Weekly summary: Episodes 266 to 270

I started the week with a maximal game, which is always nice.  David and Lily were also on track, so I did not get the win over them, but there's only so much to be done.  I stayed reasonably in touch with them both for the rest of the week, but a mental freeze on Thursday greatly reduced my score when I failed to declare anything in a numbers round.  Friday brought better reward, as I managed to solve a numbers round that eluded Lily, and so achieved that rare solo victory.  My scores were all above 70 for the week, which feels like it could be a first; certainly it's not a common thing.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Me	86	74	71	76	76
Champion	26	27	24	35	41
Challenger	8	30	13	28	27
David + Lily	86	76	75	87	74
Me (solo)	86	74	71	76	76

Anushan won Monday's game, but went down to Brydon on Tuesday.  Brydon carried the rest of the week, getting a bigger score on each game.  He broke the third game barrier, and more importantly got past the fourth game, and we can reasonably expect him to turn up again in the finals unless he completely crashes in his next game.  The limited leaderboard looks like this:

Brydon Coverdale*	43	47	56	61			207
Martin Gabor	56	58	52	44			220
Judithe Hall	62	51	43				156
Emily Hawker	67	53	29				149
Anushan Jegatheeswaran	50	47	41				138
Rachel Furness	35	54	40				129
Rebecca Skovron	53	36					89
Jodi-Ann Menzies	49	28					77

There were two full monties this week, both in the first rounds of their respective games.  Hopefully next week will bring more -- they've been a bit thin on the ground recently.  Lily encountered two tough numbers targets, one of which I was pleased to solve within time (although I was lucky to do so).

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Full Monties	1			1		2
Missed Full Monties						0
Tough Numbers			1		1	2
Impossible Numbers						0

My maximum counts for the main rounds were essentially the same as last week -- one more letters maximum, one fewer numbers maximum.  However, there was a complete turnaround on the conundrums: This week I solved them all.  That's a pleasant change!

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Maximums: L	5	2	4	4	3
N	3	3	1	2	3
C	1	1	1	1	1
Invalid: L	-	-	-	-	-
N	-	-	-	-	-

Contestants sorted by average score:

	Total	Games	Average
Martin Gabor	220	4	55.00
Judithe Hall	156	3	52.00
Brydon Coverdale*	207	4	51.75
Emily Hawker	149	3	49.67
Anushan Jegatheeswaran	138	3	46.00
Sasha Quilty	45	1	45.00
Rebecca Skovron	89	2	44.50
Rachel Furness	129	3	43.00
Brad Tucker	41	1	41.00
Daniel McNamara	40	1	40.00
Jodi-Ann Menzies	77	2	38.50
Shyam Subramaniam	72	2	36.00
Geoff Walker	71	2	35.50
Miles Tilly	33	1	33.00
Ajanthan Jegatheeswaran	32	1	32.00
Kim Butcher	31	1	31.00
Emma Watson	31	1	31.00
Cormac Murtagh	58	2	29.00
Matthew Matten	28	1	28.00
Michael Lithgow	27	1	27.00
Cameron Begley	51	2	25.50