Mastermind 2019 Semi Final 3

Morning. 3 semi finals down, then, and 3 to go. Let’s have a look at the runners and riders again, shall we?

Judith Lewis	The Life of C.S.Lewis	14	0	15	2	29	2
Pat Lucas	Isaac Newton	13	1	10	0	23	1
Bruce Horton	The Royal Navy In The First World War	9	0	12	1	21	1
Karim Lalani	Vivien Leigh	12	0	10	5	20	5
Pat Williamson	The History of Manchester and Salford	11	1	15	0	26	1

Casting a glance over the scores then you’d be forgiven for saying that this looked very much like a two horse race, and one of those horses looked rather better than the other. Judith Lewis was one of the more impressive performers in the first round, who won her heat comfortably, having a 4 point lead by half time, and increasing it with a fine general knowledge round. Pat Williamson had also scored 15 on GK, but left a bit of wiggle room with her specialist. Of the others, well, question marks over Pat Lucas’ and Karim Lalani’s GK made them outsiders, as did Bruce Horton’s specialist.

Judith went first then. Answering on the 11 Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, what she provided was a virtuoso demonstration of how to tackle a semi final specialist round. She paused for a moment on just the one question, but still answered all of her questions correctly. Many people can produce a very fine specialist round in a heat. It takes something extra to be able to produce a second one in a semi final.

As it happened, the scale of Judith’s achievement was thrown into sharp relief by Pat Lucas’ round on Benjamin Franklin. Now in her heat, Pat’s win was built on a fine specialist round on Sir Isaac Newton. She started her round last night on Benjamin Franklin in similar fashion – 3 questions, and 3 correct answers. Then it all went Pete Tong. She couldn’t find another correct answer until the penultimate question of the round, to take her total to 4. Whether that was due to faulty preparation, a sudden attack of nerves, or some other factor, only Pat could say, I’m sure. But it meant that her chance had gone.

Without wishing to be mean to Bruce Horton, he was a little bit fortunate to find himself in the semi finals, having been 4 points behind the leader at half time in his heat. He produced a good general knowledge round, while others couldn’t which saw him through. Now, they do say that lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Well, as with Pat, Bruce answered the first three questions correctly, and then it all went to pot, and he only found one more correct answer before the blue line of death had finished the round. This time, at 8 points behind, there was no chance of rescuing things on GK.

Karim Lalani had won a low scoring heat with a pair of decent rounds. Last night he was answering on The Grand National from 1978 to date. They didn’t explain this, but I’m sure they picked 1978 because it precluded Red Rum who had his last run and last win in the National in 1977. Guess what? Like Pat and Bruce, Karim answered his first three questions correctly, then missed the 4^th. Unlike them, however he did accrue a decent total of points. By the end of the round he’d managed 8. However his general knowledge from the heat held little hope that he’d be able to outscore Judith at all, let alone by enough to bridge the gap.

Which left Pat Williamson to finish the specialist rounds. As with Karim, she did manage a respectable performance, scoring 8 points as well. Unlike Karim, Pat had produced one of the better GK rounds, so there was just a little glimmer of hope for her, but you have to say, with a lead of 4 points over all of her fellow contenders, I couldn’t see any way that Judith Lewis was going to be beaten.

Pat Lucas was the first to return to the chair for GK. It wasn’t a great round, but at least it was a respectable round. It must be a daunting prospect returning to the chair being so far behind the leader, so you have to respect contenders who can keep their heads and come back. Putting Pat’s performance on GK into perspective, she only managed 1 point more in the heat when she had an extra 30 seconds, so this was an improvement in real terms.

I mentioned earlier Bruce playing his get out of jail free card on GK in the heats. I also mentioned that he was too far behind for this to happen last night. That was true. Still, at least he managed the best GK round of the night, adding a further 11 points to his total. Ironically this was also just one point less than his performance in the heat, so again, an improvement in real terms.

For Karim Lalani I’m afraid that the GK round turned out to be a bit of a grim old slog. It just didn’t work out for him, the questions didn’t fall his way, and in the end he finished with a total of 13.

Let’s put Pat Williamson’s task, as she sat back down in the chair, into perspective. Put simply, she had to score as many points as she possibly could in order to put Judith into the corridor of doubt. In real terms, I reckoned that she would need to score about 12 to have any chance of winning. She tried, and produced a perfectly respectable 9. But this meant that Judith was only going to need to score 5 and 1 pass or better, and this was always going to happen.

Judith’s round in fact was a little bit of an anti-climax. Again, it was another perfectly respectable affair, but it wasn’t the dazzling display of a potential champion in the way that her specialist round was. She had achieved the target with more than a minute left, but only went on to add a few more points, taking her final total to 21. Well done, and best of luck in the final.

There’s a perennial debate over the way that Mastermind semi final line ups are put together. Certainly in the past, and for all I know still, the policy has been to look at putting subjects rather than contenders together for a semi final line up. There’s not been any seeding involved. The principle behind this being that a line up of a wider variety of specialist subjects is more interesting for the viewer than, lets say, 4 out of 5 subjects in one show being historical, or popular culture, or whatever. The drawbacks are that it can result in some semi finals – like semi final one this season – being top heavy, and fine contenders like Brian Davis and Sue Duffy being eliminated – and other semi finals – like this one – being a bit of a yawn because one contender has as good as won by half time. As I’ve said before, that’s what can happen in knockout competition. As a rule I’m opposed to tinkering with the format of the show, but I think that this is a debate which will continue.

The Details

Judith Lewis	The Lord Peter Wimsey Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers	12	0	9	2	21	2
Pat Lucas	Benjamin Franklin	4	3	9	1	13	4
Bruce Horton	The Ottoman Empire  1822 - 1922	4	0	11	2	15	2
Karim Lalani	Grand National 1978 - date	8	1	5	3	13	4
Pat Williamson	Margaret Beaufort	8	0	9	2	17	2