Mastermind 2024: First Round Heat 24

Well, hello, good morning and welcome back to LAM. I’m back in Blighty, a bit bruised and battered from my experiences in Romania, but just about in one piece, thanks for asking.(Alright – explanation – I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, but tripped over twice on an excursion to Transylvania. Ow.)

What about last Monday’s Mastermind then? The things that people do when I’m not around to keep an eye on them, eh?! There was no real hint of what would happen later when Emily Frank approached the chair to answer questions on the human digestive system. For the most part Emily found this set of questions pretty easy to digest herself. Her knowledge was extremely secure and she scored an excellent 11 and no passes.

PhD student Richard Brooks did not find his own set on AA Milne and Winnie the Pooh quite so much to his liking. He scored 7 and you can’t score 7 on a Mastermind subject without knowing it well. However it put him four points behind Emily and that’s a significant margin to have to make up. I’d scored four on Emily’s round and added another two on Richard’s. That brought my aggregate to 6 and I’m afraid that is where it stayed.

Jake Denney answered questions on The Chemical Brothers. I didn’t. It was a good performance from Jake, and with a tiny bit more of the rub of the green he would have been knocking on the door of double figures. I did actually wiki the band prior to watching the episode, but anything relating to the questions – eg the previous name the Dust Brothers – had gone out of my head by the time I did watch it.

So it fell to Chris Ducklin to bring the round to a conclusion with the Jack Ryan novels of Tom Clancy. LAM reader Chris represented the University of East London in University Challenge in 2016. As we’ve often seen, previous experience of TV competition is more often a help than a hindrance, and Chris negotiated his set very competently, reaching a good 9 to put himself only 2 points behind Emily going into the GK round.

Right. That GK round.

It’s wrong of me to do so I admit but I do sometimes dismiss contenders who are on the bottom of the leaderboard and several points behind the leader going into the GK as being down among the wines and spirits. (In the days of the music halls and then variety bills, performers featuring towards the bottom of the bill were said to be down among the wines and spirits.) I apologise to Richard Brooks for mentally dismissing him in this way as he sat down to his round. His excellent round, as it turned out. Richard didn’t get all of this questions right, but my goodness, double figures is good, and a score in the teens is very good. What particularly impressed me was where he took a breath on a couple of occasions, collected himself and then dredged up the right answer. 13 was a very fine score and it took him to 20. Could that be a winning score? It would require three contenders to score less highly on GK than he had, but yes. It was possible. Likely, though?

Jake Denney started one point to the good for his own GK round. Ah yes, but Jake already had one pass to his name. Scoring 20 would not be enough by virtue of that pass. He had to equal Richard’s 13. He gave it a blooming good lash, too, and could have done it with the last question. Sadly he gave a incorrect answer, and Richard leapfrogged above him to stay in first place.

Chris’ face was a picture throughout his round. Being 2 points ahead of Richard at halfway he knew that 12 would be enough. I say his face was a picture because he almost winced on a few occasions where he supplied an incorrect answer. He was under pressure and it certainly looked as if he knew that he was too. By the time the round had ended he had added 11 to his score, not the 12 he needed. Game over? Not necessarily for he too had not incurred any passes, so there was going to be a tie-break, unless Emily Frank could throw a spanner in the works.

Well, she did try, make no doubt about that. Like the three contenders before her she produced a round with no passes. However, like Jake before her she had incurred a single pass in the specialist round. There was almost a sense of inevitability about the way that she added 9 to her total to ensure that she finished with 20 and 1 pass.

Clive described this – all of the contenders having the same final score as unique. He might well be right too. I don’t have the data to say whether it has ever happened before in the history of Mastermind. In Mastemind : The Next Generation we had a semi-final in 2017 where three contenders tied on both scores and passes and so took part in a three-way tie-break. However there were five contenders in that contest. If there’s ever been a heat where all four contenders were separated by one measly pass before, I don’t know about it.

So after all this then the last place in the semis was going to either Richard or Chris, and based on their relative performances in the GK rounds I had a sneaking feeling that Richard might just do it. He got 3 out of the five – so did I although not the same three. Chris got 1. It’s a hard thing to take, I’m sure.

What a show to finish the first round on.  Richard, many congratulations to you sir, and the very best of luck.

As usual I’d like to give my thanks to all of his season’s first round contenders, whether you feel you performed above, on par with, or below your expectations. Without people like your good selves willing to put yourselves forward and have a go, we don’t have a show. Good on you.

The Details

Emily Frank	The Human Digestive System	11	0	9	1	20	1
Richard Brooks	AA Milne and Winnie The Pooh	7	0	13	0	20	0	23
Jake Denney	The Chemical Brothers	8	1	12	0	20	1
Chris Ducklin	The Jack Ryan Novels of Tom Clancy	9	0	11	0	20	0	21

Age has its Privileges . . . but should it?

Here’s an open question to think about. How much should you think about and take into account the relative ages of the members of the regular teams when you’re setting a quiz? I ask the question because it’s not an easy question to come up with a definitive answer to.

On Thursday night my friend Adam set the quiz for the rugby club. I don’t know Adam and Fran’s ages, but I think they’d be similar to Jess and Dan who both turn 30 in July. Now that makes them the youngest regular players in the quiz, and by decades rather than years, to be honest. Like Jess and Dan in the two preceding weeks Adam set a great quiz which I found really enjoyable. His handout was opening lines from well known pop songs through the decades from the 1950s until the 2020s.It’s a good idea and was a fine handout – I always personally prefer handouts which either test your knowledge, or your ability to work out what you don’t know through using what you do know, rather than your ability to recognise faces. I won’t tell you how long it took to work out Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA , but if it had taken much longer he would have had enough time to record the follow up – and Snuffed it there, too.

However, there were predictably moans from some quarters about the number of songs from 2000 onwards referenced. I’m almost 60 and I’ve never heard of some of the songs and artists referenced, so it’s no surprise that the over 70s struggled. Which returns us to the issue – how much right do you have to expect the QM to tailor the quiz specifically to appeal to the most numerous age group amongst the regular players?

Well, let’s think about it. Some of those making the loudest noises about it either:

Have never set a quiz themselves for the club, which to my mind means their arguments have no moral validity

-        Or –

Do set their own quizzes in which they blatantly include questions about films/TV/Music from the 1950’s and early 60s, before I was born let alone the rest of the team. What’s more they are perfectly aware they are doing it, because they sometimes even apologise to us for it. Then they do I again every time they set a quiz. Again, to me that means their arguments also have no moral validity.

A Mastermind finalist whose misfortune it was to reach the final in the same series as the great Kevin Ashman once said that where it is not necessary to make a change then it is necessary NOT to make a change. Well, while I understand that point of view I think it’s a hell of a lot harder to judge when to make a change than this rather simplistic viewpoint would have us believe. Because the fact is that in the case of pretty much all of the setters from other teams they ask sets of questions which could have been asked 30 years ago when I first started playing myself. This doesn’t make them bad questions and it doesn’t even make them bad quizzes. But it does mean that they are cutting themselves off from areas of knowledge which are fruitful grounds for quiz questions. For example, it’s still extremely rare for one of the other setters to ask a question on ICT (and when they do it is often – what does CPU stand for?) That’s just one example – I’m pretty sure you could quickly come up with half a dozen others.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want any of the current teams to stop coming. But despite my own personal plans, none of us are going to live forever, and it would be nice if on the odd occasions a younger person played in the quiz they’d find something relevant to their own lives and their own areas of knowledge and maybe want to keep coming when the regulars shuffle of this mortal coil and join the choir invisible.

Mastermind 2024 heat 2 preview

It’s heat 24 of Mastermind 2024 tomorrow but I’m afraid that I probably won’t get to see it until Friday. Yes, I’m off with my sketchbook and pens early doors tomorrow to beautiful (I hope) Bucharest. Still, being the public-spirited sort that I am I thought I’d post a preview anyway. So here tis.

The four subjects are:-

The human digestive system

Winnie the Pooh and AA Milne

The Chemical Brothers

The Jack Ryan Novels by Tom Clancy.

Right then, tying to be as objective as possible, whilst I’d prefe rto answer on the McVities’ Digestive system (other digestives are available but McVities make the very finest IMHO) I still reckon general knowledge might well bring one or two.

Winnie the Pooh and AA Milne. Well, if I had to pick a banker subject I suppose this would be it. Details of the books, yes, details of the life of AA Milne, not so much. Possibly 2 points.

The Chemical Brothers. I originally thought that this was another Science biographical round, but apparently the aforenamed brethren are apparently popular musicians. I bet they’re not even brothers. No points for me if I’m lucky.

The Jack Ryan Novels. Not only have I never read any of them, I’ve never seen a film adaptation of any of them either. While this doesn’t guarantee that I won’t get any points on this round, it certainly makes it the most likely outcome.

So that’s it. This time next week I will try to put together a list of the semi finalists and a guide to form.

University Challenge 2024 Quarter Final Round - UCL v. Christ Church , Oxford

The Teams

UCL

James Hall

Ali Izzatdust

Tayana Sawh (Capt.)

Jacob Finlay

Christ Church, Oxford

Eliza Dean

Melika Gorgianeh

Arthur Wotton (Capt.)

Elliot Lowe

Nobody goes straight into the semis. Nobody goes straight home. Yes, that’s the way it works in these first few quarter final matches. But they’re a pretty good pointer to which teams have the buzzing and the BCR to go all the way.

You know, I always get the feeling it’s going to be a good show when Rosa Luxembourg is name checked in an early starter. Ali Izzatdust, so effective on the buzzer in his team’s previous matches, knew that she had written a work with the word Capital in the title. Capital answer, I’d say. I was also delighted to see the Art Nouveau buildings of Riga name checked in the first of the architecture bonuses that followed. I spent Easter last year there and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a really lovely city. UCL took a full house and as a statement of intent that’s pretty hard to beat. The internal orchestra struck up early last night on the very next starter. On the mention of the name Hawking I shouted out black holes but it turned out these were in the question anyway. Neither team had it. Now the next starter was one of those which suddenly becomes obvious with the mention of a name. Blah, blah, blah, blah-blah, Ravel – BUZZ! I answered Bolero and so did Elliott Lowe, which earned bonuses on marsupials. A full house for Christ Church levelled the scores. Ali Izzatdust recognised various uses of the word ghost for his second starter of the evening. Which in turn gave UCL their second full house of the evening with world events of the 16^th century. “Disasters of War” suggested Goya for the next starter and James Hall thought so too, taking it for UCL. Placenames in French and English proved to be UCL’s talon d’Achille, and they failed to add to their score. So to the first picture starter, and much to my delight a detail from a flag with a star and crescent moon. It was from the flag of Croatia – a really small detail from the shield emblem in the centre of the flag. This gave James Hall a second consecutive starter – good shout that. More flags from outside the Islamic world with crescents and stars followed. I recognised Portsmouth from the badge of their football club. UCL managed the other two. Nobody knew The Sound Pattern of English for the next starter, but Arthur Wotton got his team moving again with Pitch Drop – no, me neither – for the one after. Bonuses on literary criticism brought just the one, much to Amol’s amusement. At just past the ten minute mark UCL had a comfortable lead of 80 – 40.

Captain Arthur Wotton took a second consecutive starter with a great early buzz on the Russian Pale ( as opposed to the Russian Mild and the Russian Bitter, I suppose) Malay culinary terms removed ten more points from the Christ Church deficit. None of us knew the sagittal sutures on the skull. If you were going to bet on anyone from the UCL team taking back the initiative on the next starter you would probably have plumped for Ali Izzatdust, especially since it was about a mathematician. He gave the correct answer of Germain. “Your bonuses” announced Amol, “ are 3 questions on dimensionless quantities in Physics.” – Oh, that’s alright then, thought I. The last question asked for two subatomic particles, and not knowing any better I gave proton and electron. They were right! I set off around the sofa, sitting back down just in time for a piano quintet for the music starter. Nobody recognised the work of Brahms. Arthur Wotton again played a captain’s innings, recognising a description of the work of Racine. Got to the root of the problem, you could say. (see what I did there? Oh come on, French – English puns, what more d’you want?) More 19^th century piano quintets yielded nowt. Elliot Lowe came in too early for the next starter and lost five, allowing Ali Izzatdust a shot at an open goal with the Dahomey Amazons. Only one bonus on Charles II followed. I added a bar to my lap of honour for knowing Iridium comes between Osmium and platinum in the Periodic Table, and James Hall was happy to snap up that particular piece of low hanging fruit. Mottoes on the seals and arms of Africa countries brought one bonus. I felt for Arthur Wotton as he fell into the yawning trap the next starter opened before us. It seemed to be begging for the answer bit, but when Arthur Wotton bit it allowed Ali Izzatdust to tap it in for byte. I enjoyed the set on words ending with- illa, even though Godz, Astonv and Windym were not amongst the set. Jacob Finlay piled on the agony for Christ Church getting the island of Sark for the next starter. Bonuses on reflex actions took the score to 170 – 55 in UCL’s favour. Game over? Pretty much so, I’m afraid.

The second picture starter showed us a self portrait of an artist with a mate. To be fair to Arthur Wotton I thought that it had just a touch of Caravaggio about the right hand figure. Nobody recognised the work of Raphael (feel free to apply your own turtle-based comment if you wish). A buzzer race on the next starter saw James Hall win the right to provide the answer about Byron’s follow poet Shelley. The self portrait with buddies bonuses did not add to their score, but frankly that was never going to have a bearing on the outcome of this match. Eliza Dean took her first starter on the word ray, to earn bonuses on the Hornbostel-Sachs Instrument Classification System. Gesundheit. Christ Church took one bonus which was one more than I did. Ali Izzatdust knew that the Battle of Dettingen took place during the War of the Austrian Succession. Fathers and sons in Greek Mythology took UCL through the 200 points barrier. If I tell you that Hysteron Proteron was the correct answer given to the next starter by Elliot Lowe, what do you think that made me think of? Yes, it had to be Captain Scarlet – this is the voice of the Hysterons etc. CAF African Footballers of the Year saw Christ Church deliver a full house at full speed. Eliza Dean knew that Jae Austen’s final published novel was Persuasion. The International Booker Prize bonuses took Christ Church into triple figures. Nobody took the next starter on spiral galaxies. Elliot Lowe knew Submediant for the next starter. The first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry gave me a second bar to my lap of hour for recognising a description of osmosis. That was it. At the gong, the scores stood at 200 – 130.

Winners UCL had a BCR of 55%, while Christ Church had a BCR of 54%. So it all came down to the buzzer. There is a crumb of comfort for Christ Church that when they started really slinging buzzer in the last few minutes they were outdoing UCL.    

Amol Watch

I took issue with Amol’s reaction on the literary criticism bonuses – ‘Your mates who study English are going to crucify you for this”. I studied English and I don’t recall crucifying anyone for not knowing about practical criticism. The objective correlative, now that’s a different story and one for another day.

Do you remember back when I was forming the impression that Amol might be a Jedi bearing in mind the galvanising effect his encouragement was having on teams in the first round? Well, he waited until the 18^th minute before encouraging Christ Church, who had slipped 70 points behind by this stage. It didn’t help, I’m afraid.

I applaud Amol for upholding the first answer rule on the Greek Mythology set. As he said, maybe it’s harsh, but that’s the rule.

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

Manzanilla possibly takes its name from the Spanish for small apple. I mean, I worked it out, but it had never occurred to me before.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

The Bekenstein-Hawking formula shows that the surface area of a black hole’s event horizon is linearly proportional to what other property? This formula contains the speed of light, Boltzmann’s Constant, Planck’s Constant and Newton’s gravitational constant and helped lay the groundwork for the study of black hole thermodynamics.

I feel fully justified in highlighting this question since neither of the teams had a scooby either. Although they didn’t sing ‘dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum’ which is a bit of a shame.

Mastermind 2024 First Round Heat 23

Top of the morning to you all. Let’s talk about last night’s penultimate first round heat, shall we?

To begin at the beginning, Max Wright kicked us off with Arsene ‘I did not see it’ Wenger. Sadly, this unofficial catchphrase which he often used when asked to comment upon controversial on-field incidents involving his players did not feature in the questions. I say sadly because it might have brought me more than just the single point I did manage. Max knew his stuff alright, but there were just enough tricky ones, and a couple where it looked as if he zigged when he should’ve zagged to prevent him from reaching double figures. Still, as we’ve seen this series 8 is a competitive score in specialist.

Nicola Robertson was answering on the Comedies of Oscar Wilde. I didn’t expect any points on this round but got one through knowing Victoria station from The Importance of Being Earnest. I do not know the other comedies at all, really, so I can’t comment on how fair or otherwise this set of questions was. I will say that when I have known quite a bit about specialist subjects over the years the setters have done a good job ensuring that they have been pretty consistent in the level of difficulty. So I don’t really know what happened with Nicola’s round, but she scored 3.

I don’t know whether I ought to boast about getting 3 points on Heather O’Hagan’s round on Donny Osmond. Basically I remembered the Osmonds were from Ogden, Utah because when I first learned this from a Saturday morning cartoon series on their fictionalised adventures because it made me think of Stan and Hilda Ogden from Corrie. Two other points came from knowing “On the Shelf” and also from memories of having to endure the bloody awful Donny and Marie TV show from time to time. It was a bit of a uncertain start from Heather – she missed two of the three that I got right. However as she became more accustomed to the chair she grew in confidence and built her total up to a competitive 8.

As Rashid Mumtaz approached the chair I thought to myself – please don’t let Donny Osmond be my most successful specialist of the evening -Rashid was answering on the Godfather trilogy of films and crikey, did he know his stuff! I reckoned that I was well informed about the first two films, but I still didn’t get all of those. I had 3 correct answers as we moved to the last question. No, I didn’t know that Sofia Coppola as a baby had played the same part in the first film that she played in the third. But then, I couldn’t have named any other actress from the third movie anyway, and so by default she gave me the fourth correct answer I needed to make it my best subject of the night and spare me my blushes. Rashid, as I said, really knew his stuff. 11 points gave him a very nice cushion going into general knowledge.

Let’s be honest, if you have a lower score than you would have liked in your specialist you return to the chair knowing that you’re not going to win and in the past we’ve see how this has adversely affected some contenders. On the other had we’ve also seen some contenders pick themselves up and dust themselves down metaphorically and give the GK round a really good lash. Such a contender is Nicola Robertson. She produced a good GK round, and with just the tiniest little rub of the green she’d have had double figures. As it was her fighting 9 put her in the lead with 12.

Max Wright snapped out his answers quickly which is a useful thing to do if you can keep your accuracy as you do so. Starting only four behind Nicola meant that he was surely going to take the lead. However being three points behind Rashid meat that he was going to need a double figure round to have any chance of keeping it. Like Nicola before him Max gave it his best shot and like Nicola before him he fell one short of double figures on 9. A good round. However I felt that he’d needed a great round.

Still, it was good enough for him to keep the lead for a while longer, if only just. Heather O’Hagan followed the example given by Nicola and Max as she too produced a good 9 point round. She fell just short of the lead by dint of having a pass from the specialist round and adding another in the GK.

Given the choice I’d always prefer to see a contender winning the show through a great round rather than losing it through a disastrous collapse. So I hoped as Rashid returned to the chair that this would not be the outcome. And it wasn’t. Only Rashid could tell us what was going through his mind at the time, but he looked to be the epitome of calm as he racked up five. Yes, he had a bit of a wobble after that, but still kept his cool enough to add a further 6. This gave him the aesthetically pleasing double of top scores of 11 in both rounds and a comfortable win with 22 points.

Well done, sir! A good performance. Best of luck to you in the semi finals.

The Details

Max Wright	Arsene Wenger	8	0	9	0	17	0
Nicola Robertson	The Comedies of Oscar Wilde	3	1	9	0	12	1
Heather O’Hagan	Donny Osmond	8	1	9	1	17	2
Rashid Mumtaz	The Godfather Film Trilogy	11	0	11	0	22	0

Mastermind Heat 23 Preview

In tomorrow’s Mastermind the specialist subjects will be:-

The Career of Arsene Wenger

The Comedies of Oscar Wilde

Donny Osmond

The Godfather Films.

I’m tempted to say what I sometimes say about this being the week I finally get a aggregate of zero on specialists. But that’s not fair on myself. True, I can’t see myself getting into double figures. But I might score one or two on three of the four subjects.

The Career of Arsene Wenger – well, as a Spurs supporter you wouldn’t expect me to be that knowledgeable about one of our rival’s greatest managers ever. But I can often get one or two on football and so this is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

The Comedies of Oscar Wilde. Never studied any. Never read any. Never watched any – not even the well known one. Any points gained on this round will be a unexpected bonus.

Donny Osmond – Apparently he did have a career before becoming the worst guest judge ever on Strictly (was it my imagination or did the BBC apologise afterwards and promise never to have him back again?). It’s another of those subjects where general knowledge might bring a point or two.

The Godfather Films. Ah, this brings back memories! Derek Moody, a very fine Masterminder, picked it as his specialist for the Grand Final in the 2007 SOBM (season of blessed memory). He scored a magnificent 17. This is my banker subject for tomorrow, not because I think I’ll run away with it, but because I know the first two films well enough to get a couple of points on each. The third film, nah, not so much.

One of the banes of the QM's life, the subject Know All

If you’ve ever compiled a quiz on a regular or even a semi-regular basis then I bet you’ll have had to deal with the subject know-all before. And yes, I have to put my hand up and say that I’ve been one myself on far too many occasions. But at least I try to restrain myself nowadays. Not very successfully, I admit, but I try. In case you’re in any doubt what this might mean, a subject know-all is the kind of person who has their specialist area of knowledge  - let’s say Science – and feels that they have some sort of proprietary ownership of the subject. They feel that they know a lot more about it than the QM and look for any opportunity to flaunt that knowledge by pointing out QM’s mistakes.

Jess was question master on Thursday and she had to deal with a subject know-all. No, it wasn’t me this time. Jess asked which letter does not appear in the name of any element in the periodic table. Now, you may have read over the last couple of years posts I have made about a member of one of the teams who is very, very into his Science. He tends to be QM for one quiz a year and the vast majority of questions in both of his quizzes to date have been on Science. The problem with which is that he is the only person in any of the teams who has this consuming interest in it. With the result that neither of his quizzes was exactly well received in the club. I have to be honest, especially in his second quiz I found that the message that came across from the questions he set and the things he said about them was – I know so much more that you do, you’re all ignorant and I don’t care that you’re not interested in nuclear physics, I am, so tough! Well, it was this, for want of a better word, this cock, who made the point that q does not currently appear in the name of any element either.

It’s not so much that he made the point, it’s the way and time he did it. He waited until Jess was giving the answers, then shouted it out so as to try to cause her maximum embarrassment. He could quite easily have gone up to Jess before the answers and clarified matters then. So you can only imagine my pride when she, in the politest way, gave him both barrels, explaining how q has been used in placeholder names and will be used again for any new elements. Me? I’d have added ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know that!’ especially considering that I’m sure he did know it. Jess was able to do this because she’d put in the hard work into preparing her quiz – some thing which this bumptious arse and several others of our setters in the quiz would do well to take on board when making their own quizzes. I’d say that she’s a chip off the old block, but then I don’t do polite anything like as well as Jess does.