The westernmost point of the American mainland is Cape Prince of Wales

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 6: Well done, you beat us!
3+ out of 6: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor

The ones that got away
1) To within 10%, how long is a year on Mercury in Earth days?
2) Of the four main characters in the 2006 movie The Departed (Spoiler warning!), which actor plays the only one who isn't dead by the end?
3) The sauces Béchamel, velouté, espagnole, Hollandaise and tomato are collectively known as what?
4) Which tissue in the human body takes its name from the Latin for 'gristle'?
5) Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, who was the original lead singer of Van Halen from 1974 to 1985? Surname suffices.
6) In the board game Risk, which is the only Asian territory that connects to North America by the Bering Strait?

The answers

1) 88 days (so 79.2 to 96.8 days gets you the point)
2) Mark Wahlberg
3) The mother sauces
4) Cartilage
5) (David Lee) Roth
6) The answer given was Yakutsk, but this seems incorrect; see below

Our excuses

1) We had a very rough stab at "it's maybe between a third and a quarter of an Earth year?" and put 150 days. Annoyingly, thanks to a recent Only Connect, I could remember almost exactly how long a Mercurial year was!
2) We'd both seen the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, on which The Departed is based, and the only actor the doctor could remember from the latter was Leonardo DiCaprio. If you've seen neither, then I'd recommend seeing the original - not least because you hopefully won't have been spoilered for it by this question.
3) Despite spending an awful lot of time watching Masterchef, we couldn't figure this one out (although the answer range a bell). I quite liked our guess of "the five sauces" - like the five senses (geddit?) - though.
4) With his record on sort-of-medical quiz questions, and not knowing what gristle was, the doctor was in his element here. We went with sinew.
5) I'm starting to think the key to surviving music questions in North America is to familiarize oneself with every single member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As always with these sorts of questions, we recognized the answer, at least, but would never have got it.
6) I know, we were the Board Gamers on Only Connect, but neither of us has played Risk in about 15 years. I'm also not entirely sure this answer is correct; as far as I can tell it should be Kamchatka. Edit: Twitterer @MentalJargon has provided these handy photos that confirms yes, this is indeed the answer. Thanks!

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 point or more)? Would you have helped us win (3 points or more)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
1) Derived from Mercury Surface, Space, Geochemistry, and Ranging, what is the appropriate, albeit somewhat contrived, name given to the first spacecraft to orbit the planet?
2) Before quitting (he would later lead hip-hop group Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch), Mark Wahlberg was an original member of which boy band?
3) Though used for centuries in Tuscan cuisine, Béchamel sauce was renamed after the chief steward to which seventeenth Century King of France (also known as the Sun King)?
4) Also known as degenerative joint disease, loss of cartilage at a bone joint can give rise to what medical condition?
5) Despite being founded by brothers Alex and Eddie Van Halen, the band originally formed in 1972 under what Biblical name? They discovered it was already being used by a British group, who wouldn't top the US charts until 1986.
6) The standard Risk territories attempt to represent real-life geographical or political regions. This leads to a lot of compass points, including North Africa, Southern Europe, and Western United States. Which is the only standard Risk territory to end with a compass direction?

The answers

1) MESSENGER (MErcury, Surface, Space, ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging)
2) New Kids on the Block (the band's original name, Nynuk, is also acceptable)
3) Louis the fourteenth
4) Osteoarthritis ('arthritis' also acceptable)
5) Genesis (the 1986 single was Invisible Touch)
6) Middle East

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!