Mastermind 2020 - Heat 11

Hello, good morning, and yes, I had a lovely time in Vienna, thanks for asking. I made sure I was back in time for Mastermind yesterday, mind you. Well, you can have too much of a good thing you know.

So to the show. First up was Hugh Ashton. I don’t normally comment on contenders’ appearance, for fear that they might well start commenting on mine, but I have to congratulate Hugh for his rather wonderful waistcoat and bow tie combination. This – I thought – is someone who has a bit of confidence. Mind you, he did miss his first question on that Mastermind hardy perennial, the “Mapp and Lucia” novels of E.F. Benson, who must have written them during the intervals between performances with her all-girl band. He soon shrugged that off, though to finish with 11 and no passes. Certainly, at the least that’s an in contention at half time score.

Jane Nelson who followed gave us Manchester City FC 1992 – present day. Hmm, not quite 30 years. I mean, I’m not trying to insinuate that this isn’t a long enough time period to make a set of sufficiently testing questions, but am I alone in having a nostalgic hankering for the days when a contender would have to take the whole history of a club, or a sporting event, rather than just a selected period? Oh, I am – okay then, moving on. Jane knew her subject very well, but a rather deliberate and steady way of answering meant that she was limited to an even ten points.

So to Muhammad Ali. Muhammad was answering on Greek Mythology. Now there’s a traditional Mastermind subject for you – a particularly wide traditional Mastermind subject. Muhammad scored 4. 3 of these were to the first three questions. He also got the last question right. Now, we can only judge from what we see on the screen, so I may be completely wrong about what I think happened. But for what it’s worth, it looked from his answers that Muhammad knew a bit about Greek mythology, and thought that it would be enough. Surely if he’d have prepared thoroughly he wouldn’t have missed some absolute sitters, like Ariadne. He didn’t look particularly nervous, but hey, only he could really say what went wrong in the round.

The life and written works of Harper Lee, offered to us by Poppy Bradshaw, brought the specialists to a conclusion. Apparently she did write other things than To Kill and Mockingbird, and the recently published Go Set a Watchman. That’s Harper Lee, by the way, not Poppy. A decent round followed, although I think Poppy had just undercooked her preparation a little on Harper Lee’s journalist career.

More light for me was thrown on Muhammad’s first round problems by his second round. He didn’t absolutely smash it, however he did score 9, which John called a respectful score – which it may well have been – although I’m pretty sure that he meant it was a respectable score. Which it certainly was. So was this a case of someone who knows he has a respectable general knowledge deciding to enter the show, as is his right, then deciding specialist subjects and taking it for granted his prior knowledge of the subject would see him through? Again, only Muhammad could tell us the answer to that one.

Poppy, sadly, did not get congratulated by John for reaching a respectful score, as she added just 5 to her total, and fell into a pass spiral. I always feel I want to be a bit careful when I write about low scoring GK rounds, because it may well come across that I’m criticising the contender. I’m really not. Posting a low score in a Mastermind GK round proves nothing  other than you didn’t know the answers to most of the questions you were asked. It suggests that you don’t perhaps at this time have the standard of General Knowledge that you really need to appear on the show, but that’s about it. It has nothing to do with your intelligence. However, that is the conclusion that many people often draw, and I do feel that the production team has a duty of care towards contenders. However much they want to appear on the show, I would imagine that sitting there on the chair while you’re enduring a round like Poppy’s cannot be a pleasant experience. To be honest, as a viewer I do find it uncomfortable as well. In the last 5 shows we’ve seen 5 GK scores of 5 or less. This is just how I feel, and feel free to disagree, but I do tend to feel that if you can’t score 6 or more on a GK round, then you should not be put in the position of having to endure one. Now, ok, I am sure that there have always been contenders who score decently in their auditions, and then have a ‘mare on the show, but 5 in 5 shows? Come on – and I said this last year as well – that’s the sort of batting average that suggests that quality control in the selection process is not all it could be.

Thankfully Jane and Hugh both avoided such traumatic rounds themselves. Jane was a point behind at the halfway stage, and the rather measured style of her answers in the first round suggested that in order to be able to set a challenging target she was going to have to answer pretty accurately. To be fair, she didn’t do at all badly either. Okay, 10 points for 20 wasn’t necessarily a huge target, but it meant that Hugh was going to have to have a good round to score enough points to beat it.

Which he did, and as often happens, for the first minute of his round he looked like he’d do it with a good couple of points to scare. However the wrong answers mid round took away a bit of momentum, but he made it, scoring his own ten in the process. That one point by which he’d beaten Jane in the Specialist rounds was enough to give him the win. Well played sir.

The Details

Hugh Ashton	The Mapp and Lucia Novels of E.F. Benson	11	0	10	0	21	0
Jane Nelson	The History of Manchester City FC 1992 - present	10	0	10	0	20	0
Muhammad Ali	Greek Mythology	4	1	9	1	13	2
Poppy Bradshaw	The Life and Written Works of Harper Lee	7	1	4	7	11	8