Mastermind 2025 - First Round Heat 24

Well, here we are, peeps. We’ve now seen the Mastermind champion of 2025. Oh, we don’t know who it is yet, because there’s still the 24 semi finalists left. We’ll have a post taking a look at the runners and riders before the semis start. For now, though, let’s concentrate on last night’s final heat.

Of all of last night’s subjects I really didn’t have a fill yer boots one, so I was frankly surprised and delighted to manage five of Rashmi Bhardwaj’s subject, Audrey Hepburn. I’m not saying there were questions about everything I knew about her, but it was getting on for it. Rashmi remained calm throughout her round and if anything she seemed to be really enjoying it. The 8 that she scored wouldn’t give her an unassailable lead, but it would be competitive.

If you’d put a gun to my head and asked me before the start of this show which would have been my best specialist, I’d probably have plumped for Graeme Donaldson’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I came late to this particular party having watched and enjoyed all of them on Netflix during lockdown. Well, I should have remembered that there were 7 series, and frankly I was lucky to get 2 answers right. Graeme did well to get 7 on a round which for the most part really expected a lot of in depth knowledge.

Shelley Barnes’ subject, The DCI Ryan Novels by LJ Ross was always going to be my worst subject, since I’ve never read any of them. Crime and detective fiction just isn’t something that really interests me that much, and I failed to add to my aggregate. Shelley somehow looked very nervous to me as she began her round, and the points proved a little difficult to come by. In the end she managed a decent five, but this would leave her with a bit of a hill to climb in the GK.

Rob Caley brought us the final specialist round of the heats with John Barry. I though that there might be a couple of points here for me if there were questions on his James Bond film themes and these brought me the two points I needed to bring me an aggregate of 10 for the SS rounds. Rob managed the top score in the round although there wasn’t a great deal in it as he scored 9.

Shelley returned to the chair first. In all honesty she needed a score in the teens to open the door to the corridor of doubt for the other three contenders. She didn’t do badly with 8, but it wasn’t going to be enough to move her up the board by the end of the round.

Graeme did manage a solid double figure round of 10. This put him on 17. It was a good performance, but even before Rashmi returned to the chair I couldn’t help feeling that he would have needed maybe two more points to seal the deal.

I mentioned before that Rashmi seemed to be really enjoying her Mastermind experience. It’s the best mindset that you can have when you’re on the show although I don’t pretend for one minute that it’s easy to achieve. Each show rushes past so quickly when you’re on it. I only ever once achieved it, ironically during the final, when I told myself on the way to the chair for the GK round- you may never come this way again, old son. Smell the roses a bit. - Well,Rashmi did what she needed to do and scored 10, which put her one point ahead of Graeme.

Rob Caley had given us the last specialist round of the heats and now he gave us the final GK round. I don’t know, it seemed somehow fated – he took a pass and I said to myself – that’s what’s going to put Rashmi into the semis. - Now, you know very well when it comes to predictions, Mystic Dave I am not, but for once it turned out that I was right. Rob scored 9 to equal Rashmi’s 18, but that one pass was enough to put her through.

So let’s end the heats by saying a big thank you to all of the 96 contenders. Whatever people might say, putting yourself out there is a big commitment, and without contenders willing to do so, we don’t have a show. Congratulations Rashmi, you really seemed to enjoy your Mastermind experience and I hope that you will enjoy the semi final just as much.

The Details

Rashmi Bhardwaj	Audrey Hepburn	8	0	10	0	18	0
Graeme Donaldson	Star Trek:Deep Space Nine	7	0	10	1	17	1
Shelley Barnes	The DCI Ryan Novels by LJ Ross	5	0	8	0	13	0
Rob Caley	The composer John Barry	9	0	9	1	18	1

That's Entertainment?

Here’s a peculiar thing about human beings. For all the amount of time that we spend moaning about things that we hate, it seems to me that we also spend a comparable amount of time moaning about things that we really love. For example, I think that I’ve mentioned before that I love the TV show Doctor Who. Well, let me tell you, there is nobody who moans more about Doctor Who than the real fans. Seriously, as a group of people it seems that nothing makes us happier than bemoaning how bad the show has become. Why? Because we’re the ‘real’ fans and that gives us the right to slag it off because we love it so much.

I use Doctor Who as an extreme example, but I also find that I’m a little prone to indulging in his kind of behaviour about another of my loves, namely quizzes. I only take part in five quizzes a month now (as opposed to five quizzes a week) and I’ll be honest, I do have to remind myself that this is meant to be fun, sometimes. Yes, in case you’re wondering, it was the monthly film quiz in the Gwyn Hall on Wednesday.

Right, let’s begin with some positives. The guys that run it really love their films, and they love their film quizzes. They put a hell of a lot of work into it as well. The second round is always a music round, where songs are speeded up, or slowed down or played backwards. The amount of effort that it must take to make just one of these music rounds is huge, I’m sure. So I’m not for one moment saying that they just shove the quiz together any old how. I’m no great shakes at film quizzes and I’m the weakest member of our team, but I usually enjoy the quiz, as I reckon the majority of players do.

On Wednesday, though, not so much. In the past, when I’ve moaned about this particular quiz it’s been about the ways that tie breaks have been settled, or the ‘prizes’ for winning the league, but not really about the quiz itself. However on Wednesday night, I felt that the organisers made a fundamental error. In any social quiz like this, the fundamental aim is to give people an evening’s entertainment. For the first time I really felt as if the compilers were not so much trying to produce an evening’s entertainment, as to hammer home how clever they are and how much more they know about films than the teams do.

It's just my opinion, of course, and by all means dismiss what I say as sour grapes because we tied in first place and lost the tie-break. The theme of the quiz was Disney movies. There were one or two questions about films made before 1989, but in all honesty it was mostly just about films made in the last twenty five years. So old sods like me who could give you chapter and verse about Disney’s first 60 years were pretty much excluded. Then there was the picture round. Stills from films, all of which were made no earlier than 1989 were shown. We had to put them in order of release. It complicated matters slightly since the organisers neglected to tell us that the years of release were the UK ones. Now, I have an issue with this kind of handout. Let’s suppose you had all of the films in the correct order in relation to each other, apart from the first. So you’d think 2 was 1, 3 was 2, and so on. Because of that one mistake, you’d get zero. I’m sorry, but I can’t get away from the feeling that whatever knowledge you manage to show, you should be rewarded for it.

While I’m at it, I know that a tie break has to be something that is definitely going to separate two teams. But it really doesn’t have to be a complete guessing game. Wednesday night’s tie breaker was ‘How many views on Youtube has the trailer for Snow White had? It was released about a month ago.

I don’t know, there was just a sort of feeling that came across in the quiz that we were all being subtly told – look how little you really know. It was there in a couple of things that the question masters said, especially when boasting about the difficulty of the handout. And that’s not fun. That’s not entertaining.

University Challenge 2025 - Qualification Match - Christ's, Cambridge v. University of Warwick

The Teams

Christ’s, Cambridge

Anniko Firman

Brendan Bethlehem

Oscar Despard (Capt.)

Linus Luu

Warwick

Ananya Govindarajan

Thomas Hart

Oscar Siddle (Capt.)

Benjamin Watson

Are we already at the first quarter final qualification match, peeps? Yes we are, and the return of Christ’s, who really put themselves on the map with their victory over Imperial. And Warwick too. Thomas Hart’s dramatically raised elbow poised before each starter has been one of the more memorable sights this series. Don’t knock it, he’s been a star performer on the buzzer, but so has Brendan Bethlehem, and it was the stellar buzzing of Oscar Despard that beat Imperial in the last few minutes of their match.

It was Oscar Siddle who drew first blood for Warwick, winning the buzzer race to identify Benjamin Franklin as the oldest signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Questions on the state of Wyoming on film showed something interesting. If you said ‘Devil’s Tower’ to people of my generation, a fair proportion would probably still say ‘Close Encounters. . . “ Warwick’s young team? Not a Scooby. Yesterday’s news is today’s chip paper. Warwick knew Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid mind you, which is an even older film. They took two of the bonuses. Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudron – an early entrant for the silliest name in the show competition – brought Thomas Hart Gallium for the next starter. Fair enough. For the bonuses on figures of speech beginning with met- like Warwick I only had metaphor. Brendan Bethlehem finally muscled his way into the competition with the next starter, with an impressive feat of memory to dredge up that Lake Prespa is on the meeting point of North Macedonia, Macedonia and Greece. Chromosomal disorders provided a set of bonuses where I understood some of the words in each question, but not many. Christ’s took a full set. Oscar Despard knew about The Literary Attic to take his first starter. I always thought that would be a good name for a bookshop in Hay on Wye. A study on Asian Economics provided nowt for any of us. So to the picture starter and a map of Italy with a red dot showing the location of a National Park named after a geographical feature. Mount Vesuvius! said I. Mount Vesuvius! said Brendan Bethlehem. Three more National Parks in Italy brought two correct answers. Gawd knows what the next question meant – it was about computing, but Linus Luu knew the answer was heap. Kings of Scotland from the House of Dunkeld brought us both a full house. So just after the ten minute mark Christ’s led by 80 – 35.

Oscar Siddell was in very quickly to identify a reference to a painting of the ever popular roman emperor Elagabalus. I think someone must have been drunk at his naming ceremony. The decorated style of Gothic architecture – surely due a comeback anytime soon – provided gettable bonuses, but Warwick didn’t get any despite being very close to ogee. I was pleased with myself for knowing 1868 as a year of three prime ministers, as did Thomas Hart. The US chemist Seaborg unkindly yielded nothing for the bonus set. Language and linguistics questions are meat and drink to Brendan Bethlehem and he knew Lithuanian for the next starter. Oscar Despard knew Aime Cesaire and Christ’s took a full set abou him and this took us to the music starter. Shaking his head Oscar Despard gave the answer Elgar as the composer and seemed a little surprised to be right. More unfinished works finished by other composers brought little to the party but Christ’s were in triple figures and steadily pulling away. Brendan Bethlehem knew Colin Maclaurin and two bonuses on tennis kept the score ticking nicely along. Oscar Despard knew that the play within a play in Midsummer Night’s Dream is Pyramus and Thisbe, or Pyramid and Thimble as I was once dared to say during the Elthorne High School 1981 production of it. Without blowing my own trumpet everyone was impressed with my Bottom. Two bonuses were taken on barley. Linus Luu knew the game Geoguessr to take the next starter. I guessed that Huygens was the pendulum man for the bonuses and took my lap of honour while the going was good to fair. Christ’s took a full house. They had run riot over the last ten minutes so that on 20 they led by 180 – 50.

This showed no signs of letting up when Brendan Bethlehem identified the uvula for the next starter. Terms from Indian classical music brought two more bonuses. So to the second picture starter. Oscar Siddle won the buzzer race to identify the work of one of my all time faves, Caravaggio. Artists influenced by his characteristic use of chiaroscuro brought just the one bonus – they needed more. They got the chance to get more when Benjamin Watson took the next starter with Time. Epithets in Homer’s Iliad were similarly unforgiving, though they might have known Phoebus as Apollo. Thomas Hart was disbelieving as his answer to the next starter – Martini – proved to be right. Well, it’s the bright one, it’s the right one, it’s Martini. Ask your grandparents. Archaic place names brought them two bonuses but they were still short of triple figures. Thomas Hart was close but no cigar on the following Maths starter. Were Christ’s just a little rattled by Warwick’s suddenly ferocious buzzing? They dropped five on two consecutive starters. Warwick couldn’t dredge up the Venus of Willendorf to capitalise. Benjamin Watson took Warwick into triple figures with Baja California. Two bonuses on trees of the myrtle family followed. Warwick were catching up, but not quickly enough. As far as I’m concerned blackcurrant jelly is cold dark matter, so I didn’t get the next starter. Thomas Hart did. African writers brought one answer, but they were close but no cigar with two. Bejamin Watson knew the next starter wanted the answer Babel. They took a full house on chief mousers, but were still more than a full house behind Christ’s. The Warwick onslaught was halted with the next starter that saw Brendan Bethlehem identify bitonality. There was just time for one bonus on verbs. Christ’s won by 205 to 155.

The stats are interesting. For Christ’s were only slightly better on the buzzer. Where they had a clear advantage was on the bonuses. Their BCR was 62, to Warwick’s 40. So Christ’s reach the semi at first time of asking. As for Warwick, they have to go again.

Amol Watch

Previously I’ve commended Amol on his rulings that close enough is not close enough for an answer, but I also think he’s right to accept Macedonia, the former name of North Macedonia. In a way it’s a bit like the whole Burma/Myanmar thing. I see both accepted in different quizzes from time to time.

Amol issued the encouragement Warwick on 20 minutes. Sorry, but 8 minutes is not plenty of time, even if it is the frenetic last 8 minutes of a show. As was clearly shown, despite a brilliant fightback, Warwick did not have enough time left.

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

The uvula derives its name from the latin for little grape.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

What term is used to describe disorders where three copies of a chromosome, rather than two, are found in the nuclei of an organism? Examples of this phenomenon include that for chromosome 21, which causes Down’s syndrome.

Examples of this type of question cause my brain to go dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum. 

Mastermind 2025 First round Heat 23

Funny old game, Mastermind, isn’t it? You wait weeks and weeks for an outstanding round and then two come along one after another. We haven’t seen a perfect round since Ivan Milatovic’s specialist right back at the start of February, and as for an outstanding GK performance – well, you have to go back to 2024. Enough preamble.

The first of last night’s contenders, Gary Crawford, was answering on my fill yer boots subject of the night, King Henry II. My boots were certainly not full by the end of the round, but I was pretty happy to have taken five of them. Gary himself took 6. Not a bad score, no, but he had started so well and then somehow the brakes came on. He took a long pause before getting one wrong and it robbed him of all momentum. The scores have been lower this series, but we have no see anyone win from his position.

Kate Bleazard gave us a good old traditional subject in the Miss Marple Novels of Agatha Christie. It’s a bit of a government health warning subject though, since even if you just stick to the novels there are 12 of them, and the setters expect you to know them in often minute detail. For the most part Kate was equal to the challenge. She scored 9 and looked to be worth every point of it. Me? Well, please bear in mind that I’ve never read any of the works of Agatha Christie, whom I believe is a relatively popular author, so zero was probably a fair result for me.

Nathan Hamer was offering an interesting subject in Wales Rugby Union test matches 2000 – present. In case you don’t follow the fifteen man oval ball game, Wales are currently having their worst run of results since young Webb-Ellis first picked up the ball and ran with it. At least the round served as a reminder that this is only a recent development and will surely be only temporary. I won’t support Wales against England or Scotland (for family reasons) but against everyone else – play ball. In the professional era teams play an awful lot of tests every year so I thought that Nathan did well to cover so much ground and get 7. I only had 2.

Finally Gary Austin. Gary was answering on the sitcom Friday Night Dinner. I don’t know why but I never developed the habit of watching it regularly so I failed to trouble the scorer. Now, like me, Gary is a retired teacher, so he was guaranteed support from the Clark sofa. The jury is out on whether this is more of a help or a hindrance. We’ve spoken before about the difficulties that rounds on long running TV shows bring, and indeed Gary seemed a little uncertain about a couple of questions. For all that though he managed a magnificent perfect round of 12.

Put yourself in Eddie Crawford’s position. Judging by his expression as he returned to his seat after his specialist he knew he had underperformed, a fact which Gary’s round had made all the more obvious. At 6 points off the lead he was destined to be a bit part player in the finale. So he told Destiny where to stick it and went and delivered one of the best GK rounds we’ve seen all series. Fifteen – count ‘em – fifteen correct answers. Almost every time he looked in doubt he dredged his memory to come up with the right answer. We have seen shows where a contender lying in fourth at half time has gone on to win, but not many, and not from so far back.

Nathan Hamer was going to have to go like the clappers to give himself a chance. Fair play, there were several times during his round when I thought to myself – he’s a quizzer. But the fact was that he was falling a little behind the clock. In the end he scored 11 – that’s pretty good in a GK round. But it wasn’t enough. He finished with a good 18.

Another contender finishing with a good GK score was Kate. 12 and no passes would bring her level with Eddie. She got into double figures with 10, to give her 19. This would have been enough to win most of the shows we’ve seen since Christmas, but this, sadly, wasn’t one of them. It’s gutting not to win, but at least it’s something to be able to say that you managed a good performance. Kate can certainly make that claim.

Gary faced an interesting challenge. Anything less than a double figure round might not be enough. 9 and no passes would only bring a tie break. And traversing the long corridor of doubt did seem to be playing on him as he round progressed. As it was, though, he gritted his teeth, toughed it out, and found the 10 points he needed to get over the line.

Now, that was a great show. Do I feel for Eddie? Of course. To manage such a great GK round and still fall short is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But then, and I know that this will sound harsh, Mastermind is a show of two rounds. You have to prepare, prepare, prepare for all eventualities in the specialist. The more you prepare, the luckier you will get. So congratulations to Gary. In his insert he said that he felt that he needed the points cushion on specialist because he felt others would be better on GK. Well, whether that’s hindsight or not, it doesn’t matter. Well played sir. Best of luck in the semis.

Eddie Crawford	Henry II	6	0	15	0	21	0
Kate Bleazard	The Miss Marple Novels of Agatha Christie	9	0	10	0	19	0
Nathan Hamer	Wales Rugby union test matches 2000 - Present	7	0	11	1	18	1
Gary Austin	Friday Night Dinner	12	0	10	3	22	3

No doubt in my mind - we are the best.

Well, dearly beloved, it’s my quiz in the Rugby Club on Thursday, and it was my daughter Jess’ turn last Thursday. I confess to the sin of pride here, because I certainly take pride in the fact that Jess – and also the other regulars of my team all produce better quizzes than anyone else in the club. Yeah, I know, of course this is something I am going to be accused of bias about. But when it comes to quizzes, I try to be strictly objective in my judgements. And I stand by what I say.

I don’t know how much time and effort other QMs apart from my team put into their quizzes. It’s certainly not my place to start laying down the law about how much time and effort they should. We all of us do it just for the love of the game, and for a couple of drinks on the evening. But when it comes to other QMs, however much time and care they put in, on many occasions it appears not to have been enough, or to have been misdirected. They end up giving us something that is just not as satisfying as it could be. How?

Well, for one thing there’s the little matter of making sure your answer as QM is right. Yes, as Question Master you always have the power to fall back on the line ‘The question master is always right.” But you shouldn’t abuse this. I believe that with great power comes great responsibility. I believe that it does not give you the right to dispense with checking whether the answers that you have written down are actually correct. One of our question masters is so prone to giving out wrong’uns that my team has unkindly but accurately dubbed him Captain Slapdash. I doubt that any of the others are as meticulous in checking as Jess and my guys are.

Then there’s making sure that your question is right as well. I know that as an ex-English teacher I can come across as pedantic about the ways that questions are phrased, but it does make a difference. For example, we were once asked, “What is the name of the English actor who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Ben Hur? Well, the thing is that the actor was Welsh, Hugh Griffith. Ah well – said the QM – you all knew that I meant British. On Thursday Jess asked – to which plant family do chives belong? Now, my thought was, does she mean the scientific name – allium – or is she looking for the answer the onion family? And I was so delighted that she had anticipated this when she gave the answer – allium – but I will accept onion. It doesn’t take a lot to anticipate the problems a question might raise, but so many QMs really don’t. It’s the mark of a good QM when they do.

Then there’s the simple thing of recognising that your purpose as question master in a pub quiz is not to show an audience how clever you are, but to give all the people playing an evening’s entertainment. Yes, gimmicks can help with this – Jess used House of Games type Rhyme Time in the handout and Answer Smash in one of the rounds. But the best gimmick of all is interesting questions. An interesting question is one which you MIGHT know, which you MIGHT be able to work out, or at the least, which MIGHT make you say – that’s interesting – when you hear the answer. Which obviously doesn’t include crap like “On which date did King Charles III lose his first baby tooth?” – things which nobody is going to know, or derive any pleasure from knowing. I loved it that Jess was confident enough to ask things like – Which US State has the nickname The Old Line State? I didn’t KNOW the answer, but I thought that maybe this was a reference to the Mason Dixon Line, which narrowed it down to Pennsylvania or Maryland. I felt that the state on the southern side would be more likely which meant Maryland. Good question.

Some of my closest quiz pals from the start of my career have sadly passed away since, but I can still remember them agreeing that bad quizzers make bad quizzes, because they are not good enough to know what a good question is. I’ve no doubt that the fact that Jess and the Boys are becoming better quizzers all the time is one of the reasons why they have such consistency that they never do a bad quiz. But I also think it’s because they care about it. I know from speaking to them that they all reflect on what went well and if a particular question didn’t work so well after each quiz. A lot more than I myself do now, if truth be told. I’m not a very good example to anyone setting quizzes now because I don’t care that much whether I set a quiz or not. 30 years ago I was as keen as mustard, road tested every quiz at least once before using it and held a detailed post mortem afterwards. Well, there you go. In the words of Sam Goldwyn, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then.

Well done Jess. I am always proud of you anyway, but I enjoyed Thursday’s quiz.

University Challenge 2025 - Quarter Final - The Open University v. Bristol

The Teams

Open University

Nicky Maving

Tom Barber

Karie Westermann (Capt.)

Hector Payne

Bristol

Ted Warner

Bridie Rogers

Kevin Flanagan (Capt.)

Olivia Watts

With the Open having an average score of less than 200 and Bristol an average score of over 300 the result of this match looked something of a foregone conclusion. Yet we’ve already seen that the quarter finals have proved to be a harder proposition for pretty much all of the teams so far this year.

It was nice to have a starter on Virgil’s Aeneid and it became clear pretty soon we were looking for harpies for the answer. The teams sat on their buzzers a bit before Ted Warner broke cover to give us the answer. Terms in life science containing the letter combination o-c-h saw Bristol take a full house in pretty short order, and it looked as if the expected Bristol onslaught was beginning. I thought that the next starter was heading for Judith Butler, and so did Karie Westermann. She was right to do so, and Open were off the mark. Two bonuses on films meant that they were close behind Bristol. Ted Warner knew the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe for the next starter. Gerry Hassan – not a chap I have any great knowledge of myself – brought nowt to Bristol. The first picture starter showed us a simplified family tree based on characters from a famous novel. Count Vronsky gave me Anna Karenina. Hector Payne thought he knew, buzzed, then realised he didn’t. Bristol could not capitalise. I know of conjugation in verbs, but not in biology. Ted Warner did and this earned the picture bonuses. Three Russian novels brought two bonuses – I answered Brothers Karamazov to all three guaranteeing myself one bonus. Green Chapel – and Narrative poem – is only ever going to lead to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Karie Westermann was the first to take the plunge on it. Jazz musicians yielded nothing and this meant that Bristol led by 55 – 30 on ten minutes.

Karie Westermann knew Lily Gladstone – who is an actress and not the drag name of the Victorian Prime Minister. (That was something quite different, I believe). The first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry unleashed a stream of yawn inducing gobbledygook which brought the Open up to Bristol’s collective shoulder. They fell back a bit with an incorrect interruption on the next starter, allowing Bridie Rogers in with the suffix -etta. A lovely UC special set on characters in Middlemarch who share forenames with characters in Jane Austen novels saw Bristol unable to add to their score. For the following music starter none of us recognised a rather lovely bit of Faure. Nobody knew a white dwarf for the next starter. Hector Payne came in too quickly for the next starter and lost five, allowing Ted Warner to say that the Don flows into the Sea of Azov. Three other works conducted by Nadia Boulanger, the LPO’s first female conductor, again saw Bristol failing to bother the scorer. Undeterred Hector Payne very quickly identified the year 2014 through some of its sporting highlights. Eggs in contemporary Art brought two bonuses. Names ending in gong brought Karie Westermann another correct starter. 2 bonuses on pseudocereals levelled the scores at 75 apiece as we passed the 20 minute mark.

So, our marathon had now come down to a sprint. Ted Warner knew Byzantine Emperors called Leo. Julia ‘Qui?’ Kristeva brought none of us any joy. None of us recognised a black and white still from that popular family favourite The Spirit of the Beehive. Hector Payne knew or worked out that Europe’s furthest point from the sea is in Slovakia. Good shout, that. For the picture bonuses we saw stills from films by directors who went a long time between films. Kubrick will be there, said I, and he was. The Open also had one of the others and for the first time in the match they were in the lead. Karie Westermann was unlucky not to quite get Kintsugi for the next starter. I only knew it from a previous series of the Great Pottery Throwdown. One of those seemingly simple arithmetic questions – you know the sort, add the number of nostril hairs visible on the Mona Lisa to the number of smarties in half a packet and divide it by the number of faces on an octonoctofloctohedron – and nobody had it. Bridie Rogers knew that Claudio falls in love with Leander in Shakespeare which was followed by the names of European football clubs whose names contain just one of the five vowels. They took two for a ten point lead. With hardly any time remaining Open needed to take the next starter. But it was Bridie Rogers who linked up South Pacific and Pacific Rim. Polish artist Jan Matejko brought the two bonuses they needed to ensure that even a full set would not be enough for the Open. As it was nobody could take the next starter on Helium 3, a popular jazz trio from the 1930s. Ted Warner hammered the final nail in the Open’s coffin by taking the next starter on the word crane. Bristol won by 135 – 95, but it was a close, close match

If we look at the BCRs of both teams it becomes pretty clear where this battle was won and lost. The Open managed a straight 50 while Bristol only managed 38, so it was their sharper buzzing that brought victory. It isn’t quite true that it’s bonuses for show and starters for dough, but you can’t expect to win the match if you’re losing the buzzer races.

Amol Watch

Amol has this habit of saying words to the effect of – the other team knew the answer to that one – when a team gets a bonus wrong sometimes and if I’m honest I’m not entirely sure what it brings to the party. He also has the habit of saying ‘good job you’re a biologist/physicist/mathematician’ when someone answers a question on their own subject. I wonder what he’d say if someone got a starter right on the novel ’Portnoy’s Complaint.’? “ It’s a good job you’ve got a – - - on your team“  No, I am not explaining that. Ask your parents.

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

Europe’s furthest point from the sea is in Slovakia.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

The Van ‘t Hoff factor explains how a given solute affects what class of properties for a mixture, such as its osmotic pressure, freezing point, depression and boiling point elevation? These properties depend on the ration of solute and solvent, and not on the chemical species present.

Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2025 First Round Heat 22

Last week I made the point that Mastermind has struggled to pick up momentum since the long Christmas break. Well, in my opinion anyway. Did last night’s 22^nd heat manage to do anything to ameliorate this? Well, let’s see.

I didn’t have much resembling a banker subject last night. I suppose that Addie Curley’s round on Seamus Heaney represented my best chance, but that all depended on the few of his poem’s I’ve actually read coming up. Under the circumstances I think that I was lucky to even get the two points that I managed. Addie looked to be in a bit of trouble mid-round when she was becalmed for quite some time. However she seemed to find a fresh wind in her sails towards the end and managed a decent enough six.

What do I know about Steve Earle? Well, I now know that he was a musician of some repute, which is more than I knew this time yesterday before the show. Funnily enough I did get a point for guessing Tennessee for one of the first two questions. Neil Pritchard didn’t quite get us a double figure round – we’ve seen precious few specialist rounds of that calibre since Christmas. However he scored 9 which is not easily done in the current period of the show. He was going to be well in contention come the half time turn around.

I was at least aware of the show Mad Men’s existence prior to Amy Dwyer’s round on the same. Never watched it, mind you, which is probably why I got what I deserved, namely nul points. Oh, long running TV shows. I’ve said before they are the kind of subject that ought to come with a government health warning. There’s just so much could be asked. I have no doubt that Amy is a massive fan and knows a lot about the show. Sadly though there were a lot of these questions that passed her by. She scored five. Not bad by any means, but it left her some way adrift of the lead.

To be honest, the Battle of Arnhem, as offered by Stuart Davidson, means little more to me than the epic war film ‘A Bridge Too Far’, the experience of watching which in the Northfields Odeon seemed to last for a fortnight. So no, I didn’t score any. Stuart started really well and for a moment or two I felt he was on the way to double figures. He faltered a bit in the second half though and ended with 7. Perfectly respectable, and being only a couple behind Neil he certainly had a chance.

First back to the chair was Amy. She kept on answering even though the round didn’t really seem to be going her way most of the time. In the end she scored 6, which did at least mean that she was in the lead for the time being.

Addie did better, and up until the last few questions I really did think she would get into double figures. She had scored 8 and there were still a few questions to go. Sadly though they all failed to yield up any more points, and she finished with 14 points.

So then to Stuart. I talked last week about the fact that I found that it didn’t really matter if I was chasing a total or trying to set one. I just went like billy-o and hoped for the best. So Stuart needed to score 8 to take the lead and then to add as many more points as he could to give Neil something think about. I don’t think he did a bad job with it either. He got into double figures, with his ten setting the bar at 17.

This left Neil needing 9 for an outright win. That’s the kind of target which could just put you into the corridor of doubt. As it was, Neil’s GK round was similar to Stuart’s. I wouldn’t say it was an absolutely barnstorming performance but it was certainly good enough for 10 points which was enough to see him climbing the steps to the Royal Box, metaphorically speaking.

No, if I’m honest, this was another heat that didn’t really blow my socks off, but there we are. I’m not trying to criticise the contenders here – they’re all giving it a lash and without people being willing to put themselves in the firing line we don’t have a show. But it would be nice to see the questions being shortened in order to at least give them a chance to let off some fireworks.

For now, though, it’s Neil we’ll be seeing again in the semis. Well done, sir, and I wish you the best of luck.

The Details

Addie Curley	The Poetry of Seamus Heaney	6	0	8	2	14	2
Neil Pritchard	Steve Earle	9	1	10	1	20	2
Amy Dwyer	Mad Men	5	0	6	4	11	4
Stuart Davidson	1944 Battle of Arnhem	7	0	10	2	17	2