Elimination competitions

[mtbc]

Many television reality competitions have a format where they start with many contestants and eliminate one-ish each episode. Once we get to the last small handful, we hold the final.

One thing that surprised me at first but seems commonplace is the idea that the semifinal is before the final, then before that is the quarterfinal, etc. I can understand that in two-contestant-trial knockout matches, as one can find in some tournaments between sports teams. Then, the teams in the quarterfinals are in the final for a quarter of the teams, the teams in the semfinals are in the final for half (semi) of the teams, etc. However, this model doesn't fit the current reality shows at all.

Perhaps my reasoning fits the original meaning, then the typical thing happened where a precise word was broadened into becoming rather less useful. Or, I was just mistaken from the start.

Comments

[mtbc]

That's certainly inventive, thank you for the summary! I'd not followed Masterchef for very many years so I hadn't realized.

My father watched snooker so perhaps it makes sense for me to feel rather aware of the what the words may mean in that regard. I still like watching snooker but it's more a case of if it happens to be on and I want to kill some time gently (and the sports betting advertising is now a bit in-one's-face). I rather miss the past workplace where my typical Friday afternoon included my playing a colleague in the campus' nice snooker room, we were equally bad at it.