Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 10

When you appear on Mastermind, there’s really only one aspect of the show that you have any control over and that’s your specialist subject. Now, you can prepare thoroughly and things can still go wrong for a number of reasons – nerves, feeling ill on the day of the recording, or maybe a mismatch between your understanding of the parameters of the subject and the setter’s understanding of it. By and large, though, the more effectively that you prepare, the better you will do. Yet bearing this simple axiom in mind, it is remarkable how many times we see contenders failing to really hit the heights on their specialists. If you watch the 1977 series which is being repeated at 9:30pm on Monday nights on BBC Four, you’ll see that this is by no means a recent development. In last night’s BBC Four show we saw three contenders underachieve on GK, which meant that the other, despite having a ‘mare on GK, still won.

Well, heat 10 of the 2026 series kicked off with Kate Peck answering on the music of George Michael. This was my ‘banker’ subject of the night, which says more about my lack of knowledge of the other subjects than my knowledge of George Michael, but it still delivered me three points. It delivered Kate a good round. For most of it she looked as if she was heading for double figures, but fell just short to finish with 9. That’s a good score in the current era.

The only other specialist I thought that was likely to bring me any more points was the next up. Gareth Peel was answering on tennis star Monica Seles. Surprisingly this one gave me more points than George’s music did. I landed 4, to take me up towards respectability for the aggregate. Gareth, like Kate before him, looked as if he was heading for double figures and what’s more he achieved it finishing with 10 points and a singe pass. Good round.

There was only one of the four specialists which I could not score on and if you’d asked me before the show which one it was going to be I would have picked Justin Uzomba’s round on Kerry James Marshall. Yet I did get a point, more by luck than judgement. There was no luck involved in Justin’s terrific score of 11, though. Like the previous two contenders his round had double figures written all over it in fact the only surprise was when he ended up passing one. Quality.

Three specialists and three really good rounds. Was Eileen Thatcher going to be able to complete a full set with the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L. Sayers? Yes, she was. Sometimes I say that there’s something in the air, something infectious that seems to make successive contenders struggle in some shows. Well, what there was in the air with this show was confidence and knowledge, and Eileen too powered through her round to take a fine 11 and 1 pass. Quality.

Well done everyone! The fact we so rarely see all four contenders in a single heat do so well on their specialists made this a better heat already than many of this series.

Was it a case of ‘after the Lord Mayor’s Show’ in the GK? Not really, no. Kate Peck, who would be forgiven for thinking herself a little unlucky to be in fourth place after scoring 9 on specialist, gave a competent performance on GK, scoring another 9 for 18 in total. Which would have won or tied some of the earlier heats in the series. Good work.

We were all returning to the chair for GK in the same order in which we’d undergone the specialists so it was Gareth Peel back next. Now, Gareth’s first half dozen or more answers were delivered with such confidence and authority that I thought he was going to be on for a second double figure round in the same show. But the wrong answers and a couple of passes crept in and he lost a bit of momentum. In the last part of the round he steadied the ship and took the last question to give himself 9 for a total of 19 and the lead.

Now, I don’t think that we saw a single bad round last night, but we did see a round where one of the contenders seemed to struggle just a little bit. That was Justin’s GK round. Now, don’t get me wrong, the 7 he scored brought him to a perfectly respectable 18 points, a total which has been a winning total already during this series. However he did look just a little disappointed not have claimed at least a share in the lead with one contender still to go.

This was Eileen. She needed 9 to put the result beyond doubt, and this she achieved. You know, there’s a lot to be said for keeping your head, answering what you know, giving the percentage answer for what you don’t and just carrying on answering. In the end it brought Eileen 11 points for a total of 22. The feat of achieving double figures in both specialist and GK is one we haven’t seen that many times during this series yet, and so many congratulations for that. In fact congratulations to all four contenders for making an exciting show. I wish Eileen the best of luck in the semi-finals.

The Details

Kate Peck	The Music of George Michael	9	0	9	3	18	3
Gareth Peel	Monica Seles	10	1	9	2	19	2
Justin Uzomba	Kerry James Marshall	11	1	7	1	18	2
Eileen Thatcher	The Peter Wimsey Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers	11	1	11	1	22	2

Mastermind 2027 - First Round Heat 10 - Preview

 Good Lord, look at the time! Where did that weekend go? Well, never mind, let’s have a look at tomorrow night’s Mastermind Specialist subjects:-

The Music of George Michael

Monica Seles

Kerry James Marshall

The Peter Wimsey Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers

Personally I think there’s maybe 1 or two for me in the first two, but nowt in the others, even the old stager Lord Peter Wimsey. Pools panel forecast – no telegram claims required.

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 9

Well, that was certainly more like it, wasn’t it.

Beth Goodliff kicked off the first round with The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. I did explain in my preview that I have never read any of these and sadly my memories of the TV adaptation of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit were too sketchy to bring me any points. Beth on the other hand managed the coveted double figure round, so whatever happened in the rest of the show, hers was not a wasted journey to the studio.

Lottie Verheijen was answering on the Films of Nicole Kidman. I know more about the films of Nicole Kidman than I do about the novels of Jeanette Winterson but I still didn’t know enough to earn any points on this round. Lottie, though, managed our second double figures round of the night, going one better than Beth and scoring 11. Again, she can be very pleased with how she acquitted herself in the chair.

Were we perhaps on for a triple of double figures rounds? It feels like a long time since that happened. Yet Alex Spacey looked a shoe in to achieve this from very early doors in his round on the radio comedy series Round The Horne. I stumbled my way to 4 points, but Alex blasted through to his own 11 points. So far the whole show had been like a little oasis of quality in what has so far been a rather uninspiring first round.

Finally civil servant Freddie Mitchell with a real old-style Mastermind subject, the Paris Commune of 1871. Would he complete a first round of all double figure scores for us? Well, no, not quite. Still, his 8 was not achieved without a very good knowledge of his subject, and by no means suffered badly by comparison with what had gone before. I scraped two to finish with an aggregate of 6.

Prospective contenders please take note. These performances show you what you should all be aiming for in your specialist subjects. There is no substitute for thorough preparation and if you prepare thoroughly for your specialist round, this is what you can achieve.

Freddie Mitchell returned to the chair and, as if to make amends for missing out on double figures in his specialist he put in a very good GK performance to score 11. It is not very often that we see a contender who is fourth at the turn around go on to win, but a performance like this certainly put him in contention to do so.

Beth returned to the chair needing a double figure round of her own for an outright lead. She too put in a good performance, keeping her head , picking off what she knew and guessing what she didn’t. It didn’t quite take her to double figures but it brought her 9, although Freddie retained the lead on pass countback. So, two contenders were in the clubhouse and both could feel very pleased with their performances all evening.

Lottie, sadly, did not do so well on her general knowledge. She gave it her best shot and did manage to come up with answers to every question, but was unable to find enough correct ones to challenge the lead. She finished with a total of 16.

So only Alex Spacey remained. None of the other three contenders had quite managed two double figure rounds. If Alex could to it then he would win. If he could score 9 and no more than 2 passes he would win. Well, I mentioned in my review of the previous heat that you can often tell someone who has a quiz background from the way that they answer. Alex certainly gave that vibe to me as he never looked in any doubt. He passed the target and had enough time to add several more correct answers to take his overall score to 24. 13 in general knowledge is a total that has to be taken seriously in this series. Very well done, Sir. You coulda been a contender and in fact, you very much are.

As for Freddie and Beth, well, I hope that they take consolation from the fact that the majority of this season’s heats have been won with scores of 19 or less. A show with no fewer than 4 double figure rounds. Monsieur, our ‘ost is spoiling us.

The Details

Beth Goodliff	The Novels of Jeanette Winterson	10	1	9	4	19	5
Lottie Verheijen	The Films of Nicole Kidman	11	0	5	0	16	0
Alex Spacey	Round the Horne	11	1	13	1	24	1
Freddie Mitchell	The Paris Commune of 1871	8	1	11	2	19	3

 

Mastermind Heat 9 Specialist subjects

 Here we are then, the subject line up for tomorrow’s Mastermind heat 9. They are:-

The novels of Jeannette Winterson

The films of Nicole Kidman

The BBC radio comedy series Round The Horne

The Paris Commune of 1871

I don’t see myself getting a hatful of specialist subjects. I’ve never read any of Jeannette Winterson’s novels although I did watch the excellent TV adaptation of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit with the late Charlotte Coleman and Geraldine McEwan. Films of Nicole Kidman may be my best chance of 1 or 2 points, while there might be a piece of low hanging fruit in Round the Horne for me.

Mastermind 2027 - First Round Heat 8

Back home from Helsinki, peeps and there’s catching up to be done. So let’s begin with last Monday’s 8^th heat of Mastermind.

First up was Taz Modi who was answering on musician Neil Young. More than a few times during this series so far I’ve watched rounds where I’ve thought that the contender is very good on specific areas of their subject, but then they get asked about things which they’re far less secure on. This seemed to happen to Taz a few times during the round. Oh, don’t get me wrong, 7 is perfectly respectable in this day and age but it’s not the definitive marker that you really want to be laying down in the first round.

Charlotte Long was answering on golfer supreme Rory McIlroy. Answering well, too. For most of the round this looked like it was going to be a really sterling double figure round. A couple of questions did trip her up a little on the way to the tape though and Charlotte levelled out to finish with a good 9 points. I didn’t answer any fewer questions than in the first round, but that’s not a consolation considering that I didn’t answer any in either round. Were we potentially looking at a zero aggregate for me on specialist?

No. Lauren Church gave us a round on US astronaut Sally Ride. While I don’t claim to know much about her life or career, I do know enough about US manned space programmes to be able to pick up a few pieces of low hanging fruit. With her score of 4 by the end of the round, it did look as if there were gaps in Lauren’s knowledge, but I can’t help feeling that she seemed to be affected by nerves as well. After all, I’ve no doubt she would have known Edwards Air Force base in California. I’ll say a bit more about nerves when we get to the GK.

Finally then Gustav Ader. His subject was British Brutalist Architecture. Now I don’t instinctively hate ALL British brutalist architecture. But I do hate a lot of it. The second question concerned Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, and I hate that building, an ugly duckling that has always remained ugly for sure. But leaving aside my own personal feelings, it’s an interesting subject and it brought me 5 points to push my aggregate for the Specialist to 8 points. Gustav did better but with 7 points he too looked as if he’s left a few points behind that he might have managed to get.

So to the General Knowledge. I mentioned about Lauren Church seeming to be a bit nervous in the first round. Well, there were definitely times during her GK round when you could almost see her desperately trying to push the right answer just a little further off the tip of her tongue yet not quite managing it. Who knows, maybe the first round was playing on her mind. She at least finished with a double figure aggregate, scoring 6 to give her an overall total of 10.

Taz Modi delivered a double figure round on GK. He remained calm throughout the round and accumulated points steadily, not rushing in to give a wrong answer quickly where a second’s thought might have produced a correct answer. As a result he pushed through to 11 points. Yes, we’ve seen better GK rounds this series, but only a couple of them, and with the way things have been going you fancied that this might well be a winning performance.

Within the first minute or so of Gustav’s round you couldn’t help feeling that he wasn’t going to match Taz. He too was not answering very quickly, however he wasn’t answering as well as Taz. It was an okay GK round from someone who you’d guess isn’t a quizzer. I’ll say a little bit more about that generally shortly. Gustav scored 7 to take his total to 14.

Finally Charlotte. Essentially she needed a round of 9 points and no passes to win. Basically, a good general knowledge performance. You don’t have to be a quizzer to have a good GK performance, but you do need a cool head, an ability to guess and above all else, just a little bit of luck with the questions you’re asked. At times it looked as if Charlotte had the first two requisites but not the third, as the clock ticked down. In the end she was close but the cigar remained unawarded, for she scored 8 to finish with 17 and no passes.

Well done Taz! With a good GK round many a tricky position at half time can be rescued, and if you can really nail down your specialist for the semi than you are going to be in with a shout. I wish you good luck.

Once again, as seems to have been the case for so much of this series and the previous we’ve seen contenders whose intelligence I have no doubt of, but who are not quizzers. Basically, when you’re a quizzer of a certain standard yourself, there are certain questions that contenders get asked during GK rounds where you think – if you were a quizzer you would have heard that question so often that you’d never get it wrong. And they get it wrong because they haven’t heard it before. Now, I know that it has always been the case that the non-quizzers greatly outnumber the quizzers among the contenders on Mastermind. But there just seem to be so few coming through on the show now who have a good quizzer’s general knowledge. Is it just that quizzers aren’t applying in decent numbers any more? Or is it that, for whatever reason, they’re just not getting through the applications process? I don’t have an answer, but it’s a question that could be asked, certainly.

The Details

Taz Modi	Neil Young	7	1	11	0	18	1
Charlotte Long	Rory McIlroy	9	0	8	0	17	0
Lauren Church	Sally Ride	6	2	4	2	10	4
Gustav Ader	British Brutalist Architecture	7	3	7	3	14	6

Mastermind Preview

I won’t actually be in the country for tomorrow night’s Mastermind, peeps. Yes, the English Fool is heading off Abroad with his sketchbook again, this time to Helsinki. Still, I haven’t gone yet so I thought we might at least cast a glance over tomorrow night’s subjects – I will catch up with the show next weekend when I’m back.

The specialist subjects are :-

Neil Young

Major-winning golfer Rory McIlroy

American Astronaut Sally Ride

British brutalist Architecture

Interesting subjects. Sally Ride is of course the only one to feature in the lyrics of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. I reckon I might get one or two on all of these subjects. I have to say that the last one, British brutalist architecture is a particular hate of mine. Be fair, I was born in the 60s and grew up in London in the 70s and we had more than our fair share of these eyesores. I mean, I am not a fully paid up member of the all-buildings-should-have-columns brigade and I accept that there was a need to put up cheap mass housing in our cities after the devastation of World War 2. But did they have to make them quite so pug-ugly? Alright, I know, it’s not everything that was built between the 40s and 70s – just too much of it.

See you next weekend.

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 7

It’s heat 7 and up to now although we have seen much honest endeavour it seems to me that the series has been in need of a little bit of quality. Did we get it at the 7^th time of asking? Well, see what you think.

Lewis Demmon was first into the chair, answering on the Essays of George Orwell. It’s not a subject about which I know a great deal as demonstrated by my 2 points, so I don’t know just how much he wrote and I don’t know whether the questions Lewis was asked were a particularly tough lot. Whatever the case Lewis struggled with his round, and by the end of it he had only accrued 4 points. Hard lines.

By way of contrast Jane Gibbons achieved a perfect 12 from 12 on her round on the films of Madonna. I had 3 of these – which surprised me, since the only one of these films I’ve watched all the way through is A League of Their Own. Whatever your subject may be getting a perfect score is hard to do. I never managed it – my best performance was dropping just 1 point in the semi-final. If she could nail the landing on the GK she could end up with a really good score. Quality.

If Ali Morgan was daunted by Jane’s round, she certainly didn’t let it show. Answering on Pauline Gower she too whacked in a perfect 12 from 12. Me? Well, shame though it is to admit it, I don’t recall ever hearing abut Pauline Gower before, and I earned the precise total of nowt. Like Jane’s round before, this was a fine display of a contender knowing her subject inside and out, and I reckon she could have gone on for another two minutes and would still have had them all right. Quality.

So to Chris Matterface, answering on the 2000AD comics of the 80s and 90s. Well, whichever way you look at it, that’s a hell of a lot of comics. Me? Well, I thought I was a little too old for comics by the time the 80s came round (which was wrong. You’re never too old for comics) and I’d never read the comic before. So my aggregate stayed at the 5 points I’d scored in the first two rounds. It would have been remarkable had Chris also scored a perfect round. Well, he didn’t quite do that and with a veery good double figure round of 10 he was still in contention with the two leaders at the turnaround.

So then Lewis returned to the chair for the GK round. Put yourself in his position. For whatever reason your specialist round really hasn’t worked out. Then you watch all three contenders make a seemingly effortless show of posting excellent scores. You’re way behind and seem to have no chance of winning. So what do you do? Well, in Lewis’ place he kept his head, and scored a good 8, at least putting his night’s efforts into the honest endeavour category.

Chris Matterface then returned to the chair. Now, it’s dangerous to read too much into a contender’s face while they’re answering questions. But during Chris’ round he never looked uncomfortable, and even though it seemed as if there might be a few guesses in his answers, one of the marks of a good quizzer is that when they have to guess, they make guesses that have a good chance of being right. Chris delivered what has become a very rara avis indeed in this series, a score in the teens and posted 13 to take his total to 23. The two remaining contenders were going to need extremely good GK rounds of their own to beat him. Quality

Jane Gibbons gave it a lash. In several of the shows we’ve seen this series her 9 points, a good score in its own right, would have seen her into the winner’s enclosure. Not this time, though. But I think she can be very pleased with her evening’s work, and sometimes, that’s enough to be going home with.

Ali Morgan did not, sadly, do quite as well in her own GK. She zigged when she should have zagged with a couple of the answers, was caught out by a few others and ended the round with a decent 7 to take her score to 19. Putting Ali’s evening into perspective, what she can take away is that she has joined the pretty exclusive ‘perfect club’ for people who achieved a perfect round on specialist and believe me that’s something special.

But the laurels go to Chris, and rightfully so. That was actually a really good all-round performance. When I’m looking at heat winners with the potential to go further I particularly look for those who can really learn a specialist and can hack it at GK. On admittedly just one show’s evidence, Chris seems to have that. Very well done sir. Best of luck in the semi-finals.

Good show.

The Details

Lewis Demmon	The Essays of George Orwell	4	2	8	2	12	4
Jane Gibbons	The Films of Madonna	12	0	9	2	21	2
Ali Morgan	Pauline Gower	12	0	7	2	19	2
Chris Matterface	The 2000 AD comics of the 80s and 90s	10	1	13	1	23	2

Mastermind 2027 - Heat 7 Preview

I really don’t pretend to understand why Mastermind has been taken off for another week. This time its replaced by Grand Tours of Scotland’s Lochs. Which I’m sure will be interesting and picturesque, but hardly necessitating the disruption of the normal schedules, I would have thought.

Well, when heat 7 is aired a week today the specialist subjects will be –

Essays of George Orwell

The films of Madonna

The Pilot Pauline Gower

The 2000 AD comics of the 1980s and 1990s

I would like to think I will get a couple of points. Not in each round, but as an overall aggregate. None of the subjects can I pretend to know anything about. I think the only Madonna film I have watched all the way through is “A League of their Own.” I have never read any of the essays of George Orwell. Nor, for that matter, 2000 AD. I have never heard of the pilot Pauline Gower, to my shame. So hopefully general knowledge will help me scramble a couple of pieces of low hanging fruit.

Thankfully there’s still Mastermind 1977 on BBC Four, and it’s the only edition of Mastermind to see Sir David Hunt beaten, I believe. He won the repechage semi and the final and then won the 1982 Champion of Champions series.

Mastermind 2027 - Heat 6 Review

So here we are at heat 6, which I believe is actually ¼ of the way through the first round. Have we seen the eventual series winner yet? Hard to say.

Akin Ajayi kicked off with my ‘banker’ subject. Well, I say that. When I originally took a gander over the subjects for last night I thought it was the whole of the Tour de France rather than just the Tour de France in the 21^st century. I went off it for a few years after it became blindingly obvious that Lance Armstrong (and some others) had cheated their way to wins or high positions and didn’t really get switched back on until Geraint Thomas won in 2018. Nonetheless I managed 4 of these. Akin did better, and after a minute double figures looked possible. He didn’t quite get there, but in the context of this year’s low scoring series, 8 did look quite competitive.

Mary Obodo gave us my second ‘banker’ of the night with George Harrison. Mary is a retired teacher so of course she had the dubious reward of support from the Clark sofa. She certainly knew what she knew, and reached a respectable 7, but there did seem to be gaps her knowledge of aspects of George’s life and career which caught her out once or twice. I took another 4, and a double figure aggregate looked possible.

I don’t pretend to know the story behind the Aeneid as well as I know the Greek myths on which Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are based, but I thought I should get at least 1 on Paula Lawford’s round. I doubled my expectations and got 2. Paula seemed to know her stuff, as did all of last night’s contenders, but some of the questions caught her out a bit, and left her with 6 at the end of the round. That was still only 2 points off the lead, but there was still one more contender to go on specialist.

This was Hugh Nicholl, and his specialist was Lyndon B. Johnson. He’d never have been a banker for me, but US politics is always an interesting subject and I reckoned if I kept my wits and plucked off any low hanging fruit I might get 1 or 2. 2 is indeed the score I managed. This took me to an aggregate of 12 for the show and meant that I had been able to answer some questions in each of the rounds. Speaking of which, Hugh’s was the finest specialist round of the evening, a very good 11. I don’t want to lecture or preach, but you have to prepare thoroughly and you have to prepare smartly for your specialist. It’s not necessarily about the amount of time you put in – although the more time you can put in the better. It’s just as much about using that time well and making sure that you’ve covered all aspects of the topic that you possibly can. If you do, then you can end up like Hugh, with a very healthy 3 point lead going into GK.

I don’t get off on watching any contender’s specialist round when it doesn’t go as well as they would have liked. But I felt especially sorry for Paula Lawford over her specialist when she returned to the chair to deliver a really good general knowledge round. 11 in GK this year is no mean feat. It pushed her up to 17 and that with no passes either. We’ve seen heats won this year with a lower score.

Mary Obodo, sadly, didn’t really get to grips with her own GK round. 7 is nothing to be ashamed of, but it wasn’t a score or a performance to get the pulse racing or bring her close to the target.

Akin Ajayi, on the other hand, was certainly in contention in his round. He didn’t match Paula, no, but 10 would have been enough. Well, in the current series there’s nothing easy about scoring 10 in general knowledge and he fell just short, scoring 9. This put him on 17 as well, but behind on passes.

Only Hugh Nicholl stood between Paula achieving the best comeback since Lazarus. But I think Hugh has what seems to be a wise head on young shoulders. I think he knew that he didn’t have to match Paula’s 11, and so he never got flustered when he didn’t give a right answer, but just kept on providing answers to what he did know, and guesses to what he didn’t so he wouldn’t lose on passes. He achieved the target with a little to spare and in the end scored 8 for a total of 19.  Well done Hugh! Best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Akin Ajayi	The Tour de France in the 21st Century	8	0	9	3	17	3
Mary Obodo	George Harrison	7	2	7	1	14	3
Paula Lawford	Virgil’s Aeneid	6	0	11	0	17	0
Hugh Nicholl	Lyndon B. Johnson	11	0	8	0	19	0