Mastermind - Round One - Heat 6

Well, I have to say it – credit where it’s due, that was a cracking good show tonight. Two virgins, two recidivists.

First of the recidivists then was Geoff Snape. Geoff was a first round contender in both the 2012 series, and the 2007 SOBM. I have to say that looking at his previous GK scores, if Geoff was going to make it to his first semifinal he was going to have to have an absolute blinder on specialist. He picked the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and that’s a tall enough order since there’s getting on for 60 of them. It reminds me of my first ever Mastermind competition. This was Elthorne High School Mastermind ’81 – actually the inaugural running of the competition as it happened. One of my fellow contenders – I believe it may have been Emma Rushton, but my memory may be deceiving me here – had opted to take the Sherlock Holmes stories – but she believed that she was only going to be asked about the 4 novels – not the 50+ short stories. Uh oh. IIRC the show did go on, and she still achieved a creditable score. As did Geoff in reaching double figures with 10 points. A useful score, but not a blowing the opposition away score. I reckoned that he’d be behind at halfway, and would find it too difficult to make up ground on GK.

Margaret Brown was making her first Mastermind appearance, and answering on the excellent Radio 4 comedy series Old Harry’s Game. I know the series well enough to know that you have to have a very, very deep knowledge of it to achieve a high score on the questions that Margaret was asked – and she did as well as could possibly be done with them. Margaret scored a perfect 14 from 14. Very good performance, and it meant that the pressure was well and truly on the two contenders yet to go.

It didn’t seem to bother fellow Mastermind virgin David Shah too much. He was answering on the Roman Army 200BC – AD200. Now, that’s a long time. David can only answer what he’s actually asked, and he, as had Margaret before him, answered all 14 of them correctly. Now, my feeling is that I must know a lot more about Roman history than I thought I did since I managed 10 of these, and only really missed the ones which were specifically about the organization of the roman army. That’s immaterial anyway. An excellent performance from David, and poor old Geoff must have been sitting in his chair with a sinking feeling along the lines of – here we go again.

Speaking of déjà vu, I wonder if that’s what Ewan Paton experienced, since it’s only a year since he began his previous Mastermind campaign. Last year he reached the semi finals and was runner up in his semi behind LAM reader and all round good egg Diane Hallagan. Now, before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy, I am not saying there’s anything wrong with this quick return. How can I? To date I am still the only contender to be knocked out in the first round in one series, and to win the next series. In two outings last year Ewan impressed me as someone who knew his GK better than the average contender, and so the real question was whether he could get close enough to the two leaders in his specialist round on Harold Wilson. Yes. He certainly could. Another perfect round of 14 from 14. Has it ever happened that we’ve had three perfect rounds in a row? Well, possibly, but I can’t remember any instance of it happening before. And believe you me – it is incredibly hard to get a perfect specialist round. I tried five times and the closest I ever got was one wrong and no passes.

So after a fantastic first round, poor old Geoff was down among the wines and spirits, and had to return first. He will surely have known in his heart of hearts that it was highly unlikely that he could overhaul all three of his fellow contenders, and so made something of an uncertain start. The round actually got better, although he never seemed quite to build up a full head of steam. I was interested to see him give a double thumbs up to John as he stood up to go back to his seat. This seemed to me not to be saying that he thought it would be good enough, but a little satisfaction that he had performed as well as he thought he could, and that’s an attitude I can applaud.

There are two ways of looking at the position that Margaret was in. On the one hand you could say that it was hardest for her, having to set the target for the others to chase, and then wait to see if she could hang on. True. On the other hand you could also say that she didn’t have the problem of having a hugely daunting total to chase, and could then just concentrate on building the best total that she could. For the first minute and three quarters I thought that she was going to put the target beyond the other two. She answered so well that had it been a two minute round I think she might even have won the heat. However the last 45 seconds or something robbed her of momentum, as the answers dried up somewhat. Nonetheless her score of 13 to leave the target at 27 and no passes to force a tie break certainly looked to be enough to put the last two contenders into the corridor of uncertainty.

What was uncertain, mind you, was the outcome of the match. David wasn’t giving in and conceding defeat at all – however he did end up passing. This may have just been unavoidable for him – it may have been deliberate tactics. Whatever the case, it actually made the job harder for him since, having passed once he needed to score 14 – 27 wouldn’t do for a draw now. He wasn’t a million miles away from it either, but looking at his answers, I think a score of 12 was just about as well as he was going to do. Heartbreakingly close, but no King Edward this time.

So would Ewan prove the point I’ve often made about the value of experience in the chair? To me it looked pretty much neck and neck with Margaret’s round for most of the way through. However, we had seen that Margaret’s round slowed up towards the end. Ewan arrived at a target equaling 27 and no passes with time for a couple of questions left. He got the first of the two wrong, but the second, about the famous Jim Callaghan ‘quote’ – crisis, what crisis – would rob us of a tie break.

AS I said, that was a great show. Many congratulations Ewan on keeping your nerve, reaching the target and becoming a double semifinalist. As for Margaret, congratulations on a fine performance yourself, and sticking my neck out I’d say your chances of reaching the semis are pretty good. As for David, well played too – although, and I’m sorry to say this – I fear 26 and 4 passes may just be outside the repechage slots when the dust has settled.

The Details

Geoff Snape	The Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle	10	1	11	3	21	4
Margaret Brown	Old Harry’s Game	14	0	13	0	27	0
David Shah	The Roman Army 200BC – 200 AD	14	0	12	4	26	4
Ewan Paton	Harold Wilson	14	0	14	0	28	0