Mastermind 2024 - Semi-Final 5

The Tale of the Tape

Name	Specialist  Score	Specialist  Passes	GK Score	GK Passes	Total Score	Total Passes	Tie break
Peter Wilson	12	0	15	1	27	1	-
Paul Judge	10	1	12	0	22	1	-
Helen Lippell	12	0	9	0	21	0	4
Ben Jones	8	0	12	0	20	0	-

We’re getting close now, early beloved. One more semi-final and then it will be Grand Final time.

Kicking off last night’s contest was Helen Lippell. Helen was in the bottom half of my unofficial heat winners’ table. According to my records Helen also took part in the first round heats in both 2016 and 2019, narrowly failing to progress on both occasions. In her heat she answered very well on Grinling ‘Funky’ Gibbons. Last night she needed an equally good specialist round on British Prime Ministers of the 18^th century. She very early got it too, with a fine round of 11 points. Me? Well, I had my best specialist round of the night with four.

Second up was Paul Judge. He’d scored 1 more point in the heats than had Helen, achieved largely through a very good GK round. In his first round Paul had scored 10 points on the Life and Career of Magic Johnson. Last night he was answering on The Stranglers from 1974 – 1990. With such a relatively short time period it was a given that Paul was going to be asked some questions requiring real in-depth knowledge. For the most part he was equal to the task, scoring a good round of 10 to put him just the one point behind Helen.

Ben Jones had scored 1 point fewer than Helen in the heats. He’d had 8 on F. Scott Fitzgerald. 8 is a very respectable score, but while it might be enough in some heats it is unlikely to bring you a win in the semi-final, especially one in which the other contenders have prepared their own specialists so well. Ben, sadly, did not manage to improve on his specialist score from the heats. Answering on the America poet Elisabeth Bishop he scored 7. It is only in the rarest circumstances you’d see a four point lead overhauled in a semi final GK round and there was still one contender to go.

Peter Wilson came in at number 2 on my unofficial table. Last week we saw stand in Thomas Nelson comfortably win a semi final he did not expect to take part in because he had lost in the first round heats. Well, Peter was the contender who beat him, through a magnificent GK round of 15 points. Peter had scored 12 on the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. Last night, answering on Oscar Winning Feature Films he repeated that feat to take the lead. Incidentally I was pleased to see Clive clarify that the subject was about winners of the Oscar for best animated feature film and not on animated feature films that won any Oscar. For the record I scored four on Helen’s round. 2 on the Stranglers, nowt on Elizabeth Bishop and 2 on the films for an aggregate of 8.

So to General Knowledge. Ben’s GK round was very reminiscent of his GK round in his heat. He started off at a blistering pace, snapping out the answers and building considerable momentum. It he’d maintained this then he might possibly have got into the mid teens. However as had happened in his heat he had a couple wrong mid-round and seemed to start doubting himself a little more. Don’t get me wrong, he scored 11 and in a semi-final 11 is pretty good going. But having started five behind the lead, it surely wasn’t going to be enough.

Paul Judge, on the other hand, was only two points off the lead on 10. In his heat he’d score 12 points and if he could do so again then he would be giving himself a shout. To cut a long story short, this was what he did. 12 points gave him a total of 22, and a chance of clinging on at the top until the end of the show.

Let’s put Helen Lippell’s task into perspective. In order to go into the outright lead Helen would need to score 12. That would mean equalling her best ever GK round on Mastermind. At first she did sound rather unsure of some of the answers she was giving, but as more and more of them hit home she kept on dredging them up, until by the end of the round she had posted her highest ever GK round of 13. It was the kind of round that made me recall my own semi final all those years ago, when I said to myself to just keep answering and not worry about any I got wrong.

Which is not to say that Helen was anything like home and dry at this point. Peter Wilson, let us remember, had scored 15 on GK in the heats. He only needed 13 to win outright. Well, there’s no ‘only’ about 13 on GK in the semis. Peter did not get the kind of ride in this round that he had in the heats, and once he got a couple wrong it seemed to play on his mind, There’s nothing to be ashamed about in a score of 8, which is what Peter scored but he will know that he’s better than that score suggests.

I have to say though that it is nice to see persistence rewarded. It must take a certain amount of determination to come back for a third attempt at the show, and so to see Helen not just make her first semi-final, but also her first grand final is great. Best of luck.

The Details

Helen Lippell	British Prime Ministers of the 18th century	11	0	13	0	24	0
Paul Judge	The Stranglers 1974 - 1990	10	0	12	0	22	0
Ben Jones	Elizabeth Bishop	7	0	11	0	18	0
Peter Wilson	Oscar Wining Feature Films	12	0	8	0	20	0