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