Mastermind 2019: Semi Final 4

We’re getting there, Dearly Beloved. Another semi has come and gone. Here’s the form guide to last night’s contest:-

Lucy Glass	Prince	11	1	13	4	24	5
Keshava Guha	The novels of Penelope Fitzgerald	15	1	11	1	26	2
Sanjoy Sen	The TV series Jeeves and Wooster	13	2	15	3	28	5
Hamish Cameron	John Knox	13	0	14	3	27	3
Carole Stead	The Reign of Akhenaten	14	0	16	1	30	1

I was a little surprised to see Keshava in the semis, since I didn’t think that he had made it into the top six runners up once passes had been taken into consideration. Maybe names above him on the list couldn’t take part? Who knows? The eye was very much drawn to Carole Stead’s total. Her 16 on GK in the heats was a really impressive performance, and if she could repeat that kind of form she’d be hard to beat. Sanjoy Sen’s 15 also suggested a strong contender. However, Hamish Cameron has played in more Mastermind semi finals than any other contender in the history of the show, and reached the final last time he got this far, so you’d have been foolish to discount his chances.

First up was Lucy Glass. Now, when you watch the semis in Mastermind, you know that you’re going to see some contenders who coped very well with GK inn their first round but fail to do so in their semi, and you’re going to see some contenders who couldn’t get to grips with their second specialist round anything like as well as their first. Well, I’m sorry to say that this happened to Lucy. I do know a lot more about her specialist subject, Queen Victoria, than I know about any of the other of tonight’s specialists, and I have to say that the questions were very fair, and Lucy missed out on somethings it’s reasonable to expect her to have known. As a result, her 5 meant that she was out of contention before another contender had even walked through the portal of portent.

That contender was the aforementioned Keshava Guha. It’s been quite a quizzing year for Keshava as he’s now notched up second round appearances in 2 of the big 5 – UC being the other. Answering on test cricket between England and India he began extremely well, and seemed to really know his stuff. However the brakes seemed to come on about halfway through the round, and he finished on 6. You had to reckon at this point with 3 contenders left to come that at least one of them would score quite a bit more highly than this. Two contenders down and, sorry to say, two contenders out. 

Now, with Sanjoy Sen taking his place in the chair, we finally got a contender who could handle his specialist as well as he’d handled his specialist in the first round. Sanjoy’s round on Sir Alec Issigonis wasn’t perfect – he picked up a couple of passes – but it was still pretty good, and more importantly it gave him a 4 point lead at this stage of the competition, and also served as a statement of intent to the two contenders left to come. 

The first of these was Hamish. I met Hamish personally when he was the stand in for my grand final in the 2007 SOBM. As I’ve mentioned before, I stand ready to be corrected about this, but I believe that Hamish is the most experienced Masterminder of them all, and has sat in the black chair answering questions more times than anyone else. Bearing this in mind it was a shock to see him commit the cardinal sin in one of his first questions on Thomas Paine, of pausing for ages on a question before passing. Bearing in mind he amount of time he threw away he did actually recover well to take his total to 8, but make no mistake, his campaign had reached crisis point. Two points was a gap that could be bridged on GK. But if our final contender, Carole, could throw in a perfect specialist round, then the game could have been up.

Carole Stead was answering on the Plays of Henrik Ibsen. Never read one, never seen one, know a few of the titles and that’s about it for me. So I can in no way comment whether her 10 and no passes was just a very good performance, or a great one. Still, in retrospect it threw a little bit of a lifeline to Hamish. Having said that, though, if all three put in a GK round similar to their relative performances in the heats, then Hamish looked unlikely to make it to a second final. 

Before we got to the business end of this contest, though, Lucy and Keshava had to return to the chair. I was surprised that Lucy scored 8, to bring her total to 13, not because she did as well as she did, but because during the round it did feel a little better than the score suggested. She showed a pretty wide range of knowledge. Keshava, alas, found the questions not very much to his liking, and added 5 to his total for 11.

So to Hamish. Now, the highest GK score we’ve had so far in the semis was Sue Duffy’s 14 in the first semi, closely followed by Mark Grant’s and Brian Davis’ 13s in the same semi. Hamish himself put on a storming performance to post his own 13. If his specialist displayed the cardinal sin of hesitating before passing, then his GK was a fine display of the cardinal virtues of this kind of quizzing; crisp, quick answering, total concentration on the question in hand. A total of 21 had won the previous 2 semis, and that was where Hamish stood now. He could do no more.

John rather unhelpfully made a point of reminding Sanjoy that the target now stood at 21 before his round began. I liked Sanjoy’s style, very quick, crisp answers, no messing around. After 4 or 5 questions he was on target and up with the clock. Then three or four successive questions held him up in the middle of the round, and you felt that was his chance gone. Building up a head of steam again he came desperately close, but the blue line of death only allowed him to reach 20. 

So finally Carole. Going back to my comments about Lucy’s specialist round, sometimes contenders just can’t find the same level of performance on GK that they managed in their heat, and sadly for Carole this was the case here. Now, don’t misunderstand my comments here. A GK score of 8 in a semi isn’t a bad score. But it’s not on the same level as a 16 in the heats, and after the first half a minute Carole was behind on the clock, and it really didn’t look as if she was going to make it.

So well done Hamish, congratulations on making another final. Brian Chesney’s and Isabelle Heward’s wins in the last 2 series suggest it may well be a recidivist who wins again this year. However, Hamish isn’t the only one who has made the final so far. There is a certain chap who has placed 3^rd and 2^nd in Grand Finals before who awaits. . . 

The Details

Lucy Glass	Queen Victoria	5	2	8	1	13	3
Keshava Guha	Men’s Test Cricket between England and India	6	1	5	1	11	2
Sanjoy Sen	Sir Alec Issigonis	10	2	10	2	20	2
Hamish Cameron	The Life and Times of Thomas Paine	8	1	13	1	21	2
Carole Stead	The Plays of Henrik Ibsen	10	0	8	0	20	0

Mastermind 2019 Semi Final 3

Morning. 3 semi finals down, then, and 3 to go. Let’s have a look at the runners and riders again, shall we?

Judith Lewis	The Life of C.S.Lewis	14	0	15	2	29	2
Pat Lucas	Isaac Newton	13	1	10	0	23	1
Bruce Horton	The Royal Navy In The First World War	9	0	12	1	21	1
Karim Lalani	Vivien Leigh	12	0	10	5	20	5
Pat Williamson	The History of Manchester and Salford	11	1	15	0	26	1

Casting a glance over the scores then you’d be forgiven for saying that this looked very much like a two horse race, and one of those horses looked rather better than the other. Judith Lewis was one of the more impressive performers in the first round, who won her heat comfortably, having a 4 point lead by half time, and increasing it with a fine general knowledge round. Pat Williamson had also scored 15 on GK, but left a bit of wiggle room with her specialist. Of the others, well, question marks over Pat Lucas’ and Karim Lalani’s GK made them outsiders, as did Bruce Horton’s specialist.

Judith went first then. Answering on the 11 Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, what she provided was a virtuoso demonstration of how to tackle a semi final specialist round. She paused for a moment on just the one question, but still answered all of her questions correctly. Many people can produce a very fine specialist round in a heat. It takes something extra to be able to produce a second one in a semi final.

As it happened, the scale of Judith’s achievement was thrown into sharp relief by Pat Lucas’ round on Benjamin Franklin. Now in her heat, Pat’s win was built on a fine specialist round on Sir Isaac Newton. She started her round last night on Benjamin Franklin in similar fashion – 3 questions, and 3 correct answers. Then it all went Pete Tong. She couldn’t find another correct answer until the penultimate question of the round, to take her total to 4. Whether that was due to faulty preparation, a sudden attack of nerves, or some other factor, only Pat could say, I’m sure. But it meant that her chance had gone.

Without wishing to be mean to Bruce Horton, he was a little bit fortunate to find himself in the semi finals, having been 4 points behind the leader at half time in his heat. He produced a good general knowledge round, while others couldn’t which saw him through. Now, they do say that lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Well, as with Pat, Bruce answered the first three questions correctly, and then it all went to pot, and he only found one more correct answer before the blue line of death had finished the round. This time, at 8 points behind, there was no chance of rescuing things on GK.

Karim Lalani had won a low scoring heat with a pair of decent rounds. Last night he was answering on The Grand National from 1978 to date. They didn’t explain this, but I’m sure they picked 1978 because it precluded Red Rum who had his last run and last win in the National in 1977. Guess what? Like Pat and Bruce, Karim answered his first three questions correctly, then missed the 4^th. Unlike them, however he did accrue a decent total of points. By the end of the round he’d managed 8. However his general knowledge from the heat held little hope that he’d be able to outscore Judith at all, let alone by enough to bridge the gap.

Which left Pat Williamson to finish the specialist rounds. As with Karim, she did manage a respectable performance, scoring 8 points as well. Unlike Karim, Pat had produced one of the better GK rounds, so there was just a little glimmer of hope for her, but you have to say, with a lead of 4 points over all of her fellow contenders, I couldn’t see any way that Judith Lewis was going to be beaten.

Pat Lucas was the first to return to the chair for GK. It wasn’t a great round, but at least it was a respectable round. It must be a daunting prospect returning to the chair being so far behind the leader, so you have to respect contenders who can keep their heads and come back. Putting Pat’s performance on GK into perspective, she only managed 1 point more in the heat when she had an extra 30 seconds, so this was an improvement in real terms.

I mentioned earlier Bruce playing his get out of jail free card on GK in the heats. I also mentioned that he was too far behind for this to happen last night. That was true. Still, at least he managed the best GK round of the night, adding a further 11 points to his total. Ironically this was also just one point less than his performance in the heat, so again, an improvement in real terms.

For Karim Lalani I’m afraid that the GK round turned out to be a bit of a grim old slog. It just didn’t work out for him, the questions didn’t fall his way, and in the end he finished with a total of 13.

Let’s put Pat Williamson’s task, as she sat back down in the chair, into perspective. Put simply, she had to score as many points as she possibly could in order to put Judith into the corridor of doubt. In real terms, I reckoned that she would need to score about 12 to have any chance of winning. She tried, and produced a perfectly respectable 9. But this meant that Judith was only going to need to score 5 and 1 pass or better, and this was always going to happen.

Judith’s round in fact was a little bit of an anti-climax. Again, it was another perfectly respectable affair, but it wasn’t the dazzling display of a potential champion in the way that her specialist round was. She had achieved the target with more than a minute left, but only went on to add a few more points, taking her final total to 21. Well done, and best of luck in the final.

There’s a perennial debate over the way that Mastermind semi final line ups are put together. Certainly in the past, and for all I know still, the policy has been to look at putting subjects rather than contenders together for a semi final line up. There’s not been any seeding involved. The principle behind this being that a line up of a wider variety of specialist subjects is more interesting for the viewer than, lets say, 4 out of 5 subjects in one show being historical, or popular culture, or whatever. The drawbacks are that it can result in some semi finals – like semi final one this season – being top heavy, and fine contenders like Brian Davis and Sue Duffy being eliminated – and other semi finals – like this one – being a bit of a yawn because one contender has as good as won by half time. As I’ve said before, that’s what can happen in knockout competition. As a rule I’m opposed to tinkering with the format of the show, but I think that this is a debate which will continue.

The Details

Judith Lewis	The Lord Peter Wimsey Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers	12	0	9	2	21	2
Pat Lucas	Benjamin Franklin	4	3	9	1	13	4
Bruce Horton	The Ottoman Empire  1822 - 1922	4	0	11	2	15	2
Karim Lalani	Grand National 1978 - date	8	1	5	3	13	4
Pat Williamson	Margaret Beaufort	8	0	9	2	17	2