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.