Mastermind 2019 - Heat 11

Good morning! How was Christmas for you? Mine? – lovely thanks. Enough of such chaff, and let’s cast an eye over yesterday evening’s 11^th heat of Mastermind 2019.

Last week we had an all-female heat. This week an even mix, and what I believe were 4 Mastermind virgins. They all came up clean on the database, anyway. First up was Janet Farley. Now, allow me a digression here, if you will. Janet was answering on REM. Way back in the mists of time, when I made my first, ill-fated appearance on Mastermind in Geoff’s 2006 series, one of the contenders in my heat was Neil Phillips, and he too was answering on REM. Neither of us won, but it was the start of something more important, a friendship, and a few years later we would be playing together with our esteemed captain, Mastermind champion Gary Grant, in the final of Only Connect. Neil passed away earlier this year. To me he was always ‘the Legend’ following his exploits in our OC semi final. Coming back to MM, Neil did brilliantly on his round on REM, scoring 17. Well, personally, I don’t think 17 is possible the way that the specialist rounds are constructed in this day and age – 15 is even pushing it. So Janet’s 11 was still a competitive score, which would mean that she wouldn’t be out of the running by the time that the half time oranges were being passed around.

John Payne offered us another subject that has featured on Mastermind before – Edward Lear – in fact I think that you could say the same for all 4 of last night’s subjects. Edward Lear is of course most famous for nonsense verses like “The Owl and the Pussycat”. He was a great populariser of the limerick, to which I’m quite partial myself, and so it was a great disappointment when I actually read some of his to find out that a lot of them are, to use a literary term which I think may have been originally coined by F.R. Leavis, ‘utter crap’. However I digress. It looked as if John was making slow progress at the start, but he certainly picked up momentum as the round progressed to take the lead with 12 and no passes.

Now, I’ll be honest with you, a lot of art from the 1880s right through the first half of the 20^th century tends to leave me cold. I do have a thing about Gustav Klimt’s paintings, though. So I was pleased that Rebecca Shaw had taken him as her specialist subject. None of which meant that I scored many points on this round, but never mind. Like John before her, Rebecca finished with 12 and no passes, and let’s reiterate the point, for the last few years 12 has proven to be a very good first round score on specialist.

All of which left us with just Simon Jenkins. He was answering on The FA Cup 1978 – 2018. I can’t help confessing that I’m always interested when I see the contenders taking a subject like this with a date range. I mentioned earlier my ill-fated 2006 appearance. My specialist subject back then was The Modern Summer Olympic Games. Now, I wouldn’t have minded taking let’s say 1896 – 1936 – or – 1968 – present day. I was told in no uncertain terms that I would have to do the whole lot. Yet since then the Olympics has recurred, when I’ve seen other contenders allowed to take a specific year range. Ok, maybe different production teams, different approaches, I don’t know. Anyway, whatever the case, Simon had clearly learned his stuff, and despite getting caught out once or twice he still managed double figures with 10. Kudos to all 4 contenders for preparing well, I always appreciate that.

With only 2 points separating all 4 contenders any one of them could win with a good general knowledge round. Sadly for Simon Jenkins, though, he had an absolute ‘mare. For all the hype about the effect of the ‘fearsome black chair’, it really isn’t very often that we see a contender really have a disaster in the GK round. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened to Simon Jenkins. He fell into a deadly pass spiral, one of those awful situations when not only does your memory refuse to supply the correct answer, it also spitefully refuses to throw up any plausible alternative. It happens – not that often, but it does, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Bad luck, sir.

From a round where almost nothing went right, to a round where almost everything did. Janet Farley really impressed with her GK round. It wasn’t so much the score – although 16 was certainly impressive – so much as the range of answers she provided. Even when it looked and sounded as if she was guessing, the guesses were sensible, and in the majority of cases right. Sometimes you just get a feel that a contender has got something of a quiz background, and I had this feeling with Janet, even though she did look a little shellshocked at her own performance when John announced the score.

John Payne had the unenviable task of following that performance, knowing that he needed to equal Janet’s performance to go into the outright lead, or answer 15 questions correctly without incurring any passes. Well, he had a good old go, you have to give him that, and you can’t knock any contender who can get into double figures in a GK round. But even saying this it was fairly clear that he was behind on the clock while there was still a good minute to go, and he ended on 23, a perfectly respectable evening’s work, but some way short of the target.

It fell to Rebecca Shaw, then, to close the show. Now, Rebecca’s round was a pretty good demonstration, if any were needed, of just how good Janet’s round was. I don’t mean that in any derogratory way about Rebecca. Rebeca was clearly very focussed on her round. She gave her answers very quickly and clearly, and made sure that she answered every question so as not to incur any passes. She achieved 12 correct answers, a good score. Yet for all that, a round in which it looked like she had got close to an optimal performance for her, there was still daylight separating Rebecca from Janet. That’s the way that it goes.

Good show. Well done Janet, and best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Janet Farley	REM	11	1	16	0	27	1
John Payne	The Life and Works of Edward Lear	12	0	11	3	23	3
Rebecca Shaw	Gustav Klimt	12	0	12	0	24	0
Simon Jenkins	The FA Cup 1978 - 2018	10	2	3	7	13	9