Thursday 9 August 2012

Weekly summary: Episodes 16 to 20

A week of games against Andrew Fisher was always going to be exceptionally tough, but I surprised myself with my results: Three solid wins, and one of the losses by but a single point.  The very unexpected aspect (which contributed significantly to these results) is that I managed to outpoint Andrew on nine of the letters games, only two of those due to invalid word choices on his part (although a third invalid choice coincided with a longer word from me); in contrast I was only outpointed five times with no invalid words.


MonTueWedThuFri
Me7236697358
Champion3957484459
Challenger3522161020
David + Lily7771758976
Me (solo)7256748764


Andrew completed his run and successfully retired with a phenomenal aggregate of 415 points, an average of just under 70 points a game.  Fantastic stuff!

Andrew Fisher956364676759415
Chris Scholten-Smith454748473840265
Aaron Tyrrell51356118165
Sudesh Piyatissa375734128
Stephen Farrelly26303086
Rob York524294


A couple of full monties this week, both of which I was very happy to spot.  There was an impossible numbers game on Tuesday, which I was somewhat less happy about. *chuckles*


MonTueWedThuFri
Full Monties112
Missed Full Monties0
Tough Numbers0
Impossible Numbers1
1


I had some early troubles with the numbers, but settled down for the latter half of the week.  The letters results were generally strong for a pretty good run.  If COMEDIAS (see episode 18) is considered valid then Wednesday's result should be decreased by one.


MonTueWedThuFri
Maximums: L53434
N12333
C10110


Contestants sorted by average score:


TotalGamesAverage
Andrew Fisher415669.17
Rob York94247.00
Chris Scholten-Smith265644.17
Sudesh Piyatissa128342.67
Aaron Tyrell165441.25
Tanya Ithier41141.00
Chaitanya Rao38138.00
Jason Stockdale37137.00
Lara Cassar35135.00
Andrew Patterson35135.00
Elaine Miles33133.00
Jenny Blair33133.00
Alexis Harley32132.00
Alan Stewart29129.00
Adib Surani29129.00
Stephen Farrelly86328.67
Helen Robinson27127.00
Michael Gin25125.00
Les Ramsay25125.00
Jane Cleary23123.00
Nick Taubert19119.00
Dawn Tuftan15115.00

2 comments:

Mike Backhouse said...

Blogger did not work with my previous comment so here's another go.

Geoff, well done as usual, particularly against Andrew Fisher.

Given your experience on the show, is it easier to perform better at home compared to the lights, cameras and pressure of the studio?

In the first table, what is the difference in how you calculate Me and Me Solo?

That same table also indicates how consistently the team of Lily and David outscore the contestants, and what a loss the show is.

I notice that on the the L and N site, after all these weeks since the announcement, episode comments are still consistently pleas for the show to be brought back rather than say alternative maths calculations etc.

Geoff Bailey said...

Thanks, Mike. It's definitely easier to perform in the more comfortable environment of home, at least for me. That said, the lights/cameras/audience did not bother me (that I recall) when I was on the show; however, the difference in pressure is clearly great -- even though I compete against the contestants and everyone else here, further play does not hinge on success or failure. It's impossible to quantify the difference that makes, but I believe it is significant.

(Part of that "nothing on the line" approach is that I can risk a little more, and on the whole that has been paying off.)

In the first table, the top section has the scores for the three-cornered game where only the best result(s) will score. Often this means that contestant scores are less than on the show due to me finding a better answer on some round. Similarly, I may not have scored points on some round due to a contestant finding a better answer (or getting to the conundrum first).

The bottom section of that table has the solo totals for the David and Lily combination and myself. These are scores taken in isolation, by just adding up the results gained in each round, no matter if someone had a better one.

For instance, on Thursday's game my solo total was 14 points greater than my game total, due to Andrew's finds of COGNATES and GLADIATE beating my BEACONS and OTALGIA. Tuesday's game had an even larger difference of 20 points due to similar circumstances, but I also flubbed a numbers round.

I only list solo totals for David and Lily instead of trying a head-to-head comparison as they are generally too good, and I'm interested in just how close I can get. (Also, often it's not clear if they have actually found a particular answer supplied by the contestants; although I assume that they have for the purposes of solo scoring unless otherwise noted, I'm pretty sure that a couple of times this has not been the case.)