Brain of Mensa 2018

I often tell people that I'm semi retired from quizzes now. However there is still one competition that I love playing in, and that's Brain of Mensa. It’s not entirely true that I only joined Mensa so that I could play in Brain of Mensa. However it is true that it was a big factor in my decision to take the tests in 2013 to see if I could get in. 

I played in the 2014 competition, and got to the final, where I was comprehensively beaten by the mighty Les Hurst, and that year’s champion, Egghead Steve Cook. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I made a conscious decision not to enter in 2015, but just never got round to it. Still, I did miss playing in the competition that year, so I made up my mind that I would enter again in 2016. I also took a long hard look at myself, and thought about my attitude. Did I want to win? Too royal I did. Did I think it was going to be easy? No, 2014 had proven that. So I gave myself 10 years to try to win. 

Come 2016 I won my heat, and came second to Les in my semi. At least this time though I wasn’t beaten out of sight, and with a dollop of luck on my side could have pushed him even closer. Well, that dollop of luck came my way in large amounts in the 2016 final in London. I don’t think it was by a huge amount, but I won. Which caused me to rethink my attitude. Now that I’d won, I didn’t need to put any pressure on myself, I could just play for the fun and enjoy it. And I did enjoy 2017’s competition. I was out with the washing, and frankly lucky to get second. Les put in probably the most complete performance I’ve ever seen in a final in 2017, and thoroughly deserved his 4^th win.  

So to yesterday’s 2018 final. I thoroughly enjoyed a great quiz, expertly put together by Brian Daugherty, which was played in the right spirit. At the end of the 6 rounds, both Les and I were tied with the same score. We both agreed that we were perfectly happy to leave it as it was, and share the win. It seemed that Brian would have gone along with this as well, but Bobby from Mensa, very apologetically, explained that they have to have just the one champion (although he didn’t really explain why). Neither Les nor I really wanted to play the round of 6 questions to decide things, but we didn’t really have any choice. So, to cut to the chase, the records will say that I won, because I answered one more question out of 6 right. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely delighted to become a double BOM winner, and to get my name on the trophy again. However, the fact is, whatever the record books say, we all know that Les and I were joint winners.

Brain of Mensa Medals - L to R - back  - Bronze - 3rd place 2014,  Silver - 2nd place 2017, Front - Gold - 1st place 2018, Gold - 1st place 2018

Impossible! Worth watching, in my opinion

You’ve probably worked out for yourselves that I’m pretty much ‘semi retired’ as regards quizzes, judging by the dearth of posts in the last couple of years. It’s not that I’ve fallen out of love with quizzing so much, but the things which really irritated me about quizzes were irritating me more and more. So I only play in one fairly big quiz competition a year now – Brain of Mensa – and I only play in one pub quiz, and not every week either, for that matter. I still watch and enjoy every episode of University Challenge, and Mastermind, and still enjoy writing the reviews of them, and I still enjoy new episodes of Pointless, and there are a few other quizzes which I won’t switch off when they’re on. But I don’t seek out and try every new quiz on television.

So, over this summer, I’ve been rather surprised to find myself looking forward to each weekday evening’s edition of Impossible! I think we’re actually on something like the 4^th series now, but I’d never seen it prior to this July. And of course, I’m usually a far more forgiving viewer during the long summer holiday from school. But I have to say that I’ve been rather enjoying it.

Impossible for me pulls off being entertaining enough for the man and woman on the Clapham Omnibus, and yet there is enough there to sustain my interest. If you haven’t seen it, basically a wall of three tiers of contestants are asked five questions. Each question has three answers to choose from. One is right, the other could be right, and the third, according to the terms of the question, is impossible, hence the title. So for example if the question was – which presenter of the BBC television show Mastermind was born in Wales – you might be given the choice between Magnus Magnusson – Peter Snow – John Humphrys. The correct answer would be John Humphrys, while Peter Snow would be impossible since he presented the Radio 4 editions of Mastermind. If a contestant selects the impossible answer, then they are sent home until the next show. All of the contenders change at the end of the week. The contender with the highest score in the quickest time gets to play for a place in the final. They get a board with 9 answers on and the first half of a question. For example – Which BBC Blue Peter Presenter – and five of the answers would be impossible. The contestant has to pick the five impossible answers, earning money for the prize pot with each. Then they get shown the rest of the question. So if the rest of the question asked – went on to co-present Saturday Superstore and Going Live – then the answer would be Sarah Greene. If the contestant picked a wrong but possible answer, then the next best contestant of the previous round would get to answer. If he/she answers correctly, then that earns a place in the final. If he/she gives a wrong answer, then our first contestant automatically gets a place in the final. If any impossible answers remain on the board, and they give it, then that’s them finished for the show. Basically this process is twice repeated until there are three finalists. The final is in two parts. The first is a buzzer quiz. Answer a possible question correctly, and it knocks a life off the two opponents. Identify an impossible question correctly, and you knock two lives off. When one contestant remains, he/she has another 9 square grid, and a question. Three answers are correct, three possible but wrong, and three impossible. The contestant must select three answers. If all three are right, they win £10,000. If all of the answers are at least possible, then they scoop the prize pot, normally about £1500. If any of their answers are impossible they leave, as Anne Robinson once said, with nothing. 

Its sounds very complicated but it really isn’t. Host Rick Edwards might well be no Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman – well, there’s no might about it, he isn’t. But he moves things along at a fair old clip and doesn’t really irritate. For me, the show has play along value. I get a kick out of spotting the Impossible answer asap, and explaining why it’s impossible. This probably explains why my mother in law didn’t want me to watch it while I was in Spain a couple of weeks ago. Alright, it’s not Pointless, which for me is the king of teatime shows which carry out the delicate balancing act of having enough entertainment value for most, while having a great enough level of challenge for . . . well, for me. But it’s not bad at all, and I’ve been really enjoying it. In fact I did go so far as applying, but didn’t hear back. Never mind, I don’t hold it against them. 

Of course, there are criticisms I could make. Now, it’s a given that a tea time quiz show which isn’t setting out to find Britain’s best quizzer is going to have a significant proportion of entertainment questions. But it does seem to me that a huge proportion of the questions which have been asked for the £10,000 have been on entertainment, and a large proportion of those on modern pop music. Variety being the spice of life, I would like to see a more random selection. 

One nice thing has been seeing that the production team doesn’t seem to have a bias against people who have appeared on a number of other quiz shows, who might be expected to do well. Our own Rachael Cherryade Neiman was a contestant only last week. Yes, of course she got to the final – twice as it happens, and the second time of asking she made it to the final question. She avoided the impossible, so took home a cheque, but sadly not the £10,000. Which underlines that this does have a good level of challenge to it. 

I don’t know if it will be back for another series when this one finishes, but I hope so.

Is It A Question of Age?

Here’s an interesting question which has arisen through comments made about my review of the first repechage match of this season’s University Challenge. Is an average older quizzer more likely to be better than an average younger quizzer?

A few years ago I would probably have said, yes, in all probability an average quizzer in their 50’s is probably going to be better than an average quizzer in their 30s. Now, well, I just don’t know.

The only quizzer I can discuss with any real degree of authority is me, so let’s do that. I began as a quizzer in early 1988. I wasn’t a bad player, and I was lucky to be part of a good team, in local terms, until it broke up about 3 years later. Then I hardly quizzed for 2 or 3 years. So in 1995, when I started to go to the quiz in Aberavon Rugby Club, and to play in the Neath Quiz League, I was 31, and a decent player who hadn’t played in a few years. Am I a better player now than I was in 1995? I would say yes, without doubt I am. I’ve had 22 years’ experience since then. But I would argue that I’m not that much better now than I was by 1997/8. Those first few years in the League and in the Rugby Club were hugely important to my development as a quizzer. I can’t tell you the value of those early years of preparing quizzes for the club every 2 – 4 weeks. By this time I was attending at least 3 quizzes every week as well. Physically I was only 2 years older by 1997 – 33. In terms of quizzing, though, there was no comparison between the 31 year old me and the 33 year old me. In fact I’d say there was far less of a difference between the 33 year old me and the 43 year old me. And probably the 53 year old me, for that matter. 

I’ve never really worked at my quizzing as such. However, for a few years between about 2010 and 2014/15 I was doing the papers every day, writing down things I felt would possibly come up as quiz questions. So I’d say that if I had a ‘peak’ as a quizzer it would be about this time when I was just about turning 50. I’ve probably been gently rolling downhill ever since. We have a more healthy roster of regular setters for the club now, and I doubt that I set a quiz more than once in a couple of months. I’ve stopped playing in the Bridgend league, and the rugby club quiz is the only quiz I do regularly, although I still have a go at Brain of Mensa. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go overboard, but basically, going to different pub quizzes on a Sunday evening was only bringing me grief and aggravation, and I stopped enjoying the League. 

I’m straying a little from my original brief. In all honesty, I don’t know if people in their 20s/30s are naturally going to be weaker quizzers than people in their 40s/50s. I mean, you’d think so purely in terms of life experience. But then when I do the rugby club quiz, when I played in the league and various Sunday night quizzes, I was often struck by – a) How much people don’t know, regardless of their age – and – b) how the same people could keep getting the same questions wrong, year after year. And I suppose it comes down to this – there is a wide gulf separating those who want to work at their quiz, who take it very seriously – and those who don’t, and that’s regardless of age. 

I’d be interested in your opinions on this.

Brain of Mensa 2017

Well, my reign as Brain of Mensa champion was always going to come to an end sooner rather than later, and so it did yesterday in the Grand Final in Birmingham. To be honest, I can’t say it was unexpected. People who know me well enough know that I don’t really have a modest bone in my body, and so when I said that I won last year because the questions really fell right for me, well, I wasn’t lying, and lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place. After a bright start I fell away, while Les Hurst, who had already been champion three times before, put on a bravura display of frankly brilliant quizzing. Once he got into his stride there was only one person in it, and I take my hat off to him for the display he produced. 

Well, I never enter a quiz without trying to win, and I was trying to win yesterday, even though it didn’t work out. Still, coming second did bring its own consolation in the shape of a second place and silver medal. This means I now have a full set of gold – 2016 – silver -2017 and bronze – 2014. I wasn’t together enough to apply and play in 2015. As things stand, though, I’m looking forward to applying again and playing in 2018.

The three medals - 2016 gold, 2017 silver, 2014 bronze

Me and Quizzing right now - Brain of Mensa

If you were with me with my previous post, then you’ll know what’s been going on with me for the last few months. Reading it back, I can see that it might give you the impression that I finished with quizzing completely during this time. That’s not true, at least, not quite true.

I said that I made up my mind during that time that I was going to step down from playing in the Bridgend Quiz League after the end of the 2016/17 season. That is actually true, and I still have no intention of playing next season. It’s a little bit complicated. I’ve already written in the blog about things which happened in the 2016 AGM, which led to my decision not to play in the league in the 2016/17 season, a decision I had to renege on due to the sad passing away of our mate Brian. I didn’t want to leave the team in the lurch mid season, so I played, but enough is enough now. Put simply, my heart isn’t in the league any more, and so I’d rather say that by and large it’s been a fun 7 years, and I’d rather me and the league part as friends.

I also said that I’d begun missing Thursday night quizzes in the Rugby Club. That’s true, and may well happen again. I suppose that one way I’ve changed a bit in the last couple of months is I’ve stopped doing things which I don’t have to do out of a sense of duty. I’ll try to explain that. Prior to 2017, if there was a quiz in the rugby club, and I wasn’t out of the country, or at some work business I couldn’t get out of, then I’d be there. For most of the 20+ years I’ve been going to the Thursday night quiz I really wanted to, anyway. There have been times in the last couple of years when I haven’t really wanted to go, but I’ve gone anyway out of a sense of obligation to the people who’ve taken time and trouble to compile a quiz. (Yes, I do appreciate you all, even though I may moan like hell while the quiz is actually on. Can’t help it.) Since my treatment started, though, I don’t go if I don’t feel like it. The nice thing is that most weeks, I do feel like it, and I do want to go. We still don’t win that many, but when we do, it brightens the whole week for me.

And so to Brain of Mensa. Ah yes, Mensa. That’s a word which tends to put some people’s backs up, and in a sense I can understand why. I’m sure that you already know, but basically Mensa is a society founded in 1947 as an organisation for people who can demonstrate that they have an IQ in the top 2% of the population. The whole idea of intelligence, and how accurately any IQ test can measure whatever intelligence is, well, that’s a whole can of worms which is not best opened here. It’s difficult to argue against the idea that Mensa is an elitist organisation, however much we might like to think differently. It’s also difficult to respond in any meaningful way to the assertion – ‘I don’t need any organisation to tell me that I’m intelligent’ - . So maybe Mensans are the insecure and pitiable figures that certain individuals and sections of public opinion think we are. Personally, when I’ve been involved in a Mensa event, I’ve found that the people involved are a pretty wide cross section of society, and the only characteristic that links all of them is that they are members of Mensa. I’ve yet to see two people swapping IQ scores for that matter.  OK, so I guess what I’m trying to say here is, yes, I know that Mensa as an organisation is something a lot of people take a very negative view of, and that’s fine. If that’s your view, nothing I say is likely to change your mind, and I can live with that.

So – Brain of Mensa. When I first heard about the competition in about 2008, I filed it away in my memory as something to come back to in the fulness of time. I took the test and joined in the summer of 2013, and entered the 2014 competition, where I reached the final and came third. I enjoyed the competition, and very much wanted to win it if I ever could. Back in 2014 I gave myself 10 years to win it. I didn’t enter in 2015, then last year I entered, got to the final, and the questions fell my way. Not being modest here, they did. The great thing about winning last year was that I don’t have to worry about winning now. Seriously, having won it once, everything now is just for fun, and if I never win it again – and let’s face it, that’s the most likely prognosis – that’s fine by me.

Still, I never enter a quiz without wanting to win it, and so I was pleased to get through my first round heat on Saturday just gone.

If you’re not a member, or you are and you’ve never played in the competition, you might be interested in the way that it works. There are three rounds – first round heat, semi final, and final. One winner from each heat goes through to the semi finals, and the winner and second placed in the semis contest the grand final. One of the features of the competition that I really like is that each heat and semi final is hosted by one of the competitors. In theory this doesn’t have to be at anyone’s home- it could be at another venue arranged by the nominated organiser. In practice though it’s usually the organiser’s home. On Saturday I played host for the first time.

I don’t know, but I imagine that the Geographical aspect of the competition can make organisation tricky. To give an example, I live in Port Talbot South Wales. The other two competitors in my heat were from Rhyader in mid Wales, and Wexford, in the Republic of Ireland. Geographically, we were the latter’s closest competitors. I imagine that there’s probably a lot less travel involved for participants living in the South East of England. I’m lucky. Living in Port Talbot I know that I’m probably going to have to travel, and I love it. I’ve been to heats and semis in Chard in Somerset, in Stevenage in Herts., in Marlborough in Wilts. , and in Derbyshire. That’s not counting the two finals, one in Birmingham and the other in London.

As for the quiz itself, well, I think that it’s the hardest individual quiz I ever play in. The breadth and depth of the questions are a real challenge, and that’s the way it should be. The way it works is probably best explained if we take a round involving 4 players, the final or semi. There are 120 general knowledge questions. The questions are set by the estimable Brian Daugherty, who is also question master for the grand final, and they are far above the level of your local pub quiz. They are asked in rounds of 20 questions. Each player would be assigned a letter, A,B,C or D, and a seating position – A 1^st, B 2nd and so on. In round 1, A would be asked first question, then B and so on. Should A answer his or her question incorrectly, then B gets a chance for a bonus, if he answers incorrectly then C and so on. Then B would be asked his or her first question, and should he/she answer incorrectly, then it would be offered to C, then D, then A. You see how it works, I’m sure. Each correct answer is worth a point.

Now, after the first 20 questions, seating positions are changed. So while A might remain in seat 1, B,C and D would all swap. This is done in the interests of fairness. In any group of 4 quizzers, while they might all be strong quizzers in their own right, some are going to be even stronger than others. So there is a distinct advantage to coming immediately after one of the comparatively weaker players, in terms of the chances to answer bonuses which you may receive. So after each set of 20 questions the seating arrangements are changed, with the idea being that every player gets a fair crack of the whip with regards to bonuses.

It’s a terrific quiz, and over the years it has been won by some very well known quizzers, whose blushes I’ll spare. Suffice it to say, though, that in the last ten years, the competition has been won by either a Brain of Britain Champion, a Mastermind Champion, or an Egghead 7 times, while the player who won on the other three occasions is easily good enough to win BoB or MM.

I know it shouldn't. . .

 - matter to me, and it just proves that I'm shallow, arrogant and smug, if not actually stupid as such, but it made me happy when I received November's Mensa magazine this morning and found it contained a report on this year's Brain of Mensa competition.

Brain of Mensa Final 2016

I joined Mensa in the summer of 2013, so it was too late for me to enter the Brain of Mensa competition that year. I got to the final in 2014, and finished 3rd. I didn't participate in Brain of Mensa last year - it was not a great year for me for one reason and another. Still, I missed it last year, and so had another go. I won my first round heat, and came second in the semi, earning a place in the final. To be honest, I wouldn't have been too disappointed if I'd managed third again. I'm still in a bit of a state of shock that this happened: -

It would not be a lie to say that my main motivation in joining Mensa was to play in and try to win Brain of Mensa. I can't think of anything more to say about it other than clichés. But I am over the moon. 

Brain of Mensa Grand Final 2014

I haven’t really had the time to post since last Saturday, but now that I have a little it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to LAM reader Stephen Cooke, who won the Brain of Mensa final in the Mensa Games finals weekends last Sunday.

The final, for which the estimable Brian Daugherty both compiled the questions, and acted as question master, was contested between Stephen Cooke, previous multiple champion Les Hurst, Ian Dalziel and me. Both Stephen and I were playing for the first time in the competition.

I was under no illusions that I was going into the final as anything other than an underdog, having seen just how good Les was when he beat me in the semi final. As it happened, Les was a couple of rounds getting into his formidable stride in the final, while Stephen led from the first round to the last. I have to take my hat off to both Stephen and Les. They were playing and supplying answers at a level which I couldn’t match, but could only admire. In the end Les was runner up , and I came third. If you know me then you’ll know that I would have loved to have won, but could have no complaints about the outcome, and to be honest, I’d really just wanted to get to the final in this, my first year. So congratulations, Stephen, and well played as well to Les, and also to Ian. Hopefully see you next year.