Mastermind 2022: Heat 13

Well, I do think that after last week’s pyrotechnics this week was always going to be a little bit of a case of – after the Lord Mayor’s Show. But let’s be fair, and give each of this week’s contenders their due.

The first of these was Kit Lane. Kit was answering on Charles II’s long time squeeze, Nell Gwyn. You know – Nell ‘she was only the orange seller, but she certainly had appeal (a peel)’ Gwyn. Well, Kit knew, anyway. She knew a lot. As the round continued it became obvious that she had prepared brilliantly and was going to rack up a very impressive score. Indeed she did – 12 is a noteworthy score in specialist, and certainly acted as a warning shot across the bows of the other three contenders tonight.

Next up was Lillian Crawford. Lillian had some good answers, but somehow the round never quite added up to the high score it looked like it might produce at the start. 7 is a respectable s ore – and not one you’re likely to get without preparation before the round. However, it left her 5 points behind, with 2 contenders still to come. I’m afraid that every time I hear the name Sylvia Plath, or Ted Hughes, for that matter, my mind goes back to sitting in seminars at Uni, and every time Ted Hughes’ name was mentioned a couple of my fellow students muttering ‘the wife murderer!’.

Kathryn Howells’ accent suggested she may well be from Wales. I liked her attitude, when she seemed very delighted to be on the show. She didn’t do badly, either, answering on the sitcom “Still Game”. Judging from one of the questions, there were several series of the show, yet somehow it still managed to pass me by, so I’m not in a position to comment on the fairness or difficulty of the questions. Whatever the case, Kathryn managed 9 – a decent score indeed, but still one that left her trailing by three.

Finally Mary Evans answered on the Island of Sicily. This is the sort of subject that should come with a government health warning. I say this, because it means that the question setters can ask you literally anything even vaguely connected with Sicily. As the round progressed it rather seemed to me that Mary’s understanding of the parameters of her subject was noticeably narrower than the question setters’. In the end she managed to fight her way to 6 points, but being 6 points behind meant it was going to take a comeback on a Lazarus scale for her to win.

It was all the more of a shame, then, that Mary did put on a good GK performance when she was the first to return to the chair. It was really a case of ‘what might have been’ had Mary only managed a better performance on Specialist. I’ll come back to that.

Lillian’s GK round was somewhat similar to her specialist round. I liked the way she was giving the answers quickly and not messing around with them. Her score of 9 was perfectly respectable again. However, it wasn’t enough to allow her to challenge Mary’s total, and she finished with 16. Lillian seemed to be using the tactic of passing anything she didn’t know, and I just can’t help wondering if she might have been a bit better if she’d given a few more guesses.

Kathryn seemed just a cheerful and enthusiastic as she had during her specialist round. However this round did turn out to be something of a struggle. Like Lillian she finished with a total of 16, but accrued even more passes, and again, I’m not sure that this was necessarily the best tactic to use. If you can guess quickly, then you can keep your momentum, not add another pass to your score, and there’s even a chance you might guess correctly.

So this left Kit. Already on 12, she needed 7 points for an outright win, or 6 and few passes. No, that’s not a huge target, but we’ve seen GK rounds fall apart enough times to know that nothing is guaranteed. In fact, although Kit’s round was not as good as Mary’s, it was certainly good enough, and she scored 9 to win with 21. Now, coming back to what I said earlier, time was when I used to rather glibly say that you could lose Mastermind on your specialist, whereas you could win it on GK. Well, there’s times when that’s true, but other times when it isn’t. For tonight I’d argue that Kit won on her specialist. Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that hers was the best all round performance tonight. Well done, and best of luck in the semi finals.

Details

Kit Lane	Nell Gwyn	12	0	9	0	21	0
Lillian Crawford	Sylvia Plath	7	2	9	5	16	7
Kathryn Howells	Still Game	9	2	7	6	16	8
Mary Evans	The Island of Sicily	6	0	12	0	18	0