Mastermind - Repechage Runner Up Slots

Chris Quinn’s fantastic GK performance on Friday night, which led to him coming third in his Mastermind heat with 27 once again raises the issue of the repechage semi final slots.

I’ll put my cards on the table now. Mastermind proper has always been a knockout competition. Granted that Sport Mastermind had just heats and finals, with the 6 highest scoring heat winners progressing to the final, but this isn’t Sport Mastermind. This is just a personal view, but I would hate to see any situation where heat winners weren’t given automatic passage to the semis. Not that I think that this idea has ever been on the table, anyway.

With regards to the repechage slots in the semis, though, this is a whole different ball game. Taking the historical perspective, for nearly all of the Magnus era, a semi final was kept purely for the four highest scoring contenders who didn’t win their heats. (Granted things were a bit different in 1997, but that was a truncated series anyway). It could – and it did happen on at least one occasion – happen that 3 of the 4 repechage slots would go to players who had all contended in the same first round heat. Then when BBC Mastermind was revived with John Humphrys in 2003, no repechage slots were allocated at all. Only heat winners went through to the semis, and this situation remained the same until Jesse’s 2010 series.

This situation was not altogether satisfactory for fairly obvious reasons. If we take the 2007 SOBM 3 contenders all scored 29 in losing their heats ( Chris Jones and Howard PIzzey in the same heat ! ) yet were out despite such fantastic performances. SO the idea of semi final slots for the highest scoring runners up was revived, and revamped. Due to the larger number of heats and contenders, there were now 6 slots allotted to runners up. Also, there would be no special semi allocated to the runners up, instead they would be mingled in amongst the heat winners. It wasn’t clear at the time whether these places were just open to people who placed second in their heats, so I put out an open question, and to his credit Jon Kelly, the Producer emailed me to confirm that these slots were only available to those who placed second in their heats.

Since then Jon has moved on, and the new producer is Mark Helsby. He may well have decided , as is his right, to change policy on the allocation of runner up slots. Still, presuming that the policy has remained the same, I take the li9berty of showing you a table of the performances of all of those contenders who did not win their heats so far :-

Name	Subj	Score	Passes
Chris Cann	The Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan	29	2
John Wheeler	The Shipping Forecast	29	5
Helen Marshall	Catherine of Aragon	28	3
Paul Whittaker	The Life and Career of George Harrison	27	2
Chris Quinn	The Novels of Roddy Doyle	27	3
Alan Sharp	Everest Mountaineering	26	3
Nathan Joss	The Life and Times of Elizabeth I	26	3
Nina Featherston	Guns n’ Roses	25	1
Philip Walters	Dr. Who - 1963 – 1989	25	1
Andrew Hunt	The Life and Work of Caspar David Friedrich	25	2
Bart Smith	The Life and Career of Fanny Craddock	25	5
Kevin Baker	Sir Ian Botham	24	1
Philip Wharmby	The History of Rome until 1944	24	3
Rosalind Winter	The Completed Novels of Jane Austen	24	4
Laurie Handcock	The British Alpine Club	24	5
Andrew Granath	Gladstone	24
Roland McFall	Radiohead	23	5
Hazel Humphreys	The Life and Work of Dave Allen	22	3
Chris Kirk	General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn	22	3
Ian Copping	The History and Geography of Arkansas	22	3
Les Wallace	Extinct Fauna of the Ice Age	22	5
Graeme Marley	The Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle	22	7
Alan Haddick	Shakespeare’s Comedies	21	7
Jackie Phillips	The Story of Moses in the King James Bible	19	4
Sarah Lefevre	The Goodies	19	6
Xavier Woodward	Boxing World Title Fights since 2000	18	6
Matthew Clarke	Eddie Merckx	18
Nathan Scott	Wittgenstein	18
Nick Gunatilleke	Battles of the American Civil War	17	7
Barbara Bell	The National Parks of England and Wales	15	9

Now, the contenders who placed second in their heats , and thus are definitely eligible for semi final places are those in italics. At the moment, the top 4 actually all did come second in their heats. However the next two are Chris Quinn and Alan Sharp/Nathan Joss ( same scores and passes ) , none of whom came second in their heats.

Now, it may well be that another two second place contenders will beat Chris ‘ score, in which case the argument is purely academic. It’s not a pointless one, though. Basically, my thoughts are that if you have the rule that just heat winners go through it’s harsh, but it’s the way that it is. After all, that’s the way that knockout competitions usually work. If, though, you recognize that you can lose some great contenders this way, and you want to have highest scoring loser slots, then don’t do it by half measures. Have the highest scoring runners up, regardless of where they placed in their heats. It makes sense to me, but then it’s just my opinion, and as always, feel free to disagree.