Mastermind 2022 Semi Final 2

Well, dearly beloved, we are in the privileged position of being able to look at the form book before the review proper begins.

Will Vince	Joseph Rowntree	12	0	11	0	23	0
Paul Risebury-Crisp	Björk	10	1	9	0	19	0
Patrick Wilson	JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth	11	0	13	0	24	0
Alice Walker	Rodgers and Hammerstein Musicals	11	0	15	0	26	0

A couple of things stand out. Based on first round form, Alice scored a monster 15 on GK, and if she produced anything like this in her semi, then it could well be an uphill struggle for the others. Patrick Wilson’s 13 on GK was a good score as well, suggesting that he might well be duking it out with Alice when we got to the business end of the competition.

The competition, then. Will Vince kicked us off. He’d scored 12 on his first specialist subject of Joseph Rowntree (who played Shaft on TV and invented Rolos). Last night he was answering on an artist I have really grown to love over the years, Vincent Van Gogh. Well, you can’t say he hadn’t prepared, and you can’t say that he didn’t do well. But 9 is a score which you can’t help feeling is going to leave you a little short in a semi final.

Paul Risebury-Crisp had one of the most modest heat winning scores in the first round, so he really had nothing to lose when it came to the semi final.Bjork in the heat gave way to the Bill and Ted films in this semi final. He did a little bit better, too, giving himself a lead of two points over Will by scoring 11. You’ve got a chance with 11 – I know it’s only 2 points more than 9, but somehow it feels a far more substantial score.

The first of last night’s highest ranked contenders to return to the chair was Patrick Wilson. Patrick scored 11 on Tolkien’s Middle Earth in his heat. This time the subject was drum abd bass in the 1990s. The result was the same though, as Patrick again scored 11. Which certainly gave him a chance, all depending, of course, on how well Alice Walker would do on her own subject.

Alice, who had taken on Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals in the first round, shifted her attention to Julia Margaret Cameron, more commonly known as Julia Margaret Who? in LAM Towers. I’d already scored 8 in aggregate on the combined specialists – all of which had come from Vincent, Bill and Ted and it’s true to say that Margaret did not deign to supply any more correct answers for me. Alice, though, produced a good round, the only specialist round we saw last night that really reached similar heights to those we saw in the first semi. She had a two point lead with 13, and looked a good bet for the win.

Will was the first to return for the GK round, and to be fair he made pretty good progress for the first half of the round. For the second half though progress was somewhat slower, a few near misses robbed him of momentum, and although he managed a good 9, it wasn’t going to be enough to win, with 3 contenders still to go. outu

Paul Risebury-Crisp scored 9 in his previous GK round. If he could repeat this, then that would be good enough to give him a 2 point lead, and that’s exactly what he did. I rather felt that this was a few points short of the total he would have needed to mount a realistic challenge for the win. Nonetheless, he can be satisfied with his 2022 Mastermind campaign.

So back to Patrick. What followed was a round as good as his first round GK, and as good as we saw in last week’s semi-final. Which was not, I will admit, a blowing away all the competition score, but it was a good 13, which meant that Alice was going to have to pass through the corridor of doubt in her own impending round.

Speaking of which, if Alice had hit the heights she had hit in her first round heat, then she would have comfortably achieved the 12 needed to win outright. However, judging by last night’s round, I’d guess that she had a round where the questions fell kindly with her in the heat, and that she had a round last night where the questions didn’t fall quite as kindly for her. So, as the round progressed, there was a growing doubt that she would get there. In the end, though, she scored 11, and crucially, did not pass. This was enough to win her the show outright, but it was enough to force that rarity in Mastermind terms, a tie break.

It looked to be advantage Patrick, since he had been more impressive in his GK round than Alice had. By my reckoning, if my answers to the tie break were right, then he’d only cored 2. Alice came back into the studio and gave her answers to the same questions. If I was right, then she had 3. Well, to cut a long story short, I was right, and she did.

Congratulations Alice, well done on becoming a Mastermind finalist – a fitting reward for keeping your nerve. Hard lines to Patrick, but well done on a good performance.

The Details

Will Vince	The Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh	9	0	9	0	18	0
Paul Risebury-Crisp	The Bill and Ted Films	11	1	9	0	20	0
Patrick Wilson	Drum and Bass in the 1990s	11	0	13	0	24	0	2
Alice Walker	Julia Margaret Cameron	13	0	11	0	24	0	5