Ep 411: Ann Russell, John Morris (March 26, 2012)

Richard asks Ann for particular memories of her performance so far.  Ann has enjoyed it, of course, and mentions that she has discovered something about herself: Her ability to recover from blunders so that she can treat each game separately and not dwell on what she has done in the past.  She did not know that about herself, so it has been a good learning experience.

Tonight's challenger is John Morris, an economist and geologist.  John has been on several trips -- partly tied in with his geological interests -- that have tended to have a theme about them; generally, dinosaurs and volcanos.  He mentions one trip to Boulia, near the Queensland/Northern Territory border; he says that area used to be an ocean and had pliosaurs swimming around there.  So the trips were about finding fossils or evidence of volcanic activity along the way; Richard compares it to a game of I Spy.


For the first four letters rounds Ann managed to outdo John by a letter each round.  He turned the tables in the final letters round but he had already conceded far too much ground to hope to catch up.  Ann solved two of the numbers rounds also (with the third proving too difficult for both contestants), which put it beyond any doubt.  The conundrum went unsolved and Ann gained her sixth victory with a 47 to 16 scoreline, becoming the series' second retiring champion.  She'll be back for the finals, presumably, unless we keep getting retiring champions at this rate!

I was slow on the conundrum, but I got there.  I did as well as possible on the numbers, and almost so on the letters.  I actually had every best answer written down (one of them outdoing David) but talked myself out of two of them, including the full monty.  Ouch.  A comfortable win and a good game, but it hurts to have the perfect game within grasp and throw it away like that.

Ep 410: Ann Russell, Philip Scambler (March 23, 2012)

Ann has been learning Spanish in preparation for doing some travel in South America.  No mention of what she hopes to visit there, though.

Tonight's challenger is Philip Scambler, a retired school principal.  Now that he is retired, at sheep-shearing time he helps out at the shearing sheds of a friend who owns a large property.  He does not shear the sheep, but does do a variety of other tasks, "particularly the ones which are not too strenuous".


The contestants are reasonably close on the letters, but Ann twice managed to do better.  That gave her a crucial fourteen point lead, and the numbers rounds provided no difference.  Neither managed to get close in the last one which was a little odd, and it could have put Philip back into contention if he'd just done so.  (There's a suggestion that he saw something a little too late.)  Ann buzzed in with an incorrect conundrum answer, and then rather strangely Philip apparently wrote his answer down instead of buzzing in; if he had been in contention, that would have been a bizarre way to avoid winning.  Ann gets her fifth win, 49 to 35.

I was in reasonable form, but just a few seconds slow on the first letters round.  I also cunningly avoided finding the better answer in another round (but nothing nearly as bad as the ETHANOL / METHANOL slip from yesterday), and blanked on the conundrum.  But my numbers work continues to be good this series, and I had a comfortable win.

Ep 409: Ann Russell, James Cooper (March 22, 2012)

On Ann's fourth night the conversation turns to strategies.  She talks about searching for affixes in the letters rounds, and for 100's or 10's in the numbers rounds and hoping that they will lead to a solution.

Tonight's challenger is James Cooper, a management consultant.  James plays Ultimate Frisbee; he gives a brief overview of the general idea, and says that he enjoys playing it very much.


James is unlucky to have an invalid word in the first round -- one of the vagaries of the Macquarie that surprises David -- but thereafter he is generally beaten by Ann's choices.  Ann hits her stride with the letters in the latter part of the game, and although James won the first numbers game he was not able to keep that up and Ann was safe going into the conundrum.  It turned out to be a difficult one that no-one solved, and Ann won 62 to 35.

I had... well, it arguably wasn't actually that bad a game.  But it should have been so much better; two very careless misses -- one of them very costly indeed -- in the letters, plus another where I looked several times at the right idea and missed it.  Fortunately my numbers form kept me in things so that I was ahead at the conundrum but not safe.  It was a very nervous time as I failed to solve it, but with Ann not finding the answer I escaped with an extremely lucky win.

Ep 408: Ann Russell, Cassie Palmer (March 21, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


Richard makes reference to a "cave incident" that Ann has had.  She explains that she once went on a self-guided cave trip; she was with a group of scouts (who had all the torches).  When they got near the end of the cave -- this was about a kilometre underground -- suddenly the cave narrowed off.  Ann did not like the looks of that, so she decided to wait around while everyone else moved off to look at the rest of the cave.  Which they did, leaving her in complete darkness for the ten minutes or so until they returned.  As she said, "Those ten minutes... one K under the ground in complete darkness were very scary."  She does not "do" caves any more.

Tonight's challenger is Cassie Palmer, a district nurse.  Her daughter, Millie, is almost three years old; just before Millie turned two she suddenly could read the alphabet.  Cassie and her husband were surprised as to how this could be, since they had not sat down and taught it to her.  Then one night when they were eating dinner and watching Letters and Numbers -- as they do every weeknight -- Lily was putting up the letters and Millie was calling out the letters as Lily put them up.  So that was how it happened.


Cassie started off with two good words to have a 14 point lead after the second round; then the situation reversed in the next two letter rounds.  Cassie struggled with the numbers throughout, and when she somehow wrote down an invalid answer on the last round she dropped out of contention.  Ann solved the conundrum first in any case, ending up with a 46 to 20 win in a game that was quite similar to yesterday's game in some ways.

I saw a word a little too late for it to count, and could not get the conundrum, but aside from that it was a good game for me; I was particularly pleased about the last numbers round.  A comfortable win in the end.

Ep 407: Ann Russell, Peter Ghalayini (March 20, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


I'm going to digress for a moment here to note that 407 (the current episode number) is one of my favourite numbers.  It is one of four three-digit numbers that are equal to the sum of the cubes of their digits.  (i.e., 407 = 4³ + 0³ + 7³.)  The others aren't too difficult to find if anyone reading feels like trying to do so.


And now back to the show.  Ann mentions that when people come to Australia without English as their first language they are entitled to classes, but not everyone can get to those classes (perhaps because they have young children to look after, or they are infirm).  So she is part of a group of volunteers that go to the homes of such people a couple of hours a week "to get their English started".  They learn English, and the volunteers get to learn about other cultures, so it's win-win.

Tonight's challenger is Peter Ghalayini, a pastor who used to be an accountant; more precisely a credit manager.  During the time he was an accountant he was also a very active member of his church, and that led him to look at further work in the church.  He notes -- in contrast to when he was a credit manager -- that people are happy to see him come around now.

There's some more information about Peter here.


Peter gets off to a good start with a great word, and extends his lead when Ann declares an invalid word in the second round.  The next couple of rounds produce no change, but then Ann manages to edge into the lead in the last two letter rounds -- she had a good word in a tough mix, and then a very easy word in the last that Peter did not match; a little studying of RETSINA would have paid handsome dividends for him.  Ann draws further ahead in the last numbers round but the conundrum is still decisive.  Peter buzzes in first, but his answer is incorrect.  Ann eventually buzzes in with the correct answer to round off the win, 48 to 30.

I started off with well, then floundered in the second round.  My eventual answer turned out to be pretty reasonable, and the next two rounds also went all right.  I missed a word I should have seen in the fifth, but it was all mostly OK until the final numbers round, where I missed the obvious completely and declared a rather poor answer.  I took a while to see the right path on the conundrum, eventually getting there at the halfway point.  Overall it was a decent game marred by that last numbers round.

Ep 406: Ann Russell, Marc Lissner

Rounds: Here.


Two new contestants tonight, after Norm's successful retirement on Friday.  Taking the champion's seat is Ann Russell, a retired school-teacher.  In the following she implicitly refers to another person by saying "we" several times; I would assume this is her partner.  Anyway, before they retired they bought a country house down at Maslin's Beach, which she notes is right near the Mclaren Vale wine area.

(I'll digress here to note that Maslin Beach is the name of both the suburb and its associated beach, with Maslin's Beach being a common name for the beach specifically.  The southern half of this beach was Australia's first official nude beach, and used to host the Maslin's Beach Nude Olympics every year, although I gather from limited research that it has not been held for a few years.)

When Ann and her partner retired they could not decide which house they preferred, and so they ended up living in both houses.  They have a long weekend down the coast, and a short week in the city where they "see [their] family and go to the dentist and things like that".

In the challenger's seat is data analyst Marc Lissner.  He proposed to his fiancée at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, and if you've not seen pictures of it before do yourself a favour and do an image search -- there are some breathtaking pictures of it out there.  Marc points out that it inspired the Disney castle.  Richard asks why he chose that location, and Marc responds that it was a magical castle and he'd learned about it at school, so when they were in Germany he decided that that was where he wanted to propose.  (Oh, and the answer was yes.)


Ann starts off with an invalid word (a bit oddly, too, but we'll get to that in due course), giving Marc some early points.  The next two rounds are even, with her numbers choice proving too difficult for everyone.  Ann scores well in the next two rounds, including an excellent word in round 5, and with Marc doing rather poorly in the next numbers round she has a large lead.  Marc manages to get most of the ground back in the final numbers round, and it comes down to the conundrum.  Ann solves it first and takes the win, 40 to 26.

I had a poor start to this game, and was never really comfortable.  I ended up missing two other longer words that I'd have like to have seen, but I found the best results in the numbers rounds and solved the conundrum reasonably early to finish with a very comfortable win.  In fact, due to Lily's difficulties with the numbers I was only a point off the combined David and Lily total, so it arguably wasn't as bad as it felt at the time.