Mastermind 2024 Semi Final 4

The Tale of the Tape

Name	Specialist  Score	Specialist  Passes	GK Score	GK Passes	Total Score	Total Passes	Tie break
Sharon Chambers	8	0	16	0	24	0	-
Sadie de Souza	13	0	10	0	23	0	3
Elliot Hooson	9	0	10	1	19	1	-
Thomas Nelson	10	0	16	0	26	0

Well, well, well. For the first time in this set of semis one of the heat winners was unable to take part. This meant that the highest scoring runner up was brought in to take his place. Scott Torrance was the unfortunate contender forced by circumstances to miss out. You could make a case that the other three contenders were unfortunate too, since taking his place was Thomas Nelson. Only two heat winners scored higher than Thomas’ 26 and no passes in the heats, unfortunately one of them was in the same heat as his.

Sharon Chambers kicked off the evening with her round on Peter Cushing. Sharon scored 6 points, considerably better than the four that I managed. But I was fairly certain that this was going to leave her in difficulties. You have to reckon on at least one of the other contenders getting close to a maximum in specialist which would leave Sharon too far behind.

Elliot Hooson’s subject, the History of Percussion Instruments, really was the wild card specialist of the night for me. What I mean by that is that I had no reason to think it would be a round that would particularly suit me and yet it was the kind of round where good general knowledge might pick you up a couple of points. Slightly more as it happened. I took 3 for an aggregate of 7 with what looked to be two decent rounds to go. Elliot scored 10 with a quality round which looked as if it would leave him in contention as we turned for home.

Sadie de Souza was answering on what I thought would be my banker subject, the Sarah Jane Adventures. Well, actually it only provided me with my joint worst score of the night. I took another three, although if I could have counted answers which were on the tip of my tongue I could have doubled that. Still, that took the aggregate to double figures with only one round still to go. Sadie produced a very fine round to take the lead with 11.

Finally then came Thomas. He was answering on Sir Bobby Robson. My thought was that I’d know enough to get a couple on this. As indeed I did, I fact, a couple of couples. That four took me to an aggregate of 14, my second best of the semis. I can’t remember the last time that I scored at least 3 on all four specialist subjects. Last time out Thomas trailed the leader by two points at this same stage. Last night he was ahead by one after a fine 12 points.

So to the General Knowledge. Sharon Chambers had set one of the highest GK scores in the heats with 16. Starting out 6 points off the lead last night even if she could repeat this a win looked unlikely. It would make things interesting, though. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way, although Sharon did score a good 10.

I would not have enjoyed Elliot’s GK questions had I been sitting in the chair to face them. It’s already happened once during these semifinals that a contender has received a set of questions I have found noticeably less to my liking than others, and this was a second time. Judging by he pain on his face at times Elliot must have felt so too. He tried guessing. He tried passing – in the end he passed five. But he did at least manage the 7 that he needed to go into the lead.

Sadie had scored 10 in her GK round in the heat. With Thomas yet to come she needed all of that and more if possible. Well, she gave it a lash and she produced answers to all of her questions. 8 of them were correct, which gave her 19. Would it be enough? In all honesty I felt that this didn’t look likely. But then strange things can sometimes happen in semifinals.

Nothing strange happened in this one, though. Thomas needed 8 to win, and he reeled off an excellent 14. He never looked in any difficulty, and produced a great case for reinstating repechage slots in the semi-finals. I’m not going to ruin anyone’s chances by making predictions at this stage of the proceedings, but Thomas now has at least a 1 in 6 chance of walking away with the whole thing. Well done sir, and best of luck.

The Details

Sharon Chambers	Peter Cushing	6	0	10	0	16	0
Elliot Hooson	The History of Percussion Instruments	10	0	7	5	17	5
Sadie de Souza	The Sarah Jane Adventures	11	0	8	0	19	0
Thomas Nelson	Sir Bobby Robson	12	0	14	0	26	0

 

Give a Dog a (bad) Nickname

I’ve outlined my philosophy on quiz compilation quite a number of times over the years. You can boil it down to the central tenet that when you compile a pub quiz then your one overriding purpose is to give the teams the best evening’s entertainment that you are capable of. If you try to keep sight of this goal you can avoid many of the failures that blight quizzes of this sort.

Yeah, it was my turn to set the quiz last Thursday. I’ve explained in the past that I usually set picture handouts, even though they are my personal least favourite type of handout since they rarely offer you the chance to use what you do know to help work out what you don’t. You tend to either recognise the face, or not – there’s rarely helpful clues in the picture. But . . . other people like them. Since it only tends to be Jess and I who use picture handouts, I feel that I should keep doing them, even though I don’t actually like them myself.

But I will admit that my pleasure in making a quiz for the club is not totally selfless. I don’t like the kind of question master who asks something mind-bogglingly obscure and boring then congratulates themselves when nobody gets the answer. But now and again I do like it if I manage to come up with a question which people don’t all get right, but when I give the answer it makes some of them metaphorically slap their foreheads and go D’Oh! For example, I asked –

The Dial of Destiny is the latest film in which franchise?

Which paper fastening mechanism is defined as a rectangular sheet of springy steel curved into a cylinder, with two flat steel strips inserted to form combined handles and jaws.

Which range of die-cast metal car toys were introduced to the UK in 1956 and manufactured in Swansea for the first three decades?

What is the connection between your last three answers?

Now the connected answers were :-

Indiana Jones

Bulldog clip

Corgi toys

If you only look at answers two and three then it’s obvious. But Indiana Jones? Well, of course, Indiana, from whom Henry Jones Jr. took the name, was the family Jones’ dog. So they are all named or nicknamed after dogs.  (Any reader who is thinking that I could potentially have used Lasse Viren as an answer is a person after my own heart.)

I usually use a nine part connection as the last round, and this week all of them were the names of Gladiators in the current revived series on BBC. Only one team had a full house which surprised me a little.

Mastermind 2024 Semi Final 4 Preview

Phew. Only just made it since there’s only a couple of hours until semi final four is shown. So what are tonight’s subjects, then?

The actor Peter Cushing

The History of Percussion Instruments

The Television series The Sarah Jane Adventures

Sir Bobby Robson

Well, while there’s none of them on the list promises to match my round on The Prose Edda, this does look like a kinder than average set from my own point of view.

Peter Cushing. I ought to get one or two I would have thought. I was quite a fan of his work for Hammer, for example.

Percussion instruments – well, okay, this is the least lijkely subject to bring me points. Even then, though, it’s the kind of thing where general knowledge and good guessing might well bring something.

The Sarah Jane Adventures. Ten years ago I set out to watch every (surviving) episode of every series of Doctor Who, and review them. Ten books later I set out to do the spin off series Torchwood and the SJA. So I have seen all of them and I have written about all of them. Gotta be worth a least one or two, I reckon, and therefore my banker subject of the night. (The books are titled Nothing New To Say About Doctor Who and available on your kindle.)

Sir Bobby Robson again is not a subject I necessarily know a huge amount about, but it should be enough to net something. Taken altogether then an aggregate of less than five would be a disappointment, and more than 10 would be a bit of a surprise.

University Challenge 2024 Quarter Final Elimination - Open University v. Christ Church, Oxford

The Teams

Open University

Ellie Romans

Mike Holt

Ann Gavaghan (Capt)

James Davidson

Christ Church Oxford

Eliza Dean

Melika Gorgianeh

Oliver Wotton (Capt)

Elliot Lowe

Sorry it has taken so long to get round to this review. Long story. So, let’s cast a quick glance around this Last Chance Saloon, before taking in the two teams joining us for a wee dram – only one of them would get out of here alive. The stats seemed to favour the Open, but not by that much.

Oliver Wotton was in extremely quickly with the Ionian Islands for the first starter. You may remember that he scored a superb 9 starters in an earlier match against Southampton. Was this an omen that we were going to see another such virtuoso performance on the buzzer? The answer earned a set on French literary cycles – Baudelaire was allegedly an expert on the Penny Farthing. 2 correct answers were given. You had to stick with the poetry starter that followed. I didn’t recognise the lines quoted but as soon as Amol announced the title, Annus Mirablilis (supply your own jokes, please) I knew it was John Dryden. James Davidson opened the Open’s account with the same. The first hint that this maybe was not going to be Open’s night came when they took the first of a gettable set on musical styles, but missed out on two which really and truly were old quiz chestnuts. Nobody knew the Science populariser JBS Haldane – so he wasn’t a very popular populariser it seems. The moment the next starter asked us for the name of an opera originally entitled Leonora, Elliot Lowe buzzed straight in. To give the wrong answer. Again, I just make the point because this is a real quiz chestnut because its Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera. Ann Gavaghan knew that Joseph Paxton designed the original Crystal Palace for the next starter. The Open were unlucky to get a difficult set of bonuses on language families and came away from the table with nowt, much like my good self. The picture starter was a map showing the site and extent of a notorious oil spillage. I was certain it had to be the Exxon Valdez. Oliver Wotton took starter number 2 with the same. Christ Church are collectively too young to have remembered the Torrey Canyon, but remembered the Deepwater Horizon. An absolute masterpiece of mathematical gobbledygook allowed Melika Gorgianeh in with the correct answer of geometric for the next starter. Two correct answers meant that Christ Church led by 50 – 25 as we passed the ten-minute mark.

James Davidson knew that Thackeray had good things to say about Brussels. Me? I won’t even eat them for Christmas dinner myself. Mythological triads proved a tricky set and we both only got the one from Greek Mythology. Now, come on. If you study English Literature the moment you hear the name Saxo Grammaticus you should think Hamlet. So the country he wrote about had to be Denmark. That one passed the teams by.

None of us knew the chloralkali process, but Christ Church lost five on it. A great early buzz from Oliver Wotton earned a third starter, when he knew that the Geographical feature contained in many named of French Departements are rivers. Three questions on Black Swan Theory – named after the Natalie Portman film, I believe - brought just the one correct answer. Oh, for the days of the First Aid in English, where innocent primary school kids had the collective terms for animals and the name of their habitats pummelled into their brains with no thought for relevance whatsoever! Neither team knew that a holt is the home of an otter. There’s a water otter in my kitchen. It’s a kettle, which makes the water ‘otter. I’m ere all week, ladies and gents. Don’t applaud, just throw money. Ouch – I said money! The next starter asked for the name of an artist. ‘Born in Crete “ was enough to give Ann Gavaghan El Greco. 1 bonus on geology brought the scores level. Game on. None of us knew the composer of the opera we heard in the music starter, who was Massenet. Or put it another way, who was Massenet? None of us knew Audre Lord or the next starter either. Both teams sat on the buzzers a bit before Oliver Wotton took his fourth starter knowing that Nassau is the national capital on New Providence. This earned the music bonuses on pieces of music inspired by pieces of French literature whose composers were unFrench. I thought Christ Church did well to get two of them. Starter number five fell to Oliver Wotton as he knew that Old Prussia was a member of the Baltic family of languages. The Christ Church skipper, from Cardiff, smiled as Amol announced a set of bonuses on Medieval Wales. Justifiably too since he took a full house. I love the first question referencing Mervyn the Freckled. As epithets go that’s one that should be used a lot more in conversation, I reckon. Starter number 7 followed in pretty short order, as Christ Church’s Captain Fantastic supplied the answer that whiskey stills are traditionally made from copper. One bonus on paintings in the Manchester Art Gallery was enough to give Christ Church a lead of 155 – 55 at 20 minutes.

Game over? Not yet, but the Open’s collective eyes seemed glassy, and their defence porous. The Wotton onslaught continued as he identified 1975 as the year Bangladesh and others joined the UN, benefitting from the Ken Bruce Statute (one year out is permissible). An Irish mathematician saw Oliver Wotton give the cheeky answer of Joseph Grimaldi. To be honest, this set meant I was fighting the sound of the Baby Elephant Walk coursing through my head that I didn’t notice how Christ Church did with them. Not so much questions as bloody good scores in Scrabble. The blessed relief of the second picture starter saw Ellie Romans identify Apollo 11 Command Module pilot Michael Collins. Other Hubbard Medal winners brought just one correct answer. They needed more. Nobody knew the Hyades for the next starter. (I think that  they were 6^th in the 1977 Eurovision with their catchy tune, “Bim, bong, bing bammy bing.” They don’t write ‘em like that any more.) Oliver Wotton took his 8^th starter to cap off an absolutely splendid personal performance knowing that the device on the national flag of Portugal is an Armillary sphere. The Japanese playwright Chikamatsu brought just the one correct answer, but it was all academic by this stage. Christ Church were going to win, and all that remained in question was how many points they were going to win by. Eliza Dean took her first starter with No Exit, which was probably an adequate description of how The Open must have felt by this point. The first chemical elements discovered through spectroscopy only yielded one bonus, but the gap between the teams was almost in triple figures now. Ann Gavaghan, still leading her team from the front, knew that one of the events mentioned in the next starter occurred in 1989. Ancient Athens brought a single bonus. The ever popular category of plate tectonics saw neither team find the term moment. The next starter was on a Shakespeare heroine and as soon as her brother Sebastian was mentioned Eliza Dean won the buzzer race to answer Viola. German cities named after people did not have enough time to yield more points before the contest was gonged. Christ Church won by 170 to 75.

The Open have had a bit of an up and down series, but the fact that their average score going into this match was 210 speaks volumes about their ability. They were just beaten by the better team on the day. I’ve referenced Oliver Wotton’s performance throughout the review because it was so decisive. He was the massive difference between the teams in this match. For what it’s worth Open had a BCR of 28, while Christ Church had a BCR of 47.

Amol Watch

Nice to see you playing in the spirit of conviviality – Amol praised both teams for applauding each other at the start before adding rather ominously – let’s see if it lasts. To be fair, it did. He astutely pointed out that Sebastian was the real giveaway in the Viola question.

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

Joseph Paxton not only designed the Crystal Palace, he was also responsible for the Cavendish Banana, ancestor of the modern variety we eat today.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In mathematics if the arithmetic mean of a set of numbers is calculated from the sum of their values, which adjective denotes a mean defined as the nth root of the product of n numbers? The same adjective is applied to sequences where the ratio between terms is constant and has a broad meaning of relating to properties of shape and space.

Need I say more? Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2024 Semi Final 3

 The Tale of the Tape

Name	Specialist  Score	Specialist  Passes	GK Score	GK Passes	Total Score	Total Passes	Position
Julie Ashcroft	12	1	14	0	26	1	4
Tom Adlam	11	0	11	4	22	6	13
Lisa Cowan	10	0	11	0	21	0	14
Oli Hanson	9	0	12	0	21	0	16

 

So, last night saw us reach the halfway point in the semi finals. First into the chair was Lisa Cowan. Lisa was 14^th in my unofficial table of top scoring winners from the heats. Back then she answered 10 questions correctly in her specialist round. Last night she was having a pop at James Ist of Scotland. I knew the first question but drew a blank on the rest of the round. We’ve already seen in the first couple of matches that getting the highest score in specialist won’t automatically bring you the win, but being more than a couple of points behind can make things really difficult for you. So Lisa won’t have been too unhappy with 9.

Tom Adlam was answering on the TV series “Breaking Bad”. Last time out he scored 11 on specialist. Now, I never took a TV series as a specialist subject but it’s the kind of subject that ought probably come with a government health warning. There is just so much that you could be asked. So I reckon that Tom’s 7 was a pretty decent lash, but it did mean that he was already two points behind with two more contenders yet to come.

Oli Hanson, like Lisa Cowan, scored 21 in his first round heat. Back then he scored 9 on specialist, but won on the strength of his general knowledge. Last night he was answering on the world athletics championships from 2011 onwards. I added 4 to my total to take the aggregate to 5, not having scored on Breaking Bad. Oli knew his stuff, as you really must if you are to give yourself the best chance of progressing, and his 11 points put himself into the lead, and Tom into position of outsider, 4 points behind.

Finally Julie Ashcroft. In the heats Julie put on one of the best performances, scoring 12 on specialist and 14 on GK. Last night her topic was Mary Shelley, and sadly there were a few answers that seemed to make it to the tip of her tongue but no further. She finished with a respectable 7 but looked out of it at 4 points off the lead.

Tom was first back to the chair. He scored 11 in the heats but I have to say that his round in this semi seemed much better. He scored 13 to set the bar at 20, and really ‘coulda been a contender’ with a different specialist. As it was, with this being a semi final I didn’t think that his score was going to quite be enough.

Maybe not, but it was certainly good enough to stay in the lead after Julie’s GK round had finished. Julie scored an excellent 14 in the heats. Last night though she could only manage 9. I say only. 9 is a good score, but not enough to come close to the lead. My guess is that the heat GK round was a round where most things went right, and last night’s a round when too many things didn’t. We’ve all had them.

Lisa Cowan looked the most likely candidate to take the win away from Oli. Maybe she might have but oh, she had one of those rounds. You get one wrong answer, and then they start piling up. It’s a horrible feeling and there’s nowt you can do about it. Lisa ended with 13.

Which left Oli. The path through the gateway to the final beckoned, and although it looked relatively short and hurdle free he still needed 9 and no more than 3 passes to do it. And I fancy he might look back on a couple of sticky moments in the middle of the round with relief, since he managed to pull himself out of it, keep finding the answers, and win with a little bit of daylight between himself and Tom. Oli scored 12 for 23. Well played, and as always, best of luck in the grand final.

The Details

Lisa Cowan	King James I of Scotland	9	0	4	1	13	1
Tom Adlam	The TV Series Breaking Bad	7	2	13	2	20	4
Oli Hanson	World Athletics Championships 2011 to the Present Day	11	0	12	2	23	2
Julie Ashcroft	Mary Shelley	7	3	9	0	16	3

 

Mastermind 2024 Semi Final 3 Preview

Yes, peeps, it’s preview time again. In tomorrow night’s third Mastermind semi final the subjects will be:-

James I of Scotland

The TV Series Breaking Bad

World Athletics Championships from 2011 to the present day

The Life of Mary Shelley

Here’s my feelings. When there’s kings and queens involved I can usually get a point or two. However specifically Kings of (just) Scotland is more tricky. Maybe I can scrape a point. Then again, maybe not.

I did watch the first three or four episodes of Breaking Bad a few years ago, but I just didn’t continue to hold my interest and I gave it up as a bad job. Will that be enough to scrape a point? Again, it’s not impossible, but it’s not very likely either.

World Athletics Championships 2011 to the Present Day. Well, all I can say is that I think we can expect the need for really in depth knowledge when dealing with a round on such a short time period. Which is a bit of a shame since I love track and field but I’m not sure that I have the kind of in depth knowledge required to even get close to my score on the Prose Edda last week. Nevertheless, this is my banker subject.

For the first week in a long time, I don’t feel like there’s any one subject where I absolutely have no hope at all of scoring, since I know a bit about Mary Shelley. Not enough for more than a point or two, but still enough to bring me one or two I hope.

Anything approaching 7 would no be a bad return for me in aggregate, I think.

Serving up a Steaming Load of Arsenal

Since returning to the rugby club quiz in 2021 I’ve said that I’m not really interested in setting the quiz on a regular basis any more, but I will do it now and again if I’m asked to. Well, I got hoist with my own petard when Dai N. asked me to do the quiz this coming Thursday.

It’s done now, just needs printing. I think it’s alright. But I must admit that I was a little bit tempted to mess around a bit. Back in the nineties when I started compiling the quiz, I was always on the lookout for a new gimmick I could introduce. Few of them worked out and were reused.

Well, when I sat down to start compiling this one a rather stupid idea came to me. You see, Jess, and some of the kids at school have said that some times I come out with something silly and because it’s delivered with conviction and I have the reputation of being a know-all they don’t know if it’s true or if I’m joking.  A lot of the kids say far worse things about me than that, however we all have our crosses to bear. So I did think about putting at least one deliberate wrong ‘un in each round, such as “Which Hollywood star also invented the pop-up toaster? Answer – Clark Gable. Which of course is a steaming load of Arsenal since it was a guy called Chares Perkins Strite. Then I thought at the end of each round I could ask them for the 10^th question to say which question in the round was bogus.

No, I didn’t do it. I’ve got enough of a reputation for being a smartarse at the quiz as it is anyway, a reputation I only enhanced on Thursday by telling the QM that what he called and oviposter is actually pronounced ovipositor, and that Beowulf in fact defeated three monsters, rather than just the one. That second one does not reflect that well on me since I knew damn well that the answer he would want was Grendel, but dash it all, sir, I didn’t go through all the difficulty or translating that whole poem from Anglo Saxon into modern English at university to have it misrepresented in that way! For the record, after he defeated Grendel, Grendel’s mum came up out of the mire looking for revenge, so Beowulf dived into the mire and sent her to the same place he'd sent her son, and then at the end of the poem Beowulf, who is now old, has inherited the kingdom of the Geats, which is threatened by a dragon. Incidentally Tolkein’s Smaug is taken directly from this same dragon. Beowulf, deserted by all of his men save a young shaver called Wiglaf, defeats the dragon but is mortally wounded in the process.

Have a good week.