I've been watching a British gameshow called Mastermind (actually, only the celebrity version is available for streaming on Britbox, but the rules are the same for both). In the first round, each contestant is grilled for 90 seconds on a subject of his or her choosing. The second round is two minutes on general knowledge--everything from pop culture to science to history to politics to...well, whatever.
What amazes me is the subjects some contestants pick for their specialty...and then how bad they are at it. A good score in either round tends to be 7 to 9 right answers. On one show this week, one of the contestants (a Brit reality show "star") chose "cetaceans"--whales, dolphins, porpoises. I presumed she either had a lifelong interest in them or had boned up on the subject in advance. Based on her answers, I would have been wrong. She got three right. I'm no expert on the subject, but I would have doubled her score.
She was no better on general knowledge, where a good score is usually 8 to 10 right. She got 5. The whole time she was whining about how this was much harder than she thought it would be. It made me wonder why she agreed/volunteered to be on the show at all.
It also made me wonder what I would choose as a specialty in the same situation. Comic books and comic strips are an obvious choice...but to narrow it to stuff I really know (and you can do that here--one contestant had a category of the movie Die Hard...not the whole franchise, just the first film) I might make it only DC superhero comics from 1960 to 1970.
What would be your specialty?
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