Ep 309: Alex van der Kooij, Adrian Lonigro (November 3, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Alex returns after yesterday's close game; it is revealed that he is a cryptic crossword fan, which must make David happy.  Alex has written guides for people to help them get into the mindset of how to solve cryptic crosswords (distributed to his students at the University of the Third Age, I believe).  Richard mentions David's book Puzzled which also has a similar theme -- I must acquire a copy at some point.

Today's challenger is student teacher Adrian Lonigro, whose ambition is to become a commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest.  He has apparently loved it ever since he first watched it back in 1993 (he was nine at the time), and has watched it every year since, as well as some of the older ones.  He's not been to one in person, but he has attended the Swedish and Danish national finals.

Prior to the second round, Lily mentions that the Eurovision Song Contest is a big event in her family, too, and in fact they have a tradition of filling out a spreadsheet with all of their votes.  In the post-show chat Lily also mentions that her favourite Eurovision character is Epic Sax Guy (part of Moldova's 2010 entry).


This is another close match for Alex, but he was ahead going into the conundrum and solving it sealed his victory over Adrian, 51 to 38.It didn't feel like a very convincing performance from either competitor, though, with six-letter words being the order of the day.

On the other hand, I was not always able to find the better options in time, and with a failure on one numbers round my final score of 65 is perhaps more flattering than it should be.  The highlight here was once again finding a longer word than David, although the reverse happened twice.  No full monty this game, which dooms the grand slam but the Clayton's one is still alive.

As usual, details after the jump.