Well, here we are at heat 20, dearly beloved with only another
four heats to go after this one. Usually we see something a bit special in one
of the last few heats. Was it last night’s show that provided this? Well, I
know what I think, but see what you think.
Our first contender last night was Tamara Hon. Tamara was offering
us the first elected president of the USA, founding father George Washington. This
was a wide-ranging set of questions and decent general knowledge brought me two
of them. Tamara took five. That’s by no means a disaster, but from the look on
her face when Clive told her the score she knew she might have done better. It’s
impossible to be certain why a round doesn’t turn out the way that a contender
would have hoped – sometimes not enough preparation, sometimes a
misunderstanding over the rage of the subject, sometimes just a nervous
reaction to the chair. I’ll come back to this shortly.
Aine McMenamin was answering on Taylor Swift. Research
tells me that Ms. Swift is a chanteuse of some renown these days. That’s nice. As
you might guess I knew nothing about her or her oeuvre and failed to add to my
aggregate. Aine by way of contrast knew an awful lot about her and reached
double figures with a score of 10. Yes, I might be an ex-teacher now, but a
good performance by one of my old profession always brings a little joy to my
heart.
The closest thing I had to a fill yer boots subject last
night was name derivations of elements of the Periodic Table, as was offered to
us by Arvind Ramakrishnan. I say closest, but it was only close in the way that
Uxbridge station is close to Cockfosters station. Yes, they’re both on the
Piccadilly Line, but at opposite ends. So I was happy enough with my four. The
subject seemed to be an especially narrow one – and the problem with a very
narrow subject is that you have to know it in extreme detail. I won’t beat
about the bush here. Arvind scored 2. I’d guess this was in part caused by
nerves in the chair. While nothing was a gimme, they weren’t all bouncers
either. There were enough slower balls in here too.
So Dan Payne came to finish the round with “The BBC Radio
Series I’m Sorry I haven’t A Clue”. Now, If you’re a regular or semi regular
listener than you have no need for me to describe the show while if you’re not
then there’s no real point in me trying. I’ve never been a dedicated listener but
I’ve dipped in and out enough over the years to take 3 points to leave me with
a decent aggregate of 9 for the specialist rounds. Considering that the show
has been running for decades I thought that Dan handled his round very well. A
couple of errors left him just shy of double figures, but it meant that his
fate was in his own hands, being just one point behind at the turn.
How do you force yourself to concentrate back in the chair when
you’ve had such a disappointing specialist round? Well, in the case of Arvind
the answer is with dignity and application. With a very respectable round of 8
points he managed to claw his way up to a double figure total.
Sadly, Tamara Hon did not quite reach Arvind’s total in her
own GK round. She didn’t do very well, I’m afraid, adding four to take her own total
to 9. Nerves, a reaction to her disappointment with her specialist round? Who
knows? Altogether now – sometimes it just isn’t your night. Tamara, should you
read this, try not to let it get you down.
So to the first of the runners in our two horse race. As we
see with a lot of contenders, Dan started his round in very fine form. However
it did seem to become more of a struggle as it progressed. In the end Dan gritted
out a respectable 8 for a total of 17. He did incur another pass, to add to the
one he’d taken in the specialist.
Just Aine remained. She needed a straight round of 7 correct
answers and no more than one pass. Yes, it’s a relatively modest target, but
funny things can happen when you’re in the chair. You can lessen the chances of
anything happening by keeping your cool, though, which is something that Aine
did admirably. She says that she runs a general knowledge club in her school –
hey, I’m all for that – and this stood her in good stead as she put on 9 points
to win with a little daylight between herself and Dan.
Well played Aine, best of luck in the semi finals.
The Details
|
Tamara Hon |
George Washington |
5 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
|
Aine McMenamin |
Taylor Swift |
10 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
19 |
0 |
|
Arvind Ramakrishnan |
Name Derivations of Elements of the Periodic Table |
2 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
|
Dan Payne |
The BBC Radio Series “I’m
Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” |
9 |
1 |
8 |
1 |
17 |
2 |
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