I know that you’ll have been worrying about this, so I’ll put you out of your misery now. My prediction came true and I did not achieve a double figure aggregate on tonight’s specialist rounds. I got 8, or 3+3+2+0.
Just as importantly though, how did our contenders get on?
First up with probably the most unusual subject of the night was Farrar Hornby
answering on British and Irish Cheeses. Farrar certainly started brightly
enough but pretty soon the round became hard going. Was it nerves? Was it the
question setter having a wider conception of the extent of the subject than
Farrar did? To me it looked like several answers were on the tip of his tongue
but could not be cajoled to venture any further. He finished with 6.
Elsie Clark – no relation that I’m aware of – was answering
a set of questions on the Roman general and dictator, Sulla. Despite a slight stumble
mid round Elsie kept her head and kept on picking up the points throughout the
round, earning herself the estimable prize of a double figure score.
I don’t remember ever watching Jonathan Creek on TV. Mind
you, I never watched Sulla on TV either so I can’t really use that as an
excuse. I managed two very easy ones. Emily Ryan did well to get a round of 8,
I thought. There were 5 series and 32 episodes in total, Wikipedia tells me –
which is an awful lot of details to try to commit to memory. Decent round.
As for Adam Royston’s subject, Johannes Brahms, I would
have done better if the subject had been Miss Brahms from Are You Being Served.
Adam’s round was a little reminiscent of Farrar’s. It started well, but he lost
momentum. Did this mean that he missed out on answers he would have had if he
had been on a roll and built up some momentum? It could well be, we’ve seen
this happen in the past. Whatever the case, he scored 6.
In contrast to last week’s heat, the GK round would turn
out to be a bit better than the specialist round had been. First to return was
Farrar, and I dare say he might well have a bit of a quiz background, or at the
very least be a regular quiz player. His 12 equalled the best GK score so far
this series and took him to 18. No, that looked unlikely to be a winning total,
but it showed what might have been.
Adam Royston couldn’t manage 12. However he did manage a
double figure score, which turned his night’s Mastermind work into a far more
respectable performance. His and Farrar’s rounds were a timely demonstration
that when it comes to Mastermind, you have to have both, the specialist and the
GK. Preparation, thorough preparation does not guarantee success, but it is one
way of taking as much control as you can over your own destiny in the show.
Sadly, Emily Ryan’s round also demonstrated the same thing,
albeit in the opposite way. The questions just refused to fall her way, leaving
her stranded on a GK score of 6 for a total of 14.
So it was all down to Elsie. The interesting thing was that
despite having led Farrar by a full 4 points at the half time interval, his GK
heroics meant that she was going to need a GK round of 9 in order to win, and
that’s a very decent GK score in Mastermind these days. Well, the key to doing
that was to do what she’d done in the specialist round, keep calm, pick off
what you know, give the best guess you can about what you don’t know and above
all else, don’t panic. It carried Elsie to her own double figure round of 10,
and the win.
Well done! Best of luck in the semi final.
The Details
|
Farrar Hornby |
British and Irish
Cheeses |
6 |
1 |
12 |
0 |
18 |
0 |
|
Elsie Clark |
The Roman General
Sulla |
10 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
20 |
0 |
|
Emily Ryan |
Jonathan Creek |
8 |
0 |
6 |
1 |
14 |
1 |
|
Adam Royston |
Brahms |
6 |
1 |
10 |
2 |
16 |
3 |
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