Is Mastermind Unfair?

[DTCwordfan]

Tonight the leader after phase 1 has 16 points on her specialist subject, her nearest rival, 13.

On General Knowledge, the other three score 12 to 13 as I did......come the Leaders (her) turn, she gets whacked with unbelievably difficult questions. She scored seven and was in 3rd position with 23, the winner jumping from 11 (on the first round) to 26. I scored 7 too on that round, the questions nearly 50% harder...

Unbelievably biased and unfair, perhaps?.........Anybody else have the same vibes tonight as to the consistency of the standard of the question?

[Zacs-Master]

'if she had the gen knowledge'

But isn't that the whole point? You've got to have the specialist knowledge and the general knowledge.

[ducksie]

I think she and others like her get so into their specialist knowedge round that when it comes to general knowledge, even though she may know the answers she feels/felt like a cat in the headlights, the answer could be on the tip of her tongue but she just can't think of the answer. They're not trick questions therefore not unfair, all questions are general knowledge

[Peter Pedant]

DTC there are times when I seem to know a run and then another week zilch and I concluded the question setter had read the same book as I had.......

[joko]

but how do you know that?
you are just guessing based on the questions you knew

you don't know her so cannot say what she would or wouldn't have known

besides anything - why would they fix it for her to lose? why would they bother risking being found out?
why her?

[shaneystar2]

I watched this earlier and I could answer 12 of her GK questions .I admit I fast forwarded just to her as I don't really watch Mastermind on a regular basis these days .
She was very nervous .Having got the highest score in the specialist subject round she floundered .
You could see some of the answers were on the tip of her tongue but she just dried up. You either know them or you don't .It's easy to be critical when you're sitting in your own armchair but I daresay it's a whole different ball game when you're sitting in that particular chair :)