Monday 16 January 2023

Mastermind 2023 First Round Heat 17

Hello, good evening and welcome. Dearly beloved, I know that you’ve been asking yourself – Dave, did you wiki at the weekend? Well, in a word, no. I just couldn’t get myself together over the weekend. Well, I am back in work now, so fair’s fair. I did score a total aggregate of 6 on the specialists tonight. Back to normal there, then.

Hamid Khan opened the bating with former England opening batsman Marcus Trescothick. Cricket is one of the more popular sports used for specialist subjects on Mastermind. Maybe it’s because of the wealth of statistics involved in the game? Maybe not. Anyway, Hamid certainly knew a lot about Marcus Trescothick. Even having said that, though, several questions slipped the net, and I had a feeling that the 8 he scored might leave him with some work to do in the GK round.

Adeline McCartney was answering on a good old traditional Mastermind subject, in the shape of the poet Rupert Brooke. You know, when I was young and even more stupid than I am now, I found it easy to get quite sneery about Rupert Brooke and in particular his poem “The Soldier”, totally ignoring the fact that Brooke put his money – and his life – where his mouth, er, pen was. He was 100 percent sincere when he wrote it and I have to respect that. Adeline knew a lot more about her subject than I did, and looked set for a challenging score. Sadly a few mistakes started creeping in and at the end she levelled out at 6.

Teacher alert! Teacher alert! Yes, Lesley Ravencroft is another teacher, so her chances were scuppered immediately by the curse of being supported from the Clark sofa. Lesley’s subject was Thomas Cromwell. On paper this was a subject that should have yielded me more points than either Trescothick or Brooke, yet it yielded just the 2, as had both of those. I felt this was not an easy set at all, and I’m not just saying this because I wanted Lesley to do well. 6 is certainly not a case of doing badly, but at this stage she was 2 points behind, and there was every possibility that this gap could be extended by our final contender.

This was Alex Shilton. Alex was answering on the Films of Wes Anderson. In all honesty I do not think that I have ever watched any of these films, and so the questions passed me by in a blur of ignorance. My ignorance, mind you, not Alex’s. He produced the best specialist of the night, by several points. Yeah he got a couple wrong. Not many though, as he took a distinctly useful 11, giving him a 3 point lead and making him very much the man to beat.

Well, if Adeline McCartney was daunted by being five points behind as she sat down for her GK round, she didn’t show it. It was an unremarkable start, but once she got into her stride she just kept piling the points on with correct answer after correct answer. She finished with 13 and that’s a seriously good GK score in the current era of the show. Remarkably she’d set the target at 19, a score to at least give Hamid and Alex pause for thought.

Not before Lesley had returned to the chair. Her round put Adeline’s into perspective. The 9 that Lesley scored represented a pretty decent GK round. However it left her four points adrift of the lead.

Hamid couldn’t match Adeline’s 13 either, but then he didn’t need to. What he needed was a score of 11 and either no passes, or 1 pass. 11 and 2 passes would put him level with Adeline, and 11 and more than 2 passes would leave her in the lead. Well, he scored exactly 11 and 1 pass, to give him the lead by the narrowest margin possible with just Alex to go.

Wel, fair play to him, it didn’t seem to phase him at all. Alex showed the same focus in his GK round as he had shown in his specialist. He didn’t get them all right. In fact, judging by his reaction he dropped a couple he probably would have had in other circumstances. This didn’t matter though. He needed 9 and no passes to win, he got 13 and no passes to win by  points, and show a clean pair of heels to the peloton. Alex had answered like a quizzer, although his piece to camera at the end didn’t give away many clues as to whether he really is or not. Makes no difference. Very well done sir, and best of luck to you in the semi-finals.

The Details

Hamid Khan

Marcus Trescothick

8

0

11

1

19

1

Adeline McCartney

Rupert Brooke

6

0

13

2

19

2

Lesley Ravencroft

Thomas Cromwell

6

3

9

2

15

5

Alex Shilton

The Films of Wes Anderson

11

0

13

0

24

0

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