Mastermind Catcthup first round heat 19

You now I watched all of these heats that I’m catching up on now when they were first shown and some of them stick in the memory loger than others it seems. If we take heat 19, there was much honest endeavour on offer from all of the contenders, yet I had little or no recollection of what happened until I watched it again.

The best part of the contest was the specialist round. First of these subjects was The French Revolution offered by Sam Schoen. We didn’t see perfection in any of the specialists, but we did see quality. Sam managed 10 on what I can vouch for as a complex subject.

I used to enjoy the Granada TV Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, and I added three to the two I had taken on the French Revolution. Like Sam before him Ross Taylor turned in a very good round to achieve double figures as well.

A familiar face graced us with the third round on the poetry of John Betjeman. As long ago as 2012 Julie Aris made it to the semi finals and she has been this way more than once since. I can understand the appeal of coming back – had the 2007 SOBM not occurred I may well have followed that route myself. Julie was just short of joining the leaders as she scored 9.

Finally Ryan Lewendon gave us his round on the Laurel Canyon Music Scene of the 60s and 70s. Compared with the others Ryan fell a wee bit short. 7 is perfectly respectable but it left him 3 points behind as the half time oranges were handed out.

This proved to be something of a shame for Ryan would go on to produce a rather good double figure GK round . But that’s Mastermind. Even if you have a good GK round within you, you can’t afford to be lagging too far behind after the specialists.

I wouldn’t have said that Julie was lagging too far behind after the specialists. She put on 9 points to take the lead, but I somehow had the nagging feeling that she needed at least one probably two more correct answers to make it to another semi final.

By the time that Sam had weighed in with his own GK round Julie was still in the lead though, as he could only manage 7 for joint second place. So it was all down to Ross Taylor. It didn’t look easy going for him by any means, but he kept the answers coming to score the 9 he needed for the win. Well done and best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Sam Schoen	The French Revolution	10	0	7	2	17	2
Ross Taylor	The TV Series “Sherlock Holmes”	10	0	9	0	19	0
Julie Aris	The Poetry of John Betjeman	9	0	9	1	18	1
Ryan Lewendon	The Laurel Canyon Music Scene of the 1960s and 1970s	7	1	10	1	17	2