Weekly summary: Episodes 421 to 425

I managed to avoid any invalid declarations this week, although in one case that left me with nothing to declare.  It was a week of almosts, with my numbers work just a bit short of where it needed to be in order to let me catch David and Lily.  The end-of-week performance continues to be a worry, and only a passable conundrum solution let me escape with the win there.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Me	62	66	63	84	58
Champion	7	6	23	42	54
Challenger	27	16	14	34	16
David + Lily	74	74	84	87	78
Me (solo)	62	66	73	84	72

Ben faltered at the last, with three invalid answers in his final game.  But he still played six games; last series that would have been enough to get into the finals, so we will probably see him again.  The latter half of the week saw Jane start her run towards the finals; she has improved as she has gone on, and Friday's game was particularly strong from her.  If she keeps this form up then she stands in very good shape to make the finals.

Norm Do	67	62	58	61	59	62	369
Ann Russell	40	48	46	62	49	47	292
Ben Fisher	55	53	63	42	60	21	294
Jane Taylor*	47	54	64				165
Margaret Zimmer	38	37	52				127
Louise Broadbent	61	38					99
Craig Hill	45	40					85
Steve Malcolm	34	37					71

David found two full monties this week; there was probably another but it would come down to a ruling on legality.  The numbers were a little more awkward than usual, with one genuinely impossible round and two others that Lily needed more thinking time on.  (Plus some others where it seems that she had only just found a solution as time expired.)

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Full Monties			1	1		2
Missed Full Monties			1?			1?
Tough Numbers		1	1			2
Impossible Numbers	1					1

I had a mixed run this week, with the middle part being good for the maximums.  I solved four out of the five conundrums (although two of them only just within time), which is definitely above my average.  But I dropped a maximum result on the numbers on each day, and that thwarted my attempts to catch David and Lily.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Maximums: L	1	4	3	4	2
N	2	2	2	2	2
C	0	1	1	1	1

Contestants sorted by average score:

	Total	Games	Average
Norm Do	369	6	61.50
Jane Taylor*	165	3	55.00
Louise Broadbent	99	2	49.50
Ben Fisher	294	6	49.00
Ann Russell	292	6	48.67
Diana Greenslade	43	1	43.00
Margaret Zimmer	127	3	42.67
Craig Hill	85	2	42.50
Gavin Griffith	40	1	40.00
Steve Malcolm	71	2	35.50
James Cooper	35	1	35.00
Philip Scambler	35	1	35.00
Andrew Boyden	34	1	34.00
Donald Piggott-McKellar	34	1	34.00
Peter Ghalayini	30	1	30.00
Scott Morrow	30	1	30.00
Mathew Thomas	57	2	28.50
Marc Lissner	26	1	26.00
Ian Wanless	26	1	26.00
Zaid Abbas	24	1	24.00
Bonnie McAllister	23	1	23.00
Kylie Alexander	21	1	21.00
Cassie Palmer	20	1	20.00
John Morris	16	1	16.00
Casey Duggan	13	1	13.00
Vishal Gandhi	10	1	10.00
Patrick Johns	10	1	10.00
Hans Pieterse	6	1	6.00