Since the first fifty episodes are out of the way, I can cross-check them against the published book. That's the blue book, since they did not start numbering them until book 5. The majority of issues are in the solutions; although there are a few issues which should be corrected with the rounds, only one of them would stop one playing through accurately (although two more do affect the word mixes).
I'll note that they use the terms 'round' and 'game' with reversed meanings compared to how I generally use them. That is, they regard an episode as a round (whereas I would call it a game) and an individual scoring section within the episode as a game (whereas I would call it a round). I will try to be consistent with their usage rather than mine; apologies in advance if I slip up, though.
One notable difference between the books and the show is that for numbers games the books generally presents the numbers in the opposite order (small numbers on the left, large numbers on the right). Consequently, when I mention cases below of this order being reversed I am stating that the book is displaying the numbers in the same order in which they appeared on the show; this warrants correction since it is not consistent with the general policy of the books.
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Saturday, 29 September 2012
Weekly summary: Episodes 56 to 60
It was a week for the challengers, with four of the five games being won
by them; it was also one of the most vowel-heavy weeks that I recall,
averaging 4.12 vowels per letters round. A good numbers result let me gain the lead over David and Lily on Tuesday's solo totals; the other rounds were all pretty good, and if I'd managed to solve the conundrum on Thursday then I'd have my closest result so far to them on weekly aggregate.
No change to the finals rankings this week, which is not surprising as it will take four games to get onto it.
David went one from two on the full monties this week, as did I. I safely navigated the numbers round that proved difficult to Lily, and did as well as possible on the impossible target (as did Lily).
It was a good week for my numbers maxima; in fact, it was the first week this series that I have not dropped one, so that's nice. The letters results were maybe a touch over average, and for the third week in a row I've solved four conundrums but not five. Overall these are pretty good results, although the conundrum speed is an issue as ever.
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | 75 | 87 | 74 | 68 | 67 |
| Champion | 16 | 0 | 6 | 10 | 22 |
| Challenger | 20 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 28 |
| David + Lily | 78 | 85 | 75 | 79 | 74 |
| Me (solo) | 75 | 87 | 74 | 68 | 72 |
No change to the finals rankings this week, which is not surprising as it will take four games to get onto it.
| Andrew Fisher | 95 | 63 | 64 | 67 | 67 | 59 | 415 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naween Fernando | 73 | 60 | 64 | 94 | 64 | 56 | 411 |
| David Jones | 63 | 63 | 50 | 61 | 55 | 53 | 346 |
| Liam Bastick | 48 | 60 | 48 | 46 | 50 | 72 | 324 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 45 | 47 | 48 | 47 | 38 | 40 | 265 |
| Kashi Ross | 48 | 46 | 34 | 41 | 45 | 32 | 246 |
| Esther Perrins | 55 | 43 | 75 | 46 | 219 | ||
| Aaron Tyrrell | 51 | 35 | 61 | 18 | 165 |
David went one from two on the full monties this week, as did I. I safely navigated the numbers round that proved difficult to Lily, and did as well as possible on the impossible target (as did Lily).
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Missed Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Tough Numbers | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Impossible Numbers | 1 | 1 |
It was a good week for my numbers maxima; in fact, it was the first week this series that I have not dropped one, so that's nice. The letters results were maybe a touch over average, and for the third week in a row I've solved four conundrums but not five. Overall these are pretty good results, although the conundrum speed is an issue as ever.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximums: L | 2 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| N | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| C | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Total | Games | Average | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Fisher | 415 | 6 | 69.17 |
| Naween Fernando | 411 | 6 | 68.50 |
| Sam Chow | 65 | 1 | 65.00 |
| David Jones | 346 | 6 | 57.67 |
| Esther Perrins | 219 | 4 | 54.75 |
| James Weatherhead | 164 | 3 | 54.67 |
| Liam Bastick | 324 | 6 | 54.00 |
| Angus Kidman | 103 | 2 | 51.50 |
| Rob York | 94 | 2 | 47.00 |
| Jayanthi Viswanathan | 140 | 3 | 46.67 |
| Pravin Dullur | 45 | 1 | 45.00 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 265 | 6 | 44.17 |
| Geoff Heard | 88 | 2 | 44.00 |
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 128 | 3 | 42.67 |
| Yolanda Sztarr | 127 | 3 | 42.33 |
| Aaron Tyrell | 165 | 4 | 41.25 |
| Kashi Ross | 246 | 6 | 41.00 |
| Peter Stegelman | 82 | 2 | 41.00 |
| Veronica Corrigan* | 41 | 1 | 41.00 |
| Tanya Ithier | 41 | 1 | 41.00 |
| Amanda Mendizza | 40 | 1 | 40.00 |
| Keith De La Rue | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Kiao Inthavong | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Jonathan Scarlett | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Chaitanya Rao | 38 | 1 | 38.00 |
| Ian See | 113 | 3 | 37.67 |
| Jason Stockdale | 37 | 1 | 37.00 |
| Rob Mould | 70 | 2 | 35.00 |
| Rolli Pick | 70 | 2 | 35.00 |
| Lara Cassar | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Andrew Patterson | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Chris Ryan | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Beckett Rozentals | 34 | 1 | 34.00 |
| Elaine Miles | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Jenny Blair | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Alexis Harley | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| James Pho | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| Erez Gordon | 31 | 1 | 31.00 |
| Ben Strate | 30 | 1 | 30.00 |
| Alan Stewart | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Adib Surani | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Stephen Farrelly | 86 | 3 | 28.67 |
| Michael Clark | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Tristan Leech | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Helen Robinson | 27 | 1 | 27.00 |
| Michael Gin | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Les Ramsay | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Rachael Bausor | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Brian Lynch | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Stavroula Nicholls | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Robin Wedd | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Jane Cleary | 23 | 1 | 23.00 |
| Mark Mota | 22 | 1 | 22.00 |
| Brendan Murphy | 22 | 1 | 22.00 |
| Jim Bailey | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Daniel Pratt | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Matt Woodley | 20 | 1 | 20.00 |
| Nick Taubert | 19 | 1 | 19.00 |
| Arthur Barrs | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Carol Campbell | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Dawn Tuftan | 15 | 1 | 15.00 |
| Bassem Abousaid | 12 | 1 | 12.00 |
| Frances Weinberg | 10 | 1 | 10.00 |
| Dean Schwab | 7 | 1 | 7.00 |
| Paul Hughes | 6 | 1 | 6.00 |
| Andrew Bullen | 5 | 1 | 5.00 |
Ep 60: Yolanda Sztarr, Veronica Corrigan (September 28, 2012; originally aired October 22, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
This is Yolanda Sztarr's third night, and we find out that her greatest achievement was renovating a derelict Victorian home. Yolanda expands on this a bit: Her boyfriend is an architect and builder, and he has done a really good design for the house, one that is quite sustainable and beautiful and minimalist. She says it is just a beautiful place to live; obviously she is very proud of the contributions she has made towards its existence.
Challenging Yolanda tonight is Veronica Corrigan, a third-year medical student who has recently taken up ballet... again. Veronica first started ballet when she was five and then stopped after school, which was about four years ago. She has only just taken it up again and has found it a bit of a struggle but is enjoying it; she finds it good to have an artistic outlet to balance the rigorous study required by medicine.
The game started with a matched round, and then Yolanda drew ahead thanks to a good word and a tough numbers round. But Veronica turned the tables in the second third, finding the longer word and a better numbers answer to take the lead by a point. Two shared rounds followed and the difference was still one point going into the conundrum. It proved to be rather difficult and neither solved it, so Veronica got the win by 41 points to 40.
There were some tough letters rounds today -- too many vowels tends to do that -- and I missed a couple of findable maxima, one of which was depressingly clear in hindsight. Ah, well. The numbers behaved themselves for me, and although I was slow on the conundrum I got there in the end. Overall a decent game with not too much potential.
This is Yolanda Sztarr's third night, and we find out that her greatest achievement was renovating a derelict Victorian home. Yolanda expands on this a bit: Her boyfriend is an architect and builder, and he has done a really good design for the house, one that is quite sustainable and beautiful and minimalist. She says it is just a beautiful place to live; obviously she is very proud of the contributions she has made towards its existence.
Challenging Yolanda tonight is Veronica Corrigan, a third-year medical student who has recently taken up ballet... again. Veronica first started ballet when she was five and then stopped after school, which was about four years ago. She has only just taken it up again and has found it a bit of a struggle but is enjoying it; she finds it good to have an artistic outlet to balance the rigorous study required by medicine.
The game started with a matched round, and then Yolanda drew ahead thanks to a good word and a tough numbers round. But Veronica turned the tables in the second third, finding the longer word and a better numbers answer to take the lead by a point. Two shared rounds followed and the difference was still one point going into the conundrum. It proved to be rather difficult and neither solved it, so Veronica got the win by 41 points to 40.
There were some tough letters rounds today -- too many vowels tends to do that -- and I missed a couple of findable maxima, one of which was depressingly clear in hindsight. Ah, well. The numbers behaved themselves for me, and although I was slow on the conundrum I got there in the end. Overall a decent game with not too much potential.
Friday, 28 September 2012
Ep 59: Yolanda Sztarr, Mark Mota (September 27, 2012; originally aired October 21, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Yolanda Sztarr gets her first turn in the champion's seat, and presumably hopes to break the run of short-lasting champions. Yolanda first learnt to ride a bike during her university years, which is unusually late, but she has since embraced riding with a lot of enthusiasm. She thinks it has been wonderful in a lot of ways, and in particular she met her boyfriend eight years ago on a bicycle ride. She uses her bike for transport, on holidays, cycle touring... she even rode it to the studio today.
Tonight's challenger is Mark Mota, an accountant who made a new year's resolution some years back to run a marathon. And last year (2009, that would be) he did manage to do so. Mark was living in London at the time, so he took part in the London Marathon. Not the best time, he says, but he did finish it, and that's all he was trying to do.
Yolanda got an early lead in the first round, and then a couple of shared rounds followed. She forged ahead with three excellent words (even if not the best possible) in the remaining rounds, and the numbers went a bit each way. Yolanda was safe going into the conundrum (indeed, safe going into the final numbers round) and it proved to be a tough one. Neither was able to solve it, but Yolanda broke the recent losing streak of champions with her second win, 49 to 22.
I found some a couple of good words today, but missed another tough one that feels like it was findable. The numbers posed no problem but the conundrum was too hard for me; still, I'd done more than enough and overall it was a decent game.
Yolanda Sztarr gets her first turn in the champion's seat, and presumably hopes to break the run of short-lasting champions. Yolanda first learnt to ride a bike during her university years, which is unusually late, but she has since embraced riding with a lot of enthusiasm. She thinks it has been wonderful in a lot of ways, and in particular she met her boyfriend eight years ago on a bicycle ride. She uses her bike for transport, on holidays, cycle touring... she even rode it to the studio today.
Tonight's challenger is Mark Mota, an accountant who made a new year's resolution some years back to run a marathon. And last year (2009, that would be) he did manage to do so. Mark was living in London at the time, so he took part in the London Marathon. Not the best time, he says, but he did finish it, and that's all he was trying to do.
Yolanda got an early lead in the first round, and then a couple of shared rounds followed. She forged ahead with three excellent words (even if not the best possible) in the remaining rounds, and the numbers went a bit each way. Yolanda was safe going into the conundrum (indeed, safe going into the final numbers round) and it proved to be a tough one. Neither was able to solve it, but Yolanda broke the recent losing streak of champions with her second win, 49 to 22.
I found some a couple of good words today, but missed another tough one that feels like it was findable. The numbers posed no problem but the conundrum was too hard for me; still, I'd done more than enough and overall it was a decent game.
Thursday, 27 September 2012
Ep 58: Rolli Pick, Yolanda Sztarr (September 26, 2012; originally aired October 20, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Rolli Pick is back, and he enjoys the travel opportunities that his job provides him (as a reminder, he is a part-time travel sales and product manager). Rolli has travelled quite extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. One of his favourite places in the world is Canada, and particularly southern Alberta where the Rocky Mountains meet the US border. He says it is called "Big Sky Country" (I gather that is slightly more accurately a term for Montana), and that it is just stunning -- wilderness, side of a lake, mountainside... just beautiful.
Tonight's challenger is Yolanda Sztarr, a research and development tax consultant with a double degree in chemical engineering and science. Yolanda also keeps busy with what she calls "home-based chemical engineering". When she was young she loved baking cakes and experimenting with such things, and she sees chemical engineering as an outgrowth of that. More recently she decided that she should put her years of study to use and has been making her own moisturisers and cleaning products and such.
The contestants started with a couple of matched rounds, but then an error from Rolli in the first numbers round let Yolanda take the lead. Yolanda extended her lead in the next round but Rolli gained some of the ground back on the second numbers round. The last letters round was shared and a final impossible numbers target proved to be too difficult for the contestants to get close to/ The game came down to the conundrum but when neither could solve it Yolanda was the victor, 38 points to 31.
I had a good game, just dropping the one maximum towards the end. The conundrum took me a while but I got there just short of halfway through to round it out, and it's nice to have put together two good games in a row.
Rolli Pick is back, and he enjoys the travel opportunities that his job provides him (as a reminder, he is a part-time travel sales and product manager). Rolli has travelled quite extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. One of his favourite places in the world is Canada, and particularly southern Alberta where the Rocky Mountains meet the US border. He says it is called "Big Sky Country" (I gather that is slightly more accurately a term for Montana), and that it is just stunning -- wilderness, side of a lake, mountainside... just beautiful.
Tonight's challenger is Yolanda Sztarr, a research and development tax consultant with a double degree in chemical engineering and science. Yolanda also keeps busy with what she calls "home-based chemical engineering". When she was young she loved baking cakes and experimenting with such things, and she sees chemical engineering as an outgrowth of that. More recently she decided that she should put her years of study to use and has been making her own moisturisers and cleaning products and such.
The contestants started with a couple of matched rounds, but then an error from Rolli in the first numbers round let Yolanda take the lead. Yolanda extended her lead in the next round but Rolli gained some of the ground back on the second numbers round. The last letters round was shared and a final impossible numbers target proved to be too difficult for the contestants to get close to/ The game came down to the conundrum but when neither could solve it Yolanda was the victor, 38 points to 31.
I had a good game, just dropping the one maximum towards the end. The conundrum took me a while but I got there just short of halfway through to round it out, and it's nice to have put together two good games in a row.
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Ep 57: Peter Stegelman, Rolli Pick (September 25, 2012; originally aired October 19, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
SBS has switched how the online video is delivered yet again, resulting in somewhat glitchy viewing for me. Fortunately it only impacted the game seriously once, costing me about five seconds in a round where I found a best answer early.
Peter Stegelman gets his turn in the champion's seat, and Richard informs us that Peter is a keen traveller. Peter likes visiting other cultures and seeing other places around the world. He also likes to watch the football (soccer) where possible; he has been to a few games in Australia and also some in the English Premier League, which he says was quite an experience -- they have to segregate the crowds and such.
Challenging Peter is Rolli Pick, a financial services student and part-time travel sales and product manager. Rolli wants to own a bookkeeping business; this is because his son Max (six years old at time of filming) has Asperger's Syndrome and a love of numbers. Rolli would really love for Max -- assuming that he is interested! -- to be able to walk into a family business when he is old enough.
The game opened with a very helpful mix that neither contestant made much use of but which Rolli handled slightly better. Several of the remaining rounds were shared, but the general trend was that Rolli did a touch better in the letters and Peter managed to stay in touch thanks to the numbers rounds. Rolli was ahead but not safe going into the conundrum; Peter buzzed in first but without a valid answer, and Rolli was not able to solve it either but won the game, 39 to 33.
I had quite a good game tonight, just dropping the one letters maximum. I was pretty sure the longer answer was available but it took me a while after time to find it. My conundrum speed was a bit slower than I would have liked but still decent, and I managed to find a good solution to a numbers round that eluded Lily, meaning that my solo total was better than David and Lily's; that is always treasured.
SBS has switched how the online video is delivered yet again, resulting in somewhat glitchy viewing for me. Fortunately it only impacted the game seriously once, costing me about five seconds in a round where I found a best answer early.
Peter Stegelman gets his turn in the champion's seat, and Richard informs us that Peter is a keen traveller. Peter likes visiting other cultures and seeing other places around the world. He also likes to watch the football (soccer) where possible; he has been to a few games in Australia and also some in the English Premier League, which he says was quite an experience -- they have to segregate the crowds and such.
Challenging Peter is Rolli Pick, a financial services student and part-time travel sales and product manager. Rolli wants to own a bookkeeping business; this is because his son Max (six years old at time of filming) has Asperger's Syndrome and a love of numbers. Rolli would really love for Max -- assuming that he is interested! -- to be able to walk into a family business when he is old enough.
The game opened with a very helpful mix that neither contestant made much use of but which Rolli handled slightly better. Several of the remaining rounds were shared, but the general trend was that Rolli did a touch better in the letters and Peter managed to stay in touch thanks to the numbers rounds. Rolli was ahead but not safe going into the conundrum; Peter buzzed in first but without a valid answer, and Rolli was not able to solve it either but won the game, 39 to 33.
I had quite a good game tonight, just dropping the one letters maximum. I was pretty sure the longer answer was available but it took me a while after time to find it. My conundrum speed was a bit slower than I would have liked but still decent, and I managed to find a good solution to a numbers round that eluded Lily, meaning that my solo total was better than David and Lily's; that is always treasured.
Ep 56: Jayanthi Viswanathan, Peter Stegelman (September 24, 2012; originally aired October 18, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Jayanthi Viswanathan has her third game tonight, and we find out that she is a huge crime fiction enthusiast. Jayanthi's favourite way to relax is with some Agatha Christie -- "a little bit of murder, a little bit of intrigue", as she puts it.
Tonight's challenger is Peter Stegelman, an accountant who loves travelling, watching cricket and football, and enjoys baking. Peter very much enjoys getting in the kitchen and whipping up a cake or a slice; he says that what he does best is probably chocolate cake, and I have to say that is a fine thing to be proficient in.
Jayanthi started well in the letters, getting a good early lead, but Peter pegged some of it back in the first numbers round. Jayanthi extended her lead again in the next letters round, then an invalid declaration cost her points. Two shared rounds followed, and then Peter capitalised on Jayanthi's weakness in the numbers to take the lead going into the conundrum. He solved it first in any case, getting a 49 to 34 point win.
I missed a few words I would have liked to have found, but it was still a reasonable performance. I solved the conundrum quickly, although in part that was due to buzzing in with the wrong answer in mind but correcting that within time. Once more I avoided the trap of a tempting invalid word, and finished with quite a comfortable victory.
Jayanthi Viswanathan has her third game tonight, and we find out that she is a huge crime fiction enthusiast. Jayanthi's favourite way to relax is with some Agatha Christie -- "a little bit of murder, a little bit of intrigue", as she puts it.
Tonight's challenger is Peter Stegelman, an accountant who loves travelling, watching cricket and football, and enjoys baking. Peter very much enjoys getting in the kitchen and whipping up a cake or a slice; he says that what he does best is probably chocolate cake, and I have to say that is a fine thing to be proficient in.
Jayanthi started well in the letters, getting a good early lead, but Peter pegged some of it back in the first numbers round. Jayanthi extended her lead again in the next letters round, then an invalid declaration cost her points. Two shared rounds followed, and then Peter capitalised on Jayanthi's weakness in the numbers to take the lead going into the conundrum. He solved it first in any case, getting a 49 to 34 point win.
I missed a few words I would have liked to have found, but it was still a reasonable performance. I solved the conundrum quickly, although in part that was due to buzzing in with the wrong answer in mind but correcting that within time. Once more I avoided the trap of a tempting invalid word, and finished with quite a comfortable victory.
Saturday, 22 September 2012
Weekly summary: Episodes 51 to 55
I was much more consistent this week, although there's still substantial variation due to full monties and the conundrum. I did miss a few words I should have found, but was nowhere near the lowlights of the last couple of weeks. I also found three words longer than David managed (within time), and one numbers solution that eluded Lily, so there were some definite positive notes.
Liam Bastick successfully retired and takes a solid fourth place. The leader board is looking very crowded with six-gamers, and even Kashi Ross's position is a bit tenuous at this point.
David found the full monty on Monday and Thursday, but Tuesday's one eluded him; I was pleased to find all three of them this week. Two numbers rounds proved troublesome to Lily, one of which I managed to solve. A genuinely impossible target livened things up on Tuesday, and it has been a moderately interesting week.
A few missed maxima that I should have found, but overall a better performance (or perhaps friendlier rounds) than the last couple of weeks.
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | 64 | 82 | 75 | 85 | 68 |
| Champion | 26 | 33 | 50 | 0 | 30 |
| Challenger | 10 | 10 | 16 | 22 | 10 |
| David + Lily | 86 | 74 | 76 | 84 | 77 |
| Me (solo) | 64 | 82 | 75 | 85 | 74 |
Liam Bastick successfully retired and takes a solid fourth place. The leader board is looking very crowded with six-gamers, and even Kashi Ross's position is a bit tenuous at this point.
| Andrew Fisher | 95 | 63 | 64 | 67 | 67 | 59 | 415 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naween Fernando | 73 | 60 | 64 | 94 | 64 | 56 | 411 |
| David Jones | 63 | 63 | 50 | 61 | 55 | 53 | 346 |
| Liam Bastick | 48 | 60 | 48 | 46 | 50 | 72 | 324 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 45 | 47 | 48 | 47 | 38 | 40 | 265 |
| Kashi Ross | 48 | 46 | 34 | 41 | 45 | 32 | 246 |
| Esther Perrins | 55 | 43 | 75 | 46 | 219 | ||
| Aaron Tyrrell | 51 | 35 | 61 | 18 | 165 |
David found the full monty on Monday and Thursday, but Tuesday's one eluded him; I was pleased to find all three of them this week. Two numbers rounds proved troublesome to Lily, one of which I managed to solve. A genuinely impossible target livened things up on Tuesday, and it has been a moderately interesting week.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full Monties | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||
| Missed Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Tough Numbers | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||
| Impossible Numbers | 1 | 1 |
A few missed maxima that I should have found, but overall a better performance (or perhaps friendlier rounds) than the last couple of weeks.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximums: L | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| N | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| C | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Total | Games | Average | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Fisher | 415 | 6 | 69.17 |
| Naween Fernando | 411 | 6 | 68.50 |
| Sam Chow | 65 | 1 | 65.00 |
| David Jones | 346 | 6 | 57.67 |
| Esther Perrins | 219 | 4 | 54.75 |
| James Weatherhead | 164 | 3 | 54.67 |
| Liam Bastick | 324 | 6 | 54.00 |
| Jayanthi Viswanathan* | 106 | 2 | 53.00 |
| Angus Kidman | 103 | 2 | 51.50 |
| Rob York | 94 | 2 | 47.00 |
| Pravin Dullur | 45 | 1 | 45.00 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 265 | 6 | 44.17 |
| Geoff Heard | 88 | 2 | 44.00 |
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 128 | 3 | 42.67 |
| Aaron Tyrell | 165 | 4 | 41.25 |
| Kashi Ross | 246 | 6 | 41.00 |
| Tanya Ithier | 41 | 1 | 41.00 |
| Amanda Mendizza | 40 | 1 | 40.00 |
| Keith De La Rue | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Kiao Inthavong | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Jonathan Scarlett | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Chaitanya Rao | 38 | 1 | 38.00 |
| Ian See | 113 | 3 | 37.67 |
| Jason Stockdale | 37 | 1 | 37.00 |
| Rob Mould | 70 | 2 | 35.00 |
| Lara Cassar | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Andrew Patterson | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Chris Ryan | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Beckett Rozentals | 34 | 1 | 34.00 |
| Elaine Miles | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Jenny Blair | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Alexis Harley | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| James Pho | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| Erez Gordon | 31 | 1 | 31.00 |
| Ben Strate | 30 | 1 | 30.00 |
| Alan Stewart | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Adib Surani | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Stephen Farrelly | 86 | 3 | 28.67 |
| Michael Clark | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Tristan Leech | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Helen Robinson | 27 | 1 | 27.00 |
| Michael Gin | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Les Ramsay | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Rachael Bausor | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Brian Lynch | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Stavroula Nicholls | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Robin Wedd | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Jane Cleary | 23 | 1 | 23.00 |
| Brendan Murphy | 22 | 1 | 22.00 |
| Jim Bailey | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Daniel Pratt | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Matt Woodley | 20 | 1 | 20.00 |
| Nick Taubert | 19 | 1 | 19.00 |
| Arthur Barrs | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Carol Campbell | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Dawn Tuftan | 15 | 1 | 15.00 |
| Bassem Abousaid | 12 | 1 | 12.00 |
| Frances Weinberg | 10 | 1 | 10.00 |
| Dean Schwab | 7 | 1 | 7.00 |
| Paul Hughes | 6 | 1 | 6.00 |
| Andrew Bullen | 5 | 1 | 5.00 |
Friday, 21 September 2012
Ep 55: Jayanthi Viswanathan, Keith De La Rue (September 21, 2012; originally aired Otober 15, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Jayanthi Viswanathan is back, getting her first turn in the champion's seat. Richard mentions that Jayanthi loves to travel and asks her about her favourite destination. Jayanthi responds that the place she has been to most is India; the more she goes, the more she discovers about the country and where she came from, and she thinks that is really important.
Tonight's challenger is Keith De La Rue, a knowledge management consultant with a degree in applied science. Keith travels the world as a keynote speaker, but Richard wants to know what knowledge management is. Keith explains that organisations depend a lot on what people know, and knowledge management is about enabling that knowledge to be shared so that the whole organisation can benefit from it.
Jayanthi got out to an early lead, outdoing Keith in the first three rounds to be ahead by twenty points at the first break. That was too much to overcome, in the end; Keith managed to match her in the second third of the game, but the final letters round ensured her victory. Keith got the consolation prize of solving the conundrum, but Jayanthi got the win, 56 to 39.
I was in rather spotty form, struggling with a few letters rounds. Twice I saw the best option with only a second left on the clock and not enough time to get it written down; that was frustrating. The words were in my grasp, but not quite fast enough. There was a minor consolation in finding one longer word than David, and aside from the first two rounds it was a pretty satisfactory game.
Jayanthi Viswanathan is back, getting her first turn in the champion's seat. Richard mentions that Jayanthi loves to travel and asks her about her favourite destination. Jayanthi responds that the place she has been to most is India; the more she goes, the more she discovers about the country and where she came from, and she thinks that is really important.
Tonight's challenger is Keith De La Rue, a knowledge management consultant with a degree in applied science. Keith travels the world as a keynote speaker, but Richard wants to know what knowledge management is. Keith explains that organisations depend a lot on what people know, and knowledge management is about enabling that knowledge to be shared so that the whole organisation can benefit from it.
Jayanthi got out to an early lead, outdoing Keith in the first three rounds to be ahead by twenty points at the first break. That was too much to overcome, in the end; Keith managed to match her in the second third of the game, but the final letters round ensured her victory. Keith got the consolation prize of solving the conundrum, but Jayanthi got the win, 56 to 39.
I was in rather spotty form, struggling with a few letters rounds. Twice I saw the best option with only a second left on the clock and not enough time to get it written down; that was frustrating. The words were in my grasp, but not quite fast enough. There was a minor consolation in finding one longer word than David, and aside from the first two rounds it was a pretty satisfactory game.
Ep 54: Bassem Abousaid, Jayanthi Viswanathan (September 20, 2012; originally aired October 14, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
There are two new contestants tonight since Liam successfully retired yesterday. Taking the champion's position is Bassem Abousaid, an I.T. professional who loves professional wrestling and even commentates at wrestling events. Bassem has been interested in wrestling since it was televised in the 80's and has been commentating for it since 2004.
(I remember the professional wrestling back then! I used to sneak out of bed on Tuesday nights after my parents had gone to bed and stay up all night watching television; the wrestling was one of the shows in the lineup.)
Taking the challenger's position is Jayanthi Viswanathan, a secondary school mathematics teacher who is the author of a textbook on introductory calculus. Her aim is to make calculus accessible and fun; Richard asks how she manages that, and Jayanthi responds that she tries to take the jargon out of it and introduce calculus to students in a way that makes sense and builds upon what they have learned in previous years.
Bassem fell victim to a phantom letter in the first round, and never really made much progress after that. He managed to match Jayanthi twice in letters rounds, but had another invalid answer that left him trailing significantly. Neither contestant really dealt that well with the numbers but Jayanthi had the better of it, and she finished it all off by solving the conundrum for a 50 to 12 victory.
I had a decent game tonight, twice beaten by David but managing to outdo Lily in one numbers round to end up just ahead on the solo aggregate. That's always a result to be happy about, and I got my second score in the 80's this week thanks to a reasonably straightforward full monty.
There are two new contestants tonight since Liam successfully retired yesterday. Taking the champion's position is Bassem Abousaid, an I.T. professional who loves professional wrestling and even commentates at wrestling events. Bassem has been interested in wrestling since it was televised in the 80's and has been commentating for it since 2004.
(I remember the professional wrestling back then! I used to sneak out of bed on Tuesday nights after my parents had gone to bed and stay up all night watching television; the wrestling was one of the shows in the lineup.)
Taking the challenger's position is Jayanthi Viswanathan, a secondary school mathematics teacher who is the author of a textbook on introductory calculus. Her aim is to make calculus accessible and fun; Richard asks how she manages that, and Jayanthi responds that she tries to take the jargon out of it and introduce calculus to students in a way that makes sense and builds upon what they have learned in previous years.
Bassem fell victim to a phantom letter in the first round, and never really made much progress after that. He managed to match Jayanthi twice in letters rounds, but had another invalid answer that left him trailing significantly. Neither contestant really dealt that well with the numbers but Jayanthi had the better of it, and she finished it all off by solving the conundrum for a 50 to 12 victory.
I had a decent game tonight, twice beaten by David but managing to outdo Lily in one numbers round to end up just ahead on the solo aggregate. That's always a result to be happy about, and I got my second score in the 80's this week thanks to a reasonably straightforward full monty.
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Ep 53: Liam Bastick, Tristan Leech (September 19, 2012; originally aired October 13, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
This is Liam Bastick's sixth night, and his last appearance until the finals series. Obviously he is hoping to become a retiring champion, and a win here will move him from fifth to fourth in the rankings. Richard asks him the frequent question about his strategies, and Liam says something a little interesting: One of the things he has learned while playing instead of watching is that he loses thinking time while picking the letters, so he does better by choosing fewer vowels. Interesting! That also explains his rapid-fire consonant choices, to an extent. No point giving the opponent too much of an advantage over you in that regard.
Tonight's challenger is Tristan Leech, a trainee surgeon at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Tristan also DJ's, with the nickname of "Hot Pants". That obviously leads to further questions; Tristan explains that it began a long time ago when he played the evil Doctor Clown Pants in a staged wrestling event. Then when he was doing student radio around the turn of the millennium he took it to Hot Pants. Richard remarks that this was not quite what he expected from a surgeon; Tristan responds that one is expected to exercise a certain amount of decorum at work so it is good to have some outlets to express other sides of his personality.
The game started quietly enough with a pair of shared letters rounds, then Liam pulled ahead in the first numbers round. He extended that lead in the next letters round, and then again in the second numbers round when Tristan used a number that was not present. A further gain in the final letters round guaranteed Liam the win, which he rounded off in fine style by solving the conundrum to finish with his best total so far and a 72 to 28 victory.
I dropped two maxima that I should have found (they were easily seen after time once the pressure was off); the rest all went as well as possible, including finding a longer word than David in one round. A fast conundrum finished things off on a positive note, and I had a decent win.
This is Liam Bastick's sixth night, and his last appearance until the finals series. Obviously he is hoping to become a retiring champion, and a win here will move him from fifth to fourth in the rankings. Richard asks him the frequent question about his strategies, and Liam says something a little interesting: One of the things he has learned while playing instead of watching is that he loses thinking time while picking the letters, so he does better by choosing fewer vowels. Interesting! That also explains his rapid-fire consonant choices, to an extent. No point giving the opponent too much of an advantage over you in that regard.
Tonight's challenger is Tristan Leech, a trainee surgeon at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Tristan also DJ's, with the nickname of "Hot Pants". That obviously leads to further questions; Tristan explains that it began a long time ago when he played the evil Doctor Clown Pants in a staged wrestling event. Then when he was doing student radio around the turn of the millennium he took it to Hot Pants. Richard remarks that this was not quite what he expected from a surgeon; Tristan responds that one is expected to exercise a certain amount of decorum at work so it is good to have some outlets to express other sides of his personality.
The game started quietly enough with a pair of shared letters rounds, then Liam pulled ahead in the first numbers round. He extended that lead in the next letters round, and then again in the second numbers round when Tristan used a number that was not present. A further gain in the final letters round guaranteed Liam the win, which he rounded off in fine style by solving the conundrum to finish with his best total so far and a 72 to 28 victory.
I dropped two maxima that I should have found (they were easily seen after time once the pressure was off); the rest all went as well as possible, including finding a longer word than David in one round. A fast conundrum finished things off on a positive note, and I had a decent win.
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Ep 52: Liam Bastick, Amanda Mendizza (September 18, 2012; originally aired October 12, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Liam Bastick is back for his fifth night, with a win almost certainly confirming his place in the finals. But first the talk is about football, or soccer as it was called here when I was growing up. Liam has a passion for it, and managed to get a job as a football reporter for Derby County. That was his second job and he loved it; he did it for four years and it was a great wrench giving it up when he came to Australia.
As an interesting coda to this, when Liam went to an Ashes match at the MCG, the person who sat next to him was a member of the Barmy Army who had swapped places with an Australian who wanted to go and sit with them and see what it was like. It turned out that the person who was now sitting next to Liam was the person who had taken over that reporting job from him.
Tonight's challenger is Amanda Mendizza, a children's speech pathologist who collects ornamental owls. She has done so since the early 1980's, and has almost three hundred now. Mostly they are confined to a cabinet, but some have ended up in the courtyard or even outside.
The contestants started evenly, but two good rounds from Liam saw him get a sizeable lead. Amanda tried a risky play that came off to reduce the deficit, but she needed to do better in the final numbers round to have a chance. Liam was safe going into the conundrum; he buzzed in with an invalid word that gave the actual answer away; Amanda solved the conundrum, but Liam took the win, 50 to 40.
I missed a word I should have seen in the first round, but otherwise was in good shape. I did drop a couple of other maxima but they were tough to spot; more importantly, I found a full monty that David did not. Always to be cherished, that! I was a bit slow on the conundrum but managed to get there, and a score above eighty is always nice to have.
Liam Bastick is back for his fifth night, with a win almost certainly confirming his place in the finals. But first the talk is about football, or soccer as it was called here when I was growing up. Liam has a passion for it, and managed to get a job as a football reporter for Derby County. That was his second job and he loved it; he did it for four years and it was a great wrench giving it up when he came to Australia.
As an interesting coda to this, when Liam went to an Ashes match at the MCG, the person who sat next to him was a member of the Barmy Army who had swapped places with an Australian who wanted to go and sit with them and see what it was like. It turned out that the person who was now sitting next to Liam was the person who had taken over that reporting job from him.
Tonight's challenger is Amanda Mendizza, a children's speech pathologist who collects ornamental owls. She has done so since the early 1980's, and has almost three hundred now. Mostly they are confined to a cabinet, but some have ended up in the courtyard or even outside.
The contestants started evenly, but two good rounds from Liam saw him get a sizeable lead. Amanda tried a risky play that came off to reduce the deficit, but she needed to do better in the final numbers round to have a chance. Liam was safe going into the conundrum; he buzzed in with an invalid word that gave the actual answer away; Amanda solved the conundrum, but Liam took the win, 50 to 40.
I missed a word I should have seen in the first round, but otherwise was in good shape. I did drop a couple of other maxima but they were tough to spot; more importantly, I found a full monty that David did not. Always to be cherished, that! I was a bit slow on the conundrum but managed to get there, and a score above eighty is always nice to have.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Ep 51: Liam Bastick, Chris Ryan (September 17, 2012; originally aired October 11, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Liam Bastick faces his fourth game tonight, and there's been some pretty strong contenders in recent weeks. Can he clear the fourth game hurdle and book a probable spot in the finals? We'll find out, but first we get to discuss his numbers ability as Richard asks how Liam developed those skills. Liam explains that he was the first child; his mother took time off work and from the age of two to three she taught him the times tables (up to twelve) by rote learning. He agrees with Richard that it is an important skill to have, and I heartily agree -- having those very basic details down pat makes later developments substantially easier.
Tonight's challenger is Chris Ryan, a secondary school teacher also described as a multilinguist. Richard asks how many languages Chris knows, and Chris responds that he is up to "about five". His mother was (is?) Mauritian so his first language was French; when he went to school he had to learn English, and then later some Latin. In his thirties he learned Irish Gaelic which he got involved in due to the beauty of Irish poetry. Unfortunately, Richard's comments along the way have perhaps distracted Chris, and we don't find out what the fifth language is.
It was a close game, with honours even in the first round and Liam getting a small lead in the second. The first numbers game was too hard for both, and when Liam overreached in the next round Chris was able to level the scores. Chris drew ahead in the next round, and two shared rounds followed; Liam managed to gain on the last numbers round to take a one-point lead into the conundrum; he did well to solve it quite quickly to seal the win, 46 to 35.
I had a decent game except for one round, and the conundrum was too tough for me. A slightly risky option in another round turned out to be the right decision, so there were definitely some pleasing facets to it. Overall a satisfactory game but with room for improvement.
Liam Bastick faces his fourth game tonight, and there's been some pretty strong contenders in recent weeks. Can he clear the fourth game hurdle and book a probable spot in the finals? We'll find out, but first we get to discuss his numbers ability as Richard asks how Liam developed those skills. Liam explains that he was the first child; his mother took time off work and from the age of two to three she taught him the times tables (up to twelve) by rote learning. He agrees with Richard that it is an important skill to have, and I heartily agree -- having those very basic details down pat makes later developments substantially easier.
Tonight's challenger is Chris Ryan, a secondary school teacher also described as a multilinguist. Richard asks how many languages Chris knows, and Chris responds that he is up to "about five". His mother was (is?) Mauritian so his first language was French; when he went to school he had to learn English, and then later some Latin. In his thirties he learned Irish Gaelic which he got involved in due to the beauty of Irish poetry. Unfortunately, Richard's comments along the way have perhaps distracted Chris, and we don't find out what the fifth language is.
It was a close game, with honours even in the first round and Liam getting a small lead in the second. The first numbers game was too hard for both, and when Liam overreached in the next round Chris was able to level the scores. Chris drew ahead in the next round, and two shared rounds followed; Liam managed to gain on the last numbers round to take a one-point lead into the conundrum; he did well to solve it quite quickly to seal the win, 46 to 35.
I had a decent game except for one round, and the conundrum was too tough for me. A slightly risky option in another round turned out to be the right decision, so there were definitely some pleasing facets to it. Overall a satisfactory game but with room for improvement.
Sunday, 16 September 2012
Weekly summary: Episodes 46 to 50
Another erratic performance from me this week, with many letters maxima missed. The lowlight was missing a full monty that would have giving me a head-to-head win against David and Lily, an opportunity that is not likely to be repeated often. It was another week of strong competitors, with the unluckiest being Sam Chow whose chance of victory went away due to three of the easiest numbers rounds put together in one game.
Esther Perrins lost her fourth game but still holds down a precarious sixth place. Liam Bastick will get a fourth game so is currently in eighth spot on the rankings, but highly likely to move to at least seventh. Sudesh Piyatissa and James Weatherhead were the two contestants who dropped out of the eight.
David found the only full monty on Wednesday, but missed the one on Thursday. I was just a little slow to see that missed one, but at least found it after time. Lily was temporarily troubled by one numbers round, probably a case of looking at the less helpful options first..
I ran into problems throughout the week, with Tuesday and Wednesday being decent days. That said, I managed to avoid declaring any invalid answers despite some strong tempations, and on Monday that was a minor victory all of its own.
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | 50 | 75 | 78 | 67 | 72 |
| Champion | 36 | 65 | 32 | 34 | 28 |
| Challenger | 6 | 65 | 10 | 0 | 18 |
| David + Lily | 77 | 77 | 89 | 76 | 77 |
| Me (solo) | 69 | 75 | 78 | 67 | 72 |
Esther Perrins lost her fourth game but still holds down a precarious sixth place. Liam Bastick will get a fourth game so is currently in eighth spot on the rankings, but highly likely to move to at least seventh. Sudesh Piyatissa and James Weatherhead were the two contestants who dropped out of the eight.
| Andrew Fisher | 95 | 63 | 64 | 67 | 67 | 59 | 415 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naween Fernando | 73 | 60 | 64 | 94 | 64 | 56 | 411 |
| David Jones | 63 | 63 | 50 | 61 | 55 | 53 | 346 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 45 | 47 | 48 | 47 | 38 | 40 | 265 |
| Kashi Ross | 48 | 46 | 34 | 41 | 45 | 32 | 246 |
| Esther Perrins | 55 | 43 | 75 | 46 | 219 | ||
| Aaron Tyrrell | 51 | 35 | 61 | 18 | 165 | ||
| Liam Bastick* | 48 | 60 | 48 | 156 |
David found the only full monty on Wednesday, but missed the one on Thursday. I was just a little slow to see that missed one, but at least found it after time. Lily was temporarily troubled by one numbers round, probably a case of looking at the less helpful options first..
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Missed Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Tough Numbers | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Impossible Numbers | 0 |
I ran into problems throughout the week, with Tuesday and Wednesday being decent days. That said, I managed to avoid declaring any invalid answers despite some strong tempations, and on Monday that was a minor victory all of its own.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximums: L | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| N | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| C | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Total | Games | Average | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Fisher | 415 | 6 | 69.17 |
| Naween Fernando | 411 | 6 | 68.50 |
| Sam Chow | 65 | 1 | 65.00 |
| David Jones | 346 | 6 | 57.67 |
| Esther Perrins | 219 | 4 | 54.75 |
| James Weatherhead | 164 | 3 | 54.67 |
| Liam Bastick* | 156 | 3 | 52.00 |
| Angus Kidman | 103 | 2 | 51.50 |
| Rob York | 94 | 2 | 47.00 |
| Pravin Dullur | 45 | 1 | 45.00 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 265 | 6 | 44.17 |
| Geoff Heard | 88 | 2 | 44.00 |
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 128 | 3 | 42.67 |
| Aaron Tyrell | 165 | 4 | 41.25 |
| Kashi Ross | 246 | 6 | 41.00 |
| Tanya Ithier | 41 | 1 | 41.00 |
| Kiao Inthavong | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Jonathan Scarlett | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Chaitanya Rao | 38 | 1 | 38.00 |
| Ian See | 113 | 3 | 37.67 |
| Jason Stockdale | 37 | 1 | 37.00 |
| Rob Mould | 70 | 2 | 35.00 |
| Lara Cassar | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Andrew Patterson | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Beckett Rozentals | 34 | 1 | 34.00 |
| Elaine Miles | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Jenny Blair | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Alexis Harley | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| James Pho | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| Erez Gordon | 31 | 1 | 31.00 |
| Ben Strate | 30 | 1 | 30.00 |
| Alan Stewart | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Adib Surani | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Stephen Farrelly | 86 | 3 | 28.67 |
| Michael Clark | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Helen Robinson | 27 | 1 | 27.00 |
| Michael Gin | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Les Ramsay | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Rachael Bausor | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Brian Lynch | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Stavroula Nicholls | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Robin Wedd | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Jane Cleary | 23 | 1 | 23.00 |
| Brendan Murphy | 22 | 1 | 22.00 |
| Jim Bailey | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Daniel Pratt | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Matt Woodley | 20 | 1 | 20.00 |
| Nick Taubert | 19 | 1 | 19.00 |
| Arthur Barrs | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Carol Campbell | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Dawn Tuftan | 15 | 1 | 15.00 |
| Frances Weinberg | 10 | 1 | 10.00 |
| Dean Schwab | 7 | 1 | 7.00 |
| Paul Hughes | 6 | 1 | 6.00 |
| Andrew Bullen | 5 | 1 | 5.00 |
Saturday, 15 September 2012
Ep 50: Liam Bastick, Rachael Bausor (September 14, 2012; originally aired October 8, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Liam Bastick gets his third appearance on the show, and Richard asks about the strangest job that Liam has had. When Liam first left university he ended up in a rather unusual job: For forty hours a week he had to time how fast things like tomato sauce, salad cream, and mayonnaisse flowed down a particular ramp. As Richard puts it, Liam was a viscosity tester.
Tonight's challenger is Rachael Bausor, a deputy CEO who works predominantly in grant and project management at a community centre. Rachael enjoys playing electronic strategy games and spending time with her five-year-old daughter Chloe. Richard asks about the kind of strategy games that Rachael enjoys, and she gives examples of expanding a railroad empire across the United States, or running a restaurant, or -- one of her favourites -- running a theme park and designing rollercoasters and things like that. (I'd be willing to bet that the first and third are Railroad Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon, but the restaurant one has too many possibilities.)
There was some back and forth in the letters rounds and the net result was equal scores to the contestants from those. But Rachael was not able to get a scoring result in any of the numbers rounds, and that allowed Liam a comfortable lead. He was safe going into the conundrum, and with neither solving it the final scoreline was 48 to 24 in his favour.
I was down on many letters maxima again, but not too far off the pace. All in all it was an unexceptional game from me and a comfortable win.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Liam Bastick gets his third appearance on the show, and Richard asks about the strangest job that Liam has had. When Liam first left university he ended up in a rather unusual job: For forty hours a week he had to time how fast things like tomato sauce, salad cream, and mayonnaisse flowed down a particular ramp. As Richard puts it, Liam was a viscosity tester.
Tonight's challenger is Rachael Bausor, a deputy CEO who works predominantly in grant and project management at a community centre. Rachael enjoys playing electronic strategy games and spending time with her five-year-old daughter Chloe. Richard asks about the kind of strategy games that Rachael enjoys, and she gives examples of expanding a railroad empire across the United States, or running a restaurant, or -- one of her favourites -- running a theme park and designing rollercoasters and things like that. (I'd be willing to bet that the first and third are Railroad Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon, but the restaurant one has too many possibilities.)
There was some back and forth in the letters rounds and the net result was equal scores to the contestants from those. But Rachael was not able to get a scoring result in any of the numbers rounds, and that allowed Liam a comfortable lead. He was safe going into the conundrum, and with neither solving it the final scoreline was 48 to 24 in his favour.
I was down on many letters maxima again, but not too far off the pace. All in all it was an unexceptional game from me and a comfortable win.
Friday, 14 September 2012
Ep 49: Liam Bastick, Dean Schwab (September 13, 2012; originally aired October 7, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
It's Liam Bastick's first night as champion, and Richard comments that music is a large part of Liam's life. Liam reveals that he owns twenty thousand CDs, which certainly seems like a lot to me. Liam used to work for the BBC and acquired a good deal of promotional material as a result, which explains part of that. His partner has suggested to him that he should sell the CDs and buy the house outright; I'm not sure how much second-hand CDs sell for these days, but that may be a rosy view of their worth.
Challenging Liam is Dean Schwab, a football umpire and insolvency specialist with a degree in accounting; Dean is hoping to becoming a chartered accountant by the end of the year. He is also a keen coin collector, having done so for most of his life (his grandfather got him started). His pride of collection is a penny from 1904. (Australia did not have its own currency until 1910, and pennies not until 1911, so it is presumably a British penny. Such a coin in mint condition might be worth as much as $150, or so a cursory search suggests to me.)
Dean fell victim to a phantom letter in the first letters round, and did not seem able to recover from that. Liam steadily forged ahead in both facets of the game; Dean managed to get some ground back in the fourth round with a good word that he could easily have made better, but that was it for him. Liam rounded out a good night by solving the conundrum fairly quickly for a comprehensive 60 to 7 victory.
I... yeesh, this hurts. I had a reasonable game, really, but I was about five seconds too slow to make it into a fantastic one. The opportunity was there to outdo both David and Lily in the same game, and not only that but to come out genuinely ahead in a head-to-head against them. I missed the longer word, though, and an unlikely-to-be-repeated chance went begging. I could still have salvaged a higher solo total by solving the conundrum, but it was too difficult for me, and what could have been great became merely good.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
It's Liam Bastick's first night as champion, and Richard comments that music is a large part of Liam's life. Liam reveals that he owns twenty thousand CDs, which certainly seems like a lot to me. Liam used to work for the BBC and acquired a good deal of promotional material as a result, which explains part of that. His partner has suggested to him that he should sell the CDs and buy the house outright; I'm not sure how much second-hand CDs sell for these days, but that may be a rosy view of their worth.
Challenging Liam is Dean Schwab, a football umpire and insolvency specialist with a degree in accounting; Dean is hoping to becoming a chartered accountant by the end of the year. He is also a keen coin collector, having done so for most of his life (his grandfather got him started). His pride of collection is a penny from 1904. (Australia did not have its own currency until 1910, and pennies not until 1911, so it is presumably a British penny. Such a coin in mint condition might be worth as much as $150, or so a cursory search suggests to me.)
Dean fell victim to a phantom letter in the first letters round, and did not seem able to recover from that. Liam steadily forged ahead in both facets of the game; Dean managed to get some ground back in the fourth round with a good word that he could easily have made better, but that was it for him. Liam rounded out a good night by solving the conundrum fairly quickly for a comprehensive 60 to 7 victory.
I... yeesh, this hurts. I had a reasonable game, really, but I was about five seconds too slow to make it into a fantastic one. The opportunity was there to outdo both David and Lily in the same game, and not only that but to come out genuinely ahead in a head-to-head against them. I missed the longer word, though, and an unlikely-to-be-repeated chance went begging. I could still have salvaged a higher solo total by solving the conundrum, but it was too difficult for me, and what could have been great became merely good.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Ep 48: Esther Perrins, Liam Bastick (September 12, 2012; originally aired October 6, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
This is the crucial fourth night for Esther Perrins; if she wins she'll most likely make the finals, otherwise she will more likely miss out. Richard comments about yesterday's nailbiting game, but basically does not give Esther chance for more than a few sounds of agreement before moving on.
Tonight's challenger is Liam Bastick, a financial modeller from the UK with a PhD in mathematics and qualifications in accounting. Liam will soon be running a series of lectures around Australia (that was as part of the CPA Congress in 2010). It is mentioned that Al Gore will also be a guest speaker at the same Congress; unfortunately for Liam, the two of them are speaking at the same time (but in different locations), so Liam suspects that his audience may be rather sparse. I believe that Steve Wozniak was also a guest speaker at that Congress, incidentally.
The game goes much along the lines one would expect, with Esther having a strong advantage in the letters but Liam able to make up ground in the numbers. A lot could easily have gone either way, but perhaps the decisive moment was a careless error from Esther in the first numbers round that allowed Liam to tie up the scores. Esther was able to draw ahead thereafter but never quite get safe, and once more the game was alive going into the conundrum. Liam managed to get there first, and snuck through for a 48 to 46 victory.
I had a good game, which made a nice change after the dissatisfaction of some recent efforts. I got to the conundrum in quick time (although still a bit slower than others would have solved it), and only missed one maximum throughout. I'm not sure I'd have chanced it even if I'd seen it, but I should have been able to do better. Still, overall I was pleased with how it went.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
This is the crucial fourth night for Esther Perrins; if she wins she'll most likely make the finals, otherwise she will more likely miss out. Richard comments about yesterday's nailbiting game, but basically does not give Esther chance for more than a few sounds of agreement before moving on.
Tonight's challenger is Liam Bastick, a financial modeller from the UK with a PhD in mathematics and qualifications in accounting. Liam will soon be running a series of lectures around Australia (that was as part of the CPA Congress in 2010). It is mentioned that Al Gore will also be a guest speaker at the same Congress; unfortunately for Liam, the two of them are speaking at the same time (but in different locations), so Liam suspects that his audience may be rather sparse. I believe that Steve Wozniak was also a guest speaker at that Congress, incidentally.
The game goes much along the lines one would expect, with Esther having a strong advantage in the letters but Liam able to make up ground in the numbers. A lot could easily have gone either way, but perhaps the decisive moment was a careless error from Esther in the first numbers round that allowed Liam to tie up the scores. Esther was able to draw ahead thereafter but never quite get safe, and once more the game was alive going into the conundrum. Liam managed to get there first, and snuck through for a 48 to 46 victory.
I had a good game, which made a nice change after the dissatisfaction of some recent efforts. I got to the conundrum in quick time (although still a bit slower than others would have solved it), and only missed one maximum throughout. I'm not sure I'd have chanced it even if I'd seen it, but I should have been able to do better. Still, overall I was pleased with how it went.
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Ep 47: Esther Perrins, Sam Chow (September 11, 2012; originally aired October 5, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
This is Esther Perrins' third night, and Richard asks about the origins of her word technique. Esther says that it goes back to the earliest days of her growing up -- she cannot recall a time when they were not playing word games. She mentions Scrabble and Lexicon in particular; I'd not heard of Lexicon before, but it seems that Richard is familiar with it.
Tonight's challenger is Sam Chow, a student doing a double degree in commerce and science. Sam is president (or was, rather, in 2010) of the Melbourne University Mathematics and Statistics Society, who produce one of my favourite events of the year: The MUMS Puzzle Hunt. Sam enjoys playing chess and doing distance running, and also tutors university and secondary students in specialist mathematics. He was a member of Australia's team to the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2005, getting a bronze medal. (That year was unusual in that every member of the Australian team gained a bronze medal.)
Both contestants played well tonight, and neither was able to get any advantage over the other. The numbers rounds were sadly unchallenging, probably the easiest set of three in any game so far. That presumably was bad luck for Sam who may otherwise have been expected to gain some ground on those. Both contestants scored equally in the main rounds, but it was Esther who solved the conundrum first to finish with the win, 75 to 65.
I was in the same boat as both contestants, matching them throughout. David managed to find two better options but they were hard to see and I'm not overly upset about missing them. That led to a three-way tie going into the conundrum, and fortunately I managed to solve it first.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
This is Esther Perrins' third night, and Richard asks about the origins of her word technique. Esther says that it goes back to the earliest days of her growing up -- she cannot recall a time when they were not playing word games. She mentions Scrabble and Lexicon in particular; I'd not heard of Lexicon before, but it seems that Richard is familiar with it.
Tonight's challenger is Sam Chow, a student doing a double degree in commerce and science. Sam is president (or was, rather, in 2010) of the Melbourne University Mathematics and Statistics Society, who produce one of my favourite events of the year: The MUMS Puzzle Hunt. Sam enjoys playing chess and doing distance running, and also tutors university and secondary students in specialist mathematics. He was a member of Australia's team to the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2005, getting a bronze medal. (That year was unusual in that every member of the Australian team gained a bronze medal.)
Both contestants played well tonight, and neither was able to get any advantage over the other. The numbers rounds were sadly unchallenging, probably the easiest set of three in any game so far. That presumably was bad luck for Sam who may otherwise have been expected to gain some ground on those. Both contestants scored equally in the main rounds, but it was Esther who solved the conundrum first to finish with the win, 75 to 65.
I was in the same boat as both contestants, matching them throughout. David managed to find two better options but they were hard to see and I'm not overly upset about missing them. That led to a three-way tie going into the conundrum, and fortunately I managed to solve it first.
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Ep 46: Esther Perrins, Matt Woodley (September 10, 2012; originally aired October 4, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Esther Perrins is back, hopefully refreshed after the night's sleep. Richard mentions that Esther is a keen campanologist -- in particular, the kind of bell-ringing that involves pulling on ropes -- and asks for more information about her interest in that. Esther explains that she has been into it for around thirty-five years; she had friends that did it and they convinced her to give it a go. She finds it a good balance between physical and mental activity, and that's why she likes it.
Taking up the challenge tonight is Matt Woodley, who has degrees in both education and aquaculture. Matt's first career was farming: Cultivating lobsters, oysters, and mussels. He had always had an interest in environmental science and towards the end of high school (in 1988) he read that we had already passed the sustainable level of what we could take from the seas and it was still going up. That was what set him on his current path; as he notes, it was a fairly new area of study back then and he had to take some of his courses off-campus.
Esther was in cracking form with the letters tonight, kicking off with a couple of good sevens. Matt got a little ground back in the first numbers round, but Esther continued to extend her lead in the letters and also the following numbers round. Matt needed an unanswered full monty in the last letters round to even have a chance, but although Esther came up with an invalid word it was not enough for him and the victory was hers. The conundrum solution eluded them both, and the final scoreline was 43 to 20 to Esther.
I had a rather unsatisfactory game, consistently missing longer words that I feel I should have found; I also missed a numbers target that just needed the application of a common technique. The result was a rather unwanted matching of my performance on episode 39 -- not a single maximum in the letters at all. The saving grace was avoiding invalid answers despite several temptations, and managing to solve the conundrum. Somehow that ended up being enough for me to wobble home ahead, but I was definitely playing well below my best today and that was a lucky result.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Esther Perrins is back, hopefully refreshed after the night's sleep. Richard mentions that Esther is a keen campanologist -- in particular, the kind of bell-ringing that involves pulling on ropes -- and asks for more information about her interest in that. Esther explains that she has been into it for around thirty-five years; she had friends that did it and they convinced her to give it a go. She finds it a good balance between physical and mental activity, and that's why she likes it.
Taking up the challenge tonight is Matt Woodley, who has degrees in both education and aquaculture. Matt's first career was farming: Cultivating lobsters, oysters, and mussels. He had always had an interest in environmental science and towards the end of high school (in 1988) he read that we had already passed the sustainable level of what we could take from the seas and it was still going up. That was what set him on his current path; as he notes, it was a fairly new area of study back then and he had to take some of his courses off-campus.
Esther was in cracking form with the letters tonight, kicking off with a couple of good sevens. Matt got a little ground back in the first numbers round, but Esther continued to extend her lead in the letters and also the following numbers round. Matt needed an unanswered full monty in the last letters round to even have a chance, but although Esther came up with an invalid word it was not enough for him and the victory was hers. The conundrum solution eluded them both, and the final scoreline was 43 to 20 to Esther.
I had a rather unsatisfactory game, consistently missing longer words that I feel I should have found; I also missed a numbers target that just needed the application of a common technique. The result was a rather unwanted matching of my performance on episode 39 -- not a single maximum in the letters at all. The saving grace was avoiding invalid answers despite several temptations, and managing to solve the conundrum. Somehow that ended up being enough for me to wobble home ahead, but I was definitely playing well below my best today and that was a lucky result.
Monday, 10 September 2012
Weekly summary: Episodes 41 to 45
I had a bit of a topsy-turvy time this week, with quite a variation in the scores and my first invalid word for over thirty games. That was a particular shame as it cost me a tie with David and Lily, in a game I had otherwise played reasonably well on. The week featured three pretty good contestants, any of whom could have gone quite far if not for running up against the others.
Ian See very briefly appeared in the finals rankings, only to be knocked out again by James Weatherhead. There's currently a very noticeable gap between the top five contestants and the next three.
There were three full monties on offer this week, but one of them was only found by Sam Gaffney. (It seems plausibly common enough for it to show up again, so I may get another chance some day). Not that much action in the numbers, although I managed to get myself tangled up in some of them; Lily skilfully avoided such issues.
As I mentioned above, I got myself in troubles in the numbers toward the end of the week, and that reflects in some dropped maxima. The invalid word on Monday was a careless oversight, but it was Wednesday where I really showed some problems, missing many maxima on the letters. Most other days were pretty good, though, and I did get all the conundrums within regulation time; twice contestants beat me to them, though.
Contestants sorted by average score (notice that James Weatherhead and Angus Kidman still rank in the top six on this list; their eliminations this week were a bit unfortunate):
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | 68 | 77 | 66 | 84 | 62 |
| Champion | 27 | 10 | 35 | 20 | 31 |
| Challenger | 17 | 38 | 33 | 26 | 48 |
| David + Lily | 75 | 88 | 78 | 88 | 78 |
| Me (solo) | 68 | 87 | 71 | 84 | 72 |
Ian See very briefly appeared in the finals rankings, only to be knocked out again by James Weatherhead. There's currently a very noticeable gap between the top five contestants and the next three.
| Andrew Fisher | 95 | 63 | 64 | 67 | 67 | 59 | 415 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naween Fernando | 73 | 60 | 64 | 94 | 64 | 56 | 411 |
| David Jones | 63 | 63 | 50 | 61 | 55 | 53 | 346 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 45 | 47 | 48 | 47 | 38 | 40 | 265 |
| Kashi Ross | 48 | 46 | 34 | 41 | 45 | 32 | 246 |
| Aaron Tyrrell | 51 | 35 | 61 | 18 | 165 | ||
| James Weatherhead | 63 | 54 | 47 | 164 | |||
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 37 | 57 | 34 | 128 |
There were three full monties on offer this week, but one of them was only found by Sam Gaffney. (It seems plausibly common enough for it to show up again, so I may get another chance some day). Not that much action in the numbers, although I managed to get myself tangled up in some of them; Lily skilfully avoided such issues.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full Monties | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||
| Missed Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Tough Numbers | 0 | |||||
| Impossible Numbers | 0 |
As I mentioned above, I got myself in troubles in the numbers toward the end of the week, and that reflects in some dropped maxima. The invalid word on Monday was a careless oversight, but it was Wednesday where I really showed some problems, missing many maxima on the letters. Most other days were pretty good, though, and I did get all the conundrums within regulation time; twice contestants beat me to them, though.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximums: L | 3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| N | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| C | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Invalid: L | 1 | - | - | - | - |
Contestants sorted by average score (notice that James Weatherhead and Angus Kidman still rank in the top six on this list; their eliminations this week were a bit unfortunate):
| Total | Games | Average | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Fisher | 415 | 6 | 69.17 |
| Naween Fernando | 411 | 6 | 68.50 |
| David Jones | 346 | 6 | 57.67 |
| Esther Perrins* | 55 | 1 | 55.00 |
| James Weatherhead | 164 | 3 | 54.67 |
| Angus Kidman | 103 | 2 | 51.50 |
| Rob York | 94 | 2 | 47.00 |
| Pravin Dullur | 45 | 1 | 45.00 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 265 | 6 | 44.17 |
| Geoff Heard | 88 | 2 | 44.00 |
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 128 | 3 | 42.67 |
| Aaron Tyrell | 165 | 4 | 41.25 |
| Kashi Ross | 246 | 6 | 41.00 |
| Tanya Ithier | 41 | 1 | 41.00 |
| Kiao Inthavong | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Jonathan Scarlett | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Chaitanya Rao | 38 | 1 | 38.00 |
| Ian See | 113 | 3 | 37.67 |
| Jason Stockdale | 37 | 1 | 37.00 |
| Rob Mould | 70 | 2 | 35.00 |
| Lara Cassar | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Andrew Patterson | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Beckett Rozentals | 34 | 1 | 34.00 |
| Elaine Miles | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Jenny Blair | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Alexis Harley | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| James Pho | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| Erez Gordon | 31 | 1 | 31.00 |
| Ben Strate | 30 | 1 | 30.00 |
| Alan Stewart | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Adib Surani | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Stephen Farrelly | 86 | 3 | 28.67 |
| Michael Clark | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Helen Robinson | 27 | 1 | 27.00 |
| Michael Gin | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Les Ramsay | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Brian Lynch | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Stavroula Nicholls | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Robin Wedd | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Jane Cleary | 23 | 1 | 23.00 |
| Brendan Murphy | 22 | 1 | 22.00 |
| Jim Bailey | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Daniel Pratt | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Nick Taubert | 19 | 1 | 19.00 |
| Arthur Barrs | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Carol Campbell | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Dawn Tuftan | 15 | 1 | 15.00 |
| Frances Weinberg | 10 | 1 | 10.00 |
| Paul Hughes | 6 | 1 | 6.00 |
| Andrew Bullen | 5 | 1 | 5.00 |
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Countdown viewing figures
Recently David Knox wrote a piece for TV Tonight where he provided some much-wanted statistics for how Countdown has been received (compared with Letters and Numbers). It pretty much confirms all expectations: Viewership has dropped by almost 100,000 viewers from 128,000 to 36,000 (weekly average). This has had flow-on effects for their news viewership as well, which has dropped around 24,000 viewers.
That's a pretty clear demonstration that Letters and Numbers had been doing exactly what it had been commissioned to do: Acting as a feeder to increase viewership for SBS news. I suspect that other shows have also suffered a little as people who might normally have seen ads for them during Letters and Numbers no longer do so, but it would be hard to draw any compelling connection there.
Such figures do give me a little hope for the eventual reinstatement of Letters and Numbers, as I can't imagine that the drop of 92,000 viewers in such a key timeslot would be viewed with much favour. Maybe it's time for some more letter-writing.
That's a pretty clear demonstration that Letters and Numbers had been doing exactly what it had been commissioned to do: Acting as a feeder to increase viewership for SBS news. I suspect that other shows have also suffered a little as people who might normally have seen ads for them during Letters and Numbers no longer do so, but it would be hard to draw any compelling connection there.
Such figures do give me a little hope for the eventual reinstatement of Letters and Numbers, as I can't imagine that the drop of 92,000 viewers in such a key timeslot would be viewed with much favour. Maybe it's time for some more letter-writing.
Ep 45: Angus Kidman, Esther Perrins (September 7, 2012; originally aired October 1, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Angus Kidman gets his turn in the champion's chair tonight. He gets paid to test drive the latest in technical toys; Richard asks whether Angus is more interested in the things that can be done, or the miniaturisation. Angus responds that the miniaturisation is the important thing for him; devices can do all sorts of interesting things, but it's getting them into a small form factor so that they can always be at hand to use that has him excited.
Tonight's challenger is Esther Perrins, a former British Scrabble champion. This continues the show's early run of strong tournament Scrabble players; in fact, Esther appears in the 1986 edition of the Guinness Book of Records for having won the British Scrabble championship with the highest three-game total there had ever been (1782 points, an extremely impressive average of 594 points per game).
Esther struck form early with a good eight-letter word, but then Angus demonstrated that the competition was very much alive by outdoing her in the second round. The numbers round went to Angus, then Esther took the next letters round and the scores were tied at the halfway mark. Four shared rounds followed, and for the first time two contestants were on equal scores going into the conundrum. Esther was the one who solved it first, getting the win by 55 points to 45.
I had mostly good results throughout, but faltered in the middle third. I was a bit too slow to see the best option in one letters round, and spent too long writing down a backup plan in a numbers round instead of checking for an actual solution. I was beaten to the conundrum by a reasonable margin, but had fortunately done enough before that to take the win.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Angus Kidman gets his turn in the champion's chair tonight. He gets paid to test drive the latest in technical toys; Richard asks whether Angus is more interested in the things that can be done, or the miniaturisation. Angus responds that the miniaturisation is the important thing for him; devices can do all sorts of interesting things, but it's getting them into a small form factor so that they can always be at hand to use that has him excited.
Tonight's challenger is Esther Perrins, a former British Scrabble champion. This continues the show's early run of strong tournament Scrabble players; in fact, Esther appears in the 1986 edition of the Guinness Book of Records for having won the British Scrabble championship with the highest three-game total there had ever been (1782 points, an extremely impressive average of 594 points per game).
Esther struck form early with a good eight-letter word, but then Angus demonstrated that the competition was very much alive by outdoing her in the second round. The numbers round went to Angus, then Esther took the next letters round and the scores were tied at the halfway mark. Four shared rounds followed, and for the first time two contestants were on equal scores going into the conundrum. Esther was the one who solved it first, getting the win by 55 points to 45.
I had mostly good results throughout, but faltered in the middle third. I was a bit too slow to see the best option in one letters round, and spent too long writing down a backup plan in a numbers round instead of checking for an actual solution. I was beaten to the conundrum by a reasonable margin, but had fortunately done enough before that to take the win.
Friday, 7 September 2012
Ep 44: James Weatherhead, Angus Kidman (September 6, 2012; originally aired September 30, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
James Weatherhead is back in the champion's seat, hoping to get his third win. James plays a certain amount of golf, and Richard points out that the last time James played he got a birdie. That might not seem that worthy of note (although it's certainly vastly better than I could do, I'm sure), but it's not the traditional golf meaning at work here. James explains that he was walking down the fairway of the eighteenth hole and a budgerigar landed on his golf bag and would not leave them alone. It was obviously already domesticated so they took it home and named it Flog ("golf" backwards).
Tonight's challenger is Angus Kidman, a freelance technical writer with a degree in linguistics and a penchant for gadgetry. Happily, then, he managed to find a job combining both interests. As Angus puts it, he has always loved writing and playing with computers but did not study either of them at university. He walked out of university and "fell into" a job writing about computers, and has done it ever since. Richard asks what kinds of gadgets Angus likes, and Angus responds that he likes most gadgets, pretty much, but particularly likes portable ones -- he wants them to be small. He continues by saying that the whole history of computing is about stuff getting smaller, and neater, and sometimes weirder.
More information about his writing endeavours can be found at his web site.
Angus showed some solid letters play today, getting off to a good start there. James missed a couple of chances to get ground back, and Angus was guaranteed the win going into the final numbers round. James got the consolation prize of a quick solution to the conundrum, but Angus got the win, 58 to 47.
I had a decent game again, and I was particularly pleased with my first and final letters rounds. I did miss two maximums, one in the letters and one in the numbers. I'd certainly have liked to do better on those -- the numbers round in particular -- but it was at least acceptable. There was a full monty going that I found (although it was perhaps the most high-probability one in the game) and that is always nice, and I rounded it out with a quick solve on the conundrum for a score in the 80's.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
James Weatherhead is back in the champion's seat, hoping to get his third win. James plays a certain amount of golf, and Richard points out that the last time James played he got a birdie. That might not seem that worthy of note (although it's certainly vastly better than I could do, I'm sure), but it's not the traditional golf meaning at work here. James explains that he was walking down the fairway of the eighteenth hole and a budgerigar landed on his golf bag and would not leave them alone. It was obviously already domesticated so they took it home and named it Flog ("golf" backwards).
Tonight's challenger is Angus Kidman, a freelance technical writer with a degree in linguistics and a penchant for gadgetry. Happily, then, he managed to find a job combining both interests. As Angus puts it, he has always loved writing and playing with computers but did not study either of them at university. He walked out of university and "fell into" a job writing about computers, and has done it ever since. Richard asks what kinds of gadgets Angus likes, and Angus responds that he likes most gadgets, pretty much, but particularly likes portable ones -- he wants them to be small. He continues by saying that the whole history of computing is about stuff getting smaller, and neater, and sometimes weirder.
More information about his writing endeavours can be found at his web site.
Angus showed some solid letters play today, getting off to a good start there. James missed a couple of chances to get ground back, and Angus was guaranteed the win going into the final numbers round. James got the consolation prize of a quick solution to the conundrum, but Angus got the win, 58 to 47.
I had a decent game again, and I was particularly pleased with my first and final letters rounds. I did miss two maximums, one in the letters and one in the numbers. I'd certainly have liked to do better on those -- the numbers round in particular -- but it was at least acceptable. There was a full monty going that I found (although it was perhaps the most high-probability one in the game) and that is always nice, and I rounded it out with a quick solve on the conundrum for a score in the 80's.
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Ep 43: James Weatherhead, Pravin Dullur (September 5, 2012; originally aired September 29, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
James Weatherhead gets his turn in the champion's seat tonight, and presumably hopes it will be the first of many such appearances. James loves history, and in particular earlier 20th century American history. He makes particular mention of Al Capone and Prohibition, and says that he feels it is a sometimes-neglected period of history, coming as it did between two world wars.
Tonight's challenger is Pravin Dullur, a father of two and psychiatrist specialising in child and adolescent health. Pravin comes from the south of India, and came an impressive third in the Indian version of Mastermind (it's not mentioned which year; my understanding is that each series had 64 contestants from all around India, but of course there were likely a great many more who did not make it past selection and onto the show).
James gained an early lead in the second round, and extended it in a later letters round. He missed a chance to go further ahead in the second numbers round, and Pravin did quite well in the last letters round to close the gap to a tantalising nine points. That was the margin going into the conundrum with both keen to solve it to take the win. In the end it was too difficult for them both, and James got his second win, 54 to 45.
I started off in unsatisfactory fashion, missing a word that I've found before. A couple of parsimonious letter rounds later in the game proved troublesome, and I missed a numbers solution I would have found on a better day. All in all, I definitely felt below par, but decent speed on the conundrum kept me well clear of the contestants.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
James Weatherhead gets his turn in the champion's seat tonight, and presumably hopes it will be the first of many such appearances. James loves history, and in particular earlier 20th century American history. He makes particular mention of Al Capone and Prohibition, and says that he feels it is a sometimes-neglected period of history, coming as it did between two world wars.
Tonight's challenger is Pravin Dullur, a father of two and psychiatrist specialising in child and adolescent health. Pravin comes from the south of India, and came an impressive third in the Indian version of Mastermind (it's not mentioned which year; my understanding is that each series had 64 contestants from all around India, but of course there were likely a great many more who did not make it past selection and onto the show).
James gained an early lead in the second round, and extended it in a later letters round. He missed a chance to go further ahead in the second numbers round, and Pravin did quite well in the last letters round to close the gap to a tantalising nine points. That was the margin going into the conundrum with both keen to solve it to take the win. In the end it was too difficult for them both, and James got his second win, 54 to 45.
I started off in unsatisfactory fashion, missing a word that I've found before. A couple of parsimonious letter rounds later in the game proved troublesome, and I missed a numbers solution I would have found on a better day. All in all, I definitely felt below par, but decent speed on the conundrum kept me well clear of the contestants.
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Ep 42: Ian See, James Weatherhead (September 4, 2012; originally aired September 28, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
This is Ian See's third night; a win here will give him a good chance of moving to sixth position in the finals rankings. Ian has a sweet tooth and likes to bake; his favourite thing to make is brownies -- they are really easy and everyone seems to love them.
Challenging Ian is James Weatherhead, who is studying a masters degree in teaching. James has already completed a law and arts degree, which is a decent amount of study. He quite enjoys the practice of law, but is particularly passionate about teaching kids and mentoring young people. He'd like to do university lecturing as a long-term goal, but thinks that looking after a class of 25 or so will provide enough of a challenge for the near future.
The contestants were equally matched for the first four rounds, but James finished extremely strongly, finding two eight-letter words and solving the final numbers round and the conundrum. The final margin of victory was much larger than it looked like being at the halfway mark, with James winning by 63 points to 27.
I was just one round off maximal, but my conundrum speed was very slow tonight. James beat me to the solution, but everything else went pretty well for a comfortable win.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
This is Ian See's third night; a win here will give him a good chance of moving to sixth position in the finals rankings. Ian has a sweet tooth and likes to bake; his favourite thing to make is brownies -- they are really easy and everyone seems to love them.
Challenging Ian is James Weatherhead, who is studying a masters degree in teaching. James has already completed a law and arts degree, which is a decent amount of study. He quite enjoys the practice of law, but is particularly passionate about teaching kids and mentoring young people. He'd like to do university lecturing as a long-term goal, but thinks that looking after a class of 25 or so will provide enough of a challenge for the near future.
The contestants were equally matched for the first four rounds, but James finished extremely strongly, finding two eight-letter words and solving the final numbers round and the conundrum. The final margin of victory was much larger than it looked like being at the halfway mark, with James winning by 63 points to 27.
I was just one round off maximal, but my conundrum speed was very slow tonight. James beat me to the solution, but everything else went pretty well for a comfortable win.
Ep 41: Ian See, Brian Lynch (September 3, 2012; originally aired September 27, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Ian See gets his first night in the champion's chair. As we found out yesterday, Ian is a fiction editor; Richard asks him what sort of work he focuses on. Ian responds that the next project that he will be editing is an anthology of short stories, and he also hopes to edit some novels next year. Richard checks where Ian would like to be doing that work; Ian says that the big publishing dream is to work in a publishing house in New York, have the big expense account, and all that. "Maybe one day," he finishes.
Tonight's challenger is Brian Lynch, and I.T. consultant who works in banking during the week, plays soccer on weeknights, and performs in pubs on the weekend. Brian expands on that last item: He mainly does traditional Irish music at some of the Irish bars around Melbourne. He plays the guitar and sings, and there is a girl who performs with him who plays the fiddle.
Ian got off to an early lead in the first letters round, but Brian overtook him on the first numbers round. Ian got ahead again in a later letters round, and then two invalid answers from Brian stopped any comeback he might have mounted. Ian guaranteed his win by solving the last numbers round, and then capped it off by solving the conundrum to reach the fifty mark, and a final scoreline of 51 to 24.
I was in good shape tonight except for a very careless miss on one letters round, where I ended up with an invalid answer. There were a couple of reasonably obvious alternatives that I somehow overlooked in time, and that was disappointing. The rest was reasonable, but that round cost me the chance to equal David and Lily. Maybe next time...
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Ian See gets his first night in the champion's chair. As we found out yesterday, Ian is a fiction editor; Richard asks him what sort of work he focuses on. Ian responds that the next project that he will be editing is an anthology of short stories, and he also hopes to edit some novels next year. Richard checks where Ian would like to be doing that work; Ian says that the big publishing dream is to work in a publishing house in New York, have the big expense account, and all that. "Maybe one day," he finishes.
Tonight's challenger is Brian Lynch, and I.T. consultant who works in banking during the week, plays soccer on weeknights, and performs in pubs on the weekend. Brian expands on that last item: He mainly does traditional Irish music at some of the Irish bars around Melbourne. He plays the guitar and sings, and there is a girl who performs with him who plays the fiddle.
Ian got off to an early lead in the first letters round, but Brian overtook him on the first numbers round. Ian got ahead again in a later letters round, and then two invalid answers from Brian stopped any comeback he might have mounted. Ian guaranteed his win by solving the last numbers round, and then capped it off by solving the conundrum to reach the fifty mark, and a final scoreline of 51 to 24.
I was in good shape tonight except for a very careless miss on one letters round, where I ended up with an invalid answer. There were a couple of reasonably obvious alternatives that I somehow overlooked in time, and that was disappointing. The rest was reasonable, but that round cost me the chance to equal David and Lily. Maybe next time...
Monday, 3 September 2012
Weekly summary: Episodes 36 to 40
David Jones continued to be a strong competitor, and in particular maintained his good form on the conundrums, twice beating me to the solutions. Things picked up again toward the end of the week where my conundrum speed was back to decent territory. The highlight of the week was Tuesday's game, where my solo total was ahead of David and Lily's combined effort, thanks to a numbers round.
David Jones successfully retired, taking a well-deserved third place on the leader board. There was not enough time for any further movement there, but next week may well shake things up a little on that front.
This week turned up a full monty, found by a contestant. It was a much more interesting week with the numbers than last week, as evidenced by Lily being unable to solve three of the numbers games within regulation time.
Thursday's maximum count was rather bad; it was the first time since I've started tracking the maxima that I've failed to find any maximal words. Some of that was due to obscurity, but two of them I should probably have found. Aside from that, it was reasonable pickings throughout.
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | 58 | 73 | 65 | 68 | 70 |
| Champion | 41 | 49 | 40 | 16 | 6 |
| Challenger | 12 | 21 | 16 | 22 | 0 |
| David + Lily | 77 | 81 | 76 | 73 | 73 |
| Me (solo) | 75 | 83 | 65 | 68 | 70 |
David Jones successfully retired, taking a well-deserved third place on the leader board. There was not enough time for any further movement there, but next week may well shake things up a little on that front.
| Andrew Fisher | 95 | 63 | 64 | 67 | 67 | 59 | 415 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naween Fernando | 73 | 60 | 64 | 94 | 64 | 56 | 411 |
| David Jones | 63 | 63 | 50 | 61 | 55 | 53 | 346 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 45 | 47 | 48 | 47 | 38 | 40 | 265 |
| Kashi Ross | 48 | 46 | 34 | 41 | 45 | 32 | 246 |
| Aaron Tyrrell | 51 | 35 | 61 | 18 | 165 | ||
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 37 | 57 | 34 | 128 | |||
| Stephen Farrelly | 26 | 30 | 30 | 86 |
This week turned up a full monty, found by a contestant. It was a much more interesting week with the numbers than last week, as evidenced by Lily being unable to solve three of the numbers games within regulation time.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full Monties | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Missed Full Monties | 0 | |||||
| Tough Numbers | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Impossible Numbers | 0 |
Thursday's maximum count was rather bad; it was the first time since I've started tracking the maxima that I've failed to find any maximal words. Some of that was due to obscurity, but two of them I should probably have found. Aside from that, it was reasonable pickings throughout.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximums: L | 3 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| N | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| C | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Contestants sorted by average score:
| Total | Games | Average | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Fisher | 415 | 6 | 69.17 |
| Naween Fernando | 411 | 6 | 68.50 |
| David Jones | 346 | 6 | 57.67 |
| Rob York | 94 | 2 | 47.00 |
| Chris Scholten-Smith | 265 | 6 | 44.17 |
| Geoff Heard | 88 | 2 | 44.00 |
| Sudesh Piyatissa | 128 | 3 | 42.67 |
| Aaron Tyrell | 165 | 4 | 41.25 |
| Kashi Ross | 246 | 6 | 41.00 |
| Tanya Ithier | 41 | 1 | 41.00 |
| Kiao Inthavong | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Jonathan Scarlett | 39 | 1 | 39.00 |
| Chaitanya Rao | 38 | 1 | 38.00 |
| Jason Stockdale | 37 | 1 | 37.00 |
| Rob Mould | 70 | 2 | 35.00 |
| Lara Cassar | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Andrew Patterson | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Ian See* | 35 | 1 | 35.00 |
| Beckett Rozentals | 34 | 1 | 34.00 |
| Elaine Miles | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Jenny Blair | 33 | 1 | 33.00 |
| Alexis Harley | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| James Pho | 32 | 1 | 32.00 |
| Erez Gordon | 31 | 1 | 31.00 |
| Ben Strate | 30 | 1 | 30.00 |
| Alan Stewart | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Adib Surani | 29 | 1 | 29.00 |
| Stephen Farrelly | 86 | 3 | 28.67 |
| Michael Clark | 28 | 1 | 28.00 |
| Helen Robinson | 27 | 1 | 27.00 |
| Michael Gin | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Les Ramsay | 25 | 1 | 25.00 |
| Stavroula Nicholls | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Robin Wedd | 24 | 1 | 24.00 |
| Jane Cleary | 23 | 1 | 23.00 |
| Brendan Murphy | 22 | 1 | 22.00 |
| Jim Bailey | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Daniel Pratt | 21 | 1 | 21.00 |
| Nick Taubert | 19 | 1 | 19.00 |
| Arthur Barrs | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Carol Campbell | 17 | 1 | 17.00 |
| Dawn Tuftan | 15 | 1 | 15.00 |
| Frances Weinberg | 10 | 1 | 10.00 |
| Paul Hughes | 6 | 1 | 6.00 |
| Andrew Bullen | 5 | 1 | 5.00 |
Saturday, 1 September 2012
Ep 40: Rob Mould, Ian See (August 31, 2012; originall aired September 24, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Rob Mould is back for his second night, and his first in the champion's seat. Rob has a golf ambition for his retiring years: He would like one day to score less than his age. Currently his best effort is 76, so he has a few years to go yet.
Tonight's challenger is Ian See, a fiction editor with a double degree in arts and pharmacology. Ian learned to speak English in Singapore, learned French in Australia, and then went to France and taught the French to speak English. He has had a fascination with languages since he was small, and French in particular he has always found to be a beautiful language. Naturally he seized those opportunities when they arose.
Ian got the early lead, then Rob drew level again in the second round. Ian had slightly the better of the next numbers round, and then there was another exchange of points in the next two letters rounds. Then Rob was the one to get points in the numbers, and then the margin was unchanged going into the conundrum. Ian was ahead but solved it first in any case to seal the win, 35 to 22.
I had a decent game for the most part, with two words I was pleased to spot in time. Against that I made a mess of the last numbers round, but otherwise it was all pretty reasonable. A comfortable and almost complete victory as I nearly held both contestants scoreless.
Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show. Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.
Rob Mould is back for his second night, and his first in the champion's seat. Rob has a golf ambition for his retiring years: He would like one day to score less than his age. Currently his best effort is 76, so he has a few years to go yet.
Tonight's challenger is Ian See, a fiction editor with a double degree in arts and pharmacology. Ian learned to speak English in Singapore, learned French in Australia, and then went to France and taught the French to speak English. He has had a fascination with languages since he was small, and French in particular he has always found to be a beautiful language. Naturally he seized those opportunities when they arose.
Ian got the early lead, then Rob drew level again in the second round. Ian had slightly the better of the next numbers round, and then there was another exchange of points in the next two letters rounds. Then Rob was the one to get points in the numbers, and then the margin was unchanged going into the conundrum. Ian was ahead but solved it first in any case to seal the win, 35 to 22.
I had a decent game for the most part, with two words I was pleased to spot in time. Against that I made a mess of the last numbers round, but otherwise it was all pretty reasonable. A comfortable and almost complete victory as I nearly held both contestants scoreless.
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