23 out of 24 down now, dearly beloved. By this time next week we can guarantee that we will have definitely seen the winner of this year’s Mastermind. Who that will prove to be, well, it’s a little early to start conjecturing on that.
So let’s instead concentrate on Catherine Sparks’ round on
the Empress Matilda. I feared a little for Catherine when her first couple of
questions went begging, but thankfully this was just a momentary blip and she
soon began to knock most of what remained over the boundary rope. An
interesting subject Empress Matilda. I wouldn’t claim to be a great expert on
this particular phase of English history, but through a combination of sources,
not the least of which were probably the Brother Cadfael novels I’d leaned
enough in the past to take five of these. It’s been a while since I failed to get a double figure
aggregate on specialists but with that start I reckoned it was a good chance I
could do it again.
Not that Geoge Pope’s round on Stevie Nicks produced many
more correct answers for me. Well, the majority of these were on Stevie’s solo
career and earlier career, while I’m strictly a Fleetwood Mac man, myself.
George didn’t have any huge problem though. He pushed on to a good 9, which was
only one or two answers short of being a very good round.
Of all the specialist subjects on offer during this evening’s
show I was pretty sure that Rebecca Messina’s round on the What Katy Did Novels
would bring me the least points. Well, I was right about that. I was explaining
to a family member at the weekend that the lot of the quizzer is to know little
bits about books they’ve never read, films they’ve never watched and music they’ve
never listened to. Well, I’ve never read these books – in fact my lasting memory
of them is an old Two Ronnie’s joke about a BBC classic serials season
comprising of what Katy Did, What Katy Did Next, Who Did What To Katy and Son
of Katy. Look, that was the sort of thing that passed for sophistication when I
was growing up in the 70s. Rebecca knew her stuff, and managed a very
respectable 8 points.
All of which left us Mark Rogers and Universal Frankenstein
Films of the 1930s. I did enjoy these films when I was much younger, but even
allowing for that I was amazed to get 7 of these, for my best 2023 unwikied aggregate
of 14. Now, bear in mind that my combined aggregate for 4 specialists was just
1 point higher than Mark’s sore for his 1 subject and it will give you an idea
of just what a great round it was. I love it when a contender gabs his or her
subject by the scruff of its neck and gives it a good old thrashing and that is
exactly what Mark did.
Rebecca, then, was five points behind Mark when we turned around
and started heading for home. Despite this, she managed a very good double
figure GK round. You know, it’s easy for me to sit here and tell you, in order
to get a good score you play the percentages, trust your knowledge, and give
the obvious answer because it’s often right. Yeah, it’s easy to do that, but
you try doing it in the studio sitting in that chair. Well Rebecca scored 10 to
finish with 18. Well done.
Geoge didn’t really do quite so well. He added a further 7
to his total. That’s perfectly respectable, but it meant that he finished on
16, a couple of points adrift of the total.
So to Catherine. Now, on the one hand she didn’t produce as
good a round as Rebecca had done. On the other hand though she had a three
point cushion from the specialist round, which proved to be decisive over all.
Catherine scored 8, which was enough to take the lead by a point, although her
reaction to a couple of the questions suggested that she may well have left a
couple of points on the table.
The question, then, was whether George would score the 7 he
needed for an outright win. Well that was answered in pretty quick time. Which led
me to ask myself if he could possibly produce a GK round that was as impressive
as his specialist. Well, for more than a minute and a half the answer was, most
certainly he could. For the last part of the round he became a little becalmed
and the answers dried up a little, but nonetheless he still added the best GK
round of the night to the best specialist round of the night. Mark scored 11
for a total of 24.
I enjoyed that. I’d always far rather watch all 4
contenders give a good account of themselves in specialist than watch someone
having a ‘mare. Well done Mark – best of luck in the semi finals.
The Details
|
Catherine Sparks |
The Empress Matilda |
11 |
0 |
8 |
1 |
19 |
1 |
|
George Pope |
Stevie Nicks |
9 |
1 |
7 |
2 |
16 |
3 |
|
Rebecca Messina |
The What Katy Did
Novels |
8 |
0 |
10 |
2 |
8 |
2 |
|
Mark Rogers |
The Universal
Frankenstein Films of the 1930s |
13 |
0 |
11 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
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