Duty of Care

What’s this? A weekday post that’s not a review of Mastermind or University Challenge? Has the world gone mad? No, not really. You see by the end of school yesterday afternoon I’d developed a sore throat, bad chest and a splitting headache. I took a lateral flow test and the result was inconclusive. So I booked a test at my local drive in centre yesterday evening, and I’m waiting at home for the results to come back. If I was a betting man I’d say it’s just a cold, but it’s not a gamble I can afford to take. If I am positive the last thing I want to be doing is spreading it to classrooms full of kids. So I do have this little bit of unexpected time. It also means I won't be going to the rugby club quiz tonight.

I’d like to revisit the question regarding how much of a duty of care, if any, a production company has towards the contestants participating in their shows. When I say duty of care I’m not referring to physical safety, since I’m sure that’s pretty much a given. But do production companies also have a duty of care as regards the way that a contestant or a team come across on the screen? Yes, alright, this is inspired at least a bit by the plight of the Sussex team on this Monday’s University Challenge. But I think it’s a fair question.

I can understand if you think that no, they don’t. After all, nobody forces you to apply, do they? Either you’ve watched the show and so you’re fully aware of the risks involved, or you haven’t watched the show in which case you maybe deserve what you get for applying. Personally, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that.

I think you have to take into account the risk/reward ratio of each different show. If you take a show like, let’s say for the sake of argument, Tipping Point, I’d argue that the risk of appearing on the show is small, while the potential reward is fairly substantial. After all, as much as the show is about getting questions right, it’s also about the luck of the way that the ‘coins’ fall for you. So you go out in the first round? It’s unlikely that you’re going to face a Twitter storm about your assumed lack of intelligence. Now let’s take Mastermind. The risk is – in terms of quiz shows – about as high as it gets. You need to put a lot of work into preparing your subject, and even then you don’t know how you are going to react to sitting in the chair until you are in it, by which time it’s too late. Most contenders manage decent or good rounds. However, on the relatively rare occasions when a contender posts a low score, then there’s the embarrassment factor for the contender, and often a barrage of unkind and ill-informed comments on social media. And let’s be absolutely clear on this – a low score on Mastermind or University Challenge or any other quiz show is NO REFLECTION WHATSOEVER on that contender’s intelligence. Yes, I’d like to think that doing well on Mastermind shows that you’re pretty smart, but really and truly, all it definitely shows is that you’re good on quizzes like Mastermind. As for the reward – well, there’s only one tangible reward, the winner’s bowl. While it’s very nice, and a great conversation piece, it’s not quite riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

So saying all that then, when a show has such a high level of risk with such a (financially) low level of reward, is it still reasonable to say – you applied, no one forced you to, so what’s the problem? Well, to be fair, I don’t think that the various production teams of MM, UC, OC have ever been blasé about the fate of their participants. In Magnus’ book “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish” he does talk about the selection criteria aimed at saving some contenders from themselves. In my own audition in 2005 the 20 GK questions formed an important part of the audition, as did a set of questions and an improvised connections wall in our audition for OC. To my own regret I never explored the possibility of going on UC when I was at uni, so I have no personal experience at their selection processes, but I’m sure that they have their own ‘quality control’ for want of a kinder term. So what happened on Monday night? Who knows? As I said at the time, I have no doubt that the Sussex team are highly intelligent people who are good at their subject. So maybe it was just a perfect storm of questions to which they didn’t know the answers. I don’t care who you are, there are questions to which you don’t know the answer, and if you get twenty or thirty of them altogether on the same evening then you can end up looking and feeling distinctly second or third rate. Maybe that was what happened on Monday night. Whatever the case, I think it’s a shame that the team were put in the position where it happened. I’m not going to reprint any of the Twitter comments posted afterwards, but many of them weren’t pleasant.

University Challenge: Round One: Heat 14: Birmingham v. Sussex

The Teams

Birmingham

Mark McParlan

John Robinson

Michael Joel Bartelle (capt)

Jaimy Sajit

Sussex

Marianne Glascott

Spike Asri

Tom Khan-White (capt)

Jack Harcourt

Well, dearly beloved, it’s the final heat of the series and, as it turns out, a remarkable heat in its own way. Now, lovers of pedantry will have known the next starter, - the summit of a mountain in which range is the furthest point on the world’s surface away from the centre of the Earth? John Robinson correctly answered ‘The Andes’ , knowing that, the Earth not being a perfect sphere, the summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is further from the centre of the Earth than Everest. A lovely set on crows and ravens in Shakespeare yielded us both a full house. I ran out of luck then when a question about Dutch scientist Peter Debye raised its head, and it was scant consolation that neither team knew this one either. The Scapegoat and The Light of the World saw Michael Joel Bartelle win the buzzer race to supply the name of William Holman Hunt. A set of words which all began with t and contained r gave me another full house, although Birmingham rather tied themselves up in knots with them, only getting 1 of a decidedly gettable set. John Robinson won the buzzer race to identify Joshua as the first person with a book of the Old Testament named after him. If it hadn’t been just one person, then surely the band Genesis would take that one. Astronomy often offers me the rare chance at a Science bonus, and so although I didn’t take a lap of honour for knowing Cassiopeia, once Cassini came up I set off around the Clark sofa. Now, my Spanish isn’t brilliant, but for the picture starter the words “familia que la llama” – and – “la industria textil’ were enough to suggest alpaca as a pretty good shout. So it proved, as the Birmingham skipper confirmed. More of the same, with creatures whose English names are Spanish, if you see what I mean, yielded mosquito, armadillo and coyote (which sounds like a firm of solicitors in Alicante I once used) and a full house for Birmingham. “Statistical Physics” announced JP. “Nighty nighty” announced my brain. Gawd knows what the question meant, but neither team had much more of a scooby than I did. Mark McParlan either recognised or guessed several different flags used by China, earning a set of bonuses on US cartoonist Sarah Andersen. Once again, my brain switched snooze on. Which makes me all the happier that I guessed Adulthood Is A Myth. Birmingham only managed one bonus as well. However this meant that just after the ten minute mark, they led by 100 – 0. As for Sussex, one suspected the dreaded ‘plenty of time for you to get going’ might already be on the JP launchpad.

John Robinson recognised that a description of a great icy London winter came from Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”, which book holds the great distinction of being the only one of her novels I ever managed to finish. Co productions by the BBC and HBO brought just the one correct answer. The 1908 Siberian Explosion saw Tom Khan-White , the Sussex skipper, win a buzzer race, sadly only to supply an incorrect answer. John Robinson hadn’t heard of the Tunguska Blast either. I did think that both teams rather sat on their buzzers for the next starter, since the names of a group of animals, and the name Saint -Saens meant that it couldn’t really be anything other than the Carnival of the Animals. John Robinson took that. Wildlife provided just the one bonus, but really and truly even only halfway through the show it was pretty clear that there was only going to be one winner in this contest, and it wasn’t going to be Sussex. For the music starter I was pretty sure it was Liza Minelli singing, which really suggested the musical in question would be Cabaret. It was, but neither team recognised it. Jack Harcourt did recognise a group of authors all distinguished by a middle initial D – Salinger, James, you know the sort. In one answer he turned Sussex’s minus 5 to a plus five. It was at this point that Jeremy Paxman really rather disgraced himself. Having earned himself my approval for not telling Sussex there was plenty of time to get going, he then well and truly rubbed their faces in it saying “and you storm away to a whole five points!” Couldn’t resist it, could you Jez? Shame on you. This earned them the music bonuses on musicals that take place during World War Two. Sadly they only managed one of a very gettable set. Another astronomy question brought me the opportunity of a second lap of honour. Maybe it’s just me, but I would have thought it was obvious that e, in terms of orbit, stands for eccentricity. Neither team knew it. Up until this point it really looked as if Sussex were buzzer-shy, and it was all too easy for John Robinson to buzz in with the correct answer of the One Hundred Years War for the next starter. The actor Irfan Khan was the subject of the bonuses, which provided us both with 2 correct answers. Tom Khan-White grasped the nettle and buzzed early for the next starter, losing 5 for his pains. It never rains . . . To be fair Birmingham didn’t know the answer – Classics – either. So on the cusp of the 20 minute mark, Birmingham led by 150 – 5.

Okay – let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room, shall we? I never want a team to do badly in UC. But I have to say that I watched the last few minutes of the contest feeling something like a tricoteuse, since I was wondering whether we would see a remarkably low score. Birmingham certainly weren’t giving any free buzzes away, as Michael Joel Bartelle correctly identified Phoebus’ Marriage as one of the chapters of Notre Dame de Paris. Books of the King James Bible and also the Apocrypha named after females led me to suggest that we’d be looking at Esther, Ruth and Judith, and it was only a question of which order. Birmingham had the order spot on. This brought us to the picture bonus, stills from films which David Clark Has Never Seen ( a remarkably wide genre, as it happens.) Jack Harcourt recognised Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and suddenly it looked as if Sussex would be capable of posting a score that was just modest as opposed to being interestingly low. They didn’t know any of the bonuses, sadly. Now, it’s an old quiz chestnut that Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, but sadly not one that Spike Asri had heard before, which meant that Birmingham had a bite of the cherry and correctly identified Lebanon as the country in question. Now, when you get a set of Maths or Science bonuses where the team in possession of the ball don’t get any of them, I often wonder whether the question setter is making them up. Well, this might have been the case with the maths set had followed, had the setter been the late Stanley Unwin. A stream of what sounded like pure gobbledygook furnished none of us with a sniff of any points here. Adding insult to industry this was followed with a maths question answered ridiculously quickly by Jaimy Sajit. St. Anthony provided a set of bonuses that provided the one correct answer necessary to take Birmingham to 200. Spike Asri admirably threw caution to the wind with the next starter asking for a compass direction, but sadly zigged with East when he should have zagged with West. 5 points lost. A full house on Istria applied a little more gloss to the Birmingham total. Nothing daunted Spike Asri slung some buzzer again with the answer Beijing. It was Shanghai which brought more bonuses to Birmingham on Selma Lagerlof – which is emphatically not a muppet name, but the first female winner of the Nobel for Literature. Nobody knew the answer to the next starter about chemical elements. And that was it. Birmingham won by 245 to 10.

Right, let’s get that Sussex score out of the way. I could well be wrong, but I believe this is the lowest score of the Paxman era. I also believe that it is equal with the lowest score from the Bamber era – another Sussex team, as it happens, not including the Christmas specials. Doubtless Twitter users have had their say. JP himself said – at least you got on the show and 100 teams didn’t. Well, yes, that’s true, and it’s not necessarily something I’d go advertising. I am certain that the Sussex team are all very intelligent and capable people – they got to the university in the first place for one thing. But on this evidence, they’re not great quizzers, I’m afraid, and one questions the show’s selection criteria which would allow them to endure an experience like this.

Congratulations to Birmingham. We’ll see in their second round match how much of Sussex’s plight was due to great buzzing, but whatever the competition, you can’t argue with a score in the double hundreds.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week.

Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” was dedicated to Vita Sackville-West (Hey, it was a bit of a slack week)

Mastermind 2022: Heat 6

Well, to borrow Clive’s words, that was a corker, wasn’t it? Maybe not quite as good as a couple of weeks ago, but one helluva finish.

First up was Hayley Goddard, who offered us the Giza Necropolis. I always think that there’s a chance of me getting 1 or 2 on anything Egyptological, but in all honesty there seemed rather little for a dilettante such as myself, and I was happy to take four on this round. Hayley’s round spoke of excellent preparation as she scored a fine 11 points and just one pass.

Our second subject, Martin Luther, as offered by Tara Jackson-Rigchung, was another which offered points to me, but not many. In fact, only that perennial favourite the 95 theses, and the Council of Trent provided me with two pieces of low hanging fruit. Again, this was the kind of round in which only good preparation was likely to give you a hance of a double figure round, which is exactly what Tara achieved. Good round.

It probably says something about me that the only two questions that I managed to answer on Sam Anderson’s round on the films of Paul Thomas Anderson were both about ‘Boogie Nights’. Let’s be honest, I’m not a great film fan, and several of the films mentioned I’d never even heard of. Sam Anderson was the third of our contenders in tonight’s show to ave prepared himself admirably, as he too reached double figures with a fighting 10.

All of which left a former semi finalist recidivist to bring the first round to a conclusion.This was Richard Aubrey, who passed this way in 2017, IIRC, and already knew what it takes to win a first round heat. Now, I will lay my cards on the table here – I had 8 on this round. But you see, his subject, “Yes Minister/ Yes Prime Minister” is one of those sitcoms which, if you like it, you absolutely love it, and can watch it over and over again. Now, I’m not suggesting that Richard didn’t need to put in the preparation, because he had a perfect 13 on it. Now that really is excellent preparation.

So to the GK. Poor Tara looked rather like a rabbit in the headlights for most of her round. I think it was probably a combination of , well, not the world’s strongest general knowledge, and a combination of questions that really didn’t suit. She finished with 15.

So Sam only needed 6 to take the outright lead. However, in order to set the kind of total necessary to place Richard within the corridor of doubt he would need to do considerably better than that. And for the first minute of the round he missed nothing, and was on target for a monster score. Well, a bit of a mid round hiatus slowed his progress a bit, but nonetheless his 14 for a total of 24 was, to be honest, up there with the best GK rounds we’ve seen so far this series. The doorway into the corridor of doubt was now beckoning.

Hayley Goddard started her round convincingly, but once she’d had a question wrong the round became a bit of a grim old struggle. Hers wasn’t really a poor round, but in all honesty, if you have ambitions towards winning a heat, realistically you have to have the kind of general knowledge that gives you a realistic chance of getting into double figures at least.

So to Richard. I had a feeling that he might do it, but it certainly didn’t seem that this was going to be correct when he struggled to get into a rhythm during the first minute or so of the round. However, the experience of sitting in that chair, and learning you can cope with it and even enjoy it gave him the tenacity to cling on, and keep picking off the answers. He was actually through on pass countback with one question still to go, but made sure of it with the last, to finish with 25. Not, actually, as good a GK round as Sam’s had been, but his overall performance, combining that GK round with his perfect specialist round was enough to see him through. Well done, sir, and I wish you good luck in your semi.  

The Details

Hayley Goddard	The Giza Necropolis	11	1	7	3	18	4
Tara Jackson-Rigchung	Martin Luther	10	1	5	5	15	6
Sam Anderson	The films of Paul Thomas Anderson	10	0	14	2	24	2
Richard Aubrey	Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister	13	0	12	0	25	0

I

More on the subject of subjects

I don’t know if you watched last Monday’s heat 5 of Mastermind. The winner, Patrick Wilson, took on JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and very well he did on it too. In my review I remarked upon the difficulty of such a wide-ranging subject and expressed the view that just “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy itself would be a fitting subject. Well, thinking about this again, I can’t help wondering whether it was Patrick’s original choice, or whether the production team prevailed upon him to widen the subject.

My active experience of the show dates from more than a decade ago so whatever I say has to be viewed in that light. But on a couple of occasions, I did experience some of the horse trading over specialists that certainly went on in my experience. For my first audition, which led to my appearance in the first round in 2006, I went into the audition fully armed with my 4 subjects, only to be told not to do any of them. Basically, being an English teacher, they didn’t want me doing any authors in case I didn’t do very well, and it therefore reflected on me as an English teacher. It is arguably an admirable thing – saving people from themselves if you like. Still, it did mean that I had to really think on my feet to come up with the subject that I actually did do – the Modern Summer Olympic Games, and what I would have done for semi and final had I got there – Henry Ford and The Prince Regent. One of the subjects I discussed possibly doing was the anglo-saxon poem “Beowulf”. However, no sooner had I suggested this, than the member of the team who was auditioning me had bid it up to the whole canon of Anglo-Saxon poetry. So I drew the line at that one.

When I applied again the next year, I threw Henry Ford into the pot for the first round, and the Prince Regent for the semi. 2006 was before the temporary reinstatement of runners up places in the semis, and so I’d gone to the semis as a stand in and wasn’t used. Now, my way of thinking was this. In 2006 they’d have had to have a set of Henry Ford questions made which they never used. So maybe, just maybe, taking it for the first round in 2007 would make me a little more attractive because it would mean one fewer set of questions to make. Who knows whether this had any influence or not. Still, for my final subject I wanted to take Old London Bridge. This was the bridge which stood from 1179 – 1831. The team horse traded this up to every bridge bearing the title London Bridge, or standing at this point on the river prior to 1179.

Conversely, though, when it came to Champion of Champions my first round subject, the Bayeux Tapestry went through on the nod. When it came to the putative (and unused) final subject, the team actually lightened the burden for me there. I offered The Children of Queen Victoria, but the team reduced it to The Daughters of Queen Victoria. Not really sure why, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.

I didn’t have the experience I know some people have had of being asked to change the order of their specialist subjects. In the cases where this has happened, I’m pretty sure that the production team’s concern has been to get the best spread of subjects across each of the shows.

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Moving on, the newest member of our team on the Thursday night had one of the most frustrating experiences in quizzing last week. By which I mean the experience of coming up with a great answer to a difficult question, and not getting a point  because the QM has a wrong answer down. One of the very first questions began, “Which fruit is a cross between a raspberry – “ and as you would, I immediately began to write down ‘loganberry’, and just as quickly stopped writing it when the question continued ‘ and the American dewberry.” I always thought that a loganberry was a raspberry/blackberry cross. Indeed it is. Fran said that she believed it was a boysenberry. That, to me, seemed like a bloomin’ good answer. Of course, the answer given was loganberry. I consoled Fran that I was sure that the QM’s answer was a wrong’un, and we didn’t argue as I am trying very hard to be a good boy in the quiz now. Well, I will admit that I did google this when I got home. Now, although I didn’t find an answer which perfectly fit the question, boysenberry, which is given as a cross between raspberry, and dewberry ( and blackberry and loganberry!) is a better fit.

Actually, I really enjoyed the quiz apart from this. It’s the first ‘connections’ quiz I’ve played in for a few years – whereby the answers to let’s say 4 consecutive and seemingly unconnected questions – are all connected. I love the way that, if you’ve engineered your connections well, then the player can use what they do know to help figure out what they don’t know.

University Challenge 2022: Round One: Heat 13 Wolfson, Oxford v. Bristol

The Teams

Wolfson, Oxford

Martin Nowakowski

Maitrai Lapalikar

Daattavya Aggarwal (Capt)

Archie Williams

Bristol

Alex Regueiro

Sam Woodcock

Seb Priest (Capt)

Anna Brian

Not long to go people. Just one more heat after this one and we’ll have seen all of the teams in this year’s competition. Tonight, then, I took the first starter for the first time in a few weeks, recognising that rose, tulip, cedar, velvet and green were all terms applied to various revolutions. Archie Williams took that one. Quotations from English Literature which all involve words from the acronym TARDIS were a UC special set that was very much to my liking, as you might imagine. Wolfson managed 2 of them. None of us knew that Tonle Sap is in Cambodia. Daattavya Aggarwal lost five coming in for the next starter, something to do with telescopes and black holes, I think. Then, suddenly the question became clear *Warning – Lap of honour imminent!* by saying that the telescope network in question shares its name with the boundary limits of a black hole. “Event horizon!” I shouted, just before Alex Reguiero, rather more calmly, said the same. Now, maybe it was because I was circumnavigating the sofa, but it seemed to me that the next question suggested that Talulah Bankhead was born in 1982! Nay, nay and thrice nay! Bristol managed just the one on people connected with Huntsville Alabama. Archie Williams gave a good early buzz to identify polar explorer Shackleton for the next starter. I turned down a second lap of honour for knowing enzyme for the first bonus and likewise electron for the last. It’s been a long time since I took two bonuses on a science set that wasn’t specifically about the periodic table. Wolfson took the same two. The picture starter showed the rather distinctive national flag of Grenada. Martin Nowakowski took that one, and then treated us to the first of a brace of starter celebrations, a manoeuvre which I believe is commonly known as a ‘dab’. One thinks that Bamber Gascoigne would somehow not have approved. More examples of fruit in heraldry brought Wolfson no further points. Now, 30 odd years ago, if you heard the words ‘Mexican’ and ‘Painting’ you’d be fully justified in slinging buzzer and giving the answer Diego Rivera. Now, though, you’d be playing with fire if you gave any answer other than Diego’s missus, Frida Khalo. That’s the answer that Archie Williams gave, and he was right to do so. Video games are rather less fruitful as a subject for me than even psychology, economics or the sciences, so I wasn’t surprised to score zero on video games of 2001. Rather more surprisingly, Wolfson didn’t score at all either. Nonetheless they’d had clearly the better start to the contest and led Bristol by 55 to 10.

Various clues gave Martin Nowakowski the word canton for his second starter. This time he made an exaggerated toasting gesture by raising his class of water. Thanks, Martin, we’ve got it that you’re the ‘wacky’ member of your team by now. Early 19^th century French art brought Wolfson nowt. Sam Woodcock began the Bristol fightback, buzzing in with the answer that it was Debussy who composed La Mer. Me, I thought it was Georges Trenet. Or Bobby Darin. (Ask your grandparents). A couple of bonuses on John of Salisbury wiped ou  significant slice of the Wolfson lead. This took us to the music starter and a very quick buzz from Anna Brian to recognise ‘Leader of the Pack’ and recall that it was recorded by the Shangri-Las. Other examples of the teenage tragedy genre of the 50s and 60s saw them miss out on The Everly Brothers’ Ebony Eyes. They stopped performing it, and when asked to perform it on tour would usually reply – sorry, but we do have to fly places, you know. They recognised Bobbie Genry, but couldn’t recognise Roy Orbison. Ah, the folly of youth.  I wouldn’t have minded hearing all of the next question about some remarkable stuff which produced facial convulsions amongst other effects, but Alex Regueiro buzzed in early to say whatever it was, it came from Sardinia. A UC special set on film titles formed by combining countries’ internet codes proved to be rather low hanging fruit which Bristol were only too happy to gorge themselves upon, and in the process they opened a 5 point lead. Alex Regueiro took his second starter on the bounce by recognising a definition of the word sedition. This earned them a set of bonuses on black holes. Well, I’m very sorry but I already exhausted the totality of my knowledge of black holes in that bonus earlier on. Bristol lapped them up. 8 minutes earlier you’d have got very long odds on Bristol being the first to break into triple figures, but here they were just one bonus away. Captain Daattavya Aggarwal buzzed to shake his team out of their torpor, correctly supplying the mathematician Ramanujan ( well his name – not the actual person. That would have been weird). Sadly for Wolfson the bonus dice were still refusing to roll kindly as they received a set of bonuses on Puccini. I somehow doubt that they are great fans of his oeuvre, missing out even on Madame Butterfly. Sam Woodcock buzzed early to guess that in the exercise form H I I T, the H I must mean High Intensity. (Or in my case – Help – It Is Torture) A set on History followed. Yum yum! – said I. The swines only went and tuned it into a maths set – all the events mentioned happened in years when the final two digits of each answer were three times the first two. I confess, I was still working out the question as Bristol were picking off the answers. The two they gained meant that hey had just completed a splendid ten minutes’ work, and they led with 115 to 75, and all of the forward momentum.

Sam Woodcock recognised the work of an artist I particularly like, El Greco, for the second picture starter. In the bonus set of artists influenced by El Greco I was intrigued to see Jackson Pollack come up. Neither team recognised a description of the Ridgeway – who was the milkman for whom I used to work on a Saturday – apparently he also had a prehistoric trail named after him. Seb Priest took his first starter, knowing a group of words which all begin with sch in German. Remember Sch – you know who? Again, ask your grandparents. US States bordering Canadian provinces brought another full house, and with a score of 150, even if they didn’t answer another question, Bristol were guaranteed at least a repechage slot. Both teams were a little slow in recognising some well known titles of works by Aristophanes, so Sam Woodcock buzzed in to take that unconsidered trifle. Bristol couldn’t do much with SI derived units, but hey, they had a massive lead and weren’t going to lose now. Daattavya Aggarwal knew a frustum, a name absolutely begging for puns, as it happens. You somehow knew that bonuses on the Prix Goncourt weren’t going to help them very much. They didn’t. Poor Wolfson, they really didn’t have much luck the way that the bonuses worked out for them. Now , surely the Tritone Paradox was an episode of the third and final series of Star Trek (The original series)? Nobody had a Scooby about it anyway. Move on, Jez. Daattavya Aggarwal, playing a captain’s innings in the face of insuperable odds, knew the Lambda Constant (Which was DEFINITELY an episode in the second series of the original series of Star Trek. I remember it since it was the one in which William Shatner wore a syrup and snogged a lady in a dress made out of a couple of handkerhiefs. Why he was wearing a dress made out of a couple of handkerchiefs – that I don’t recall. ) Chinese history took Wolfson’s score to 110. Was it possible that they could yet claim a repechage slot? Well, their chances weren’t helped when neither team knew Limburger Cheese. That was it, since the contest was gonged before JP could finish asking the next starter.

A sterling fightback from Bristol. Hard lines for Wolfson. Had a couple of the sets of bonus fallen more to their liking they might well have made the repechage. Well, as we always say, them’s the breaks.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

The device which looks like a lit matchhead on the flag of Grenada is actually a stylised representation of the fruit of a nutmeg tree.

Mastermind 2022: Round One : Heat 5

 Well, after last week’s pyrotechnics, this was an altogether more less tense affair. We began with Mohammed Shakir who was answering on villains from the official James Bond film series. While I’d never claim that Bond was one of my own specialist subjects, I’m pretty safe on films from Dr. No to Octopussy, and this was enough to bring me a welcome 6 points towards the aggregate. Mohammed managed to reach double figures, which is always the mark of a good round with the questions being the length that they are – maybe it’s just me, but it seemed that some of the questions in the later rounds were interminable.

I thought that I might have had a chance to add to my aggregate, bearing in mind that Elizabeth Dawson was answering on Byron. Perhaps if there had been a few more questions about the poems then I might have done. However this was specifically the Life of Byron rather than the Life and Work, and so I achieved the grand total of zilch. I don’t know whether Elizabeth would also have preferred more questions on the works herself – she had to have pretty good knowledge of the life to get the 6 that she did, but at the end of the round when Clive announced the score she did seem just a wee bit frustrated.

Patrick Wilson’s choice of subject “JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth” was an interesting one. After all – surely “The Lord of the Rings “ would have been a daunting enough task as it was, without adding on “the Hobbit”, “The Silmarillion”, and all the other stuff which was only published after his death. I was pleased to manage 7 of these, but Patrick did considerably better, and scored a fine 11 points on a very wide ranging round.

Last but not least came Gill Austen. Her subject, “Castles of Northumberland” held out little or not prospect of adding to my score, so when the first question name-checked good old Ranulf Flambard I was very happy to take the money and run with the Bishops of Durham (and how many of us ever get a chance to make that bold claim, I wonder?). Gill too steadily accumulated her points throughout the round until she too finished with 11 and no passes. In fact, there were no passes at all in the specialist round – so well done to all 4 contenders for that.

When Elizabeth returned to the chair she was always struggling against the fact that she’d scored 4 points less than any of her fellow contenders. So although she battled throughout the round, and scored a decent nine, she still ended with the modest total of 15, which I would have said was not a corridor of doubt total.

Well, I would have said that, but Mohammed certainly had to pass through the corridor in order to overhaul it. In fact, he only managed to do so by one point. I did feel a little sympathetic while the round was winding to its conclusion – there’s nothing worse than just not finding the answers to a series of questions coming to you. Mohammed finished with 16.

So there were no prizes for predicting that either Patrick or Gill was going to win this heat. And within 30 seconds of the start of Patrick’s round it looked very much like it would be him. This was a good round, a decent quizzer’s round, and Patrick seemed to be immensely enjoying his Mastermind experience. That isn’t always the sign of a good round, but it was certainly true of this one. While his score of 24 would only have put him in 3^rd place in last week’s heat, I reckoned he had one foot in the semi final from this one.

We still had Gill’s round to go though. To be honest, after the first 40 seconds or so it did look as if she wasn’t going to be able to challenge Patrick’s score. It wasn’t a bad round, but there were too many wrong answers, and apparently too many gaps in Gill’s knowledge. Hard lines, but well done anyway.

Well done Patrick – certainly the pick of the GK rounds tonight – a good performance which gives you a chance in the semis. Best of luck to you.

The Details

Mohammed Shakir	James Bond film villains	10	0	6	2	16	2
Elizabeth Dawson	The Life of Lord Byron	6	0	9	1	15	1
Patrick Wilson	JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth	11	0	13	0	24	0
Gill Austen	Castles of Northumberland	11	0	8	0	19	0

Never On Sunday . . . at the moment, at least.

It’s early days for me yet, I’m sure you can appreciate that. It’s just over a month since I returned to the rugby club quiz, after all. This being Sunday, I was just a little while ago patting myself on the back for having just completed all of this weekend’s planning and marking. I got into the habit of making sure that all of my homework was done before the end of Sunday afternoon to leave the evening clear for Sunday quizzing.

It’s been quite a few years since I packed in going out on a Sunday, but let’s say 4 or 5 years ago it was a bad Sunday when I didn’t have a quiz to go to. I’ll be honest, while I could find something to enjoy about most of them, none of the Sunday quizzes I ever went to were as good as the Thursday night quiz in the rugby club, but that didn’t matter too much, since the Sunday quiz was usually a nice way to end the weekend, and set you up for the trials and tribulations of the coming week.

I can’t say it has crossed my mind to start looking for a Sunday quiz again now. As I said, it’s early days, and to be honest, the memory of why I chucked in the Sundays is too clear. It was at least partly internal – I was taking it all far too seriously and putting too much pressure on myself to win when winning really didn’t matter. I can admit that now, and it pretty much drained most of the pleasure away from the quiz. Also, when John and I would find a quiz we actually liked, it never seemed to last for very long. Either the pub would stop doing it entirely, or move the quiz to a time which just couldn’t work for us. Then there were those where, after a few weeks, either the host, or some of the other teams, or both would make it clear that they didn’t really want you there. Whatever the case, coming home feeling pee’d off was not worth leaving the house for, so I stopped.

So, at the moment, I’m going to keep my Sunday evening a quiz free zone. I’ve got to the stage where I’m enjoying the Thursday nights at the rugby club now – although I’m not ready to start taking my turn as question master again. To be honest, I don’t know when, or if I ever will. When I started in 1995, I enjoyed being the QM as much as playing in the quiz, and for over 20 years I regularly took my turn. So why not now? Well, although I’m resolved to be more laid back about quizzing, I still have some fairly entrenched views, and one of these is that you shouldn’t set the quiz unless you’re prepared to take on the responsibility of a) making it as interesting as possible – b) making it as appropriate to your regular teams as possible and c) making it as accurate as possible. Well, doing this takes time, and I’m not quite prepared to give the time to it that it needs. Not yet. I plead my 20+ years of taking my turn in mitigation, your honour.