Friday 28 August 2015

Mastermind 2016 - Round One: Heat Four

Here we are again, friends – another four contenders, two of whom are Mastermind virgins, and two of whom aren’t. More examples of the enduring truths about Mastermind? Well, yes, maybe. We’ll see about that as we go through.

Now, The Academy Awards since 1970 is one of those specialist subject that is actually a lot wider and a lot harder than it sounds. For most of us, I would imagine that we immediately think we could do quite well on best actor- actress – picture Oscars, and maybe supporting actor and actress as well. How about the unsuccessful nominees though? Not to mention all the technical categories. So when you consider all of that, Dave Lodwig’s first round 10 points was a pretty decent score, I thought. Having said that, though, in the context of this year’s contest so far it looked as if it could well land him 4 or 5 points behind at the turn, and that’s a very substantial deficit to have to make up.

Janet Parfitt offered us Weimar Germany, and my 1980 O Level History, and 1982 A Level History courses saw me through to 5 points. Now, I don't wish to be harsh but the fact is that Janet appeared 2 years ago, and also scored 6 on her specialist round then. Bearing this in mind, it does make me want to use her round as an example of what can happen if your preparation does not actually prepare you for the show. What I mean by that is that I’m not necessarily saying that Janet didn’t learn her stuff, and didn’t know her stuff. But I am surprised that, after what happened last time she was on the show, her preparation didn’t prepare her for being in the chair. So when she had one or two wrong she fell into a pass spiral which she found it very difficult to extricate herself from. Of course, it’s very difficult to recreate the studio conditions, but I think it’s very useful to train yourself to answer questions on your subject in quickfire – it helps make that vital skill of ignoring a wrong answer and getting on with answering the next to become second nature, and that’s very useful if you have a couple wrong in a round.

I’ve often said that experience in the chair is very useful, and Andrew Burrows has that, albeit from over a decade ago. In Shaun’s 2004 series Andrew reached the semifinal, so he knows what it takes to win a show. This explains how he gave a terrific demonstration of how to construct a very good specialist score on the band King Crimson. I was a bit young for King Crimson first time round, but I was always partial to a bit of prog rock through my teens, and so I still managed to pick up a handful on the round. Andrew, though, did considerably better, and arguably took both Janet and Dave out of the equation by scoring an impressive 14.

David Horan, though, had no intention of making things easy for Andrew to reach a second semi final. Now, while Janet’s round relied heavily for me on my O and A Level History courses, I gave thanks to Mr. John Browning, who was one of my A Level English teachers, and Mr. Stan Tottman, who was Head of the English Faculty at Goldies (London University Goldsmiths’ College for the uninitiated) for developing my love of Hopkins’ poetry, which enabled me to pluck off enough of these to take my overall aggregate for the show’s specialist rounds to 21. Not as high as last week, but still a decent effort. Not as decent as David’s, though. He seemed to surprise himself with a terrific perfect round of 14. Game on.

First, though, Janet returned to the chair. I have to pay tribute to her ready smile as she returned to the chair after a specialist round which she must have found rather disappointing. And to be fair she had good reason for optimism having scored 16 on GK last time out. Sadly lightning didn't strike twice this time. Her passes this time looked more tactical, a decision to move quickly on if the answer didn’t pop immediately into her head, and that is a valid tactic, but in the end she could only take her overall score to 14.

Right, remember how I made the point earlier of preparing for quickfire questions so that the answer reflex becomes ingrained, and you don’t dwell on wrong answers? Well if anything this is even more important in the GK round. Yes, it’s only 30 seconds longer than the specialist, but if you let a question pull you up in your tracks the last 45 seconds to a minute of the round can be extremely difficult. In Dave’s round he really started off as you would expect a very good GK quizzer to, and I’m sure that Dave is a good GK quizzer, judging by some of his answers. However just over a minute and half into the round, and a couple of wrong answers robbed him of momentum, and in the end he finished with 12. Ideally you want those coming after you on GK to need something in double figures to put them into the corridor of doubt.

Andrew never really looked in any doubt as he returned to the chair. He passed the target with enough time to answer quite a few more questions. You felt that it was going to be a case of the banker pays 13s and over, but that was a little beyond Andrew on the night, and in the end he posted 11 to take his total to 25. Would that put David into the corridor of doubt? Well, only David himself could probably answer that one, but I would imagine so. Cards on the table, no disrespect intended towards Andrew, but I have to root for the teacher, albeit a retired teacher, and that was David tonight. He started well, though, and although points were dropped here and there, he was never behind the clock. In fact his round progressed in a remarkably similar fashion to Andrew’s, although he was on 25 with time enough for another answer. It didn’t matter, since he too scored 11, and also finished with 25. I’ll come clean, I hadn’t been counting the passes, but I knew it was close. It was too, but Andrew had incurred 5 in total, and Dave 4, and that one less pass was the price of victory. As John said, 25 rules Andrew in with a shout of a repechage spot, but I fear those 5 passes may rule him out. Time will tell. Congratulations David, best of luck in the semis.


Dave Lodwig
The Academy Awards since 1970
10
1
12
1
22
2
Janet Parfitt
Weimar Germany
6
5
8
7
14
12
Andrew Burrows
King Crimson
14
0
11
5
25
5
David Horan
Gerard Manley Hopkins
14
0
11
4
25
4

7 comments:

Stephen Follows said...

First rule of Mastermind (to add to all your other first rules): Never pass. Ever. If you don't know the answer, say something wrong and monosyllabic, and answer all the ones you know quickly. You won't lose much time and you'll always be ahead in a tie. That should be drummed into everyone before they go anywhere near the chair.

Londinius said...

Second rule of Mastermind - learn your subject thoroughly enough so that you can come up with a wrong answer for the ones where you don't know the right answer!

Oh, look, I don't want to be horrible about it. I know there are people who want to go on the show not because they think they can win the series, or even a first round heat, but simply for the experience, and I'm not trying to discourage anyone from that. But I cannot see that you wouldn't want to prepare as well as you could for it - whatever anyone might say I cannot think that it is a pleasant experience to end up with a low specialist score on a subject you have selected for yourself.

Martin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Martin said...

Love your blog, never posted a comment before, but here goes!

I think the zeroth rule of Mastermind should be, never pass after the buzzer has sounded. Even though John Humphrys will say something like "well I can tell you...", which makes it sound inconsequential, it will still be counted as a pass. As in tonight when Andrew passed on his last GK question and John told him the answer along with "and your other passes were..."

If Andrew had answered with anything but pass, he would have at least have got to a tie-break. As you correctly remark, 25 plus 5 passes is unlikely to be good enough for repechage.

I'm sure everyone who goes on Mastermind knows this rule, but the number of times it's broken shows the pressure of The Chair!

Londinius said...

Hi Martin
Thanks for your kind comments about the blog - don't be a stranger now that you've commented.

You are right when you say there's pressure in the Chair. This was brought home to me in champ of champs. After passing twice in my SS of my first round heat in the 2007 SOBM I resolved never to pass again, and I didn't up to and including the final. However in champ of champs I was cruising through my best SS round ever, when a question came up which I knew - and the answer just didn't come as it should have done. Fazed, I passed when there was no real reason too. That's pressure.

Skiffle.cat said...

Having just checked back though your records, I'm proud to say that of my five appearances on Mastermind, I only passed on one question out of all of them. When I first appeared on a quiz show, which was 15-1 in 1995, my biggest worry was that I'd panic when faced with cameras and the host firing questions at me. Fortunately, that didn't happen, which gave me great confidence for my first Mastermind. Being able to keep a clear head, and move onto the next question rather than dwelling on the results of the last, is important in a test like Mastermind. It's helped me beat people with a better standard of general knowledge than mine (that, and skill at choosing and studying a specialist subject).

Londinius said...

Hi Gillian,
Interesting point about skill at choosing a specialist subject. I think that for me the most important things about choosing a specialist subject were - picking something about which I already had a solid baseline of knowledge - picking something in which I was already interested and therefore wouldn't mind eating, drinking and sleeping for weeks at a time - picking something about which I already had some excellent books about to cut down the expense. This meant that for the 5 specialists I was actually asked questions on they were a fairly mixed bunch. The two biographicals were finite, and maybe involved slightly less work - although the amount of learning involved was substantial. The two historicals - the histories of respectively London Bridge and The Bayeux Tapestry involved considerably more work, and the sporting one, Modern (Summer) Olympic Games 1896 - present day involved the greatest amount of work of all of them. So I wouldn't say that I found a magic formula for picking a specialist subject, and would say that some of them lent themselves more to MM than others. Yet if you look at my first 4 specialist scores - 14 - 14 - 15 - 15 they are remarkably similar - even my best SS score from champ of champs is 17 - only a couple of points higher.All of these were 2 minute rounds, although there was a tendency towards shorter questions and higher scores than we have today back in those days. Which leads me to make the observation that yes, there are undoubtedly subjects which make your job easier in the SS round, if you use all the time you have available, and prepare thoroughly, then you should always be able to achieve a good score on SS. If you're not prepared to learn a specialist subject to the best of your ability, well, I'm not saying don't go on, but I am saying, consider how you might feel if you don't score at all well in it.