In snooker (which is the sport I am most familiar with and interested in) this language of halves and quarters is used quite explicitly: commentators will say things like "Let's look at the top half of the draw" with reference to the half of the players who are in principle able to reach one of the semifinals, or "He's in a much tougher quarter of the draw than the other top seeds". The draw will often be shown visually as well, as a tree narrowing down to the final on the RHS, preceded by the two semis and the four quarterfinals.
But yes, in things like Bake Off or Pottery Throw Down or Sewing Bee you have a very different structure, with typically 12 players at the start, one lost each episode, and three being left in the final, so that you have a ten-episode series. By analogy with knockout competitions, the episode before the final is called the semifinal, and the one before that the quarterfinal. Masterchef has an even more elaborate and linguistically curious approach: there are several weeks of multi-episode heats, each ending in a "quarterfinal" episode; then there is a "knockout" week which whittles the survivors of the heats down a bit; then a "semifinal" week and a "finals" week, each containing multiple episodes. The very last episode, at the end of finals week, is sometimes called the "grand final" to distinguish it!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2025-11-10 11:17 am (UTC)But yes, in things like Bake Off or Pottery Throw Down or Sewing Bee you have a very different structure, with typically 12 players at the start, one lost each episode, and three being left in the final, so that you have a ten-episode series. By analogy with knockout competitions, the episode before the final is called the semifinal, and the one before that the quarterfinal. Masterchef has an even more elaborate and linguistically curious approach: there are several weeks of multi-episode heats, each ending in a "quarterfinal" episode; then there is a "knockout" week which whittles the survivors of the heats down a bit; then a "semifinal" week and a "finals" week, each containing multiple episodes. The very last episode, at the end of finals week, is sometimes called the "grand final" to distinguish it!