Mastermind : Round One: Heat 12

You know, I once met a contender in the first round of Mastermind who confided to me that the extent of his preparation for his specialist round was reading one book – and only getting through about the first half of it. His score, when he appeared, was predictably low. At the time I made a lot of sympathetic noises, but the older I get the more it frustrates me when I see people who, for whatever reason, just don’t seem to have put in the required time and effort into learning their subjects. Nobody gets forced to take part, and if you do get invited after audition, and you do decide to accept the invitation, then I think you have an obligation to respect the competition and take it seriously. Just my opinion, and as always, feel free to disagree. So it was a pleasure this week to see that all four contenders – Mastermind virgins all – had at least prepared well, and two of them had prepared extremely well.

The first of these was Gary Wright. Gary’s specialist subject was The History of Las Vegas. Now, I have to be honest, I didn’t think that I knew a lot about Las Vegas. Yet two minutes later I had accrued 8 points – the nature of these 8 questions being of the kind that you would know or could guess with a good general knowledge. For example, I didn’t know the name of the senator, but I know that Las Vegas’ airport is McCarran airport. I take nothing away from Gary, because he had a perfect round – which meant that he knew all the other questions as well, and these did require specialist knowledge. 13 questions and 13 correct answers. A fine performance.

The ‘Anne’ books of Lucy Maud Montgomery are remarkable in as much as they take the heroine, Anne, from being a young girl all the way through to her late 50s, I think. By crikey, but Sarah Elder, who offered us the series for her specialist round, knows these inside out. As with Gary’s round on Las Vegas, you got the distinct feeling that John could have carried on asking her questions on this subject for the full half hour, and she wouldn’t have had any wrong. Answering at pretty much top speed she managed to get one extra question in, and finished with a perfect 14 to take the lead. Game on.

Put yourself in the position of Alan Martin. He had just seen the two previous contenders come out and smash it out of the park, and now it was his turn. No pressure. I don’t have to put myself in that position, since I’ve been there. In 2006 both Kath and Neil who went before me in my heat scored 17s. I felt like I was staring down the barrel of a gun! Back then I produced a good, solid round, and so did Alan here. He couldn’t manage perfection, but he could manage the psychologically important double figures, and finished with 10.

As did Bob Mayho. I’m not a great fan of Westerns, and so “The Western Films of John Ford” was my lowest scoring round of the evening with 2. Going back to westerns, I think it was a generational thing. Westerns were my Dad’s thing – he was born in the 40s and grew up in the 40s and 50s and he loved them. Going into the round we had yet to see a pass from any of the contenders, and I did wonder whether we were going to make it a clean sweep. We came close, but Bob passed on one, although he too did manage to achieve a double figure score with 10.

Going into the GK round, then, essentially both Alan and Bob looked like outsiders, while there was hardly anything to choose between Gary and Sarah. Alan returned to the chair first, and shame though it is to say it, he made rather heavy weather of his round. We’ve noted the importance of building momentum during a Mastermind round, and this never quite happened with Alan. He seemed to have decided on using the tactic of passing, which is fine, but if you are going to pass, then it’s vital you make the decision and do it quickly, otherwise every pass just robs you of any momentum you might have built up through a couple of consecutive correct answers. Alan finished with 18 – perfectly respectable, but not enough to worry the leaders.Bob did a bit better with his round. He can be pleased with having achieved double figures in both rounds – the mark of a decent contender, that. Being realistic you need to have a lead of at least 10 to put the contenders coming after you on GK in the corridor of doubt, and Bob was a little way short of this. It had looked a two horse race at the halfway stage – now it definitely was.

Gary went first, and of all the contenders, his performance was the performance of a quizzer. He missed a couple where the answer steadfastly refused to take the plunge off the tip of his tongue, but even so a round of 14 was well up to scratch, and gave him a total of 27. Putting it into perspective, even if Sarah could improve upon this, he would certainly have an excellent chance of returning for the semis via a highest loser slot. It was unfortunate for Sarah that she had what I felt to be slightly the hardest of the GK rounds – yes, I do know that it’s all in the eye of the beholder, and they’re all easy if you know the answer, and hard if you don’t. To be fair, her GK wasn’t of the same level as Gary’s, but she can be pleased with her final total of 23, even though I doubt it will bring her back for the semis.

Well played Gary Wright – best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Gary Wright	The History of Las Vegas	13	0	14	2	27	2
Sarah Elder	The Anne Books of LM Montgomery	14	0	9	0	23	0
Alan Martin	Paul Simon	10	0	8	5	18	5
Bob Mayho	The Western Films of John Ford	10	1	11	1	21	2