Weekly summary: Episodes 251 to 255

It's been a long while since I've done one of these -- I had to remind myself how they went!  It's been a bit of a difficult week, trying to get back into the swing of the game again after such a long absence.  It really has driven home the difference between playing it live and using the unhurried approach of the web versions I provide.  Still, hopefully there'll be time to adapt.  I had mostly reasonable results, although my performance was hampered a little by playing when tired.

The first game was a slowish start as there was not much room to distance myself from Martin, and if he'd solved the conundrum I would have started off the re-runs with a loss.  I settled down a little after that point and had clear victories, finishing off with on Friday with a game just one round shy of optimal.  It was no surprise that I never managed to outdo David (there were only four chances presented: EPACRID, DIACHRONY, ANYWISE, and DIOPTASE), but a couple of tough number rounds enabled me to pick up some points against Lily and twice match their combined solo total.  So there are positive signs already, and I'm looking forward to the next week.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Me	66	65	54	67	86
Champion	58	32	37	20	15
Challenger	31	16	41	47	14
David + Lily	77	72	72	76	86
Me (solo)	66	72	69	67	86

Martin started out with a few good wins, but narrowly lost to Shyam who had one of the best conundrum solves I've seen.  Judithe then came by and played a couple of good games to be a decent contender.  Obviously my statistics are incomplete at the moment since I lack the first half of the series, but here's the leaderboard based on this week; according to the books Martin scored 56 points in his first game.

Martin Gabor	56	58	52	44			220
Judithe Hall*	62	51					113
Shyam Subramaniam	47	25					72
Brad Tucker	41						41
Emma Watson	31						31
Matthew Matten	28						28

David and I each found the full monty on the final day, but the obscure one on Tuesday eluded us.  Lily had to use the break as thinking time on three occasions -- there were some tough rounds this week!  She did find the best result on Tuesday's unsolvable round.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Full Monties					1	1
Missed Full Monties		1				1
Tough Numbers		1	1		1	3
Impossible Numbers		1				1

My maximum count on the letters was rather less than I would like, until Friday's excellent game.  The numbers went reasonably, and I was well above my usual conundrum solution rate.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Maximums: L	3	2	2	2	5
N	3	2	2	3	2
C	0	1	1	1	2
Invalid: L	-	-	-	1	-
N	-	-	-	-	-

Contestants sorted by average score:

	Total	Games	Average
Judithe Hall*	113	2	56.50
Martin Gabor	220	4	55.00
Brad Tucker	41	1	41.00
Shyam Subramaniam	72	2	36.00
Emma Watson	31	1	31.00
Matthew Matten	28	1	28.00