Mastermind 2019 Heat 6

Ah, Mastermind. A good way to end a rather fraught week – my school has had a visit from the Inspectors of Estyn.

First into the chair was journalist Mic Wright. His specialist subject was Mark E Smith and The Fall. Now, I will be honest, I thought that I knew nothing whatsoever about Mark E Smith and The Fall, but it turned out I just knew next to nothing, since I scored one. Mic knew his stuff alright. He had a couple wrong but still managed a total of 13 points for his round, which proved he must have been going like the clappers.

Through the portal of portent came Tom Cappleman. Tom reached the semi finals of University Challenge with New College , Oxford a few years ago, where he proved to be a bit of a star on the buzzer for his team, so I expected good things from him last night. I certainly got them from him in the specialist round. Answering on the letters of the New Testament he scored another 13. I, on the other hand, obviously know a little bit more about them than Mr. Smith and The Fall, since I managed 4.

Okay, without wishing to be at all mean, I’d better start off Mary Breading’s round by stating that she scored 5. I’ll be honest, judging from her reactions to some of the answers and the two passes, I don’t think that this was all down to nerves. It just seemed that there were certain areas of her subject, The History of the Wrens, she didn’t know about from her preparation, and I’m afraid that Mastermind can be a cruel old show, sometimes. If you’ve left gaps in your knowledge, it will find them out, even if they’re tiny ones. I added 3, and needed a point on Isaac Newton to take me into double figures.

As it happened I got 6, my highest score of the night which took me to a very respectable specialist aggregate of 15. Offering us the great – although seriously weird – Newton was Pat Lucas. She did very well too, finding 13 of her own answers, with just the one pass. So although behind Tom on pass countback, having the same number of correct answers she would go last on the GK round.

There was a certain irony in the fact that Mary Breading, first to return to the chair, would actually put on the best GK round of the night. In fact, had she answered just a little more quickly there was every good chance that she would have scored even more than the 11 she produced. Trailing by 8 points there was no way she was going to produce a big enough target to put any of the other three into the corridor of doubt, nonetheless, it was a good performance.

The first of the contenders with a realistic chance of winning to return to the chair was Mic Wright. He started brightly too, but ah, what do we often say? The GK round is a marathon, not a sprint, and the last 90 seconds or so looked to be something of a grim old slog. It was kind of typified by his last question, an old 50 / 50 about the animal name used to describe a falling market. Yes, it was going to be either bull or bear, but which? He zagged with bull, and the answer was bear. On such small margins. He finished with 9 for 22.

Tom Cappleman took his first two or three questions comfortably. Based on his UC record I did think he’d make the target comfortably. In fact another 4 questions would pass by before he added another correct answer, and it was a while before he built up any momentum after that. He finished just ahead of Mic with 23. His tactic had obviously been to pass if the answer did not quickly occur. It’s a valid tactic, but a risky one. He’d passed on 6 questions. Would he regret it?

Well, for much of Pat’s round, it looked as if he might not. But what Pat was doing was giving herself valuable thinking time for each question. It meant that while there were a significant number of things she didn’t know, she took points for everything that she did know, and for those questions which were guessable to her. She maximised her performance that way, and took her own score to 23 and 1 pass. John Humphrys did a rather strange thing next. Before she’d even had a chance to get her breath back John told her she’d scored 21 points and 1 pass and had won. Strange. The usual procedure is to let her the last contender go back and sit down, announce there’s been a tie, say how many passes the contestants involved in the tie had scored, and THEN announce the winner. Much more effective in my opinion.

Well, there we are. Congratulations, Pat. Not the highest scores we’ve seen so far this series, but enjoyable nonetheless.

The Details

Mic Wright	Mark E Smith and The Fall	13	1	9	2	22	3
Tom Cappleman	The Letters of the New Testament	13	0	10	6	23	6
Mary Breading	The History of the Wrens	5	2	11	0	16	2
Pat Lucas	Isaac Newton	13	1	10	0	23	1