Mastermind 2026 - Semi final subjects and a few thoughts

Heads up peeps. I’ve just been over to the BBC Mastermind website. The specialists for the last of this year’s semi finals will be:-

Amelia Earhart

Sir Laurence Olivier

The red wines of Burgundy

The songs of Sir Noël Coward.

I have to be honest, on a personal level it’s hard to call any of them a banker subject. I suppose that I have more chance of getting one or two right on Sir Laurence Olivier, but with the others it will be a matter of pure luck whether something I can guess the answer to comes up.

On another level I looked at the photograph of tomorrow night’s line up and it didn’t look as if Dennis Wang was among them. On one level it’s good if it means that everyone who won a heat got to experience a semi final. On another level though, I can’t help feeling sorry that we are in an era of the show without repechages. I do feel that the talent is thinly enough spread as it is.

So I’ve had a think about this. Earlier this year I suggested my option 1 - that we make a series of 29 shows. We do 22 heats and then the two highest scoring runners up get wild cards through to the semis. But then maybe there’s a reason why the Beeb need the series to comprise of 31 shows. If this is a case then I have an option 2 as a compromise. We do 23 heats. This will provide 23 contenders for 24 slots in the semis. Then we have a repechage for the 4 highest scoring runners up, with the winner becoming the 24^th semi-finalist. I don’t like it as much as option 1 because it would mean that the contender who wins the repechage would have to learn 4 subjects throughout the series if they won the semi final. But then, in 2006 when I was a highest scoring runner up  in the heats when there was no repechage, if you’d offered me the chance to do something like this I would have bitten your hand off to take the opportunity.  

I reiterate that I would not like to see Mastermind turn away from tournament play. I would not like to see the top six performers from the heats go straight through to the finals, which is what happened with Sport Mastermind. But we can tweak things so that we don’t lose potential finalists because fate has placed them a freakishly strong heat.

As always, just my opinion. Feel free to disagree.