In my defence I think that I should point out that yesterday was our first day with the pupils back in school – mine was built in 2016 so no issue with RAC (or the R.A.C., for that matter) I’m glad to say. I was just very tired.
Still let’s make up for lost
time now. Last night Karl Marx kicked us off with questions about Pete Rosser.
Sorry, I’ll write that again. Pete Rosser kicked us off with questions about
Karl Marx. He did pretty well too. As we’ve often observed, anything in double
figures is good going in the current era of the show. I did think that I might
get a couple. Well, to be honest it took a lucky guess just to get the one
point.
My banker subject, “The Royle
Family” followed. Katy Chambers, whose subject it was, really knows these shows
inside out. I say that because I thought that I knew these shows pretty well,
but I still only managed 4, a total that put my hopes of a double figure
aggregate for the specialists into severe jeopardy. Incidentally, after UC I
watched the first episode of the Royle Family, which was being shown on one of
the cable channels, and three of the questions in this round were actually
about this first episode! As I said, Katy did herself proud with a terrific
score of 12.
Sadie de Souza was answering
questions on Flags of British Counties. Now, this was a bit of an unknown
quantity. I know more about the flags of countries than counties, but then I do
know little bits about counties, and this was enough to bring me a further four
points. Sadie’s knowledge of county flags is really impressive. She scored 13,
and was worth every point, for my money.
So it fell to Eoin O’Connell
to finish off the specialist round with Django Reinhardt. Sadly I used the
unchained pun in my preview so can’t repeat it here. I know very little about
the jazz musician, but all I needed was one point to take a double figure
aggregate. Another lucky guess brought me this. Eoin obviously knows his stuff
about Django, but there were a couple of questions where the answer refused to
jump off the ti of his tongue and bearing in mind that everyone else had double
figure scores, his 7 left him some way behind as the orange segments were
passed around.
Eoin returned to the chair to
kick off the GK round. His GK was a battling performance. It’s a funny old
thing, is a Mastermind GK round. IF you get into a rhythm with it and build a
momentum it can carry you all the way through, and you find answers just coming
to you from the question void. If you just miss a couple of answers at crucial points
though it can make the whole round an uphill slog, so credit to Eoin for taking
a battling 8.
With all due respect to Eoin,
the real contest was between the other three contenders and it began in earnest
as Pete returned to the chair. Pete’s tactic was to answer each question as
quickly as he possibly could. It’s a good tactic. If you can trust yourself
that the answer which pops first into your head is your best chance at getting
it right, you can really build up a head of steam. That’s what Pete did, and he
was aided and abetted by Clive in this, as Clive got faster to match Pete’s
speed of answering. His 13 was a fine total, and certainly opened the corridor
of doubt to Katy and Sadie.
Katy gave it a lash, no doubt
about that. Having a 2 point lead over Pete at half time, she could afford to go
a little bit more slowly than Pete had. As the round went on though the
finishing line was approaching rapidly, too rapidly as it turned out. Again,
Katy reached double figures, but 10 was not quite enough, leaving her on 22.
Only Sadie remained, then. Her
round was comparable to Katy’s in a way. Slower than Pete’s, certainly.
However, Sadie had a three point lead at half time. Working on that principle,
it was always a possibility that we could be in for a tie break. A possibility
that looked more and more likely especially since Sadie was not passing. In the
end, her 10 for 23 and no passes put her exactly level with Pete,
So we had the equivalent of a
penalty shoot out. Both Pete and Katy were asked the same 5 questions. Neither
deserved to lose, but Pete answered 2 correctly and Sadie answered 3 and that’s
the bottom line. Well done, both, and well done all 4 contenders for an
enjoyable match.
The Details
|
Pete Rosser |
Karl Marx |
10 |
0 |
13 |
0 |
23+2 |
0 |
|
Katy Chambers |
The Royle Family |
12 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
22 |
0 |
|
Sadie de Souza |
Flags of British
Counties |
13 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
23+3 |
0 |
|
Eoin O’Connell |
Django Reinhardt |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
15 |
3 |
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