Ep 16: Andrew Fisher, Alexis Harley (July 30, 2012; originally aired August 23, 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.


The chat with Andrew mostly just rehashes his performance from yesterday.  Andrew notes that he saw the potential for FUMIGATES prior to the last tile being drawn, but that he saw NAUGHTIER just at "the last minute"... and I know it's an understandable phrase to use, but it grates every time.  In any case, the video suggests that he found it just under halfway through, but for a player of his calibre that could well feel like a very long time.

Tonight's challenger is Alexis Harley, a university lecturer in English literature.  Alexis plays online Scrabble and describes herself as a "bespectacle bagpiping bilbiophile".  Richard picks up on the bagpipe aspect of that and asks for more information.  Alexis explains that she and her mother were sitting outside a recorder lesson -- they were a bit early -- and her mother asked her what instrument she would like to take up when she dropped recorder.  Alexis knew that her mother was thinking flute or violin, or possibly something like saxophone at the worst, so she tried to think of the most obnoxious answer that she could.  He mother was kind enough to take her up on it, as she puts it.


It was a night for Alexis finding six-letter words only to be beaten by Andrew's seven-letter ones; that happened three times and together with the conundrum going Andrew's way proved an insuperable hurdle.  There were a couple of tricky number mixes tonight; they went a bit each way although Andrew did the better, and the net result was his second victory, 63 to 32.

I had a great round in the letters, finding optimal answers that included two words longer than those found by Andrew; one of those also outdid David.  However, I struggled in the numbers, missing a couple of adjustments to reach the target.  One of those I should definitely have found, while the other was deservedly tough.  But Lily was on target with both of them, so I ended up significantly behind the combined total.  Against that, I managed to beat Andrew to the conundrum solution again, much to my surprise.  All things considered, a pretty good game!