Friday 12 October 2012

Mastermind 2012/2013 - Heat 9

Mastermind 2012/2013 - Heat 9

The next batch of contestants stepped into the black chair tonight as Mastermind enters its 9th heat of the series. A few interesting subjects tonight so without further a do lets get on with it...

Mastermind Contenders Tonight -

Barbara Bell
Nick Gunatilleke
John Chadwick
Xavier Woodward

Barbara Bell kicked things off with her round on National Parks of England and Wales  In all fairness a very tough subject but there were plenty of questions in there that were "gimmies" and that were missed. I thought it was perhaps the pressure of the chair that caused this round to go wrong but Barbara shook her head at most of the answers when given indicating she had never heard of them. Barbara never recovered for a pass chain early on and a stuttering start left her with 5 points.

Nick Gunatilleke was next and he struggled too on Battles of the American Civil War. Maybe it was under preparation, maybe it was the pressure but he looked very nervous and looked a rabbit in the headlights. Perhaps he has just seen what happened to Barbara and feared he was next. I actually beat him in this round with no preparation and that is saying something! All credit to Nick though and I never mean any disrespect in any of these reviews so please don't take that the wrong way but I have to be honest. 4 scored.

John Chadwick looked by far the most relaxed and calm reeling off answers on HP Lovecraft. Usually 10 would give him a lot of work to do in the GK round but tonight it was good enough to give him a 5 point lead. As someone said on my Facebook "This was the Mastermind Heat to Land" and, with no disrespect to anyone else, John put himself in with a great shout of getting to the next round.

Xavier Woodward took on Boxing World Title Fights since 2000. If you consider how many titles there are and how many weights and spread it over 12 years, this is a heck of a big subject. Xavier struggled with albeit some over worded questions but the nature of the subject would always make that an issue. 4 was scored again.

So the scores after the SS Round -


John Chadwick - 10
Barbara Bell - 5
Nick Gunatilleke - 4
Xavier Woodward - 4

Now, and I know I keep saying this, but without any disrespect, is that a record for lowest combined total over a SS round?

I don't know if this was coincidence or not but the GK rounds seemed a lot easier tonight. Based on my usual sort of scores and my partners chip in's we were considerably higher tonight than usual.

Either way Nick was given the task of going out first and scored a very respectable 13 with a range of knowledge shown. A solid SS round would have set him up with a nice score here but that was not to be at with a total of 17 that was the lowest score of the series so far and probably not quite enough to put serious pressure on John Chadwick.

Xavier followed a similar pattern and with a score of 14, again, would have been well in contention for a heat win had the SS score been higher but his total of 18, although leading at that point, was not going to be enough.

Barbara continued where she left off from round 1 with a lot of passing and hesitation. Ending up with a score of 15 which sadly means that is the lowest score of the series so far. I think once the nerves had took over it was round over and I am sure in another situation she would have racked up many more points on those questions, but that is Mastermind for you!

John Chadwick strode to the chair needing 9 to be assured of the win and cruised to 13 with some confident answering and clearly taking the tactic of guessing instead of passing. He had a little stutter on 18 for a few questions, whether he knew in his head he was close to winning (or can you see the score?) he moved onto 19 after a few misses and 23 was the final total. 13 is by no means a bad effort but he makes it through with the lowest winning score so far and actually this score would not have been in the top 20 of the 36 players so far. But, you can only beat what you play against and John did enough and showed more than enough knowledge to earn his win.

The reaction amongst quizzing friends online has been what you would expect. This was a low scoring heat and I don't want to offend so I will keep a few opinions to myself. Well done to John Chadwick and best of luck for the next round!

Final Standings - 


John Chadwick - 23
Xavier Woodward - 18
Nick Gunatilleke - 17
 Barbara Bell - 15

I am just working on a proper table of Runners Up now as I was informed last week that its not going to be just the highest scoring players, they also have to have finished in second place. That should be posted shortly.


No comments:

Post a Comment