Mastermind 2026 Semi Final 1

The Tale of the Tape

Position	Contender	SS	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
=6	Lorna Frankel	12	0	12	0	24	0
11	Elis Matthews	11	0	9	0	20	0
=12	Peter Glanvill	10	0	10	1	20	1
=15	Teddy Fogel	10	1	9	0	19	0

Evening. The relative first round performances of our 4 semi finalists in tonight’s show did not contain any of our top 5. Lorna Frankel was clear of the field but you could barely slide a cigarette paper between the other three. If any contender could dredge up their best specialist form and have a blinder on GK, then any of them might make it through.

First to chance his arm was Elis Matthews. He’d won his heat with a good specialist and solid general knowledge. Tonight he was answering on the TV comedy series Fleabag. In my preview I predicted that I wouldn’t get any right. I was right too. Elis didn’t quite manage perfection but he equalled his score from the heats with a good 11. He would still e incontention at the turnaround, whatever else happened.

Well, what happened was that out highest scorer from the first round, Lorna Frankel, delivered a perfect round answering on Michael Faraday. I scraped 1, which paled into insignificance compared with Lorna’s 13 from 13. It really was a superb round, and from the moment she answered the first question it never looked like she was going to drop a point, even had Clive continued to ask questions about Faraday for the rest of the show.

Did this have an effect on the contenders who had to follow Lorna in the specialist round? Who knows. What we do know is that Teddy Fogel, answering on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, didn’t do as well as he would have hoped. It’s a big subject that , not just because Reagan was a two ter president. There were areas of the subject that Teddy just didn’t seem to have covered in his preparation and sadly by the end of the round he had only scored 6 to be 7 points off the lead and out of the contest to all intents and purposes.

Completing the SS round was Peter Glanville. For ¾ of the round on British marine invertebrates he was mightily impressive, but one question where the answer refused to take a dive from the tip of his tongue just robbed him of a bit of momentum. He still managed 10 which meant that we would have 3 contenders fighting it out for the spot in the final. I failed to score in this round but at least the 3 points I had scored on Reagan bumped my aggregate up to a 4.

Fair play to Teddy. You would have forgiven him for baling out a little in the GK round. Instead he showed great concentration, picking and answering what he knew and guessing what he didn’t. As we know, any double figure round is good in the current era of Mastermind and Teddy scored 10 for 16 and could leave the series with his head held high.

With all due respect though, Teddy’s score just wasn’t going to win this heat. Peter Glanville though was certainly in with a shout. AS it was, he did manage to post the highest GK score of the match, with 11. I somehow suspected this just left enough daylight that one of our remaining two contenders would be able to squeeze past on the inside in the run up to the tape.

Elis Matthews did not match Peter’s GK performance. But he didn’t need to. He’d scored 1 more point in the specialist round. He scored one less point than Peter in the GK and this meant they were tied. However Peter had used the tactic of passing to maintain momentum and this meant that Elis just snuck into the lead on pass countback.

Lorna had scored 12 on GK in the heat, and she could afford to fall short of this by several points which would still bring her a win. What she produced was a perfectly good GK round of 10. Credit to all of our contenders tonight, it is a pleasure to see all four contenders posting double figure GK rounds. Lorna’s total of 23 brought her the win and the place in the final. Da iawn! I wish you the very best of luck in the final.

The Details

Elis Matthews	Fleabag	11	1	10	3	21	4
Lorna Frankel	Michael Faraday	13	0	10	0	23	0
Teddy Fogel	The Presidency of Ronald Reagan	6	0	10	0	16	0
Peter Granvill	British Marine Invertebrates	10	2	11	4	21	6

Mastermind 2026 Semi Final 1 Specialist Subjects

Its semi final the first tomorrow, peeps.  I don’t know who is going to be in it so can’t say if it’s a top heavy, bottom heavy or evenly spread semi, but I do know that the specialists are:

The TV comedy Series Fleabag

British scientist Michael Faraday

The Presidency of Ronald Reagan

British Marine invertebrates

My chances are slim. I have never watched Fleabag – not a conscious choice not to, I’ve just never seen it. Each of the other 3 subjcts allows for the possibility of one or two guesses but in all honesty there’s not a banker subject at all.

University Challenge Quarter Final Elimination Manchester v. UCL

The Teams

Manchester

Ray Power

Kirsty Dickson

Kai Madgwick (Capt)

Rob Faulkner

UCL

Zak Lakota-Baldwin

Alice Lee

Michael Doherty (Capt)

Manny Campion-Dye

Howdy there pardners. Pull up a bar stool and let’s join Manchester and UCL in their visit to the last chance saloon. No more messing about – lose this one and you’re out.

Kai Madgwick won the first starter on Dio Cassius’ celebrity profile of Boudica. Bonuses on Transnational UNESCO world heritage sites weren’t easy but Manchester took two of them. I didn’t know the play Kyoto but Michael Doherty the UCL skipper did. Alliterative psychologists supplied me with a rare psychology bonus with Alfred Adler. UCL didn’t score. The ridiculously long next starter required you to keep your nerve. Kai Madgwick didn’t and lost five. By the end of the question, several weeks later, it became clear that the answer was perfect, as both Zak Lakota-Baldwin and I knew. Historian Timothy Snyder brought us both just the one bonus. No marks for either team for not recognizing the location of the city of Newport for the picture starter. Michael Doherty recognized the description of a couple of films with the word Desire in the title. Map locations of various Chartist riots or protests brought a single bonus. This was enough to give UCL a 40 – 15 lead on ten minutes.

For the next starter nobody knew the Sorbs. I remember them for their early 70s hit Part of the Union. Manny Campion-Dye was the first to recognize a description of work by David Hockney for the next starter. Terms coined by William Whewell – yes, I know, should be William Whothe’ell – brought two bonuses and it looked as if UCL might be starting to pull away. Neither team knew that the women’s 800 metres was not run between the Amsterdam and Rome Olympics because of the supposed state of the finishers at the end of the Amsterdam race. Michael Doherty knew the term colostrum for the next starter. Two bonuses on pastels (bet you can’t put one in your mouth without chewing it) were taken. In one of his less dramatic but more effective buzzes, Kai Madgwick identified fictional Methodists for the next starter. The immortal Kind Hearts and Coronets brought just one bonus but it’s always nice to see my home borough getting name-checked. So to the music round. Kai Madgwick’s free arm leaped skywards, but he was still beaten to the buzzer by team mate Rob Faulkner who very quickly identified the stylings of Fonatines DC. Me neither. Three more indie bands brought our first full house of the evening. Thales of Miletus – who was a Doctor Who villain during the Jon Pertwee era – fell to Manny Campion-Dyer for the next starter, and earned bonuses on the Weimar Republic’s second most popular jazz combo, the Gottingen Seven. One bonus followed. A very prompt buzz from Michael Doherty identified nopales as leaves of a cactus. The book Green Chemistry did not bring anything more to the table. So at just past 20 minutes UCL still led by 100 – 55.

I guessed that the list given at the start of the next question were all Maglev trains and so did Kai Madgwick. Low- or un-seeded tennis players recently successful in major tournaments brought just one bonus and took us to the 2^nd picture starter. Kai Madgwick recognized a photo of Sir Roger Bannister, runner up in SPOTY in 1954. More runners up in SPOTY brought two bonuses, and narrowed the gap to 10 points. The Manchester skipper’s head was now well and truly in the game and he levelled the scores with Tajikistan for the next starter. Northeast Caucasian languages brought a single bonus, but it also brought the lead. UCL immediately took it back as Zak Lakota-Baldwin knew the derivation of the musical term sonata. Songs inspired by the 1992 LA riots gave them two correct answers and a fifteen point lead. Kai Madgwick knew the film trilogy The Human Condition and one maths bonus levelled the scores. Kai Madgwick buzzed to identify a former president of Guatemala. A full house would surely mean Manchester couldn’t be beaten in ordinary time. Two bonuses meant that the game was not yet over. Kai Madgwick took the next starter with deuterium and tritium and then it was. Manchester gilded their score a little with a bonus on Schiller, before the gong ended the match with the score at 150 – 120 to Manchester.

An enjoyable match of fluctuating fortunes. For the record UCL’s BCR was 37.5% to Manchester’s 50%. Had UCL converted more of their earlier bonuses, I think we would have seen a different result.

Amol Watch

I can forgive Amol for pointing out that Kai Madgwick nearly jumped out of his seat for the music starter, because he did.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know of the Week

William Whewell was the first person to coin the term scientist

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In mathematics what  seven letter adjective can precede all of the following- “graph” to indicate a graph where every induced subgraph the clique number equals the chromatic number, “group” to refer to a group (incorrect buzz) equal to its commutator subgroup, “information” to refer to a class of game in which players move alternately and each player is completely informed of all previous groups and ‘number’ to indicate a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors?

Mastermind 2026 Semi Final Preview

Shall we start with my unofficial table?  Here’s the table with all contenders. Heat winners are in bold, everyone else is in italics.

David Ford	11	0	16	0	27	0
Pete Simmonds	13	0	14	1	27	1
Diane Howe	12	0	14	1	26	1
Carolyn Rowe	12	0	13	0	25	0
Dennis Wang	13	0	12	0	25	0
Paul Robinson	12	0	13	3	25	3
Danielle Connolly	11	0	13	0	24	0
Eric Davies	12	0	12	0	24	0
Lorna Frankel	12	0	12	0	24	0
Maurizio Giacometto	9	0	14	0	23	0
Paul Smith	10	2	13	0	23	0
Milena Melcharek	12	0	10	0	22	0
Miles Searle	9	0	13	0	22	0
Roger Easy	10	0	12	2	22	2
Lucy Fleming	12	0	9	0	21	0
Nigel Haynes	10	0	11	0	21	0
Stuart Beard	10	0	11	0	21	0
Mark Pagan	10	0	11	2	21	2
Elis Matthews	11	0	9	0	20	0
Ian Walmsley	9	0	11	0	20	0
Jonnie Walker	10	0	10	0	20	0
Devon Krohn	11	0	9	0	20	0
Ben Abbott	9	0	11	1	20	1
Keith Hickling	11	0	9	1	20	1
Peter Glanvill	10	0	10	1	20	1
Robert Cohen	8	1	12	1	20	2
Beth Leonard	11	0	9	3	20	3
Jason Roberts	11	0	9	0	20	3
Richard Carr	11	0	9	6	20	6
Alan Hotchkiss	9	0	10	0	19	0
Alan McDermaid	11	0	8	0	19	0
Catherine Firth	8	0	11	0	19	0
Hannah Mimiec	10	0	9	0	19	0
Kim Mackenzie	12	0	7	0	19	0
Kumaran Sivathillainathan	11	0	8	0	19	0
Matthew Patenall	11	0	8	0	19	0
Max Bougeard	9	0	10	0	19	0
Ross Taylor	10	0	9	0	19	0
Teddy Fogel	10	1	9	0	19	0
Randall Alleyne	8	1	11	0	19	1
Meg Tapp	8	2	11	0	19	2
Angus Burns	7	0	12	3	19	3
Omair Azam	10	2	9	4	19	6
Gurpal Cheema	11	0	7	0	18	0
Jane Kendrick	8	0	10	0	18	0
Matthew McStea	7	0	11	0	18	0
Annette Fenner	9	0	9	1	18	1
Brian Williams	10	0	8	1	18	1
Emma Reeves	11	0	7	1	18	1
Julie Aris	9	0	9	1	18	1
Ruaidhri O’Donnell	8	0	10	2	18	2
Eulalie Burrows	11	0	7	3	18	3
Paddy Moore	6	2	12	1	18	3
Natalie Abbott	9	2	8	6	17	8
Naomi Killen	8	2	9	4	17	6
Susannah Croft	9	1	8	5	17	6
Jonathan Wilkins	8	0	9	5	17	5
Finn Maxwell	7	2	10	2	17	4
Jonathan Wright	5	3	12	0	17	3
Tomas Stevenson	8	0	9	3	17	3
Anjaneya Bapat	9	0	8	2	17	2
Jonathan Bartley	10	1	7	1	17	2
Katherine Rich	8	2	9	0	17	2
Ryan Lewendon	7	1	10	1	17	2
Sam Schoen	10	0	7	2	17	2
Sarah Skelton	5	1	12	1	17	2
Sophie Williamson	7	1	10	2	17	2
Davina Kesby-Beck	10	0	7	0	17	0
Kate Dapré	9	0	8	0	17	0
Meg Stapleton	10	0	7	0	17	0
Andrew McKenzie	6	0	10	1	16	1
Courtney Campbell	8	1	8	0	16	1
William Tams	5	0	11	0	16	0
Katie Stoyle	8	0	7	0	15	0
Basab Majumdar	10	0	5	1	15	1
David Slater	6	1	9	1	15	2
Elizabeth Rounding	9	0	6	2	15	2
Meena Heath	9	0	6	2	15	2
Atyab Rashid	6	0	9	3	15	3
Elizabeth Howard	6	2	9	1	15	3
Terry Edwards	8	1	7	4	15	5
Helen Woolston	7	0	6	0	13	0
Rachel Sambrooks	5	0	8	0	13	0
Beth Younge	5	1	8	1	13	2
Carter Latif	8	1	5	2	13	3
Ellen Salkeld	5	4	8	0	13	4
Marcus Welsh	9	1	4	3	13	4
Maxim Sinclair	7	2	6	2	13	4
Farrah Sheikh	6	2	7	5	13	7
Phyllis Ramage	4	0	8	1	12	1
Savannah Phillips	5	1	7	2	12	3
Tom McAndrew	4	0	7	1	11	1
Bella Burgess	6	1	5	1	11	2
Melissa Hewitt	5	1	6	1	11	2
Liz Bain	4	3	5	3	9	6
Ffion Rowlands	3	2	4	3	7	5

 

Okay – a few observations. Firstly, I do hope that Dennis Wang gets his chance. In the last couple of series we’ve seen Grand Final podium places going to contenders who didn’t actually win their heats. I’ll be honest, where you have a series where a heat winner who scores 15 goes through to the semis, but a runner up who scores 25 doesn’t, is not great. Here’s a suggestion. Cut two shows from the first round and have two wild cards for the two highest scoring runners up. The talent is too thinly spread as it is – we won’t miss two heats.

Let’s look at the semi finalists:-

1	David Ford	11	0	16	0	27	0
2	Pete Simmonds	13	0	14	1	27	1
3	Diane Howe	12	0	14	1	26	1
4	Carolyn Rowe	12	0	13	0	25	0
5	Paul Robinson	12	0	13	3	25	3
=6	Danielle Connolly	11	0	13	0	24	0
=6	Lorna Frankel	12	0	12	0	24	0
7	Paul Smith	10	2	13	0	23	0
=8	Milena Melcharek	12	0	10	0	22	0
=8	Miles Searle	9	0	13	0	22	0
9	Roger Easy	10	0	12	2	22	2
10	Nigel Haynes	10	0	11	0	21	0
11	Elis Matthews	11	0	9	0	20	0
=12	Ben Abbott	9	0	11	1	20	1
=12	Peter Glanvill	10	0	10	1	20	1
13	Robert Cohen	8	1	12	1	20	2
14	Richard Carr	11	0	9	6	20	6
=15	Alan Hotchkiss	9	0	10	0	19	0
=15	Matthew Patenall	11	0	8	0	19	0
=15	Max Bougeard	9	0	10	0	19	0
=15	Ross Taylor	10	0	9	0	19	0
=15	Teddy Fogel	10	1	9	0	19	0
16	Tomas Stevenson	8	0	9	3	17	3
17	David Slater	6	1	9	1	15	2

 

The temptation is always to look at the top 6 and say – there’s our finalists. And it never actually works out like that. For one thing it’s likely that there will be at least one top heavy semi with more than one of our top 6 in it. For another thing, there’s always the possibility that our highest scoring runner up will be drafted in. As likely as a top heavy semi, is the chance of a bottom heavy semi too, whereby someone from the bottom half of the table has a famous win to reach the final.

One observation we might make is that whoever wins the Grand Final is going to have to have a very good general knowledge. I personally would not be looking for a winner from anyone who scored less than 12 in the GK round in the heat.

Whatever the case, I wish all of our semi finalists the best of luck.