Mastermind 2018 Semi Final 4

Sorry I didn’t post last night, folks, but it was a bit of a special day, as I became a grandad again for the third time. My grandson is Alfie James Clark, and he's an absolute little cracker. 

That’s enough about me. Let’s have a look at the field for last night’s show: -

Kyle Hobman	Parks and Recreation	12	0	12	0	24	0
David Sutherland	John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham	13	1	13	5	26	6
David Love	The Life and Paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder	13	0	15	2	28	2
Ken Morland	Red Dwarf	14	0	14	3	28	3
Nicola Nuttall	Kirsty MacColl	15	0	13	1	28	1

Well, what conclusions could we draw from that, bearing in mind that three contenders had the same number of correct answers in the first round? If we’re looking for ways to separate the wheat from the chaff, to use an unkind phrase, Nicola’s score was based on the solid bedrock of a fantastic score on Specialist. You can argue that with 30 seconds less this would be less of a factor. Both David Love and Ken Morland had passed more than once in their GK, and for reasons I’ve gone into before, I think clear rounds can be a better option. Just my opinion and feel free to disagree. If we’re looking to separate these two, then David has been this way before, coming third in the Grand Final in 2012, so he is an experienced hand at this game. So is David Sutherland come to that, a semi finalist back in 2010 in Jesse’s series, although again, I was worried by the number of passes he incurred in the first round. As for Kyle Hobman, well, you may recall that he knocked out the great Didier Bruyere back in his heat, so he was not to be discounted. 

In fact it was Kyle who kicked the whole contest off last night. Kyle offered us the subject of my favourite band when I was a teenager, Pink Floyd. If I tell you that I spent a lot of money and my 17^th birthday watching them perform The Wall at Earl’s Court, maybe that will give you a clue how much I liked them. Mind you, I did think that if they asked that many questions after about 1986 I’d be sunk. Thankfully they didn’t, and I knew the one about Douglas Adams anyway. Kyle had obviously done his homework, but even so he’d left a couple of gaps in his knowledge, and he and I both scored 7 on the round. It’s a good score, but not the great one that I though he’d need to compete in this heat.

Our first recidivist then was David Sutherland. David was answering questions on Marshall Georgy Zhukov, the man who did more than probably any other single individual to defeat the German Army during World War II. Having started with a 7 I had high hopes of improving on my best semi final SS aggregate of 16 for this season, but I only managed to garner 2 more pieces of low hanging fruit to bring my total to 9. Last time out David had a bit of a mare in his semi specialist. His 6 last night was quite a bit better than that, but it was never going to give him a realistic shot at the win, sadly.

My pre contest favourite for the win, David Love, was answering on Stan Cullis. Now, my knowledge of the history of English football is not encyclopaedic, but I did reckon on getting at least one or two, and two it was that I managed. David did considerably better. On a semi final SS round, once you get into double figures you’ve had a great round. David scored 11. If he could come anywhere close to the superb GK round he’d delivered during the heats, then I couldn’t see anyone beating him.

Ken Morland’s round on the Works of H.P. Lovecraft (I've just noticed that I originally typed the WOKS of HP Lovecraft. Chinese cooking with Cthulhu? ) was the one round last night that offered me nothing in terms of points, and to be fair, that’s exactly what it delivered. Never been tempted to read any of them. Ken’s round wasn’t as good as David’s. He took one pass which I thought might well prove significant, but at least he scored 9 which meant that he was only 2 points behind. I couldn’t see Ken winning, but at least he was close enough to David to make it interesting, provided that he could produce a GK performance which matched or bettered his performance in the heats. 

Finally Nicola Nuttall on my second banker subject of the show, the films of Tom Hanks. I’m not a great film goer at all, and this becomes more and more pronounced as the years go by.  However I do like Tom Hanks, and I’ve watched an awful lot of his films. This was borne out by my score of 7, which gave me a new aggregate record of 18 for this season’s semis. Nicola did slightly better, scoring 8. A good performance, but not as good as her performance in the heats, and I fancied she’d finish somewhere down among the wines and spirits when all the shouting was over. 

First back into the chair was David Sutherland. In a 2 minute GK round, with the length of the questions being asked, anything in double figures in GK is good, and anything in the teens is excellent. So David certainly produced a good, battling round with 11. However, the heat winners of the previous 3 semis had all scored better on GK, and with David starting 5 points to the good, you just couldn’t see this putting him into the corridor of doubt at all. Kyle Hobman was next to return to the chair. He started like an express train, picking off the first few questions with ease. He’d obviously decided on a no-pass tactic, and you already know my feelings about that. While the rest of his round was not quite as good as the start, he too picked up a good score of 11 to raise the target to 18. Still not high enough to worry David L unduly, I thought.

Nicola Nuttall couldn’t match what had gone before. Her round of 9 was perfectly respectable, but to be fair she never looked like overhauling Kyle, and finished with 17, although on strict pass countback she was ahead of David S. So to Ken Morland. With hindsight, did Ken really reckon he was in with a chance at the start of his round? Who knows? What I do know is that Ken did what you must do when you’re a couple of points behind, answer as many questions as you possibly can to make it as difficult as you can for the contender who has to follow. Ken too scored 11. Now, this put him on 20, and although there’s only 1 point’s difference between 19 and 20, it represents an important psychological barrier. As did the fact that David L. now needed a double figure score in order to win without recourse to pass countback. 

He looked like he was going to do it, too. He ripped through the first three questions, not all of which were low hanging fruit at all. Then suddenly 5 consecutive questions stopped him in his tracks. Firstly he couldn’t dredge up the name Dorothy L. Sayers, then made an error when asked about Gods worshipped by a South American people. He zigged with Aztecs – North American – when he should have zagged with Incas. You could see from his facial expressions that this was playing on his mind, and another 3 questions and a precious 30 seconds went by before he could manage another correct answer. This pretty much set the seal on this as ‘one of those rounds’, as David dropped another couple which he’d have answered correctly on another day, and he finished the round with 6 for 17. It’s a horrible thing, but however good you are sometimes it’s just not your night, and this was one of those times for David. 

So very well played Ken. He looked a little shocked – whether this was because he didn’t expect to win, or because he’d have to go through it all over again for the final, only he could tell us. 

The Details

Kyle Hobman	Pink Floyd	7	0	11	0	18	0
David Sutherland	Marshall Georgy Zhukov	6	1	11	2	17	3
David Love	Stan Cullis	11	0	6	2	17	2
Ken Morland	The Works of HP Lovecraft	9	1	11	0	20	1
Nicola Nuttall	The Films of Tom Hanks	8	1	9	0	17	1