Good evening again friends, and welcome to another, now shorter, Quizzy Monday! Yeah, I still haven't seen any of the new chess programme that now splits Mastermind and UC, and I'm not exactly encouraged to by what I've read of it, so I'm sticking to recording Mastermind and watching it at 8 and then going straight into UC afterwards. Still, not that much longer to go with either now. Anyway, on with tonight's festivities, beginning with UC and the first elimination quarter-final...
Imperial, the defending champions, were very easy and dominant winners over Manchester and Wadham of Oxford in the first two rounds, but were narrowly pipped by Christ's in their first QF. They were the same foursome as those three previous games:
Charlotte Stokes, from Chester, studying Applied Genomics
Mattia Elkouby, from South London, studying Chemistry
Captain: Matthew Spry, from Gateshead, studying Electrochemistry
Jaime Salamanca Camacho, from Madrid, studying Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces
Queen's University Belfast were similarly comfortable winners over Liverpool and Cardiff in the earlier rounds, but were then comfortably beaten themselves by Warwick in their first QF. They too were the same quartet as beforehand:
Sarah Carlisle, from Ballynahinch in County Down, studying English with Creative Writing
Jason McKillen, from Belfast, studying Artifical Intelligence
Captain: Daniel Rankin, from County Down, studying PPE
Sam Thompson, from Limavady, studying Physics
Imperial kicked off first with a starter and a full set of bonuses; Queen's followed with a starter and two bonuses, but then took the lead with the next. Imperial bit back with the first picture round, after which they led 45-35. Queen's pulled level with the next starter, but took no bonuses, allowing Imperial to retake the lead with the next starter. Queen's took the next two starters though, and one of the bonus sets gave an amusing moment as their famous joke answer from the first round, 'Les Miserables', was right this time! They also took the music round, after which they led 100-60.
Back came Imperial with a starter and single bonus, only for Queen's to increase their lead again. The Londoners finally got a couple of starters together though and pulled back to within five points. They then took the lead with the second picture round, and two bonuses from that meant they led 135-120. Another starter and two bonuses put Imperial in the driving seat, but Queen's now had their turn to fight back and a run of three starters in a row gave them the lead back! Imperial had to take the next starter, did, and took the two bonuses to pull level! And that was the gong! A 170-each tie!
So, another tie, the fourth of under AR's watch! A tie-breaker starter was asked. After quite a big pause once it was finished, Mr Rankin was first to buzz and offer an answer. AR then put in an even longer pause... before confirming he was right! Queen's had the win!
A top contest that, two excellent teams both of whom would've been worthy winners; kudos to them for going to shake hands at the end, pleased to see this is becoming a more frequent occurance. Well done Queen's, and best of luck in the play-offs! Hard lines to Imperial, who can consider themselves unfortunate to be going out this early, but an excellent series of performance that there's no shame in whatsoever; thanks for playing!
The stats: Mr Rankin was the best buzzer of the night with five starters (plus the tie-breaker), while Mr Spry was best for Imperial with four, ending their run their best buzzer with 20 starters over four matches. On the bonuses, Imperial managed 17 out of 27 (with the night's one penalty) and Queen's 14 out of 30, and, for the first time this year, all eight players answered at least one starter correctly.
Next week's match: we can assume it will be Darwin vs Bristol, followed by U.C.L. vs Open (again) the week after.
Mastermind’s final heat was opened
by Rashmi Bhardwaj, who was answering on Audrey Hepburn; a few pauses, but she
answered steadily and scored a decent 8. She was followed into the chair by
Graeme Donaldson, who was answering on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; another
steady scoring round, he just fell sort of Rashmi’s score and finished with 7.
Next was Shelley Barnes, who was answering on the DCI Ryan novels of LJ Ross;
after an OK start, she hit a run of wrong answers, then recovered with two late
on to finish with 5. Finally, Rob Caley was answering on the composer John
Barry; he too scored and answered steadily, and ended up just edging into the
lead with 9.
Shelley returned for GK first, and
gave a respectable round, scoring 8 for a total of 13, not bad, but probably
not a winning score. Graeme managed to beat it, scoring 10 for a good total of
17, but a late pass left him vulnerable. Rashmi, again, had a few long pauses,
but kept her score ticking over, and ultimately scored 10 as well for a total
of 18, leaving Rob needing to match that to win. He started well, then fell
into a wrong answer run and incurred a pass as well, meaning he really did need
10; he fell just short, scoring 9 for a total of 18 and one pass, which meant
it was Rashmi who took the last place in the semis! Well done her and thanks to
the others for playing; semi-finals begin next week!
And that's another week done! Thanks once again for reading, and enjoy the longer Mastermind write-ups while you can as I've more or less decided to go back to shorter summaries of that next season and focus my energies on UC and OC. Back next week as usual as Mastermind enters its semi-finals, so, see you then, same time same place...
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