Mastermind 2024: First Round Heat 24

Well, hello, good morning and welcome back to LAM. I’m back in Blighty, a bit bruised and battered from my experiences in Romania, but just about in one piece, thanks for asking.(Alright – explanation – I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, but tripped over twice on an excursion to Transylvania. Ow.)

What about last Monday’s Mastermind then? The things that people do when I’m not around to keep an eye on them, eh?! There was no real hint of what would happen later when Emily Frank approached the chair to answer questions on the human digestive system. For the most part Emily found this set of questions pretty easy to digest herself. Her knowledge was extremely secure and she scored an excellent 11 and no passes.

PhD student Richard Brooks did not find his own set on AA Milne and Winnie the Pooh quite so much to his liking. He scored 7 and you can’t score 7 on a Mastermind subject without knowing it well. However it put him four points behind Emily and that’s a significant margin to have to make up. I’d scored four on Emily’s round and added another two on Richard’s. That brought my aggregate to 6 and I’m afraid that is where it stayed.

Jake Denney answered questions on The Chemical Brothers. I didn’t. It was a good performance from Jake, and with a tiny bit more of the rub of the green he would have been knocking on the door of double figures. I did actually wiki the band prior to watching the episode, but anything relating to the questions – eg the previous name the Dust Brothers – had gone out of my head by the time I did watch it.

So it fell to Chris Ducklin to bring the round to a conclusion with the Jack Ryan novels of Tom Clancy. LAM reader Chris represented the University of East London in University Challenge in 2016. As we’ve often seen, previous experience of TV competition is more often a help than a hindrance, and Chris negotiated his set very competently, reaching a good 9 to put himself only 2 points behind Emily going into the GK round.

Right. That GK round.

It’s wrong of me to do so I admit but I do sometimes dismiss contenders who are on the bottom of the leaderboard and several points behind the leader going into the GK as being down among the wines and spirits. (In the days of the music halls and then variety bills, performers featuring towards the bottom of the bill were said to be down among the wines and spirits.) I apologise to Richard Brooks for mentally dismissing him in this way as he sat down to his round. His excellent round, as it turned out. Richard didn’t get all of this questions right, but my goodness, double figures is good, and a score in the teens is very good. What particularly impressed me was where he took a breath on a couple of occasions, collected himself and then dredged up the right answer. 13 was a very fine score and it took him to 20. Could that be a winning score? It would require three contenders to score less highly on GK than he had, but yes. It was possible. Likely, though?

Jake Denney started one point to the good for his own GK round. Ah yes, but Jake already had one pass to his name. Scoring 20 would not be enough by virtue of that pass. He had to equal Richard’s 13. He gave it a blooming good lash, too, and could have done it with the last question. Sadly he gave a incorrect answer, and Richard leapfrogged above him to stay in first place.

Chris’ face was a picture throughout his round. Being 2 points ahead of Richard at halfway he knew that 12 would be enough. I say his face was a picture because he almost winced on a few occasions where he supplied an incorrect answer. He was under pressure and it certainly looked as if he knew that he was too. By the time the round had ended he had added 11 to his score, not the 12 he needed. Game over? Not necessarily for he too had not incurred any passes, so there was going to be a tie-break, unless Emily Frank could throw a spanner in the works.

Well, she did try, make no doubt about that. Like the three contenders before her she produced a round with no passes. However, like Jake before her she had incurred a single pass in the specialist round. There was almost a sense of inevitability about the way that she added 9 to her total to ensure that she finished with 20 and 1 pass.

Clive described this – all of the contenders having the same final score as unique. He might well be right too. I don’t have the data to say whether it has ever happened before in the history of Mastermind. In Mastemind : The Next Generation we had a semi-final in 2017 where three contenders tied on both scores and passes and so took part in a three-way tie-break. However there were five contenders in that contest. If there’s ever been a heat where all four contenders were separated by one measly pass before, I don’t know about it.

So after all this then the last place in the semis was going to either Richard or Chris, and based on their relative performances in the GK rounds I had a sneaking feeling that Richard might just do it. He got 3 out of the five – so did I although not the same three. Chris got 1. It’s a hard thing to take, I’m sure.

What a show to finish the first round on.  Richard, many congratulations to you sir, and the very best of luck.

As usual I’d like to give my thanks to all of his season’s first round contenders, whether you feel you performed above, on par with, or below your expectations. Without people like your good selves willing to put yourselves forward and have a go, we don’t have a show. Good on you.

The Details

Emily Frank	The Human Digestive System	11	0	9	1	20	1
Richard Brooks	AA Milne and Winnie The Pooh	7	0	13	0	20	0	23
Jake Denney	The Chemical Brothers	8	1	12	0	20	1
Chris Ducklin	The Jack Ryan Novels of Tom Clancy	9	0	11	0	20	0	21