Mastermind 2024 - Semi-Final 6

The Tale of the Tape

Ruth Hart	12	0	14	0	26	0
Caryn Ellis	10	0	11	4	21	4	-
Tom Moody	13	0	7	2	20	2	-
Tom Flowerdew	9	0	9	1	18	1	-

 Yes thanks, I had a lovely time in West Wales. As it happens I did watch Monday’s last semi-final, but it’s only since returning home I’ve had he chance to write it up.

So let’s start with Tom Flowerdew. Tom was the lowest scorer on my unofficial table of heat winners. Is that significant? Well, not necessarily, no. It’s a clean slate in the semis. The real question is – can you improve on your performance from the heats? The second real question is – can you improve enough to earn yourself a place in the final? Tom was answering on bears. Now, had I made a prediction about this match I’m not sure I would have made this my banker subject. However, I should have done since I managed five of these. Tom certainly achieved the objective of improving on his heat performance, scoring a double figure round with 10.

Second contender Ruth Hart had the best performance of all four heat winners in her first round match. She came in 3^rd on my unofficial table with an excellent 26 and if you didn’t know any better you’d have been forgive for thinking that, with all three fellow contenders in the bottom half of the table, that this match was hers to lose. It doesn’t necessarily work like that in a semi-final, though. Answering on the Novels of Dame Muriel Spark, a subject on which I was amazed to score 1.

Our third contender and second Tom of the evening, Tom Moody, weighed in at number 20 on my unofficial table. However, he had scored an excellent 13 on specialist back then, and if he could repeat this it would give him a useful advantage over our first two contenders. On Monday night Tom was answering on the ICC Cricket World Cup. I was a little uncertain about this – I felt I might do okay on world cups up until the 90s. In fact this is exactly how it worked out, and I added four to my aggregate to take me to double figures. Tom, like Ruth and Tom F before him scored 10, but he incurred a single pass.

Our final contender Caryn Ellis came in at number 17 on my heat winners’ list. She’d scored a good 10 on specialist in the heats, but the rounds we’d seen so far round had already show that this was the least that was going to be needed in this semi. On Monday night Caryn answered on William Harvey and the Discovery of the Circulation of Blood. I haven’t checked, but this could well be the longest specialist subject title of the series so far. I took a couple to take me 12, a pretty decent aggregate, but Caryn scored 9 and 1 pass.

You know, I do like a match when all four contenders have prepared their subjects so well that they are all still in with a very realistic chance of winning at the turn around. All four contenders were separated by one point and one pass. That’s close. Usually at least one contender is out of it by half time.

Back to the chair for Caryn, then. She’d scored double figures in the heats with 11, and being realistic she would need all of that to have a good chance of keeping the lead until hometime.  She got it, too. That was certainly going to put the other three into the corridor of doubt, although in such a tight match the three passes she had accrued during her round were looking dangerous to her prospects.

Well, Tom Flowerdew, the next to go, also passed three times. In the heats he had scored 8 on GK, and he actually improved on this. Sadly for him though, the 9 that he scored left him a point behind on 19. Look, winning your heat, then improving on your performance in the semi final, that’s got to be a cause of some satisfaction.

Ruth Hart had scored an excellent 14 on GK in her heat. She didn’t need to improve on this, or even equal it to take the lead. 10 and no more than 3 passes would see her take the lead with one contender to go. Well, she scored the 10 points she needed while she passed . . . twice. Some way down on her best, but good enough to take the lead. Could Tom Moody take it from her?

Well, he could, but it would need him to make a significant improvement on his GK round in the heats, where he scored 7. He certainly tried. You could see his frustration every time he gave an incorrect answer. He kept his momentum going with a few quick passes, but the line was approaching more quickly than his total was growing and in the end he fell just short with 19.

Well played everyone. Nobody need feel the least disappointment, although it’s only natural to want to win and to be disappointed if you don’t. Well done especially to Ruth, and good luck in the Grand Final – which is on Monday! Yay.

Tom Flowerdew	Bears	10	0	9	3	19	3
Ruth Hart	The novels of Dame Muriel Spark	10	0	10	2	20	2
Tom Moody	The ICC Cricket World Cup	10	1	9	4	19	5
Caryn Ellis	William Harvey and the Discovery of the Circulation of Blood	9	1	11	3	20	4

Mastermind 2024 - Semi-Final 5

The Tale of the Tape

Name	Specialist  Score	Specialist  Passes	GK Score	GK Passes	Total Score	Total Passes	Tie break
Peter Wilson	12	0	15	1	27	1	-
Paul Judge	10	1	12	0	22	1	-
Helen Lippell	12	0	9	0	21	0	4
Ben Jones	8	0	12	0	20	0	-

We’re getting close now, early beloved. One more semi-final and then it will be Grand Final time.

Kicking off last night’s contest was Helen Lippell. Helen was in the bottom half of my unofficial heat winners’ table. According to my records Helen also took part in the first round heats in both 2016 and 2019, narrowly failing to progress on both occasions. In her heat she answered very well on Grinling ‘Funky’ Gibbons. Last night she needed an equally good specialist round on British Prime Ministers of the 18^th century. She very early got it too, with a fine round of 11 points. Me? Well, I had my best specialist round of the night with four.

Second up was Paul Judge. He’d scored 1 more point in the heats than had Helen, achieved largely through a very good GK round. In his first round Paul had scored 10 points on the Life and Career of Magic Johnson. Last night he was answering on The Stranglers from 1974 – 1990. With such a relatively short time period it was a given that Paul was going to be asked some questions requiring real in-depth knowledge. For the most part he was equal to the task, scoring a good round of 10 to put him just the one point behind Helen.

Ben Jones had scored 1 point fewer than Helen in the heats. He’d had 8 on F. Scott Fitzgerald. 8 is a very respectable score, but while it might be enough in some heats it is unlikely to bring you a win in the semi-final, especially one in which the other contenders have prepared their own specialists so well. Ben, sadly, did not manage to improve on his specialist score from the heats. Answering on the America poet Elisabeth Bishop he scored 7. It is only in the rarest circumstances you’d see a four point lead overhauled in a semi final GK round and there was still one contender to go.

Peter Wilson came in at number 2 on my unofficial table. Last week we saw stand in Thomas Nelson comfortably win a semi final he did not expect to take part in because he had lost in the first round heats. Well, Peter was the contender who beat him, through a magnificent GK round of 15 points. Peter had scored 12 on the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. Last night, answering on Oscar Winning Feature Films he repeated that feat to take the lead. Incidentally I was pleased to see Clive clarify that the subject was about winners of the Oscar for best animated feature film and not on animated feature films that won any Oscar. For the record I scored four on Helen’s round. 2 on the Stranglers, nowt on Elizabeth Bishop and 2 on the films for an aggregate of 8.

So to General Knowledge. Ben’s GK round was very reminiscent of his GK round in his heat. He started off at a blistering pace, snapping out the answers and building considerable momentum. It he’d maintained this then he might possibly have got into the mid teens. However as had happened in his heat he had a couple wrong mid-round and seemed to start doubting himself a little more. Don’t get me wrong, he scored 11 and in a semi-final 11 is pretty good going. But having started five behind the lead, it surely wasn’t going to be enough.

Paul Judge, on the other hand, was only two points off the lead on 10. In his heat he’d score 12 points and if he could do so again then he would be giving himself a shout. To cut a long story short, this was what he did. 12 points gave him a total of 22, and a chance of clinging on at the top until the end of the show.

Let’s put Helen Lippell’s task into perspective. In order to go into the outright lead Helen would need to score 12. That would mean equalling her best ever GK round on Mastermind. At first she did sound rather unsure of some of the answers she was giving, but as more and more of them hit home she kept on dredging them up, until by the end of the round she had posted her highest ever GK round of 13. It was the kind of round that made me recall my own semi final all those years ago, when I said to myself to just keep answering and not worry about any I got wrong.

Which is not to say that Helen was anything like home and dry at this point. Peter Wilson, let us remember, had scored 15 on GK in the heats. He only needed 13 to win outright. Well, there’s no ‘only’ about 13 on GK in the semis. Peter did not get the kind of ride in this round that he had in the heats, and once he got a couple wrong it seemed to play on his mind, There’s nothing to be ashamed about in a score of 8, which is what Peter scored but he will know that he’s better than that score suggests.

I have to say though that it is nice to see persistence rewarded. It must take a certain amount of determination to come back for a third attempt at the show, and so to see Helen not just make her first semi-final, but also her first grand final is great. Best of luck.

The Details

Helen Lippell	British Prime Ministers of the 18th century	11	0	13	0	24	0
Paul Judge	The Stranglers 1974 - 1990	10	0	12	0	22	0
Ben Jones	Elizabeth Bishop	7	0	11	0	18	0
Peter Wilson	Oscar Wining Feature Films	12	0	8	0	20	0

Mastermind semi final five preview

Okay, dear readers. I’m going to give you the list of tomorrow’s semi-final five specialist subjects. See if you can work out which one would be my banker and which one looks like a Londinius nul points.

British Prime Ministers of the 18^th Century

Rock band The Stranglers 1974 – 1990

American Poet Elizabeth Bishop

Oscar Winning Animated Feature films

It’s easy for me to say where the nul points are likely to be scored. I’m afraid that I am not at all familiar with the American poet Elizabeth Bishop, so any points there look very unlikely.

As for the other three subjects, they each have the potential to being me one or two, but none of them looks like a secure source of points. I liked the Stranglers a lot really from the end of the punk period through the early – mid 80s, but how many questions in the round will relate to this I don’t know. I know a bit about all Prime Ministers, but nowhere near as much about the 18^th century ones as I do about the 19^th century ones. Then Oscar Winning Animated Feature films. I’m not clear about the parameters of this round. Does it mean just films that won the Oscar for Best Animated feature film, or does it mean animated feature films that won ANY Oscar? The former has only been going since 2001 so that’s really doable. The later – not so much.

Forecast – well I’d always rather underforecast than overforecast, so let’s save anything higher than five would be pretty good for me.