Mastermind 2026 End of Season Report

Now that there’s been just a couple of days for the dust to settle, let’s have a look at the 2026 series, the well-dones and the could-do-betters. Yes, this is all just my opinion and please feel free to disagree.

Let us begin with the well-dones. Up to and including the 2025 season we’ve noticed that when it gets to the semi finals you tend to get at least one ‘top-heavy’ and at least one ‘bottom-heavy’ semifinal. To put it another way, at least one of the semis would be overloaded with top scorers from the heats, and at least one overloaded with lowest scorers. It arose, I believe, from an emphasis on putting the ‘right’ specialists with each other in each show. Maybe I’m wrong about this but it certainly seemed to me that there was a far better spread in this year’s semis. Yes, there were a couple of contenders whose scores in their runner up slots in their semis would have been enough to win several of the other semis, but this wasn’t because they’d been placed in unfairly loaded semis, but because they were beaten by a truly outstanding performance. You can’t legislate against that.

Likewise, we saw a very exciting final. It seems that the days of jetting off far and wide for the filmed inserts won’t be coming up any time soon, but there were still some famous faces to surprise our finalists, which is always nice to see.

The could-do-betters, then. I think you know what is coming. Now, the format of the series as stands assigns 96 contenders to 24 heats. As far as I know, this is done by placing the right variety of specialist subjects with each other in each show. If this happens to throw two top contenders together by coincidence, well, that’s just the way it is and bad luck. Yes, the runner up can be a stand in for the semis but there’s no guarantee they will be used. Now, okay, you might say, well, sorry, but if you want to win the series you have to be prepared to face anyone and to beat them. Harsh, but true. You might also say, well, Dave, this happened to you in 2006. You were a stand in for the semifinal, you weren’t used, so you tried again the next year and look what happened. Again, true. But, oh, I don’t know, some years I just feel that real quiz talent is too thinly spread to sustain 24 heats and I feel that someone who had a top 5 score in the heats but didn’t qualify deserves another chance.

But of course, it is a question how you can actually deliver that. If I could wave a magic wand I would shorten the series by 2 shows and give 2 semifinal wild cards to the highest scoring runners up. If the makers are contractually obliged to provide 31 shows, then I would want 23 heats, and a repechage pitting the top 4 runners up. Yes, it would mean that they would have to learn an extra specialist round, but then you can’t expect something for nothing. I don’t know that I would condone going back to 5 contender semi finals though.

The other could-do-better is not actually the fault of the show itself. But just as happened in 2025, the first round was killed stone dead by having such a long hiatus for Celebrity Mastermind. Look, the Celebrity show really isn’t my cup of tea now, but I understand that there’s an audience for it. I don’t want to be mean about the celebrities who appear on it since they are doing it buckshee to support a charity. But I’m afraid that by now, too many of the celebs aren’t so much from Who’s Who as from Who The Hell’s That? Mastermind isn’t a great fit for a celebrity show, I’m afraid. Yeah, there’s a place for it, but not where it’s being shown at the moment.

Well, there we are. Just my opinions.

University Challenge 2026 Grand Final (Spoilers)

The Teams

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alice Leonard (capt)

Rayhana Amjad

Manchester 

Ray Power

Kirsty Dickson

Kai Madgwick

Rob Faulkner

No Grand Final is ever settled in the opening exchanges, but the opening exchanges of this Grand Final were going to tell us a lot about how the match might unfold. For the first starter neither team knew Mary Wollstonecraft was writing to Talleyrand in the quotation given. Nerves? No. Kai Madgwick buzzed in extremely fast to identify the border between China and Afghanistan as the border with the largest difference in time zones in the world. The works of my great, great, great, great uncle’s mate, Pushkin (honestly, Pushkin wrote a poem to him and about him) brought two bonuses. No panic from Edinburgh. Rayhana Amjad, their own star buzzer from the semi, recognised the description of Bose for the next starter. They in turn took two bonuses on foreign football clubs founded by British ex pats. Nobody knew sachlichkeit – which surely only exists as part of the lyric of the song Let’s Go Sachlichkeit from Mary Poppins. Johnny Richards knew that the creature in a film mentioned was a donkey. (The film wasn’t Shrek). Poisonous plants brought a full house, and the lead. The picture starter showed us the flag of Turkmenistan and that sort of thing is meat and drink to Kai Madgwick. More flags in the bad category of the 2001 pamphlet Good Flag Bad Flag proved considerably harder and brought nowt to any of us. Edinburgh lost five with an interruption of the next starter. Given a little more Kai Madgwick was able to identify the Nestorians (whose planet was saved from the Daleks by the Doctor in the 1968 Doctor Who Serial “It’s them Bleedin’ Daleks Again”) Non-narrative film makers brought two bonuses and the lead. The score was 50-40 at the ten.

Amol did not get to the end of the next starter when the Manchester skipper buzzed in with degenerate. Places and characters from Greek mythology sharing a name element – hippo – brought two bonuses. The Madgwick surge looked to be irresistible as he buzzed with the name of poet Rainer Maria Rilke. For those of us counting, this was his fifth starter. That was as many as he managed in the whole contest last time Manchester played Edinburgh and more than half of the contest remained to be played. This was ominous. 2 bonuses followed on the Second Crusade. The gap was widening. Edinburgh really needed to find a starter. For the music starter nobody recognised a little bit of Wagner – that’s Richard, not Robert. Rayhana Amjad was first in with the name Thule for the next starter. More pieces of classical music about fire did not, sadly, include the timeless work of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. They didn’t add to the Edinburgh score either. Nobody knew a video game widely praised for its realistic depiction of psychosis – sounds a whole load of fun, does that. Kai Madgwick took another starter linking the name Bokassa with CAR – Central African Republic – or Empire as he would later have it for a while. Even if he hadn’t been playing so well, I would still have applauded Kai Madgwick for his comment “This is too mathsy for me!” about the bonuses. You and me both kid, you and me both. The Continuum Hypothesis – a prog rock group from the 70s, surely, yielded one bonus. Kirsty Dickson was unlucky to give Argyll and Bute for the next starter thus allowing Rayhana Amjad to tap just Bute into the open goal. Sociological terms beginning with A brought one bonus. It helped, but they really needed to be winning more on the buzzer. So Rayhana Amjad took the next starter with various clues to the word corner. Zimbabwe stubbornly refused to yield up bonus points. Still, at the 20 minute mark the gap stood at only 20 points, 100 – 80 in Manchester’s favour. Both teams were still in it.

For the second picture starter Kai Madgwick identified a photo of Werner ‘Du, du, lichts mir in’ Herzog. Stills from three documentaries directed by Herzog brought one bonus but stretched the lead to 35. Again, Edinburgh cut into it as Parthav Easwar recognised words for pomegranate syrup. (another prog rock band?) German chemist Ida Noddack brought them one bonus and the gap was back down to 20. Gawd knows about enantiomers. Neither team did for the next starter. An incorrect Manchester interruption narrowed the gap to 15. The lightning fast buzzing of Kai Madgwick struck again for the next starter to identify poems contained in the Exeter Book. Two world heritage sites only yielded one bonus, but that bonus meant that Edinburgh would need two unanswered visits to the table. And there was not a lot of time left. It’s almost needless to say that it was Kai Madgwick who turned the likelihood of a Manchester win into a certainty by buzzing in with the correct answer of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk for the next starter. Paintings by Basquiat brought ten points to stretch the lead to 50. Johnny Richards knew that the German word for cathedral is Dom, taking Edinburgh into triple figures. But that was it. The contest was bonged after one incorrect answer on international borders and Manchester had won by 145 to 105.

And let’s be clear. Although Kai Madgwick was the undoubted star of the final, and the series, it was won by Manchester, the team and the whole team. Kai knew this, saying ‘I’m pleased with every single member of this team’. Right enough.

Analysis – well, should you need such a thing, then Edinburgh achieved a BCR of 42.1% while Manchester had 48.1%. But the story of the day was not about bonuses, but about starters. Manchester got more of them than Edinburgh and yes, Kai Madgwick got all of his team’s starters, 9 to be precise. I said in my preview that if Kai Madgwick hit top form then my tentative prediction of an Edinburgh win wouldn’t be worth a damn. Well, he did and it wasn’t. At the end of the day, like every other team that Manchester have played in this series (except themselves in the quarter final) Edinburgh were Madgwicked.

I enjoyed the fact that the Beeb had asked Miriam Margolyes to present the trophy. This was a cue for her story of using the F word when playing in a series in the 60s when she got one wrong. I think I did once read that her episode no longer exists in the archives, so that’s one we just have to imagine. Miriam M is a popular, yet somewhat high-risk speaker. Miriam is going to say what Miriam wants to say, not what someone else wants her to say. In this case, no expletives, but the usual thing is for the luminary presenting the trophy to pay a tribute to both teams, commiserate with the runners up, congratulate the champions and not single out any one player. Not our Miriam. All she wanted to do was concentrate on Kai Madgwick. “You’re extraordinary. You’re a genius.” Even when pushed by Amol to pay tribute to Edinburgh she hardly gave them a word. When presenting the trophy she said to the Manchester team “You were brilliant,” and then looked at the skipper and said “especially you!” Well, if we’re honest, it’s probably what we were all thinking.

Amol Watch

Another good season, Mr. Rajan, so take a well earned bow, please. I think we can safely say that you’ve made the show your own now.

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

The largest time zone difference over a land border between two countries is that between China and Afghanistan. With its huge area yet single time zone, it had to be China, but I didn’t know if it would be a Western or Eastern border.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

First advanced by Georg Cantor in 1878, what name is given to the hypothesis that posits there is no set whose cardinality is an intermediate value between the cardinality of the integers and that of the real numbers?

Yeah, you had me at cardinality. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind Grand Final 2026 (Spoilers)

Well, I’m just starting to come down from all the excitement of the double bubble of Quizzy Mondays Grand Final evening. My first thought is – thank goodness I didn’t try to predict that final! Well, we’ll say a bit more about that later. Meanwhile, on with the show.

Kicking off the final was Lorna Frankel. In both previous rounds Lorna had been rock solid on her specialist rounds and I expected her to be so again. She certainly did well, scoring 11. However, she did drop a couple of points, and her score was slightly lower than she had managed in her two previous specialists. No disaster at all, though and game on.

Ross Taylor was answering on the films of Danny Boyle. His solid 10 in the heat was trumped by his excellent 12 in the semi. Which was not actually the highest specialist score in that particular match. Ross’ upward trend continued as he whacked in a near perfect 13. I had no doubt that this would put Ross in the shakeup when we got into the business end of the competition.

There was a kind of symmetry about Danielle’s specialist round. She had scored 11 in the heat and 11 in the semi so we can’t claim it was a surprise when she also scored 11 in tonight’s round on Beatrix Potter. Yes, she was a couple of points behind, but if she could match her GK round from the heat then she would have a very competitive score.

David Ford started his round on Robert Burns extremely well. He’d scored 11 in the heat and he looked on course to at least repeat that. However a couple of stoppers in mid round seemed to put him off his stride a bit, but in the end he recovered to get into double figures with 10. 3 points behind the lead is not an unbridgeable gap, especially if he could produce a GK round like the one he’d had in the heats.

Miles Searle did point out in his filmed insert that if he won, then he would be the youngest ever winner, being a remarkable 21 years old. I don’t know if this makes him the youngest finalist since Susan Reynolds in 1974, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Oh, you know, I do sometimes wish that they wouldn’t ask contenders to talk about this sort of thing in their films for the start of the specialist rounds. I always think it’s tempting fate. I remember for my film for the 2008(7) SOBM Grand Final I was asked about my chances of winning, and I stonewalled it with ‘1 in 6, same as everyone else.’ Miles’ round of 8 points on Notre Dame Cathedral was a perfectly satisfactory one. But in the final, the banker only pays double figures.

Finally Diane Howe. Answering on Jim Lovell she scored a fine 12. This was on a par with the score from her the specialist round in her heat, and notably better than the 9 points she had scored in the semi final. At just one point behind in second she was handily placed on the leader’s shoulder at the canal turn.

For the record, I scored 5 on Jim Lovell, 4 on Julie Andrews, one each on Danny Boyle, Beatrix Potter and Robert Burns and precisely zero on Notre Dame.

First to return to the chair was Miles Searle. Miles had scored a brilliant 15 on GK in his semi and if he could repeat or improve upon this then it would certainly put the cat among the pigeons. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way this time and he finished with 17. But a Mastermind finalist at 21! All that he is missing from his armoury is a few good years at the quiz face and, should he desire, he could easily pass this way again.

David Ford, as with his specialist round, at first looked like he was on for a very fine performance. But a wrong answer in the middle of the round robbed him of all momentum. Oh, as we know any score in double figures in the modern era of Mastermind is a good one. But when you’re 3 points behind, 10 just isn’t going to be enough. Not in the Grand Final.

Now, I did mention in my preview that what you hope to do in the Grand Final is to find your very best form and pull out a better round than you managed in either heat or semi. In the heat and semi Lorna Frankel managed GK scores of 12 and 10. Tonight she got to 10 and kept answering. She got to 12 and kept answering. She got to 13 and finally ended the round with 14 and no passes. 25 and no passes overall. That could, just could, be a winning score, I thought.

Danielle Connolly’s best GK score so far of 13 in the heat would not quite be enough. Like Lorna before her she was going to have to improve on her best form in GK. Well, she gave it a good go. But before the white line of time started to run out it was clear she wasn’t going to get there. Nonetheless a good 10 for 21 gave her 2^nd place with 2 contenders still to go.

The first of whom was Diane Howe. Diane’s best GK form from the heat, where she scored 14, was required to take the outright lead. She looked calm and was answering well. As the round went on there were perhaps just signs of fatigue as she closed in on the 13 and no passes that she needed for a share of the lead. It was close, but she got there. Also 25 and no passes.

Finally Ross Taylor. Alone of all the contenders, Ross returned to the chair knowing exactly what he needed to do. 12 points and no passes for a share of the lead and a three way tie break. 13 for an outright win. Make no doubt, Ross could do this. He’d produced the joint best GK round of the whole series in the semi, where he’d scored 15. Of all of the finalists he has played in the most high-powered and pressured quizzes. All he needed was for the questions to run for him. It was close, desperately so. However, Ross, in an attempt to maintain momentum I believe, passed during the round which meant that 12 would not be enough. As it was, he just fell a wee bit short. It happens. He finished with 24.

Which meant that we had a tie break, between Lorna and Diane. In one way it is a shame that one of these fine competitors would have to lose, but that’s Mastermind. Lorna was the first to answer the five questions in the tie break. I was fairly sure that she had two of them. Diane was brought back and she, I believed, answered 3 of them correctly. I was right. Diane, the self confessed adrenaline junkie, is our new Mastermind champion. Huge congratulations.

I offer my heartfelt commiserations to Lorna. And my thanks to all 6 finalists for a great hour’s entertainment. It was nice to see Clive paying a fulsome tribute to them and to all of the contenders, without whom we would not have a show. Thanks to the team who make the show too. Cheers Mastermind – I look forward to the next time we meet in the 2027 series.

The Details

Lorna Frankel	Julie Andrew	11	0	14	0	25	0	28
Ross Taylor	The Films of Danny Boyle	13	0	11	2	24	2
Danielle Connolly	Beatrix Potter	11	1	10	1	21	1
David Ford	Robert Burns	10	0	10	0	20	0
Miles Searle	Notre Dame Cathedral - Paris	8	0	9	0	17	0
Diane Howe	Jim Lovell	12	0	13	0	25	0	3

Mastermind 2026 Grand Final Specialist SUbjects

Silly me.  All of that guff in the preview and I haven’t even mentioned the specialist subjects for tomorrow’s Grand Final. They are:-

Dame Julie Andrews,

The Films of Danny Boyle,

Beatrix Potter,

Robert Burns,

Notre-Dame Cathedral

Jim Lovell.

Actually, as a set I really rather like them. I mean, there’s none of them which I’d pick as an absolute banker, but with a bit of luck and a following wind I might be able to score a point or two on all of them. There’s none of them that seem to carry a government health warning with them. Yes, there’s over 800 years worth of history to consider for Notre Dame, but it can be done. There were over 1900 years of History for London Bridge in my final and like I said, it can be done. I always think biographical subjects are a good fit for Mastermind, having definite limits to what you can be asked, and we have four of them. Beatrix Potter might prove problematical as there’s all of the books, and all of the pictures and all of the life. I read a biography of her a couple of years ago and there is a lot to deal with. Likewise, Julie Andrews is 90, and her career started as a child star, so even if you just concentrated on her stage and screen career there is a hell of a lot to learn. Robbie Burns wrote over 500 poems, without even touching his life and career. Jim Lovell, well there’s all of his career as an astronaut which is pretty well documented but that only accounts for about 12 years of his life. He was 97 when he passed away last August. That’s a lot of non-astronaut years to learn about. Finally, the films of Danny Boyle. I believe he has thus far had 16 films released. Sounds manageable? Well, when you consider that film and TV rounds do tend to concentrate on the events of the film/TV show, that’s a lot of films to watch, make notes on and learn.

Well, however our six finalists do in the show, I hope that you’ll join me in thanking them for giving it a go. Whatever happens, take satisfaction that you are a Mastermind finalist and nobody can ever take it away from you.

University Challenge 2026 Grand Final Preview

 The Tale of the Tape

	1st rd F	1st rd A	2nd rd F	2nd rd A	QF1 F	QF1 A	QF2 F	QF2 A	QF3 F	QF3 A	SF F	SF A
Edinburgh	200	105	180	150	195	80	105	85	/	/	155	110
Manchester	170	150	160	135	80	195	150	120	185	135	250	70

 

	For - Average	Against - Average	Margin - Average
Edinburgh	167	106	61
Manchester	166	115	51

 

Well, before we think about my comparative performance tables, let’s consider the fact that these teams met in the first set of quarter finals. Back then, it wasn’t really close. Edinburgh won by 195-80.

So are we looking at a foregone conclusion in the final? No. I’ve read my review of that quarter final match, and everything comes back to the starters. It usually does. In that match Manchester skipper Kai Madgwick answered 5 starters correctly. Now compared with his 10 in the semi final that looks as if it’s famine rations, while actually it’s a good performance. But nobody else in the Manchester team managed to answer a starter correctly. In a match where the skipper was getting beaten on the buzzer more than usual it really needed another member of the team to help ease the pressure just a little. As it was Johnny Richards of Edinburgh scored 7 starters which was more than Manchester scored all evening.

Alright, then, now let’s look at the comparative performances. There is only a 1 point difference in the teams’ average scores. When you factor in that on average Edinburgh’s average points difference is +61, while Manchester’s is+51, and that is affected by the match between the teams, then this suggests that they are a lot closer than their quarter final match suggests. There was no other team that faced both of our finalists so we don’t have that to compare.

Bearing this in mind, we have to speculate on why the score wasn’t closer when the teams met in the quarters. Maybe Edinburgh are just that tad faster on the buzzer and we’ll see a similar result in the final. That’s certainly possible. But there are other possible explanations. Maybe that particular set of starters happened to be more closely aligned to Edinburgh’s knowledge than Manchester, though the sheer blind luck of the draw. Maybe Johnny Richards was having an especially good night while Kai Madgwick was having an off night. That’s possible.

I always like a team which has people who can answer a wide enough range of starters in up to three of their seats. Edinburgh look stronger to me on this score than Manchester look. Now I grant you that a player who can answer you 10 starters in an evening has the ability to carry you to a win if they are on song. However the other side of that particular coin is that you are reliant on them not having a bad night. Last week we saw one of this series’ finest buzzers, Oscar O’Flanagan, having such a night. It can happen.

Mind you, that was largely because Kai Madgwick and his team started the contest at such a tremendous pace and it meant that Oscar and Imperial were forced to gamble and come in a little bit too early. What might happen, I wonder, if Manchester manage to get off to a similar start against Edinburgh? By the end of the quarters Edinburgh were the only unbeaten team left in the series. How will they cope if they find themselves under real pressure for the first time in this series?

Twist my arm behind my back and I’ll say Edinburgh to win, but if Kai Madgwick has another blinder that prediction won’t matter a damn.

Can’t wait.

Mastermind 2026 Grand Final Preview

 The Tale of the Tape

Lorna Frankel	1st round	12	0	12	0	24	0
Lorna Frankel	semi	13	0	10	0	23	0
Average		12.5	0	11	0	23.5	0
Diane Howe	1st round	12	0	14	1	26	1
Diane Howe	semi	9	3	11	2	20	5
Average		10.5	1.5	12.5	1.5	23	3
Ross Taylor	1st round	10	0	9	0	19	0
Ross Taylor	semi	12	0	15	0	27	0
Average		11.5	0	12	0	23	0
Danielle Connolly	1st round	11	0	13	0	24	0
Danielle Connolly	semi	11	1	6	2	17	3
Average		11	0.5	9.5	1	20.5	1.5
David Ford	1st round	11	0	16	0	27	0
David Ford	semi	9	0	10	1	19	1
Average		10	0	13	0.5	23	1
Miles Searle	1st round	9	0	13	0	22	0
Miles Searle	semi	11	0	15	0	26	0
Average		10	0	14	0	24	0

 

Yes, peeps, the above table shows how our 6 finalists in tomorrow night’s Grand Final have performed in their semi-finals and their first-roundheats. Now, if you’re looking for a prediction, well, I’m afraid that I’ve stopped doing that. Yes, I know in my heart of hearts that me predicting a winner cannot logically really scupper that contender’s chances. But I’m sick of getting it wrong all the time.

It’s probably just as well that I’m not trying to pick a winner, anyway, because this year is too difficult to call. Just in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve averaged out the points from each contender’s two shows, and 5 of our contenders have an average points total of between 23 and 24. 5 contenders separated by 1 point. Now, okay, that is only the average. But that in itself raised the point that generally there is a lot of inconsistency between the finalists’ performances in their first round, and in their semi, especially when it comes to general knowledge. In all likelihood the winner will need to have been the top, or very close to the top performer in general knowledge. So even in the case of the finalist with the lowest GK score from the semis, who is to say that they won’t have a GK round that is even better than their first round GK? Even in the case of the finalist with the highest GK score from the semis, who is to say that they won’t have a performance that is on a par with their first round GK?

So even though it is always a case of the final is there to be won by the person who manages to find their very best form on the night, it seems to apply even more for tomorrow than it normally does. Alright, I haven’t picked an actual winner for years, but the winner is usually one of the contenders I’ve thought was in with a chance. It hasn’t been won by an outsider. Well, if I’m honest, there really are no real outsiders this year. If any of these contenders has their best evening of the series, and the others don’t, then there’s our winner.

It’s not the time or place to reiterate the points I made last week about how I’d like to resolve the situation that can happen when two of the strongest contenders in the whole series get matched in the same heat. All I want to do now is to congratulate each of our 6 finalists for getting this far. I hope that the final proved to be a memorable and enjoyable experience for all of you, and I’m really looking forward to it.