Saturday 27 July 2013

Only Connect: Series 7: Semi-Final 1: Festival Fans vs Celts

Sorry for the long wait, but I have only just been able to watch this week's show back. There may be similar problems this week coming.

Anyway, onto the semi-finals. Both teams had won twice to get here, but the Festival Fans (Ed Dovey, Marianne Fairthorne and Stewart McCartney) had lost a match as well; they lost to the Francophiles, but then beat the GPs and the Cat Lovers. The Celts (Beverley Downes, Huw Pritchard and David Pritchard) have quietly but confidently defeated the Cartophiles and the Cat Lovers (as well) to reach here undefeated.

Apart from the loss, the main thing that determined the favourites here was that the Celts had one comfortable win under their belt, whereas the Fans had won narrowly twice.

The first round was an evenly fought affair between the two teams, and it ended a tie 4-all. The highlight of the round was a question on the Ig-Nobel prizes, which are always good fun. One that wasn't included, but that I know of, was research into 'how many times a group photo has to be taken to be make sure no-one is blinking'.

The sequences round gave the Festival Fans a slight advantage, as they led 9-7 at the end of the round. But that advantage disappeared when they hit a truly hard Connecting Wall, getting no groups and only getting two or three points for the Connections. The Celts, on the other hand, got all four groups, and narrowly missed out on a clean sweep by missing one connections, which got them seven points, and handed them the narrow advantage of 14-12 going into the final round.

Again, like most final rounds this series, it was a hard fought one. But the Celts just managed to preserve their lead (and their unbeaten track record) to win by 20-16. And well done to them; deserving finalists. But well done to the Festival Fans for a great recovery from a shaky start to the series.

Next week, the Francophiles play the Cartophiles to decide who meets the Celts in the final. Should be another good one.

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