Well, at least with the last semi final we knew exactly who’s going to be in it.
Up first tonight was Ann Mayner. She’d answered on Rennie Mackintosh
in the first round, and carried on in similar architectural vein in this semi
final with Sir Edwin Lutyens. I was quite chuffed with myself for getting two
of these which was at least one more than I’d expected. It was a good round.
Not quite perfect, but she pushed onwards to a total of 12 and the evidence
from most of the other semi finals went to suggest that this would certainly
give her the chance of a win.
Ben Spicer answered on Peaky Blinders last time out. In
honour of this he wore shirtsleeves, waistcoat and cap. Tonight he was wearing
a colourful short sleeved shirt covered in guitars, doubtless in honour of his
semi final subject of the band Coldplay. Again I outdid my own expectations,
getting one right where I had expected none. Ben was very close to an
exceptional round, but even allowing for a mistake he still finished with 13.
He’d won his first round through an excellent round on specialist followed by a
good performance on GK. Would this be a case of History repeating itself?
Of these last four semi-finalists the strongest first round
performer on GK had been Joe Andrew. If this was an accurate reflection of the
contenders’ relative strengths, then what Joe needed to do was to put himself
within striking distance of the lead b the end of the specialists. I would
certainly say he managed this. Answering on the Karen Pirie novels of Val McDermid
he didn’t take the lead, but finished with 11, just two points adrift of Ben. All
to play for.
Alex Shilton had put in a decent specialist round on the
films of Wes Anderson in his heat. Sadly, he didn’t manage to do quite so well
on the films of Terry Gilliam tonight. Don’t get me wrong, the score he managed,
7, is nothing to be ashamed of but it put him out of the competition to all
intents and purposes. The sad thing was that he was close on a number of
answers, but somehow his prep had just not quite readied him for the demands of
the round. Not quite. It’s a fine line sometimes.
It was a quick turnaround for Alex, as he was first back
into the chair for the General Knowledge round. He could have quite easily let
the travails of the specialist round rob him of all composure, so all credit to
him for keeping his head and producing a useful round of 9. Not, I dare say as
good as his 13 in the heats, but considering that this had all the appearances of
not being his night, I think he came back well.
With the best will in the world, though, the winner was
going to come from our final three contenders. First up was Joe Andrew. Now, in
the heats Joe’s MO had been to not rush, take each question as it comes and
pick off everything that was there to be picked off. It had resulted in a
mighty score of 1 then. Tonight it didn’t quite come off as well. Sometimes the
questions suit you more than others.Nothing was wrong with Joe’s score of 9 for
20, but it just didn’t look like it would be enough.
It wasn’t enough, either. Not many contenders do better in
their semi final GK round than they do in their heat GK round, but Ann did. If
she had equalled her 8 from the first round she would have only tied with Joe.
However, she went one better. As had Joe and Alex she scored a total of 9,
which put her one ahead. With just Ben to go, the big question was whether she
could hang on and find herself in the final.
All 3 contenders so far had scored 9 on GK. If Ben could
repeat this then he would win. Whether it was by accident or design, Ben had
hit upon a technique which gave him the best chance of doing so – snap out
answers as quickly as you can, without stopping to worry about those you get
wrong. 9 would have done it but in the end Ben scored 10. Very well done, sir.
As I said, I shall post a preview of the final, but let’s
stop to thank all of the semi-finalists for their valiant efforts and for the
entertainment that they have provided over these past few weeks
The Details
|
Ann Mayner |
Sir Edwin Lutyens |
12 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
21 |
0 |
|
Ben Spicer |
Coldplay |
13 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
23 |
0 |
|
Joe Andrew |
The Karen Pirie
Novels of Val McDermid |
11 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
20 |
0 |
|
Alex Shilton |
The Films of Terry
Gilliam |
7 |
0 |
9 |
1 |
16 |
1 |
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