Mastermind Grand Final 2016 - Full Review

Strictly speaking I should have gone to bed a while ago, but I’m still buzzing over the final, and have to write this up before I go to bed.

I had two favourites who I was cursing with my support for this final – Alan Heath, known for his exploits with Heather and Kip in Only Connect a few series ago, and LAM reader Jim Maginnis. More about that later.

Alan kicked off with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Thunderbirds. Quite poignant really, since Sylvia Anderson passed away in March. Like Alan, I absolutely loved Thunderbirds when I was a nipper. Unlike Alan I could answer hardly any of the questions. I knew that Alan was the only other of the Tracy brothers who ever had to do a stint in Thunderbird 5, but that was about it. Now, it’s as true in the Grand Final as it is in any other round of the competition that while it’s nice to get a perfect score at specialist, the most important thing is to give yourself the chance to win it on GK. In the context of what we’ve seen in the last few series, Alan’s 13 looked highly competitive, especially considering that he looked likely to be one of the stronger contenders in the GK round.

After Entertainment, then, we were offered Sport, in the shape of Richard Tring’s round on English Test Cricket since 1970. It was nice to see Richard visiting the Oval for his film. The only Test Match I ever got to spectate was the 1984 test v. the West Indies at the Oval. I’d not wish to give you the idea that I actually know much about cricket, because I don’t. Don’t have the attention span for it, I suppose. Still even though I would far rather watch an episode of Thunderbirds than a day’s test cricket, I was rather surprised to score 6 times as many points on Richard’s round than I had on Alan’s. Richard’s 12 was a good, competitive performance, and it meant that he would be one of the contenders still in with a chance at half time.

Christine Harrison had the honesty to admit in her filmed insert that she would really love to take the trophy home with her. I was asked a similar question in my filmed insert in 2007, and I rather fudged my answer to it. When asked how much I wanted to win, and what I thought my chances were, I replied that of course I wanted to win, but I was sure the other 5 contenders did as well, and that I rated my chances as 1 in 6, same as everybody else. Coming back to Christine, having seen previous performances the rather ungallant thought struck me that her GK may not be strong enough to give her a realistic chance. As it happened, though, it was her specialist round which really put her on the back foot. Don’t misunderstand me, 10 is by no means a bad specialist score, but 3 points is a significant gap to make up, even more so in a Grand Final.

This may sound as if I am speaking from the benefit of hindsight, but in all honesty I genuinely started to fear for Andrew Diamond during his filmed insert. He said that he’d had difficulty with the Austro-Prussian aspect of the Seven Years War. He then went on to say that he’d encapsulated his reading on the subject into 100 questions. That worried me. I’m honestly not bragging here, but on my less complex subjects I compiled sets of between 700 – 1000 questions, and on my most complex specialist subjects it was between 1500 – 2000. I’m not saying that’s the only way to do it – I’m not saying it’s the best way to do it. But I do know that anywhere you’re light on preparation for a specialist, the question set will find you out. And so when Andrew got found out on one of those nasty Austro-Prussian bits it wrecked his round completely. He fell into a pass spiral, and finished with 3 points.

No time to pause to extend sympathy, though, for this brought Ewan Paton to the chair with the Ryder Cup. I liked it that Ewan talked about tactics and not passing, in his filmed insert. Quite prophetic words really, in the context of what we were going to see unfolding in the next half hour or so. Ewan was answering on the Ryder Cup, and he scored 12, putting him one point behind the leader, Alan, and also in contention at the halfway stage.

Jim Maginnis also talked about tactics in his filmed insert. Apparently he began just by writing down questions and answers on the same sheet in an A4 folder, which wasn’t very effective. His daughter suggested using flashcards, and from what he showed us this looked like exactly the same method I’d used in all of my appearances. He also looked to have several hundred questions there as well. Now, the highest score up to this point was Alan’s 13. In the context of this series, we’ve seen that it is possible to score as much as 15 on specialist, so there was always a little bit of daylight for Jim to set a higher target. He did too, and it took a perfect round to do it. You can’t do better than a perfect round in the Grand Final, and that’s exactly what Jim did. He had a two point lead with 15 at the halfway point.

The title looked like a four horse race to me, but there were 6 GK rounds to come. First was Andrew Diamond’s. John H. frankly did not need to make a comment like ‘I don’t need to tell you how many you scored in the first round’. No John, you didn’t. and you certainly didn’t need to draw the attention to Andrew’s disappointing first round, which is what I feel your comment was designed to do. Best say nothing, and allow him to concentrate on GK. Which, to be fair, he gave his best shot, and I reckon he did well to put that first round behind him and get into double figures, with 10 on GK for a score of 13. John’s comment ‘You’ve redeemed yourself’ was, I feel, unnecessary. Andrew had nothing to ‘redeem himself’ for in the first place. The man is a Mastermind Finalist, and nobody and nothing is going to take that away from him.

Christine went on to prove that she would have been a title contender if she’d had a better specialist round. She managed 12 on GK – not a world beating score, but a good one in a tight match. However, she started the round 5 points behind Jim, and I just couldn’t see her making up this gap. At least, though, 22 was a high enough score to at least open the door to the corridor of doubt. It remained to be seen whether any of the 4 remaining contenders would have any inclination to enter.

Richard didn’t. He missed a few in the first minute or so, but in the last minute and a half he gained the momentum which is essential to building a convincing GK score. Were this year’s contenders especially mindful of last year’s final, which was decided on points countback, I wonder? Richard had avoided any passes on his specialist round, and he managed to maintain this record in is GK round. The 13 points he scored put the target at 25, and that’s the sort of score which would mean that every contender remaining would have to enter and pass through the corridor if they wanted to win.

So far I’d felt that all of the GK rounds were pretty much of the same level, and would have fancied my chances of setting a decent score in them. In my opinion – l free to disagree – Ewan’s certainly started harder, and it was impossible for him to establish any consistent momentum. By the minute and a half mark he was well behind the pace, although I was pleased for him that he managed to take his score up to 20. To win Mastermind takes hard work, but it also takes a little bit of luck, and Ewan was unlucky that the GK questions just didn’t run for him. Hard lines, sir.

And so to the first of my boys, Alan. Had the scores been reversed, I would have fancied Alan to win with a little bit of daylight, as I felt he would probably score more highly on GK than Jim. Could he score three points more than Jim, though, for that’s what it was going to need to win outright. Well, he gave it a good old go, pacing his round extremely well, picking off all the answers he did know, coming up with guesses for all the answers he didn’t know. This might sound like hindsight, but I honestly thought that Alan needed a score of 15 to be sure of a win. So he went and scored 14. Working on the old golfing principal that it’s better to be leading the Open in the final round when you’re back in the clubhouse, than to be on the 17^th tee and needing to birdie the last 2 holes to win, I still thought that he had a very good chance.

Mind you, I was having second thoughts about this after the good start that Jim made to his round. He was picking off everything he knew, and not wasting too much time on things he didn’t. But the GK round in the Grand Final is a marathon, not a sprint. By half time he was not answering as well as Alan was. The question which remained, though, was this – was his round going to turn out 3 points worse than Alan’s? A late rally put him through on 27 with one question to go. If he could come up with the answer – coyote – then he would be champion. He asked for a repeat, but when the buzzer has gone John is not allowed to repeat the question. I know, for I asked for a repeat after the buzzer once. Was Jim playing for time, or had he honestly not properly heard the question? Who knows? He didn’t come up with coyote though.

So, in 2004 a tie between Shaun Wallace and Don Young was decided on passes in Shaun’s favour. Then last year, in 2015, a tie between Marianne Fairthorne and David Greenwood was decided on passes. This year, 2016, neither Alan nor Jim had incurred any passes. There have been precious few tiebreak rounds ever in Mastermind, and as John informed us with ill-disguised glee, never one in a Grand Final. So five questions would decide the Grand Final.

Alan went first, and you could tell by his face that he knew he’d only got 2 of them right. What must have gone through his mind, though, when he heard Jim get those 2 wrong. Had he managed all, or any, of the other three though? The answer was, no. In the closest and most exciting final Alan had won.

Well played all 6 finalists, and once again, commiserations to Jim, a gracious and dignified runner up. But congratulations, Alan Heath. Mastermind Champion, 2016. Well played, sir.

The Details

Alan Heath	Thunderbirds	13	0	14	0	27	0	2
Richard Tring	England Test Cricket since 1970	12	0	13	0	25	0	/
Christine Harrison	Mrs. Gaskell	10	1	12	0	22	1	/
Andrew Diamond	The Seven Years War	3	3	10	2	13	5	/
Ewan Paton	The Ryder Cup	12	0	8	0	20	0	/
Jim Maginnis	The Battle for Berlin	15	0	12	0	27	0	0