Yay, it’s quizzy Monday again, dearly beloved. Another Mastermind first round heat. Not, I have to say, one that was quite as out of the ordinary as last week’s, but although not necessarily a heat for the connoisseur it certainly had enough for the student of the game to enjoy
I must admit that I seem to have no familiarity at all with
the work of jazz musician Bill Evans. Bill Evans was the milkman who delivered
to us when I was a kid, I thought. I didn’t get any points anyway in the first
specialist round on the man himself. Paddy Pammet did better, which is only
fair considering that he opted to take the subject. However he still struggled
after the first couple of questions, and in the end he had managed to answer 5
. Which is actually 1 more than last week’s winner managed in his own
specialist round, so nothing was certain. Still looked like it would be a
struggle, though.
Suzette Aagaard answered on Georges Remi and Tintin. Now, I
have to be honest, while I enjoyed some of the Tintin books, I was always far
more of an Asterix the Gaul man when I was younger. So I only managed a couple –
the old quiz chestnut on Snowy originally being called Milou, and then I knew
that the great Belgian cryptozoologist mentioned could only be Bernard
Huevelmans. Suzette missed out on a few, but nonetheless her 9 looked a pretty good
return which meant she had a shout of being in the shakeup in the GK round.
Katie Lane was burdened by the support from the Clark sofa
tonight, being an English tutor. Katie was answering on William Morris – the arts
and crafts man and not the car manufacturer. Like so many of the rounds in this
and the previous show this was a round that promised more at the start than it
delivered in the end. Katie had obviously prepared her subject, but too many of
the questions went begging and in the end she scored 6. By no means a disaster,
but 3 points off the lead with one more contender yet to play.
That contender was Blake Robinson. Blake was answering on the
Doctor Who spin off series Torchwood. Now, considering that I once wrote a book
reviewing every episode in the series I did think that I might get a couple of
these. Well, I did – 3 to be precise – but it’s years since I wrote the book
and frankly my memory just wasn’t up to the in-depth knowledge required by most
of these questions. Blake’s was, though. He scored a praiseworthy 11, and with
a lead of 2 at half time he looked the best bet for the win.
First, though, we were back among the supporting acts with
Paddy. Paddy gave it his best, that was clear, but the finishing tape came
almost immediately after he managed to take the lead, by adding 7 to his score
to finish with 12. He was followed by Katie. Her first target was to score the 7
she needed to go into the outright lead. This she achieved. She managed to add
another 2 points to take her to a total of 15. 9 Is a perfectly respectable
score in a GK round, but unfortunately respectability was never going to be
enough to give her a realistic chance of a win.
Starting 3 points to the good in her own GK round, Suzette
Aargaard needed 7 to take the lead. To be fair, this is exactly what she
achieved, in a round which, to be perfectly honest, looked at times to be a bit
of a struggle. She did it though, which meant that each of our contenders held
the lead at one point of the contest or another.
Putting the task facing Blake Robinson into context, he
only needed to score 6 in his GK round to win. Was this going to be like last
week where the final contender, faced with a seemingly modest target, had a ‘mare
of a round and didn’t get there?
No.
Having produced comfortably the best specialist round of
the night, Blake went on to produce the best GK round of the night as well. The
symmetry was pleasing in the way that he also scored 11 for GK, that being his
score in specialist. He was clearly the best of the contenders tonight, and
thoroughly deserved his win. Congratulations to you sir, and good luck in the semi-finals.
The Details
|
Paddy Pammet |
The Jazz musician
Bill Evans |
5 |
1 |
7 |
1 |
12 |
2 |
|
Suzette Aagaard |
Georges Remi ad
Tintin |
9 |
0 |
7 |
0 |
16 |
0 |
|
Katie Lane |
William Morris |
6 |
0 |
9 |
1 |
15 |
1 |
|
Blake Robinson |
Torchwood |
11 |
0 |
11 |
0 |
22 |
0 |
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