Mastermind 2012/2012 - Round 1 - Heat 6
I have a few issues to discuss after tonight's show but before I do that the line up for the sixth heat of this years Mastermind was.......
Matthew Bradshaw
Les Wallace
Hazel Humprheys
Chris Kirk
The show started with Matthew Bradshaw giving a very impressive, almost perfect round, on Epsom winners since the 1980's. Only one question, requiring the age of Lester Piggot, stopped him from getting a perfect score but with fast, confident answers he scored a very good 16. The set had some tricky ones in (but did contain some quiz chestnuts) however Matthew knew his Derbies and set himself up nicely for the next round.
Les Wallace faced a round on Extinct Fauna of the Ice Age. I cannot judge how hard this round was as I have no deep knowledge of this area so suffice to say Les coped well with the set given scoring 12 and only failing on two questions. However, and my first issue with tonight's show, he was asked 3 questions less than Matthew despite answering at pretty much the same speed. He may have been a tad slower in one or two responses but not enough to warrant a 3 question gap.
Hazel Humprheys looked a little nervous but she managed to rattle off a solid 15 to put her right in contention on the subject of Dave Allan. I did some reading on him before tonights show and it seemed a fair set. Indeed she only dropped one point.
Chris Kirk finished off with his knowledge on General Custer. I managed a few without any research but a string of wrong answers towards the end left Chris with a still impressive 13.
After the SS round on tonights Mastermind I thought it was looking like we could see some big scores. Everyone had left themselves in with a chance and I did hope that Les Wallace, getting asked less questions than any other contestant, would not suffer because of that.
Standings after SS -
Hazel Humprheys - 15
Chris Kirk - 13
Les Wallace - 12
So, Les Wallaceneeded to set a high GK score and here in lies another one of my issues with tonight. Before I mention it I must say this is nothing to do with Les himself. In actual fact Les scored 10 in the GK round making it the joint highest of the night with the eventual winner and with an extra three points from the SS round (if he had the same number of questions asked) then you never know....
But the issue for me is that if there is a contender who is trailing the lead by anything over 3 they seem to be "handed" half a dozen gimmies to get them back into it. In a normal quiz I wouldn't mind, to keep everyone involved and happy but this is Mastermind and this is the third or fourth time it has happened this series. As I said this is nothing against Les Wallace as he showed great knowledge later on in the round to bring his score to 22. Probably not quite enough to win which was his only hope of progression now.
Chris Kirk too needed something special to apply pressure to the two above him but sadly it just wasn't his day. A much harder set here and whether it was the pressure or the nerves, Chris did not really get going until it was too late. Still, towards the end a strong run of answers brought his score also to 22 and just like Les it was probably not going to be enough.
Hazel thus had a great chance to make her mark on the round. She looked a bit more nervous here and sadly managed 7 in the GK round. 22 is a very respectable score overall but it now all looked like it had played into the hands of Matthew Bradshaw.
Needing only 7 to win Matthew made a strong start again with confident and quick answers. He faded out mid-round and for a brief moment it looked as if a four way tie on 22 was possible but he pulled himself together well, got some of the tougher questions and ended up scoring 10 for the round and 26 overall to move into the Semi-Finals.
So the final scores on Mastermind tonight -
Matthew Bradshaw -26
Hazel Humprheys - 22
Chris Kirk - 22
Les Wallace - 22
Matthew moves into the Mastermind Semi Final then but as you will see below Hazel, Chris and Les did not do enough to be one of the six highest scoring runners-up as you can see below.
I will probably make another post later in the week regarding a few issues and I am really hesitant to say anything about the standard this year as I am in no position to judge but I don't think, as somebody commented on here last week, that we have seen any serious contenders for the Mastermind crown yet. I know a good few talented quizzers who have filmed episodes recently so expect the below to chance a lot in upcoming weeks!
Overall Mastermind 2012/2013 standings -
Qualified
Gregory Spiller - 32
Kathryn Palmer - 31
Sian West - 26
Shahab Mossavat - 26
Matthew Bradshaw -26
Aidan Mccquade - 24
Runners up
Chris Cann - 29
John Wheeler - 29
Nathan Joss - 26
Philip Walters - 25
Rosalind Winter - 24
Andrew Granath - 24
Laurie Handcock - 24
---------------------------------------------------
Roland Mcfall - 23
Graeme Marley - 22
Hazel Humprheys - 22
Chris Kirk - 22
Les Wallace - 22
Ian Copping - 22
Alan Haddick - 21
Sarah Le Fevre - 19
Jackie Phillips - 19
Matthew Clarke - 18
Nathan Scott - 18
Hi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how subjective this quizzing business is, I actually thought Les had the hardest of the 4 GK sets. There are always a few straightforward questions at the start of every GK round (which I think is fair enough as it must be an intimidating enough experience sitting in the hot seat without being bombarded with though questions right from the start) and Les's first 4 certainly fell into that category, but the fifth, the turbot question, was a toughie I thought and Les had to get some good ones right (Huxley, Giant's Causeway etc) just to scrape into double figures. 10 isn't a huge score on GK but I thought Les had to earn it.
I do agree however that the standard of contestants on this series (so far) has seemed a little weaker than usual. The questions have also seemed a little gentler on the whole. Perhaps they're saving the 'heavy hitters' for later in the series?
Typo - that should have said 'bombarded with tough questions...'
ReplyDeleteWe may not have seen many strong contenders, but I think Shahab is one... I was very impressed by him last week, he managed a lot of correct answers, and he remained very composed, never once losing his cool. I'm excited to see more from him, I reckon out of everyone we've seen so far, he is the most likely to go far.
ReplyDeleteHi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteAs Ewan says so much of the relative difficulty of GK rounds is in the eye of the beholder. I felt that all four rounds on Friday nigth were much of a muchness. The only reason why I scored less well on the last two rounds was because the contenders were both giving long pauses and going fairly slowly. As regards the strength of contenders this year so far, well, if you put me on the spot I'd say that I doubt that we have seen the champion so far ( and I stress here and now that I have NO insider knowledge about this ). With respect to George's comment, I think Shahab showed as a good contender, but he'll have to do quite a bit better than that to look like a potential champion. If I'm being brutally honest none of tonight's contenders impressed me with their general knowledge very much. I felt that they each had a fair set of questions, and you need to be able to get a good dozen at the very least in a two and a half minute round if you are going to mount a serious challenge. The highest score in GK was only 10.
Hi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI think we generally under-estimate the impact of pausing before answering questions. Speaking from my own experience, in my heat last year both myself and Andrew Hunter were asked 18 SS questions and our two competitors were each asked 15. I thought that this seemed a big difference, so I got out my stopwatch and timed each SS round, and the results were amazingly consistent – the average length of time it took for John Humphrys to ask a question in all 4 rounds hardly varied at all (from 5.8 to 5.9 seconds) so the difference between 15 and 18 questions asked was purely down to the time taken to answer. Based on these numbers, a pause of just 1 second per answer is enough to cost you 2 or 3 questions over a 2 minute round.
And as a comparison so far this year, the average score after 6 heats is 24.0 - this compares favourably with the overall average for the heats last year, which was 23.3. However, it is true to say that they seemed to "front-load" the heats last year, as after 6 heats last year, the average score was 25.1 (and we'd had 5 scores of 30+ vs 2 scores of 30+ this year so far.)
ReplyDeleteHi all and thanks for the comments
ReplyDeleteNice to hear from a previous contestant Jeff and some interesting observations there indeed. From who I know is taking part (in heats filmed sometime after the others) I have a feeling the leaderboard will change a heck of a lot in the coming weeks.