I don’t know if you watched last Monday’s heat 5 of Mastermind. The winner, Patrick Wilson, took on JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and very well he did on it too. In my review I remarked upon the difficulty of such a wide-ranging subject and expressed the view that just “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy itself would be a fitting subject. Well, thinking about this again, I can’t help wondering whether it was Patrick’s original choice, or whether the production team prevailed upon him to widen the subject.
My active experience
of the show dates from more than a decade ago so whatever I say has to be
viewed in that light. But on a couple of occasions, I did experience some of
the horse trading over specialists that certainly went on in my experience. For
my first audition, which led to my appearance in the first round in 2006, I
went into the audition fully armed with my 4 subjects, only to be told not to
do any of them. Basically, being an English teacher, they didn’t want me doing
any authors in case I didn’t do very well, and it therefore reflected on me as
an English teacher. It is arguably an admirable thing – saving people from
themselves if you like. Still, it did mean that I had to really think on my
feet to come up with the subject that I actually did do – the Modern Summer
Olympic Games, and what I would have done for semi and final had I got there –
Henry Ford and The Prince Regent. One of the subjects I discussed possibly
doing was the anglo-saxon poem “Beowulf”. However, no sooner had I suggested
this, than the member of the team who was auditioning me had bid it up to the
whole canon of Anglo-Saxon poetry. So I drew the line at that one.
When I
applied again the next year, I threw Henry Ford into the pot for the first
round, and the Prince Regent for the semi. 2006 was before the temporary
reinstatement of runners up places in the semis, and so I’d gone to the semis
as a stand in and wasn’t used. Now, my way of thinking was this. In 2006 they’d
have had to have a set of Henry Ford questions made which they never used. So
maybe, just maybe, taking it for the first round in 2007 would make me a little
more attractive because it would mean one fewer set of questions to make. Who
knows whether this had any influence or not. Still, for my final subject I
wanted to take Old London Bridge. This was the bridge which stood from 1179 –
1831. The team horse traded this up to every bridge bearing the title London
Bridge, or standing at this point on the river prior to 1179.
Conversely,
though, when it came to Champion of Champions my first round subject, the
Bayeux Tapestry went through on the nod. When it came to the putative (and
unused) final subject, the team actually lightened the burden for me there. I
offered The Children of Queen Victoria, but the team reduced it to The
Daughters of Queen Victoria. Not really sure why, but I certainly wasn’t
complaining.
I didn’t
have the experience I know some people have had of being asked to change the
order of their specialist subjects. In the cases where this has happened, I’m
pretty sure that the production team’s concern has been to get the best spread
of subjects across each of the shows.
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Moving on, the
newest member of our team on the Thursday night had one of the most frustrating
experiences in quizzing last week. By which I mean the experience of coming up with a great answer to a difficult question, and not getting a point because the QM has a wrong answer down. One of the very first questions began, “Which
fruit is a cross between a raspberry – “ and as you would, I immediately began
to write down ‘loganberry’, and just as quickly stopped writing it when the question
continued ‘ and the American dewberry.” I always thought that a loganberry was
a raspberry/blackberry cross. Indeed it is. Fran said that she believed it was
a boysenberry. That, to me, seemed like a bloomin’ good answer. Of course, the
answer given was loganberry. I consoled Fran that I was sure that the QM’s
answer was a wrong’un, and we didn’t argue as I am trying very hard to be a
good boy in the quiz now. Well, I will admit that I did google this when I got
home. Now, although I didn’t find an answer which perfectly fit the question, boysenberry,
which is given as a cross between raspberry, and dewberry ( and blackberry and
loganberry!) is a better fit.
Actually, I
really enjoyed the quiz apart from this. It’s the first ‘connections’ quiz I’ve
played in for a few years – whereby the answers to let’s say 4 consecutive and
seemingly unconnected questions – are all connected. I love the way that, if
you’ve engineered your connections well, then the player can use what they do know
to help figure out what they don’t know.
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