Mastermind

[CurlewKate]

My dil has got to the second stage in the Mastermind audition process. Which made me wonder what people would choose for their specialist subjects. You need to choose 4-but two will do for this thread. Mine would be the life and works of Jane Austen, and Starsky and Hutch. You?

I have been on Mastermind!

The key is finding a subject that they will accept, but it also narrow enough that you don't have to study too much. My specialist subject was on the life and works of an author because I had just read a biography about her. Think someone like Emily Brontë.

I wouldn't choose the life and works of Agatha Christie because she has written about a gazillion books. If I wanted to do an Agatha Christie theme I would do Miss Marple novels only.

Yeh I was also on Mastemind. I chose a series of books I love and have read loads. Still had to do some work tho.

Jane Austen had been done too recently. My second option was the Miss Marple books @CuteOrangeElephant! how did you do?

I'd saw life and works of Jane Austen is too popular and too big a subject. You'd want to do works only but it's probably chosen too often.

You can see when people have chosen a good tactical subject vs something way to broad.

I did really well on my specialist subject, my general knowledge let me down a bit. I tied with another candidate who got to go through because she had fewer passes.

You?

I was a semi-finalist. They turned down my request to do the novels of Jane Austen as everyone asks for it and it's been done to death. For my heat I did something that I was interested in learning about, but which had a limited amount of material, and for the semi something that I'd already done a lot of research on. Your specialist subject is relatively easy if you put the work in and have the kind of exam-oriented mind which can spot the likely questions. GK is where it's won and lost. I had many, many flashcards!

The wives and children of Boris Johnson would be quite a wide topic 😄

Yes that is my view as well. I wouldn't call the specialist subject easy but it is predictable.

I scored well but was beaten by a contestant who ended up in the final. I actually got the highest second place score of the series and beat a lot of other heat winners, so I felt vindicated :)

Wow- so many of you! I think dil’s thinking about something about Shakespeare’s comedies, Taylor Swift, something about Paddington Bear, or Gavin and Stacey. Oh, and Joseph Conrad. But she has other options-apparently if you get through they help you choose. Personally, I think Jane Austen and Starsky and Hutch would be my only possible options! Oh, and possibly yeast bakery. Good thing I’m not going to be doing it….

I think my preferred specialist subjects would be too narrow (all very tightly defined history), so I’d probably try others that I’m familiar with and interested enough in to revise. Maybe the poetry of Brian Patten, and the works of Dorothy Sayers.

The Mapp & Lucia novels of EF Benson
Rod Stewart and the Faces (not Rod alone)
Something Alfred Hitchcock based

I think the reasons Mastermind is harder than some are:

• No team to work with (Only Connect, Univ Ch)
• No time to think (Millionaire)
• No multiple choice (The Chase)

So yes, the questions, esp the GK ones, are often pretty easy, easier than some of the quizzes I mention above – but you need to be so quick and it is only you. Great quiz tho, all the best to your DD @CurlewKate

(hahahahaha no one has ever heard of my first spec subj (it's what ppl always ask you and they look dumbfounded when I tell them) and someone has mentioned it on here lol)

I’ve always said “Buffy” (the tv series) would be my specialist subject! I was obsessed with it and knew all the ins and outs.

i think I would be good at 90’s music (maybe narrow to pop music from the 90’s) or 90’s “one hit wonders”

I would consider Kylie Minogue too as a topic!

definitely outing myself though if anyone that knows me reads this thread and then sees any of my others with personal details in 🤣

Mine would be the books of E M Forster.