Mastermind - Is it fair and Should it be Fair?

Claire Reynolds’ brilliant win in the second semi-final of the current series of Mastermind last Monday, after being brought in as a stand in has led to more calls for the reinstatement of semi-final repechage slots for highest scoring runners up in the heats. Those calling for the reinstatement point to Thomas Nelson’s runner up place in last year’s Grand Final, after he had been originally beaten in an exceptionally high scoring heat.

I have mixed feelings about the issue. There were no repechage slots between 2003 and 2010. I was a highest scoring loser in the first round in 2006. I went to the semis as a stand in and didn’t get used. And thank heavens for that! Even if I had found myself in one of the lower scoring semis and even if I had managed to sneak a win, I can categorically state that I would not have won the final. So I applied again in 2007, opening the door on one of the most amazing experiences in my life. On the other hand, at the time I did bemoan the lack of repechage places to producer Jon Kelly, as did a lot of people. His successor reinstated the repechage places.

But. It was the reintroduction of the repechage slots that led to the fist tinkering with the length of the rounds. I’m a bit of a purist myself. I always thought that the show was at its best with an even two minutes for both of the rounds. Just my opinion and feel free to disagree.

Of course, the best argument for repechage slots doesn’t apply now. For much of the twenty five year run of the original TV series contenders got only one shot. If you didn’t win you couldn’t come back for a later series. Now, if you’re not satisfied with how you did in the series you can apply again and again. I point to Mastermind legend Isabelle Heward, 3 times an unsuccessful semi-finalist then fourth time was the charm. If it matters that much to you then you swallow the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune and you apply again. Many do.

We all know that life isn’t fair and yet we expect our game shows and quiz shows to be. But, you know, tournament play often isn’t fair. Mastermind has no seeding according to ability. You can get into some heats and semis that are hugely more high-powered than others – it’s the luck of the draw. Well, the luck of which other specialist subjects the team feel your specialist subject would work well with. So the question is – should Mastermind take more strenuous efforts to spread the talent more evenly? I don’t know. There is an argument that if you want to win the series, you have to be prepared to meet anyone and to beat anyone. Harsh? Maybe. At least, though, the contender has the safety net of being at liberty to apply again and again.

After all, what are the alternatives? The way I look at it they boil down  to:-

We keep the series as it is now, top- and bottom- heavy heats and semis notwithstanding

The production team start seeding based on perceived ability. In my day – and for all I know still – part of the audition was a set of general knowledge questions to answer, which might give some basis for seeding the heats. How the audience would react to a show of four specialist rounds all about, for the sake of argument, contemporary drama TV series in the same show would be interesting to see. Would it guarantee a more even spread of talent? I have my doubts about just how effective it would be, for seeding is an inexact Science. Everyone who goes on Mastermind knows things. If a lot of those things come up in a one off GK round you can look like a world beater. There may only be 12 GK questions in the whole show that you don’t know, but if they come up in your round, you’re going to look a lot weaker as a player. Numbers and statistics tell a story, but it’s often not the whole story.

The production team could use something similar to the system that was used for Sport Mastermind, all those years ago. If you don’t remember it was a spin off series of 10 shows. Each heat had a winner, just like proper Mastermind. However there were no semi-finals. The top six highest scoring heat winners went through to the Grand Final. So for the parent show you could for example dispense with the semi-final round altogether and just have the 6 top scorers from the heats contest the final. I wouldn’t like this. It’s not Mastermind. I also think that in Mastermind, you should be able to progress until you get beaten. Likewise, if the twenty four semi-final slots were allotted to the twenty four highest scores of the heats, then we’d have some heat winners missing out and I wouldn’t like to see that.

So for all the fair comment about highest scoring runners up and stronger and weaker semi-finals I can’ help feeling that it wouldn’t necessarily make the series better if we did start changing things around again and could, if we weren’t careful, make it worse. Just my opinion and please feel free to disagree.

University Challenge 2025 Quarter Final Elimination Match - UCL v. The Open

The Teams

UCL

Calum Jack

Josh Mandel

Olivia Holtermann Entwistle (capt.)

Sanjay Prabhakar

Open

Nicky Maving

Tom Barber

Karie Westermann (capt.)

Hector Payne

Howdy pardners. Take your seats by the bar in the Last Chance Saloon, while UCL and the Open duke it out for continued existence in the competition, all for your viewing pleasure. Mind the spittoon.

Both teams are old hands now and knew the value of patience. The first starter ground on and on but nobody twitched until Amol mentioned Confessions of an English Opium Eater which saw Karie Westermann unleash her buzzer finger and give the correct answer of Thomas de Quincey – who was also the ventriloquist with Nookie Bear on his days off. Ask your parents. Rock songs with repeated titles – She said She said being one – brought just the one bonus with Louie Louie. None of us really got hold of the next starter which was looking for A – E – I – O – U. Fair enough. Sexual Dimorphism brought Sanjay Prabhakar UCL’s first starter. Octavia ‘I ‘ate you’ Butler brought UCL a welcome full house. Lee Miller gave The Open the next starter bringing up a set on cotton weaving terms, (as opposed to cotton-pickin’ varmints. Remember Deputy Dawg? No, alright, then.) For the picture starter we saw a diagram of the cross section of a leaf, that looked as if it was about to attack the Starship Enterprise. Nicky Maving took it with xylem. I’m sure I once met a guy called Billy ‘Spongy’ Mesophyl in 1985 in the Duke of Cambridge in Lewisham (since demolished to build a bus garage) but he wasn’t an acceptable answer anyway, so The Open took two bonuses on that set. Nobody knew that a group of wonderful and /or horrendous people were all alive in the 1610s. Olivia Holtermann Entwistle knew a group of works all linked by the word blue.  A timely full house on seaweed sadly did not include – if the answer is ‘because the seaweed’, what is the question? (Why did the lobster blush?) but meant that the score at just after 10 minutes was 60 – 50 to the Open.

The Orion Nebula allowed Sajay Prabhakar to level the scores. He was on good form last night and the most successful of either team. Video Games released in the year of 95 brought two correct answers to UCL – and I got one of them with Worms. Loved that game. Calum Jack knew that the Japanese culinary term katsu derived from the English cutlet. Lakes in the EU brought a brace of bonuses. For the next starter the unmistakeable opening bars of New Order’s Blue Monday set off a buzzer race won by Nicky Maving. Three tracks that ‘would never have been made without the Hacienda’ proved less well known. I had none while Open had the Chemical Brothers. When I hear the words ‘literary quarterly I usually answer Granta, and so did Karie Westermann, earning her team bonuses on the Majahapit Empire. Yeah, me neither. The Open still took 2. Josh Mandel was the first to recognise a set of clues relating to the word assumption. A science set about gawd only knows what brought UCL one more bonus than it brought me. Sanjay Prabhakar knew that Charles Lyell wrote ‘Principles of Geology’ and then Gabriel Garcia Marquez brought 2 bonuses. That man Prabhakar struck again on the next starter, recognising clues to the word ignorance. Famous pantomime performers brought me a full house, but only one correct answer to UCL. However they were starting to exert control on the match, leading at 20 minutes by 149 – 95.

For the second picture starter Karie Westermann recognised the work of costume designer Leon Bakst. More of Bakst’s designs for the Ballet Russes brought two correct answers. One full set separated the teams. Josh Mandel came in early to identify a funeral oration given for Pericles. A beautiful UC special set on football teams and patience gave three clubs who had to wait a long time between winning trophies. Next year if they ask the set they’ll be able to include Newcastle United. Two bonuses stretched the lead again. Sanjay Prabhakar stretched the lead further knowing Eightfold Path in Physics. Directors who have worked numerous times with Tilda Swinton brought UCL a full house. The gap was now more than two full houses and the sands of time were gathering on the bottom of the Open’s hourglass. LAM reader Hector Payne had a lash at the behavioural scientist needed for the next starter but none of us knew it. Calum Jack knew the Oscar Winning Twenty Days in Mariupol to pretty much seal the deal. Terms in graph theory only provided one bonus, but UCL were heading for the winner’s enclosure anyway. Josh Mandel knew the river on the banks of which stands Hanoi. This allowed UCL to take 2 of a relatively gentle set on the Labours of Heracles. Sanjay Prabhakar knew of augmented chords and US composer and supporting character in Porridge, Charles ‘Bee’ Ives, brought a well guessed full house. None of us knew karyotype. Nobody could get that Tennyson’s Sea King’s Daughter was Alexandra of Denmark before the contest was gonged. UCL won by 235 – 105.

The stats are pretty much all in favour of UCL. Across the whole show they outbuzzed the Open, and scored a BCR of 67, while the Open managed a BCR of 61. So hard lines to the Open, but hey, you are quarter finalists and nobody can take that away from you.

Amol Watch

Got a bit fussy with pronunciation with the lake set did our Amol. When Josh Mandel offered us the Ee – sel meer Amol accepted it but not without correcting him to Eye – sel – meer. I bet that wouldn’t pass muster in the Netherlands, Amol.

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

The Japanese culinary term katsu derived from the English cutlet.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

A repulsive term scaled by the Debye Length is included in DVLO theory. This measures the stability of what type of mixtures where a small insoluble phase is suspended throughout another phase? Examples include gels, aerosols and foams.

Poetry, sheer poetry – although nowhere near as sonorous as dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2025 Semi Final 2

Talk about Life being a rollercoaster! Last night’s second semi pitted these four contenders:-

							Table Position
Claire Reynolds	10	0	13	0	23	0	7
Phil Nowek	7	0	14	0	21	0	12
Lewis Jones	5	0	14	0	19	0	17
Rashmi  Bhardwaj	8	0	10	0	18	0	20

You may notice that Claire Reynolds’ name is in italics. This is how I show you that the contender was the highest scoring heat runner up, and therefore not on my original table. Heat winner Mike Noyes was unable to make it. So this gave us a semi final line up in which the strongest performer Claire, who lost out to Nancy Braithwaite in the first heat, was the only one who didn’t yet have a win under her belt.

First in the chair was teacher Phil Nowek. He was answering on the TV comedy series Blackadder. Now, if ever there was a fill yer boots subject for me, this was it. I managed 10 answering all on the questions about the individual episodes correctly. Fair play, I didn’t know Darling was originally called Cartwright. Phil, well he put in a superb round right up until the last question. Was it premature, I wondered, to speculate whether we might get two teachers into the final?

Next up was Claire Reynolds. Claire, so it seemed to me, was having the time of her life and didn’t sop beaming for the whole show. Quite right too – it must have come as a wonderful surprise when she got the phone call from the production team inviting her to the semis. Her subject was Joseph Chamberlain. Good choice. A fascinating figure in British politics at the end of the Victorian era, I can imagine that there was a lot for Claire to get to grips with. Me, I only got the 1, but Claire got a very good 10 to put herself right in contention.

Rashmi Bhardwaj was answering on film star Gregory Peck. Now, the thing about old Greg was that he lived into old age and he kept working for pretty much all of his life. So that was a lot of ground to cover. I picked up 3 of these and surprised myself by doing so and this brought my aggregate innings to a close with 14. Rashmi pushed on to 6 points and maybe could feel a little bit aggrieved to come so close on The Blue and The Gray without getting the point. That was the first of two close decisions, and for what it’s worth I thought that the ruling was correct.

The second came in Lewis Jones’ round on The Legend of Zelda video games. Now, I don’t know much about these, as you can see from my score of zero. But at one point Lewis was asked in which video game etc. etc. and replied Four Swords Adventure. Clive refused on the grounds I was called Four Swords. Now, I don’t know, this seems extremely harsh to me and I’m not sure that I would agree with this ruling. As it was Lewis struggled with the round and scored four.

Which is where the rollercoaster started to climb for Lewis. Returning first to the chair for the second half, Lewis delivered a GK round that absolutely smashed it out of the park. He’d been in a similar position in his heat, and swinging for the fences had brought him fourteen points and a win. Last night he outdid this by scoring 15. He was too far behind for this to bring him a spot in the final, but Lewis, if you do decide to give it another go sometime, if you can get the right specialists you will be very much a contender. Very much.

Sadly Rashmi didn’t manage a brilliant GK round last night. She scored five. However, this was a semi final and being a Mastermind semi finalist means never having to say you’re sorry. It can’t be taken away from you.

Claire had scored 13 on GK the last time that she passed this way in the heat. The GK round that she produced last night was on another level. Very little passed her by as she passed Lewis’ score and just kept building and building her own total. In the end she scored 15 to set the bar at a daunting 25.

Of course, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that this would be the winning score, and that we would not have 2 teachers in the final. Phil had scored 14 on GK in his heat. That would bring a tie break if he could repeat it and if he could score fifteen then he would win. He gave  it a decent lash too. However when you’re chasing such a big goal you have so little room for error. Phil produced a good GK round. But as it was, good was not going to be good enough. Phil scored 11 for a total of 22.

Congratulations to Claire! Only 6 out of 95 other contenders had outscored her in the heats, yet she had not been in the original line up for the semis. Now she finds herself in the final 6 contenders, with every chance of winning the lot. We can have opinions about top heavy semi finals and bottom heavy semi finals, but the fact is that Claire’s score was higher than the runners-up in last week’s top heavy line up. Jolly good show!

Phil Nowek	Blackadder	11	0	11	0	22	0
Claire Reynolds	Joseph Chamberlain	10	0	15	0	25	0
Rashmi Bhardwaj	Gregory Peck	6	0	5	0	11	0
Lewis Jones	The Legend of Zelda Video Games	4	0	15	0	19	0

University Challenge 2025 - Quarter final qualification match - Darwin, Cambridge v. Bristol

The Teams

Darwin, Cambridge

Rebecca McClelland

Sophie Willis

Harrison Whitaker (Capt.)

Rowan Stewart

Bristol

Ted Warner

Bridie Rogers

Kevin Flanagan (Capt.)

Olivia Watts

Well, after all the excitement earlier in the evening in Mastermindland were we, I wondered, in for a wee bit of a change of pace in UC? Probably not. For this was another qualification match. To the winners a place in the semis and to the losers a bar stool in the last chance saloon.

I will confess that I didn’t really get where we were heading with Iris van Herpen’s skeleton dress for the first starter, however it was Darwin’s top buzzer who did. Harrison Whitaker knew that this must have been the first dress made by 3D printer. Good shout. - Norse Myths as chronicled in Gylfaginning - announced Amol. Yum yum, announced I. I had the lot, but only the last one, Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge was at all easy, and this was the one bonus Darwin took. Bristol’s top buzzer, Ted Warner took the next starter knowing the Mukden Incident, among others. Muk Den was the main character in the Beijing based version of Eastenders back in the 80s, I believe. Winners of the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival brought us both just the one point for Pride. For once I awarded myself a lap of honour for something other than a Science question. I know as little about video games as I do about Science so when I correctly guessed the Final Fantasy series of games for the next starter, off around the Clark sofa I trotted. Ted Warner gave Bristol the lead with that one. Amol announced a set of bonuses on proteins and my mind went back to sleep for a bit. Bristol took two, and received an apology from Amol that he couldn’t accept the third. For the picture starter we saw a map and a vinyl disc. The vinyl disc contained a photograph of a recording artist. The map showed the location of a town or city mentioned in the name of a well known song recorded by the artist. Olivia Watts knew it was Aretha Franklin so the city had to be San Jose. Ah, but she didn’t ask Amol if he knew the way to San Jose so was right, but didn’t get the starter. Rebecca McClelland knew Nobel Laureate Felix ‘Everybody in the whole cell’ Bloch for the next starter. This earned the picture bonuses. The last answer was Tina Turner and Nutbush City Limits, which I once thought was about Rupert Bear’s home town. Darwin took a single bonus. Nobody knew the Rhinemaidens for the next starter but Darwin lost five. So at the ten minute mark Bristol led 35 – 25.

Now, thanks to Alex Haley’s “Roots” I knew the term griot for the next starter.  Harrison Whitaker knew it as well. Gloria Steinem brought a full house which pogoed Darwin into the lead. I haven’ t heard of the Crying of Lot 49 but Harrison Whitaker was in quickly for it. Medieval philosophy provided a second consecutive full house to give Darwin fifty points on the bounce. Centimorgan? Me? Nope, but it gave Ted Warner the next starter. The artist Barbara Walker brought just one bonus, but Bristol will have to view that particular set as a missed opportunity. With the next starter we had to wait and wait until suddenly it became clear we were looking for the mother of invention. Harrison Whitaker won the buzzer race to say necessity. Science stuff brought a full house, and Darwin had a fifty point lead. I was very pleased with my guess of Poulenc for the music starter – nobody else had it. Ted Warner knew an inlet of the Caspian Sea and this earned him the music bonuses on Les Six. A full house halved the gap between the teams. Bridie Rogers knew trochlea and trochlear for the next starter. Ways of preparing vegetables for cooking did not include the classic British method of boil the bejeesus out of them. We both took the same one with Julien. Darwin lost five with an early interruption for the next starter, allowing Ted Warner in with the cocktail party problem. Women and the Mexican Revolution brought just the one bonus. So as we zeroed in on the 20 minute mark Bristol led by 105 – 95. Anyone’s game.

Harrison Whitaker traced the Lords Appellant to the reign of Richard II, without mentioning the Lords Repellant in every reign since. 3 questions on the element Mercury brought two bonuses. So to the second picture starter and Kevin Flanagan identified a beautiful painting by Rousseau. Bonuses on three more carnival scenes brought two correct answers. French philosopher Lyotard gave Harrison Whitaker another starter. The literary magazine Blast brought Darwin two correct answers. A good old quiz chestnut about the acid present in culinary vinegars saw both teams hesitate before Olivia Watts gave the answer of acetic acid. A really tricky set on semantics yielded nowt. All square again. “The Journey Across the Heath” was the clue that we wanted The Return of the Native for he next starter. Ted Warner zigged with Tess of the D’Urbervilles. This allowed Harrison Whitaker in with the right answer. European place names beginning with the English name of a culinary herb – eg – Dillenburg – brought just the one bonus, when a full house would have been possible. Nobody knew Don Giovanni for the next starter. Captain Kevin Flanagan knew that Marie Curie would be he right answer to the next starter. Historical fashion brought nowt and Bristol still trailed by 10. Olivia Wats wiped this out recognising a starter alluding to the Japanese Tea Ceremony. They got one bonus wrong, and then came the bong. Another tie break! For once, I also knew the answer to it. I knew my favourite poem, Ode to Autumn ends with “Gathering swallows twitter in the sky”. So did Harrison Whitaker. On such small margins. Darwin went straight through to the semi final.

It seems an obvious thing to say that there wasn’t much in it. Darwin were slightly outbuzzed by Bristol. However their BCR of 67 kept them in the game. Bristol won two more starters than Darwin did, but their bonus conversion rate of 38 meant they couldn’t seal the deal in full time.

Amol Watch

Whatever else I say about Amol, I freely admit that he consistently gets it right with his rulings on whether answers are acceptable or not. Yes, I know that he probably has direction coming into his ear about this, but his “I’m so sorry, I can’t accept that Olivia, I did ask for the full title of the song. . . “ just strikes the right note. I yield to no one in my admiration for Jeremy Paxman, but sometimes his rejoinders in such cases were tantamount to insult being added to injury. While I’m praising Amol, I like the way he makes it clear just how much fun he’s having. His reaction to Tina Turner’s Chattanooga Choo Choo from Darwin was rather infectious.

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

The cocktail party problem is a term describing the phenomenon of selective attention wherein someone can attend to a single auditory stimulus tuning out surrounding noises.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In enzymology, the Km is the substrate concentration where half of the maximum rate of reaction is reached. The letters Km stand for which constant?

I was fine up to ‘in’. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2025 Semi Final 1

 

							Table Position
Ian Grieve	11	0	17	0	28	0	1
John Robinson	12	0	12	0	24	0	4
Robin Dunford	11	0	12	3	23	3	7
Jane Northen	10	0	12	3	23	3	8

Well, peeps, if you read my preview of the semi finals last week then you’ll know that John Robinson promised us that this week’s first semi final would boast four of the top 8 contenders of the first round. Well, he was right about that. We’ve seen semi finals before that have been this top heavy – let’s be honest, we tend to get 1 every series, at least. But it just strikes me as a shame to have a line up of contenders who could grace a final all in the same semi. Well, regardless of what I think, that’s what we had.

First to go was LAM reader Ian Grieve. Ian had a great specialist round in his first match, followed by an absolutely blinding GK round, the best of the series so far. Tonight he was answering on The Clash. Cars on the table – to say that I did not do very well on the specialists in his show would be an understatement. Ian did well, in fact at one stage I thought a perfect round might be in the offing. Well, we didn’t quite get that, but 11 and no passes was a serious statement of intent.

Jane Northen was offering us The Ironclad Battleship, HMS Warrior. I think the Warrior has its own Mastermind connection since I think that Mastermind legend Gavin Fuller – 1993 champ (youngest champ of the Magnus era) was its archivist. Jane had obviously prepared really well, and she topped Ian’s round, scoring 12 and 1 pass. Already this semi final was turning out to be one of the best shows of the series so far – and we’d only had 2 of the 6 rounds yet.

Robin Dunford, who was 7th on my unofficial round one leaderboard, had scored two double figure rounds in his heat. Answering on the films of Marilyn Monroe he managed 8. In this day and age that’s a good score, but the merely good was not going to be good enough in this particular show. As an aside “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” did at least bring me my first correct answer of the show, so I can thank you for that, Robin.

Finally then, LAM reader (and teacher) John Robinson. John was fourth on my first round leadership table and he was answering on one of his favourite artists, Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Mine too, John, mine too. I’ve been lucky enough to see his work in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum too. This yielded me a massive or measly three. (Measly because it’s a low total, massive because its three times as many points as I got from any of the other specialist rounds. John’s round was practically flawless, and he had a deserved lead scoring 13 and no passes.

So it would all come down to the GK. Robin, nothing daunted by having become detached from the leading group, rallied himself well and delivered a double figure round of 10. No, he wouldn’t win with 18, but he’d certainly be able to walk away with his head held high.

So to Ian, then. If the round went his way he had shown that he was capable of setting an extremely challenging total. Did it go his way? Well, it was a very good round indeed, but the dog end of the round just seemed to throw in some of the hardest questions we’d hear all night. I never knew that the Man in the Iron Mask was part of a longer work, for example. As a result Ian’s round finished on 13 for 24 when it looked as if he was going to score one or two more. It meant he was clearly leader in the clubhouse, but with two left out on the course anything could happen. If Jane could equal her best of 12, she would be behind Ian on pass countback. She had 12 on the scoreboard and a question to go. Which state is Mt. Kosciusko located in? She zigged with Victoria when she should’ve zagged with NSW. 24 points. Fine score, but only good enough for 2^nd.

John’s outstanding specialist round meant he needed 11 and no passes to force a tie break, and 12 to win outright. John had scored 12 in the heats, so he was certainly capable. It was close, but in the end not that close, since he managed to equal Ian’s 13 and no passes, which gave him a clear win on 26.

This was a fine, fine show, full of excitement and great performances.  Time will tell if 24 would have been enough to have won some of the other semi finals – my gut feeling is that it will. I will have huge sympathy for Ian and Jane if this does prove to be the case. Every year we lose at least one genuine contender because they are in a really tough semi, but knowing this can’t make it ay easier to bear if you’re the contender to whom it happens.

But on a more positive note, congratulations to John! That performance was a great example of what I said about preparation and maximising your performance in GK. I think at this point I should introduce a self imposed rule that I do not tip, or even comment on the potential of teacher contenders since it only tends to scupper their chances. So I will content myself by saying great performance. Best of luck.

The Details

Ian Grieve	The Clash	11	0	13	0	24	0
Jane Northen	The ironclad battleship HMS Warrior	12	1	12	3	24	4
Robin Dunford	The Films of Marilyn Monroe	8	2	10	3	18	5
John Robinson	Pieter Brueghel the Elder	13	0	13	0	26	0