Another week, another first round heat. To be honest, the series has fallen a little into the doldrums in recent weeks, with much honest endeavour but little real quality. Apologies to every contender in the last few weeks. You’ve all given it a lash – this is just how I feel and please feel free to disagree. It’s been a little while since any of the contenders really blew my socks off. Could last night’s manage to do this?
Rachel Sambrooks started us off with the short fiction of
George Saunders. This was not the same George Saunders who voiced Shere Khan in
the Jungle Book, I hasten to add. No, this was the Booker Prize winner who
wrote my current read, “Lincoln in the Bardo”. I guessed the ‘I Am Spartacus’
question, but that was all I could manage in this round. Rachel did better, but
the questions persisted in going into areas she maybe hadn’t considered during
her preparation, and the round ended with Rachel having scored 5.
Like the previous round, Beth Younge’s round on the musical
“Les Miserables” brought me just the one point – Bring Him Home, if you must
know. For the second round in a row I think we saw a contender having to face
up to the fact that the setters took a wider view of the subject than the
contender had. Beth too scored 5.
I didn’t really expect that I was going to do that much
better with our third specialist, Florence Nightingale. Well, I was right about
that. At the start of the round I was on zero and I was still there by the end
of it. Terry Edwards managed a respectable 8 on the subject – which is pretty
decent considering that our Flo did live a long time. My grandmother Florence
was named after Florence Nightingale. Well, sort of. She was actually named
after her father’s sister, Florence. Now she was the one who was actually named
after Florence Nightingale. There you go.
Submariner Tomas Stevenson brought the specialist round to
a close with the O.C., a popular television series from the United States. Which
I have never watched. So it was cue another zero points round and an aggregate
of a measly 2 points. Tomas stumbled here and there – well, that seemed to be a
bit of a linking theme tonight, but he pushed on and like Terry before him he
put together a decent round worth 8 points.
An interesting contrast in styles between the two contenders
tied in third place actually brought about similar results in the subsequent
general knowledge round. Rachel seemed very tense but was snapping out the
answers – not always correctly but she really gave it a good go. A respectable
8 points took her up to 13. Beth, on the other hand, seemed a lot calmer, but
consequently never really built up a head of steam, either. She too scored 8
for 13, but was behind on pass countback.
Terry, then, had two clear goals. One was to score the 6
points he needed for an outright lead. These he managed. His second objective
was to push on to set the most daunting target that he could for Tomas. In this
I’d say he was less successful. The questions just seemed to refuse to fall his
way, and despite a fair amount of time left in the round he ground to a halt
with a total of 7 for 15 overall. Judging by the look on his face he must have
known that it wouldn’t be enough.
Still, there’s many a slip twixt cup and list. Alright,
Tomas only needed 8 but he still needed to find those 8 correct answers. Well,
despite a wobbly first half of the round he settled enough to find nine which
gave hm a won with 17. Maybe not the highest winning score we’ve ever seen –
well, there’s no maybe about it – but a win is a win is a win. Well done and
good luck in the semi finals.
The Details
|
Rachel Sambrooks |
The Short Fiction of
George Saunders |
5 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
13 |
0 |
|
Beth Younge |
“Les Miserables” The
Musical |
5 |
1 |
8 |
1 |
13 |
2 |
|
Terry Edwards |
Florence Nightingale |
8 |
1 |
7 |
4 |
15 |
5 |
|
Tomas Stevenson |
The O.C. |
8 |
0 |
9 |
3 |
17 |
3 |
4 comments:
I'm going to be honest, this is the sort of heat that makes me doubly grumpy there's no path for highest scoring runners-up to make it to the next round.
Hi and thanks for taking time to leave a comment. It's so difficult isn't it. There is absolutely no way that I want to say anything derogatory about the contenders. They have all had the guts to put themselves on the line and done their best. There is no way I would want to lose the tournament play aspect of the show, by having only the 30 highest scorers, regardless of heat positions go through to the semis. But yes, having someone who scored in the mid 20s not go through while a heat winner with 18 does, that's hard. Repechage slots do seem to be the answer and it is a shame they stopped them.
Totally agreed on all points. I feel like Brain of Britain has struck a great balance between the two extremes. Wish that Mastermind would bring back their version. I assume they had a reason for the change, but it is very obscure to me, that's for sure.
I think the reason for the change was they now have semis with 4 contenders rather than 5. When it was 5, the rounds needed to be shorter (90 seconds for specialist, 2 minutes for GK) , so maybe they thought that detracted from the format?
Whilst I understand that, I agree with the consensus here.
And as for Brain Of Britain, I heard it's not happening this year and neither is Counterpoint. I'm more mad about that, right now!
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