Mastermind Heat 4

Well, here we are, dearly beloved, another heat of Mastermind on a Friday evening. What could be much better than that? The big question for me was – were we going to see the kind of fireworks that we saw in last week’s high scoring heat? Experience suggested that we probably weren’t, and indeed we didn’t, but there was still much to enjoy.

The first specialist subject on offer in this heat was the History of Zimbabwe, offered to us by Paul Muddle. I didn’t expect to answer many of these correctly, yet it proved to give me my best specialist score of the night with 5. Paul did quite a bit better than this. His 12 points was the kind of score that you need to make sure that you are at the very least still in contention when the GK round comes along.

Next through the portal of portent was Ben Fasham. He gave us a good historical figures subject in the shape of Henry the Navigator.  Now, Henry the Navigator is one of those figures of whom many of us have heard, but about whom many of us know relatively little. That was my experience anyway as I struggled to 3 points. Ben, though, coped more than admirably, and in fact was on for a perfect round until the very last question, where he failed to dredge up the name of the right pope. Ah, them pesky popes.

John comes up with some odd things some times. Third contender Neil Chapman had passed through the portal, sat down and announced his subject of Sunderland AFC, when John took it into his head to start dissing his team. “. . . who won the FA Cup a VERY long time ago. “ Neil wasn’t having any of that, knowing full well that Sunderland have actually won it twice. Still, once that was over, the round began, and while it wasn’t nearly perfect like Ben’s, it was just as effective, as Neil too amassed a score of 12, and I added 4 more to my total.

Now, be honest, when you heard that the last round, offered by Sue Duffy, was about Elizabeth Taylor, did you think she meant the film star? I did. I’ve never to my knowledge heard of Elizabeth Taylor the novelist. Under those circumstances I suppose I was lucky to get one. Sue was asked one of those – ‘even if you haven’t heard it you can work it out from the question’ types- if you were banned from entering the USA because you belonged to a political party, the communist party is always going to be a good guess. Enough about me, Sue had a perfect round, and ended in the lead with 14.

Once again, my congratulations and thanks to all the contenders. I know how much time and effort it costs to learn a Mastermind subject that well, and I do love it when all 4 contenders do this well in specialist.

Now, though, we moved to the GK. We had the interesting situation that the contenders would all be returning to the chair in the same order as in the specialist round. This meant that Paul was first to return. After about a minute it became pretty clear that we weren’t going to see another round of 17 or 18. However, scores of that magnitude are pretty exceptional. What we did see was a good round of 13, achieved through what looked like a massive amount of concentration on the job in hand.

It was a score which was too high for Ben Fasham to match. For much of the round it looked possible that he might get there, but he’d slipped off the pace before the blue line of doom started to appear around his score. 11 points for 23 certainly gave him respectability, though, and double figure scores in both rounds.

The most interesting GK round of the night was Neil Chapman’s. I say this, pretty sure that it won’t be of much comfort to Neil himself should he read this, but it started so well. Of the first 7 or so questions, Neil had the first 6 right, with just the one pass. His tactic seemed clear, to answer what he knew as quickly as possible, and pass quickly if he didn’t have a clue. And don’t knock that, it’s a perfectly valid tactic. However, after about a minute he picked up a couple of passes in a row, and something changed. It seemed as if his memory had suddenly started refusing to give answers which he knew that he knew. In the end, he scored 9 to take his total to 21. Perfectly respectable, but a shame for Neil since the start of the round had promised so much more.

So to Sue Duffy. The bare facts of the matter were that her GK round had given her a two point cushion. She needed 11 and 3 passes to force a tie break. Anything less would not be enough, and anything better would give her the outright win. She was always up with the clock , and in terms of progression through the round, this was pretty similar to Paul’s. She hit the target just before the blue line of death appeared, which enabled her to match Neil’s GK score of 13, giving her 27. Well done! Best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Paul Muddle	The History of Zimbabwe 1890 - 1990	12	0	13	3	25	3
Ben Fasham	Prince Henry the Navigator	12	0	11	1	23	1
Neil Chapman	Sunderland AFC 1945- date	12	2	9	5	21	7
Sue Duffy	The Life and Works of Elizabeth Taylor	14	0	13	2	27	2