Mastermind 2023 - First Round Heat 7

We’re forging on with Round 1, good people, and (say it quietly) a show that produced my lowest specialist round aggregate for the entire series so far. The first of these tight fisted rounds was offered by Robert Hemming. Robert was answering on the battleship Bismarck. Now, I did think that there might be a chance of a couple here. No chance. I was lucky to scrape one. Robert, as I so often say, clearly knew his stuff. You can’t score 8 on such a round if you don’t. But it was just a couple of marks short of a score that would put him up with the leaders by half time.

Someone who did get a score that put her up with the leaders at half time was Reena Patel. Reena was answering on the late Syd Barrett, the musical genius behind so much of what was good about the very early Pink Floyd. Again, I thought I might get more than one. Nope, in fact I had to really dredge my memory to scrape one point. Reena on the other hand produced 10 and as we so often note, anything in double figures on specialist is good going these days.

Isobel Murray almost repeated the double figure feat in round 2, but finished just one point away on 9. She was answering on the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca, executed by Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. I’ve taken a lot more interest in the Spanish Civil War since visiting the monument to the political prisoners in the San Isidro camp in the village where my mother in law used to live. Not enough, obviously as I only scraped one point again.

Finally Paul Judge on the basketball player Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson. Look, the fact is that some sports you like, and some leave you could and I’m afraid that basketball is the latter for me. I’m not dissing the game, but just saying I can’t get up any interest in it. Paul obviously could. He too scored 10 and apart from the first question there appeared to be precious few gimmes in the round. The first question, incidentally, was the only 1 I got right to leave my aggregate on a measly 4.

We saw a week ago how it’s possible to come from a few points behind to win with a strong GK, so all 4 contenders were certainly in with a chance going into the GK. Robert was first to return to the chair, and he gave it a decent lash. With the best will in the world though he really needed more than the 9 he scored to force the other three contenders to all have to negotiate the corridor of doubt.

Isobel, on the other hand, put in a useful turn at the quiz face in her own GK round. She often looked as if she didn’t know the answer and was a little surprised when it turned out to be right. And she had 11 correct answers in all, taking her total to 20. This is a significant number. There’s a whole world in the one point that separates 19 and 20.

Renna took her turn. What she scored was a perfectly respectable 8 points, but this was not enough to give her the lead. Reena looked a little downhearted when she sat back in her chair. I hope that she wasn’t, as she had nothing to be ashamed of, even if she wasn’t going to win this time.

Only Paul Judge remained, then. He started one point ahead of where Isobel had started her round, so matching her score of 11 would be enough for an outright win. I wouldn’t necessarily say that he ripped the round apart, but he did score 12, which is not bad going by anyone’s book. In his piece to camera at the end I liked his comments about watching as a fan and finally deciding to give it a go. Well done sir! If we didn’t have people willing to give it a go, we wouldn’t have a show. Best of luck.

The Details

Robert Hemming	The Battleship Bismarck	8	0	9	2	17	2
Reena Patel	Syd Barrett	10	0	8	4	18	4
Isobel Mosely	Frederico Garcia Lorca	9	1	11	1	20	2
Paul Judge	The Life and Career of Magic Johnson	10	1	12	0	22	1

 

Mastermind Specialist Subjects tomorrow

I don’t have time today myself but if anyone fancies the wiki challenge for tomorrow night’s Mastermind – here are the specialist subjects:-

The battleship Bismarck

Syd Barrett

Frederico Garcia Lorca

The Career of Magic Johnson

I can maybe scrape 1 or 2 on the Bismarck. There’s a chance of doing better with Syd Barrett – when I was a teenager I was a huge Pink Floyd fan and nerd, Lorca I predict no points on and Magic Johnson – perhaps I'll scrape 1 . Aggregate forecast – 3 to 7. Telegram claims not required (ask your grandparents.)

So Farewell, then, 'Sitting on a Fortune' and 'Moneybags'

I’ve heard on the grapevine that both Moneyball and Sitting on A Fortune have been cancelled. I reviewed both shows in November 2021. Neither of these ex-footballer hosted quiz games gained my full approval, but neither of them was a complete turkey either. For me they could both have been a little shorter and a lot more fast moving. Either would have been a decent enough evening opener, but neither was strong enough to stand against, for the sake of argument, Strictly Come Dancing.

Run of the Mill night down the club

Well, there were no themes or gimmicks in Thursday night’s quiz and we should at least be grateful for that. It was a perfectly decent, run of the mill general knowledge quiz and it was – and I know that I’m a heel for saying this – a bit of a bore.

You know, I couldn’t take a huge issue with any individual question that was asked, which is something of a rarity for me, I know. But the quiz as a whole somehow managed to be less than the sum of its parts. There was no handout, for one thing. I’m ambivalent on handouts. I’m not a fan of ‘name the vacuous celebrity’ type picture quiz handout but I do rather enjoy anything more cryptic or anything that rewards a bit of knowledge.

Since I’m in full grumpy old sod more I’ll say that I think that it works like this. You don’t have to be a great quizzer to make a great quiz. However, it does help if you are at least good enough to know the difference between a hard question, a ridiculously hard question and a ridiculously easy one. Thursday night’s quiz lurched drunkenly from one extreme to the other.

University Challenge 2024 Bangor v. Edinburgh

The Teams

Bangor

Nihal Bhatt

Katie Barnes

Jack Cunliffe (capt.)

Luke O’Hagan

Edinburgh

Matt Stafford

Frances Hadley

Arun Uttamchandani (capt.)

Matt McGovern

To a quizzer of a certain age, ‘Born in York in 1570 – “ which is how the first starter opened, this immediately flags up the name Guy Fawkes. It took both teams a moment or two more to process this before  Arun Uttamchandani buzzed in to pluck this particular unconsidered trifle. Bonuses on landmark experiments involving cohe picture starter common culinary plants amazingly saw me take a lap of honour for knowing that dephlogisticated air was the rather splendid name the Joseph Priestley gave to oxygen. No, of course I didn’t know the first. Mind you I knew all about Gregor Mendel and his peas. Edinburgh took the first and last. A list of films was given and Nihal Bhatt buzzed in to say they were all set in Boston. Both teams were now off the mark.  Bonuses on 60s and 70s music were a pretty easy set for an old codger like me, but the youngsters from Bangor couldn’t manage any of them. Right – what comes to mind when you hear the words Eurasian network of overland routes? Silk Road it was for me and silk road it was for Luke O’Hagen. This earned Bangor a set of bonuses on chess world champions and this set was far more to their liking. We both took a full house. The picture starter showed us the ensign of a navy of a European country. I’ll be honest, I didn’t have scooby which navy it belonged to. Neither did the teams. It was the Latvian Navy. Yeah, a little bit of a whythe’ell as a question. Fari play, I was impressed with Mat Stafford’s answer of neoplasticism for the architecture starter that followed. The 3 naval ensign bonuses that followed were thankfully a lot easier to identify than the Latvian one – at least they bore some reference to the national flags. I was surprised how long both teams dwelt on the metal with the lowest atomic mass. “Lithium?” I answered, not quite believing it might be so simple. It was, though. Luke O’Hagan chanced his arm with mercury, This let Arun Uttamchandani in with Lithium. This gave a set of bonuses on pairs of fictional works liked by words in their titles. Edinburgh took two. Luke O’Hagan recognised definitions of the word canon, and this brought a gettable set on island peaks. They messed up the second by giving a country rather than the island it’s part of, nonetheless they managed a pair. It was, at this stage, quite an even contest, with Edinburgh leading by 65 – 55.

Matt Stafford came in early on the next starter to identify places in Saudi Arabia. Subtitles of films in the MCU yielded a relatively simple full house, despite not including my favourite subtitle Thor: Seasiderok. The next question was about the kid of explanation that Sir Humphrey Appleby used to give in the beloved “Yes, Minister” – I give confidential briefings, you leak, he is being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.” Nobody knew that this is also called a conjugation. Matt Stafford worked out that the various definitions they were given were all pointing towards punt. Gobbledygook about chemical bonds saw us both take just the one with vitamin C. Arun Uttamchandani could see that the next starter was leading towards the word masala and this gave them a shott at bonuses on the work of engineer Mike Burrows. They took just the one. Nonetheless they were now comfortably into triple figures and were increasing the lead with each set. It was Arun Uttamchandani who was first to recognise the Ronettes with Be My Baby. Other tracks with drums played by Hal ‘Who’ Blaine brought Edinburgh two bonuses. Arun Uttamchandani, who was practically running the game at this point, knew the answer polymerase to a question I didn’t understand. Leading figures of Dadaism brought another brace of bonuses. Poor Bangor couldn’tt buy a starter at this point. Jack Cunliffe did exactly what he should, and buzzed early for the next starter to put Edinburgh off their stride. Sadly it was too early and allowed Edinburgh a free shot at goal. Frances Hadley knew that the title of Orwell’s book about his participation in the Spanish Civil War ends in the letters – ia. This brought a swiftly taken full house on places sharing their names with the tiles of novels. Right then – you hear of a gentleman with a seemingly arab sounding name, and you’re told he’s rebuilding a library. So come on it can only surely be Alexandria, can’t it? Luke Hagan thought so and this at last set the Bangor wheels in motion again. They also took one bonus on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. An arithmetic question involving adding the numbers of stars on specific flag then dividing by the square root of the number you first thought of, or summat like that saw Matt Stafford give a very quick and correct answer. A rather gentle set on abandoned settlements in southern England provided the rampant Edinburgh team with another full house. This meant that they led by 210 – 65 at the 20 minute mark.

For the second picture starter we were shown a Leonardo – that’s the artist and not the turtle. It was quickly recognised by Matt Stafford. Three other paintings depicting John the Baptist provided two more correct answers. Such was the lead by this stage it was surely academic by now. I was pretty pleased that when the next question asked for the letter ascribed to a straight line passing through the centre of a circle I guessed it had to be D for diameter. Meringues brought another full house. You had to wait a bit wih the next starter, but when it mentioned ‘his signature tune, Take the A Train’ it become a buzzer race won by Frances Hadley. Poor old Bangor. It must have felt as if they wee on the receiving end of a beating with blunt instruments as Edinburgh took another full house on glaciers. Luke Hagan stemmed the tide for a moment, knowing that the uncle of Queen Victoria sharing a name with presidents McKinley and Taft was William. Names beginning with Cass yielded just one bonus. It was at this stage, with several minutes left on the clock, that I noticed that one more full house would be enough to take Edinburgh through the rarely-broken 300 barrier. It didn’t happen with the next starter. Katie Barnes took that with various words beginning with – rum. The Greek philosopher Theophrastus saw them take a welcome full house, pushing them through the 100 point barrier. Luke Hagan recognised Hooke’s Law (which, as we all know states you should never smile at a crocodile) and brought Bangor bonuses on Lady Mary Wortley Monatgu. I loved her series on History’s greatest fibs. Bangor took a full house, and there was just he outside possibility that they might get onto the repechage ladder. Captain Jack Cunliffe made it look less unlikely by knowing that the 40^th anniversary of The Italian Job was marked by a competition to solve the cliffhanger ending of the film. 2 bonuses put them tantalisingly close on 150. -That’s enough of that – the Edinburgh team metaphorically said and Matt Stafford buzzed in to ake the next starter on the French pointillist painter Signac. The city of Arezzo in Italy provided two correct answers, and took Edinburgh to the magical 300 points. “Written on Watter” has to refer to John Keats, surely? Frances Hadley felt so and was right. Two bonuses on Nebraska  added to the Edinburgh total. There the gong ended the contest.

Superb score, Edinburgh. Bangor did well with the bonus they were asked, achieving a 62.5 BCR, but they didn’t get asked enough. Edinburgh achieved a 72.7 BCR, all the more impressive considering just how many bonuses they were asked. We will all have to watch Edinburgh very closely from this point on.

How is Amol Doing?

Fine, what do you expect by now. It was just after the 17^th minute that Amol uncorked “Plenty of time Bangor. See if you ca get going with this.” Now, we’ve seen that so ar in this series, far from being the kiss of death that it was in the time of Paxman, this has often worked as a rallying cry, which we have quite logically taken as proof that Amol is a jedi. Well either his powers are on the wane, or Bangor are just not susceptible to the Force.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

Nebraska is described as the only triply landlocked country of the USA

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

“Large lactone rings are present in which class of antibiotics? This class includes erythromycin and is commonly used to treat pneumonia and chlamydia.” No the most extreme example we’ve had this year, but pleasingly obscure.

Mastermind 2024 first round heat

Yeah, late again. Sorry about that. I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes you’re just so tired in an evening that you’re best to admit defeat, not force it, and come to it with a fresh mind the next day. Enough of such things.

The first into the chair last night was Bob Teasdale. Bob was answering on the folk musician Richard Thompson. I can’t claim any familiarity with him but I did recognise he names of a lot of people he’d worked with and a lot of tracks he played on. Only a despairing guess on the last question concerning Britney Spears did I scrape a point. Bob did better – we can all be grateful for that. He scored 8 and no passes. It’s a strange score, is 8, in as much as it’s still an achievement which displays your knowledge, but it’s likely to be beaten, and by a couple of points at least.

Lisa Wallace was the first to try to beat it. She was answering on the TV show Ted Lasso. Somehow this show has managed to fly beneath my radar and other than a vague recollection of having heard the name before I knew nothing about it, as proven by my pathetic nul points. Lisa, by contrast, delivered a wonderful round, hardly faltering at all, never passing and accruing an excellent 12 points in the process. Beat that!

Well, Jane Hill certainly had a go. Jane joins a select band of hardy masterminders who appeared in the original Magnus era, and have now appeared in the revived show. She was answering on the life and works of Joan Didion. No, I’m not very familiar with Joan Didion and her work at all. I scraped a couple with guesses. Right up until the last question it looked very much as if Jane could match Lisa’s score. The last answer let her down though, and she finished with a fine 11 points.

Krishna Jada closed the first round with my ‘banker’ subject, the early life of Gandhi. I call it my banker subject, but that’s only because I though I might scrape a couple of points – which I did – whereas I didn’t fancy my chances of getting any on the other three subjects. This was another fine round. Krishna was thoroughly prepared for anything that Clive threw at him, answering quickly, precisely and above all correctly. He too scored 12 and no passes.

General knowledge then. Bob Teasdale had found himself in last place at half time despite having had a pretty good specialist. This didn’t seem to both him. He accrued 10 points and had 3 or 4 questions left, and these were what might have raised a good round to the status of a great round. Sadly he passed on most and ended with the 10. A good performance, but surely one of the others would be able to beat his 18 bearing in mind that they each had several points head start.

Thinking about it, Jane Hill’s GK round was like Bob’s in reverse. He start wasn’t quite as good as she would have liked, but once she got into her stride there was no stopping her. Her momentum built, encouraging Clive to ask more and more quickly. In the end she’d accrued a brilliant 14, to raise the target to 25. Not a 100% guaranteed winning score, but a score that would prove a considerable challenge to everyone.

It was a score that Lisa Wallace couldn’t match. Maybe it was nerves in the chair, or maybe the questions just didn’t fall her way but it was pretty clear from quite early n that she was not going to get there. It happens – as we often say SIJNYR (Sometimes it’s just not your night). Lisa finished with a total of 17.

Which just left Krishna. Much the same as with Lisa’s round, it became clear as the tound went on that he was going to fall short. Oh, he gave it a fair old lash, alright, passing quickly to try to move the round along, but for him too it was a case of SIJNYR. It happens. Take a bit of time to reflect, enjoy that you’ve been part of the experience and, if you want, decide if you want to try again in the future.

Well done to Jane. Last time out in the Magnus era she was a semi finalist. She’d like to go one better this time. Well, Jane, if you can produce GK like that you’ll always be in with a shout. I wish you the best of luck.

 The Details

Bob Teasdale	The Folk musician Richard Thompson	8	0	10	4	18	4
Lisa Wallace	Ted Lasso	12	0	5	0	17	0
Jane Hill	The Life and Works of Joan Didion	11	0	14	0	25	0
Krishna Jada	The early life of Gandhi	12	0	7	4	19	4

 

Bonus Conversion Rates on UC

This post comes with a government health warning. In fact it comes with several:-

 - I am not a mathematician and am all too capable of making basic errors.

 - Even my miniscule knowledge about statistics tells me that 10 is a very small number from which to draw any kind of meaningful conclusions.

 - Even when statistics provide us with questions, it’s rash to jump to conclusions over the answers.

Right then, let us begin. After the current series of UC had been running for a few weeks, let’s say five, it started to strike me that the bonus conversion rates seem noticeably higher than in previous years. So I waited until after last week’s 10^th match. By bonus conversion rate I mean the percentage of bonus questions each team gives correct answers to. So, for the sake of example, if one team were to only answer one starter correctly in the whole show, then if they answered none of the 3 bonuses that followed correctly their rate would be zero. If they answered one correctly it would be 33.3 (recurring). If they answered two correctly it would be 66.6 (recurring) and if they answered all three correctly it would be 100.

I feel that a bonus conversion rate is a useful measure to look at rather than a team’s overall score. I haven’t done analysis on these so I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the teams’ scores are noticeably higher than 2023’s. I yield to no one in my admiration of Jeremy Paxman but it’s understandable that his speed of questioning in his final series didn’t match the speed at which Amol Rajan has been asking questions in he current series. The more questions that are asked in the match , the higher the teams are likely to score. Whereas the BCR is not as strongly affected by the number of questions asked in the show. This is why it is perfectly possible for runner-up teams to have higher bonus conversion rates than the teams that beat them.

I’ve compiled a table showing the bonus conversion rates for the teams in the first ten matches of the current series, and a second table showing the rates for the teams in the first ten matches of the 2023 series. Here they are.

Bonus Conversion Rates

Current Series

Winning team	BCR (Bonus Conversion Rate)	Runners Up	BCR
Manchester	54	Trinity, Cambridge	67
Aberdeen	55	Birmingham	49
Birkbeck	80	Oxford Brookes	88
Christ Church, Cambridge	43	Southampton	67
Emmanuel, Cambridge	59	Jesus, Oxford	60
UEA	54	Strathclyde	52
Hertford, Cambridge	69	Open University	73
Imperial	71	Balliol, Oxford	66
Sheffield	67	Loughborough	72
Warwick	61	Wolfson, Cambridge	62
Average winners	61	Average runners up	66

 

2023 series

Winning team	BCR	Runners Up	BCR
Durham	57	Bristol	57
Newcastle	64	Open	43
University, Oxford	48	LSE	67
Cardiff	49	Coventry	66
Royal Holloway	63	Cranfield	36
Queens Belfast	29	Glasgow	50
S. Andrews	49	Gonville and Caius	50
UCL	70	Sheffield	52
Christ’s	48	Oriel	42
Jesus	52	St, Catherine’s	50
Average - winners	53	Average – Runners up	50

 

So what does this show us? Good question. As I said we should be careful about drawing conclusions. So let’s start with what we CAN say.

The first ten matches of the current series have seen higher average bonus conversion rates by both winners and runners up than we saw in 2023.

What MIGHT this point to?

- Maybe the bonuses are easier on the whole than they were in 2023.

- Maybe the teams are stronger than they were in 2023.

- Maybe the average BCR (bonus conversion rate) was lower in 2023 than previous years and this season has seen things revert to normal.

- Maybe it’s just a blip that looks far more significant than it is because 10 is such a small number for any statistical analysis.

It will be interesting to do the comparison for the whole series. In fact it would be helpful to do an analysis of, let’s say, the whole seasons over the last ten years. Interesting, but not something I have the time to do at the moment.

Opinion

Yes, I thought I’d better highlight that this is just my opinion and not based on anything it says in the tables above. The thing which made me start to look at the whole question over whether the bonuses have been easier this year was the BCRs, not any gut feeling that the questions were easier. It’s difficult to quantify the relative difficulty of questions as it is. After all, to use a widely quoted adage, they’re all easy if you know the answers. But no, I haven’t been sitting in front of my telly thinking that the show has ‘dumbed down’ at all. There have been the odd bonus sets where I’ve thought that they were rather easy, but that’s happened in previous years as well.

However, I seem to recall that in one of the interviews prior to the broadcast of the first match, Pinki Chambers, BBC Commissioning Editor for Entertainment and Comedy, was quoted as saying  “the questions are harder.” Well, I know it’s the kind of boast you would make, but the evidence of the first ten shows suggests that this is going to be a hard claim for to prove.