Why is Mastermind 'television's toughest quiz'?
george.millman
Posts: 8,628 Forum Member
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I watch a lot of quiz shows, but something has been bugging me.
Why is it that Mastermind is 'television's toughest quiz'? It is commonly referred to in this way, both by John Humphrys on the show and by the BBC generally in press releases. I agree it is certainly very difficult, but is it really the toughest?
Personally, I think that Only Connect is the toughest quiz on television - the questions rely a lot more on lateral thinking than on just knowing facts, and in the episode when they had the Eggheads on against three OC veterans the Eggheads really weren't as strong as they should have been. University Challenge also has, in my opinion, considerably more difficult questions than Mastermind. I think Pointless is also worth a mention - I wouldn't actually consider it more difficult myself, but I think it's still an argument worth having, given that it requires very obscure knowledge and the prediction of what other people will and won't know.
So why is it that Mastermind is apparently so much more difficult than these other quizzes? I'd be very interested to know what criteria is being used to determine this. I do realise that it is individual, whereas all of the other things I have pointed to are competed in teams - that possibly makes a difference, but then again half of the Mastermind questions are on subjects that the contestants have chosen for themselves anyway.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
Why is it that Mastermind is 'television's toughest quiz'? It is commonly referred to in this way, both by John Humphrys on the show and by the BBC generally in press releases. I agree it is certainly very difficult, but is it really the toughest?
Personally, I think that Only Connect is the toughest quiz on television - the questions rely a lot more on lateral thinking than on just knowing facts, and in the episode when they had the Eggheads on against three OC veterans the Eggheads really weren't as strong as they should have been. University Challenge also has, in my opinion, considerably more difficult questions than Mastermind. I think Pointless is also worth a mention - I wouldn't actually consider it more difficult myself, but I think it's still an argument worth having, given that it requires very obscure knowledge and the prediction of what other people will and won't know.
So why is it that Mastermind is apparently so much more difficult than these other quizzes? I'd be very interested to know what criteria is being used to determine this. I do realise that it is individual, whereas all of the other things I have pointed to are competed in teams - that possibly makes a difference, but then again half of the Mastermind questions are on subjects that the contestants have chosen for themselves anyway.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
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Mastermind has always made itself out to be some kind of ultimate duel between the contestant and the question setter. It was the same at its inception in the 1970s, but it has always been a bit of a fraud. It's really nothing more than a harder-than-average quiz show with the gimmick that contestants must bone up on a particular subject.
See > Mastermind BBC Disastermind TV Hell 1992. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGZxcZtkwqw especially the segment starting at 2:28
I think originally mastermind was the toughest but it's been over taken. need to come up with a more realistic catch phrase.
In fairness, Humphrys doesn't really do that any more, apart from on the celebrity editions. We get more chat with the contestants from Victoria on Only Connect. I don't think that chatting to the contestants is any reflection on how difficult the quiz is.
So it was a gamble by the BBC to place this upmarket quiz show in prime time. By the standards of the time it seemed impressively austere and brainy. It doesn't really look like that now, when people have the internet and are generally more clued-up, but at the time it was considered the ultimate TV quiz.
Also, having been on a few quizzes, Mastermind included, I can tell you I have never been so nervous as when I was waiting for my name to be called to the chair. Absolutely nowhere to hide!
20 years ago I was lucky to get one or two general knowledge questions per contestant right. Now I regularly get about half right- and I don't consider myself to be a brainbox.
If people select a tv programme as a specialist subject, and it's something I watch, I quite often do as well as the contestant, So, these days, with no serious research, I can often get 15 points (playing as if I were that contestant) and maybe 30+ right for the whole programme- compared to an average of about 6-8 20 years ago.
The older you get, the more knowledge you build up. I would barely get 1 right in the 70's but then I was an average teenager. Now I get half the general knowledge questions right and sometimes a few of the specialist subject ones.
Is that because the range of questions on many serious quiz programmes has widened? They used to be very biased towards the classics and I can remember contestants failing to answer very simple science questions and being surprised that they were expected to know anything about such a subject.
Well, I was 36 twenty years ago, so a fully formed adult.
But you would never have got subjects like 'Only Fools and Horses' allowed as a specialist subject until about 10-15 years ago. I haven't 'studied' OFAH, but it's been on so often I know most episodes word for word- so not at all difficult for me to score 10 points- something that never would have happened in the past.
Mastermind is much easier, and my score is higher.
The producers don't mind if you query their answer for the specialist subject, as long as you do it at the time. They accept that you've probably spent more time researching the subject than the question setters have.
You just have to set the questions at a high enough level. I would prefer that no fiction was allowed as a subject but that would mean no Shakespeare, Booker Prize winning novels etc.
If someone thinks that they are going to get an easy set of questions on something like Only Fools and Horses then you pick the most obscure details like names of people in very minor roles or production staff in the credits, registration numbers of vehicles etc.
Isn't it "Christmas" University challenge rather than "Celebrity"? All the contestants are alumni of the institutions on the quiz. Some are more generally famous than others (I expect most are well known in their field as mentioned above), but it doesn't seem set up as a "Celebrity" thing.
There have been Celebrity UCs - seem to remember one either for Comic Relief or Children in Need, one of the two.
Back to the original premise, I'd agree that it's the toughest as it's a one to one, no team mates to defer to or use for thinking time, just the contestant in the glare of a spotlight witha short time, and although the subjects and questions are undoubtedly easier than they were, they're still generally very verbose and need to be listened to. That too adds to the challenge - Only Connect allows teams to stare at the clues. Mastermind is a single wordy question fired at the victim. Granted not as forcefully as Magnus did, but still tough.
Brain Of Britain on R4 is the same; used to be really hard, not so much now.
Not always; contestants sometimes don't do particularly well on their specialist subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(TV_series)#Lowest_scores
Ah ok understood. I probably subconciously applied the Celebrity taint as the questions seem so much easier
There's no doubt the Celebrity Mastermind asks much easier questions, in the General Knowledge round, than does the regular edition.
I find that in the regular version I average between 6 and 8 correct answers per round (dependent probably on how much wine I've consumed by the time the round starts!!) whereas I can always achieve 10 - 12 right in the celeb. editions.
Only Connect really tests the braincells, and concentration - the latter might be easier to hold if Humphries rather than Victoria Coren-Mitchell were chairing it!!!