Saturday 29 September 2012

Mastermind 2012/2013 - Heat 7

Mastermind 2012/2013 - Heat 7

Well, I was slightly disappointed there had been a change to this weeks episode but either way the 7th heat of the first round of this years Mastermind involved - 

Kevin Baker
Andrew Hunt
Nina Fetherston
Michael Wright

Kevin Baker was first in the chair. Out of pure coincidence I am currently reading an Ian Botham Biography. That is why I was hoping this episode had shown next week when I had finished the book. Either way this was one of the best totals I had got in any SS round this series....oddly after only reading a third of a book (all answers gained from this bar the Question of Sport Questions). It was fair set seemingly and Kevin Baker stormed to 14 points. Always a total likely to leave the contender in with a shout.

Andrew Hunt was up next and his choice,  Caspar David Friedrich was the complete opposite for me and I knew virtually nothing about him. I can't judge how hard it was but Andrew Hunt faced slightly less questions than Kevin but still managed a solid 13.

Nina Fetherston came up next and a quick trawl through the TQA archives shows she appeared on University Challenge a few weeks ago. Her subject of Guns and Roses was interesting as I have a few of their albums but never taken much interest in them other than on record so I got far less than I expected here. Nina, a student, looked confident and bar the odd slip up managed 11 to give her every chance of progression.

Finally, Michael Wright took to the chair to take on the Hornblower novels. I had actually started reading one a few weeks back but this was off very little help. Michael Wright look relaxed, confident and gave speedy answers to land 14 points and I fancied him to take the win at this stage.

So the standings after the first round were - 

Kevin Baker - 14
Michael Wright - 14
Andrew Hunt - 13
Nina Fetherston - 11

So, Nina Fetherston was back in the chair for her GK round. Last week I said I felt the contestant trailing got an easier opening 5-6 questions but tonight proved me wrong as I found Nina's the hardest of all. Of course this is all subjective but she showed strong, wide ranging knowledge giving fast answers, being unfazed by the chair and managing a solid total 14 points on here round taking her to 25. A very good target for the opener to set but unless this is a winning score, it maybe won't be enough as one of the six.

Andrew Hunt was up next needing at least 12 to take the lead. Again he was answering quickly and showed a good range of knowledge. The few he seemed to guess at fell right and he moved into the 20's without trouble and was soon at the 25 mark which he ended up finishing with thus tying with Nina. 12 is still a solid GK score and 25 would indeed have been good enough to win an earlier heat but tonight I had a feeling more would be needed.

Kevin Baker got off to a solid start with fast, precise answers. He missed a few popular culture based questions (Pulp Fiction and Stevie Nicks) which slowed the scoring a little but he reached 20 early in the round. A few spats of wrong answers made it touch and go as to whether he would take the lead and unfortunately Kevin could only reach 24 signalling the end of his time in Mastermind this year.  

So Michael Wright needed 12 to ensure progress into the next round and to be fair he was gifted a dozen of points early on with some old chestnuts but later in the round was required to dig out some deep and impressive knowledge in what turned into a great GK round with a score of 15 taking him onto 29 and a comfortable win in the end. The joint third highest score of the series so far and Michael may well be one to watch in the coming rounds.

The way it has worked means Michael goes into the final as the third highest scorer and both Nina and Andrew are currently one of the top 6 runners-up but it will be tough to make it through with so many heats to go. Overall though a much higher standard tonight!

Hence the overall Mastermind standings tonight - 

Michael Wright - 29
Andrew Hunt - 25
Nina Fetherston - 25
Kevin Baker - 24



Overall standings for the Mastermind Series so far - 


Qualified
Gregory Spiller - 32
Kathryn Palmer - 31
Michael Wright - 29
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
Nina Fetherston - 25
Andrew Hunt - 25
---------------------------------------------------
Rosalind Winter - 24
Andrew Granath - 24
Laurie Handcock - 24
Kevin Baker - 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

1 comment:

  1. Re: Highest Scoring runners up : -

    We had some discussion about this on LAM a couple of years ago about who exactly was eligible for a highest scoring runner up spot. In the Magnus era anyone from any of the shows ( apart fromt he winner, obviously ) - regardless of finishing position could take a runner up spot - and indeed I think in one series three contenders who had all been in the same first round heat all qualified for the semis. We weren't sure if this was the case, and so I put out an appeal for the last producer of Mastermind, Jon Kelly, to ask if he could fill me in on current policy.

    Jon emailed me, and explained that now the policy is that only runners up can qualify. So even if someone has a higher score than all bar one of the other runners up , they won't qualify for the semis if they finished third or fourth in their heat.

    As far as I know that is the policy now - unless, of course they've changed it for this year.

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