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