Mastermind - Round One: Heat 16

Unlike UC, this week’s Mastermind was not delayed for Autumnwatch, I was pleased to note. Nothing against that, but surely they could have found another half hour slot for it instead of depriving us of the challenge. Oh well, enough moaning for now.

In tonight’s show we kicked off with Mark Buckley who offered us David Niven. I don’t know if anyone else was struck by this thought, but it seemed to me that Mark got anything which could have been taken from Niven’s memoirs “The Moon’s A Balloon” and “Bring On The Empty Horses”, and struggled on anything requiring detailed knowledge of specific films. Why do I think this? Because of the 8 Mark answered, I had 7, specifically through my knowledge of those two books. That's the thing. If you leave gaps in your knowledge there's every good chance that the SS questions will expose them. My gut feeling was that this would leave Mark out of contention at the halfway stage.

Lucinda Critchley offered us the second of the specialists that I quite fancied – the Soviet Space Programme. Okay,  I know a lot more about the NASA space programme of the Soviet period, but nonetheless, my knowledge was good enough to net me another 6 points. Lucinda, though, did much better than that, giving us a double figure round. The only slight drawback was that she incurred 2 passes on a subject which she obviously knew very well. Would they come back to haunt her?

I don’t really know what happened for the first minute or so of Michael Harrington’s round on Italian Renaissance Paintings. For the first minute or so he really struggled – at one stage I led him 4 – 1. Yet whatever the problem had been he suddenly seemed to snap out of it, and started answering some of what seemed to me much harder questions than ones he’d missed early doors. Could it have been nerves? Of course, and it would be an explanation for such a polarised round – although I suspect that only Michael himself could say if that was the case. The fact was that he ended up beating me 7 – 4 on the round.

Robert Hemming’s round on the Human Body was a real throwback to the kinds of specialist rounds that people would undertake in the 1970s – it's a much broader subject than we often get now. The round was a bit of a mixture of some pretty obvious stuff that any good pub quizzer should know, some guessable stuff, and some stuff which you were only going to get if you’d prepared and revised your subject in depth. I dare say that Robert knew his stuff alright – in fact he would probably have had double figures had he not misunderstood an admittedly rather confusingly phrased question about nephrons. Still, at only one point behind the leader Lucinda he had everything to play for.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t manage to come from three points behind at half time in my first ever Mastermind show, and I don’t envy anyone else faced with that task. Again, Michael Harrington didn’t get off to the best of starts, but again he warmed to his work, and what with the extra 30 seconds in a GK round he put on a good 12 points. Was 19 going to win the show? I doubted it very much, but it was going to mean that whoever won would have to work for it. It did become clear fairly early doors in Mark’s round that it wasn’t going to be him. Sometimes, as I have said in the past, you watch a GK round and form the impression that even though you don’t know the contender, he or she is a quizzer, judging by which questions they answer correctly. Then other times you get the distinct feeling that a contender is not a quizzer from the old chestnuts which they miss, and sadly for Mark this was the impression that I formed during his round.

So to Robert’s GK round. I don’t know if this is a true reflection of how he felt in the chair, but Robert never looked comfortable in either of his rounds. However, and this is absolutely essential, even though he did not build up the momentum of a juggernaut, he kept going steadily, answering what he knew, and not being put off by what he didn’t. I’ve often made the point in the past that this is crucial to building a GK score. Oh, don’t get me wrong – it’s absolutely lovely when you instantly know the right answer to the vast majority of questions you are asked, but for most of us mere mortals this doesn’t happen very often, so marching doggedly on through the round can be surprisingly effective. Robert’s 13 set Lucinda a doable but challenging target.

Which, at first, she seemed to be well capable of reaching. Now, I know that it’s all in the eye of the beholder, but I have to say that of all the 4 GK rounds tonight I found Lucinda’s the hardest. She’d clearly decided on tactics of answering quickly – which either meant a quick answer, a quick guess or a quick pass, and she stuck to her guns very well I thought. If she was nervous, it didn’t show. However it did mean that she was relatively more likely to pass. Again, that’s a valid tactic, and if you are going to pass, then passing quickly which Lucinda did is far better than passing slowly. However if you do go down the pass route, you do make the job a little harder inasmuch as you have to win outright. Sadly for Lucinda her 12 meant that she only matched Robert’s total, and with Robert having only 3 passes, that wasn’t enough for her.

Well played both, and Robert, best of luck in the semis. Enjoyed the show tonight.

The Details

Mark Buckley	The Life and Career of David Niven	8	1	9	3	17	3
Lucinda Critchley	The Soviet Space Programme	10	2	12	3	22	5
Michael Harrington	Italian Renaissance Paintings	7	1	12	4	19	4
Robert Hemming	The Human Body	9	2	13	1	22	3