Mastermind 2023: First round heat 16

Look, I know you’re probably desperate to know how the wiki challenge went for me, aren’t you? After all, it’s the first time I’ve every wikied all four specialist in a single show. So, did it make a difference to my usually unimpressive specialist aggregate? All will be revealed.

First up was Holly Parkinson. Holly was answering on Stephen Hawking. Answering very well, too, although she did drop just a couple along the way. It turned out that either from the questions I had culled from the Wikipedia page or from reading other information on the page, I answered no fewer than 8 of these questions. I think I can confidently say that I might have had just one of these otherwise. So that’s a big score for the wiki challenge on this subject. Maybe it’s because the pithy short stuff you can cull from Wikipedia lends itself to more snappy questions than a lot of the abstruse scientific stuff you might otherwise have asked. Holly did better, mind. She scored 9.

Ishmel Silverstro was answering on the Radiohead questions. I got the feeling as we went on that it was the music specifically and the songs and lyrics that he was expecting, since he didn’t find this the easiest of rounds to negotiate. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he did better than I did. Ishmael scored 6, a fairly decent result, but it had already put him 3 points off the lead with 2 contenders still to play. As for me, I managed five, none of which I would have been able to answer without the wiki. That gave me 13, which was already better than most of the shows this series.

My original choice when I was only going to wiki one subject was Theda Bara. So theoretically it looks as if I expected to do better than the other subjects. That didn’t work for me. It workd for William Andrews, though. Not a perfect round, but a pretty good one which saw him attain a double figure score  and I would have said that he was worth every point of the 10 that he accrued. Me? Well, I’ll be honest with you, I only managed four from this round. Nonetheless, it meant that I had an aggregate of 17, and it looked possible that I might even get 20, which would be a remarkably good aggregate for me.

The splendidly named Boakesey Boakes took her seat in the black chair for our final specialist on the Richard Sharpe Novels of Bernard Cornwell. I know just from culling a set of questions from some very brief Wikipedia synopses that this round must have been a hell of an undertaking. Boakesey’s score of 8 looks respectable but middling, but trust me, to get a score of 8 she had to really know her stuff on this set of questions. And to be fair, only being two points off the lead it had at least given her the chance of carrying all before her in the GK. Me? Oh, I got three, which gave me an aggregate of 20. I reckon I might have had as many as five or 6 without having done the challenge.  

Enough about me (I can’t believe I just said that!) First back into the chair was Ishmael. All he could do was give it the best go he could and hope to hang on. He certainly started brightly enough. Sadly though, as we’ve seen so many times before, he ran out of steam and correct answers in the middle of his round, and had to battle through the rest of the round to post a respectable 8 for 14.

Boakesey needed 7 to overhaul Ishmael’s total. That was what she achieved too, but after the first four or five questions it was pretty heavy going for her. You know how it is, sometimes the questions fall for you and sometimes they just don’t and I’d dare to say that this was the latter for Boakesey. Again, 15 didn’t look like it was going to provide her with a winning total, but it was at least enough to give her the lead for now.

I was pretty sure that Holly would score the 7 she needed to take the lead, and even more sure after the first half minute or so of her round. She slowed down a bit during the round, although she took the lead with a bit of time to spare. Indeed she went on to equal her specialist score of 9  for a total of 18. That’s been a competitive score in recent heats, and at least William would have to traverse the corridor to doubt in order to win.

Let’s not beat about the bush, William crossed said corridor with no fuss or bother at all. After the previous three general knowledge round you were waiting for the mid round stumble, but this never happened. Yeah, okay, he missed a couple, but there weren’t many, and his round was one of the better GK rounds that we’ve seen during this series. Yes, he’ll maybe want to get a couple more points on specialist, but if he can handle a GK round like that, then he’s certainly got a chance in the semis. Best of luck to you sir.

The Details

Holly Parkinson	Stephen Hawking	9	0	9	2	18	2
Ishmael Silvestro	The Music of Radiohead	6	0	8	1	14	1
William Andrews	Theda Bara	10	0	14	0	24	0
Boakesey Boakes	The Richard Sharpe Novels of Bernard Cornwell	8	0	7	3	15	3