Mastermind 2022 - Semi Final 3

Let’s start with a look at how last night’s contenders did in their heats, shall we, dearly beloved?

Helen Garner	The Films of Tom Cruise	13	1	14	1	27	2
Tom Lea	Line of Duty	12	0	10	1	22	1
Allister Mallon	James Craig, Viscount Craigavon	13	0	9	2	22	2
Eleanor Ayres	Catherine de Medici	9	0	12	0	21	0

Now, on paper, this looked as if it should be a clear win for Helen Garner. As we all know, we don’t play Mastermind on paper. There was nothing much to choose between Tom, Allister and Eleanor’s final scores, but possibly the most significant factor was to look at the GK scores. It’s a hell of a lot easier to improve your specialist performance between heat and semi than it is to improve your GK, which suggested that if there was going to be a dark horse, then this was more likely to be Eleanor than the gents.

Helen had given us the films of Tom Cruise, with which she scored a fine 13 in the first round. Last night she gave us the X Files. I was grateful for that for it brought me a few points. She did well, but did miss a couple, and the difference between an 11 in a semi final specialist round, and 13, is the difference between a competitive score, and a commanding score. Well, you’re not out of it with 11 at the halfway stage, that’s for sure.

Second up was Eleanor. Again, she offered a subject that offered a couple of points, in the shape of York Minster. I’ve loved the building ever since I badgered my parents into taking us to visit the National Railway Museum in 1977. Once we finished in the museum, we took a long walk around York, and I fell in love with the place in general, and York Minster in particular. Not that I know a massive amount about the history of the Minster. Eleanor did, though. She matched Helen’s score of 11, although she did incur one pass along the way.

Tom Lea gave us the specialist round of the evening on England at the Cricket World Cup since 2003. I’ll leave it to other commentators to voice opinions about the relatively narrow scope of the subject. It was a terrific round, and Tom really had to know his subject inside out to cope with what appeared – from my limited knowledge – to be a very testing set of questions. A score of 14 gave him a three point lead with just one contender still to go.

That contender was Allister Mallon. Allister was offering my favourite subject of the evening, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. I don’t know if any other readers remember a TV series from quite a few years back called something like 7 Wonders of the Industrial Age. Different episodes focused on The Bell Rock Lighthouse and the Great Eastern and one of them focused on the Brooklyn Bridge, and very good it was too. I’ve always been interested in it ever since. Allister knew more than I did, and he answered well. Crucially, though, he didn’t answer very quickly, which meant that he levelled out at 8. 6 points off the lead, essentially his chances of the win were over.

Allister was the first to go in the GK round. His 9 was perfectly respectable, but it wasn’t going to offer him much of a chance to move up the table. Not in this sort of company, I’m afraid. The pre-race favourite, Helen returned to the chair next. Now, if all three of the contenders repeated their heat scores in GK, then Helen would beat Tom by 1 point, and Eleanor by 2 points. Helen did not manage to repeat her 14 scored in the heats. Oh, she did fine, scoring 12, but she missed out on several things I might have expected her to get based on the round she put in during the heats. Whether this was due to nerves, or to a set of questions that didn’t quite suit as well as the questions in the heat, only Helen could say for certain. But it meant that the door was open.

Right. Let us talk about Eleanor’s round. I have not stood up and applauded the telly since Jonathan Gibson in the final last year. I did last night. Eleanor produced a GK round right out of the top drawer. 17 is comfortably the highest score we’ve seen in GK this series, and Eleanor didn’t score this because she had a rogue easy set of questions. They weren’t. As a round it was every bit as testing as all the other rounds we’ve seen so far. It was all the more remarkable considering that it was so much better than her round in the heat. With the quality of answers that Eleanor gave, you’d be forgiven for thinking that she is a regular, serious quizzer. Honestly, the round was that good. If this round is typical of what we might expect from her in the final, then she is a very, very serious contender indeed.

Which pretty much gives the game away that Tom Lea did not manage the 14 and no passes he needed to win on pass countback. Again, he provided a perfectly respectable round of 10, but after the pyrotechnics of Eleanor’s round you’d have to say that anything less was always going to be a bit of an anti-climax.

Well played to Helen, Tom and Allister. You are all of you worthy semi-finalists, and that in itself is something. But Eleanor goes forward, with a GK score to put the fear of God into any of the opposition in the final.

Helen Garner	The X Files	11	0	12	0	23	0
Eleanor Ayres	The History of York Minster	11	1	17	0	28	1
Tom Lea	England at the Cricket World Cup 2003 - present	14	0	10	0	2	0
Allister Mallon	The Building of the Brooklyn Bridge	8	0	9	4	17	4