreds of questions you could potentially be asked. Pam knew her stuff – although I prided myself that I knew the Lemon Pipers’ Green Tambourine which she missed. We can gloss over the many questions she knew which I missed. A decent 10 looked to me to have put her pretty much out of contention being 4 behind the leader.

Now, before I make any other comment, let me state for the record that it doesn’t matter what questions you are asked, a score in the teens is a very good performance on GK. Which is exactly what Pam achieved. I have to say that maybe it was just me, but I did think that all the GK rounds in this heat were a little bit more gentle than usual. With Pam’s round, I answered all of them correctly, and never had more than 2 wrong in any of the other three rounds. Pam didn’t manage that, but she took 6 correct answers on the bounce at the start of the round, and crucially didn’t let any wrong answers affect her. She kept picking off what she knew, and in the end had taken her total to 23. Incidentally that was last week’s winning total. With that round Pam had just made this heat a lot more interesting, by placing at least 2 of the following contenders within the corridor of doubt.

I say that, but obviously I don’t know what was going through any of the contenders’ minds. Suraj did not look noticeably more nervous than he had in his SS round, and like Pam he started confidently. There wasn’t a huge amount in it, but with about 45 seconds to go it looked fairly clear that he wasn’t quite accumulating points quickly enough to reach his target. He finished with 21. Tony Fleat’s round never looked as good as either of the two rounds that preceded it. His points tended to come in fits and starts, though. At one point he looked as if he was going to fall quite some way short, and then a spurt of answers would put him back on track. . . almost. In the last 20 seconds or so he needed a run of correct answers again to put him across the line, and these didn’t come, leaving him with a total of 21 and 4 points.

Now, it’s not completely unknown for a contender to go from 4^th place at the end of the SS round, to first place at the end of the show. It is rare though, but that’s the prospect we were still facing as Michael Benbow approached the chair. He started his round, though, knowing that anything in double figures would be good enough.  9 and no passes would earn a tie break. There was no sign of panic for the first few questions, however a pass signalled potential danger. As I said, I can’t read people’s minds, so I don’t know for certain , but it looked for all the world as if the pass started affecting Michael, and he rather froze. To be fair, he didn’t give in, but was accruing passes at a fair old rate of knots. He did have that head start, though, and he reached 23 with enough time, just to get over the line. The questions didn’t fa;; for him though, and the 6 passes in the round were the margin of defeat. Very hard lines – that’s a horrible thing to happen in the chair and you have my total sympathy. As for Pam, many congratulations!

The Details

Michael Benbow	The Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett	14	1	9	6	23	7
Suraj Anand	Mahatma Gandhi	11	0	10	0	21	0
Tony Fleat	History of the Boston Marathon	12	1	9	4	21	4
Pam Poole	Top 10 singles 1963 - 1973	10	1	13	0	23	1

Mastermind 2018 Round One Heat 17

Episode 17

Dearly beloved, I must apologise for my silence over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been under the weather – it started off as flu but then became a chest infection, and I’ve soldiered on at work, but then come the weekend I’ve been totally bereft of energy, mental or physical. I’m recovering now, though, and so I’m going to do my best to try to catch up on what I’ve missed.

So to last week’s Mastermind, then. First up was Ikenna Oguguo answering on The Champions League. I fancy that Shaun may have taken something very similar during his 2004 series. Ikenna obviously knew his stuff, and achieved a perfectly good score of 11. In this series, though, I really think you need one or two more to really have a good tilt at the win in the second round. Having said that, a great general knowledge can carry all before it, as we’ve seen once or twice in this series.

I’m sure that the Alexandria Quartet has been a specialist subject before as well. I’ve never actually tried to read any of the novels, but I did once, as a kid, sit through half an hour of the film version of “Justine”, not having a clue what was going on, and being bored witless. O I wasn’t really surprised to post a fat zero on this round. Ian Jack, though, set the highest score of the round with a very impressive 13. Now, if you can manage a score in the teens in the specialist round in a first round heat thee days, you will nearly always be in with a chance of winning.

Queen Hapshepsut, Egypt’s first, and greatest female pharaoh should probably be a lot better known than she is today. Believe me, Cleopatra (all of them) does not come into the reckoning at all. Cathy Eder certainly knew her stuff. I managed 5, but Cathy just missed out on sharing the lead, scoring 12. I like contenders who can keep a smile on their face throughout their rounds, and Cathy certainly seemed to be enjoying her Mastermind experience.

Finishing off the round then we had Julian Aldridge answering on the USTV series, “House of Cards”. Now, I really rather liked the British original, although I did think that each successive series of the 3 was less effective than the previous one. However I’ve never watched any of the US series,, so couldn’t answer any of the questions, to finish the SS rounds with a measly aggregate of 8. Julian managed 11, and at only 2 points behind the leader he was certainly not out of it. He hadn’t passed either, which just might affect the outcome of the show, I thought.

Let’s think about the received wisdom about the 2 and a half minute GK rounds for a moment. Now, not everyone agrees that the best thing to do is to avoid passes. I think it is, but you must of course feel free to disagree. Another thing I’ve observed in the past is that the GK round in the heats is a marathon, not a sprint. Or to put it another way it’s one thing to build up momentum with a string of mostly correct answers in the first minute, but an entirely different thing to be able to maintain this momentum once you get past the one minute mark. Several of these GK rounds were a useful demonstration of this. Ikenna started extremely well, however by about halfway through his round a couple of answers floored him completely, and he passed. When you’ve passed once, then it becomes easier and easier to pass again, and it can take an immense amount of concentration to get your round back on track again. In the end he scored 11 for 22. I didn’t think that it would be enough to win, but it gave him the triple crown of SS score in double figures, GK score in double figures, and combined total over 20. Respect.

Julian again started well, although did seem just a little more measured in his responses. Again, though, we saw the dip in the mid section of the round. What he did very well, though, was to keep composure. Every question was answered without passing, and for the most part even the wrong answers were pretty sensible guesses. This gave him a score of 22 and no passes. Possible wining score now? The coin was in the air.

For the first minute of Cathy Elder’s round it looked as if she could surpass the target with a bit to spare. This is just my opinion, and feel free to disagree, but I did think that the first minute or so of each of the GK rounds tonight was pretty gentle, and Cathy helped herself to almost all of the low hanging fruit in the first minute. However it couldn’t last. Gaps in her General knowledge were exposed by quite a few of the questions in the latter part of the round. She’d passed, so needed to score 23 to have a chance of the win. She came close, but like the two previous contenders finished with 22.

So to Ian Jack. And for the fourth round in a row we saw a contender negotiating his way quickly and easily through the first minute of questions. In fact, Ian made pretty calm and serene progress as far as a score of 20. Then everything seemed to slow down, and progress towards the target happened only in fits and starts. Ian had passed, so he too needed to get to 23 in order to win. Well, to paraphrase the Duke of Wellington (who never actually sat in the Mastermind chair, to the best of my knowledge) it was a close run thing. However he managed to get over the line before the blue line of death ended the round, finishing with 23 and 4 passes. Well played sir, and best of luck in the semi finals.

The Details

Ikenna Oguguo	Champions League 1992 – present date	11	3	11	5	22	8
Ian Jack	The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell	13	0	10	4	23	4
Cathy Elder	The Life and Times of Hatshepsut	12	0	10	4	22	4
Julian Aldridge	The US TV series House of Cards	11	0	11	0	22	0