Ep 133: Barry Harridge, Gary Beer (June 24, 2016; originally aired February 2, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


It's the sixth and final night for Barry Harridge, and the question is whether he can successfully retire.  But first we get to find out a little more about his past activities: Barry went to the first (English language) World Scrabble Championship, in London in 1991.  He attended as just a "Scrabble groupie"; however, when the Nigerians failed to turn up the organisers drew a name out of a hat as a replacement, and that is how he ended up playing in the tournament.  Barry adds that it was not too bad, because the rest of his team-mates had spent a sleepless night previously, but he'd had a really good sleep.  (Incidentally, Barry ended up coming 32nd out of 48, behind two of the other Australians but ahead of the other two.  A brief table of results is here.)

Standing between Barry and successful retirement is Gary Beer, an operations manager for an insurance brokerage firm.  Gary left the UK in 2005 for what was meant to be a twelve-month trip, but five years down the track has become an Australian citizen.  As he relates it, he had spent three months travelling around South-East Asia, and arrived in Australia needing to earn some extra money before he continued with the rest of his trip.  He started working for a company (that he is still working for), and back then it was only allowed to work for three months as a temporary employee.  So the company offered to sponsor him, and five years down the track he is still there, and has gained citizenship.  Obviously, he is very happy to be here.


Whoo-ee, this one went down to the wire.  In every single main round the contestants declared equal results, and they were identical in all but two cases.  One of those almost led to a swing, since it was a numbers round with calculation errors, but it turned out that both contestants managed to make errors and there was no swing.  So it came down to the conundrum, with both contestants on equal score.  It was a difficult one, but Barry managed to solve it and so successfully retire with a 59 to 49 victory.  Well done, Barry!

I was similarly matched with the contestants, right up until that late-game pair of invalid rounds.  That gave me just enough breathing space to scrape home with the win, despite not solving the conundrum within time.  Phew!

Ep 132: Barry Harridge, Susan Bee (June 23, 2016; originally aired February 1, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Barry Harridge has made it to the fifth night, and should make the finals even if he loses here.  Of course, he'd rather win.  Richard opens by noting that Barry has been exceptionally good with the words, and mentions that Barry has built up a resource that helps him in this regard.  Barry explains that he has put together a "consogram list", where words are organised by putting their consonants first.  (From later context, those consonants are then sorted and words with identical consonants are grouped together.)  He gives an example with C, N, R, T, where he would mumble to himself "curtain, nectar, citrine..." and so forth.  As a result, he called this list "a thesaurus of mumbles".  (Incidentally, this kind of thing is why I think it's best to pick vowels first against Scrabble players -- taking the consonants early just gives them more time to recall the appropriate parts of such lists.)

Tonight's challenger is Susan Bee, a freelance writer who also works as a museum guide.  Susan works in a house museum; she describes the house as a sort of eccentric Victorian Gothic mansion, set in beautiful grounds with a pleasure garden, vegetable garden, and paddocks.  She sort of trails off after "paddocks", implying there is more to the grounds (as one would expect), but presumably those were the standout features.


Barry gets his usual very fast start, with two excellent eight-letter words.  He followed it up by finding a good solution to the first numbers round, and was 26 points ahead going into the first break.  The remaining letters rounds went a bit each way, with Barry rather surprisingly missing a full monty that Scrabble players would be expected to find, and both contestants were unable to score points in the numbers (Barry due to errors of calculation, while Susan was not able to get within range).  The conundrum was likewise elusive, so those first three rounds made all the difference: Barry won in a surprisingly low-scoring game, 39 to 13.

Barry's start was too good for me, and I was sixteen points behind at the halfway mark.  Fortunately I was able to capitalise on the full monty opportunity, and pick up some useful points in the numbers rounds as well to be safe going into the conundrum.  I was pleased to solve it (particularly after yesterday's invalid answer), and get home with the win in what started off looking like a serious loss possibility.

Ep 131: Barry Harridge, Frank Rice (June 22, 2016; originally aired January 31, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


It's the crucial fourth night for Barry Harridge, and it looks like we're out of talking points for now.  Richard asks whether Barry practised being the carry-over champion over the weekend.  Barry manages to work in a comment about trying to do the crossword by DA, but really there's no substance here.

Tonight's challenger is Frank Rice, an education consultant who loves applying mathematics to everyday situations.  When asked for examples, Frank cites using Pythagoras' Theorem to check that they had correctly marked out their tennis court.  And that's it... two short contestant chats today; were they already running late this early in the filming?


It was another one-sided game, with Barry jumping to an early lead in the first two letters rounds.  Frank was not able to get anywhere with the first numbers round, and Barry took a 21 point lead into the first break.  He extended that in the next numbers round; Frank managed to stop the rot over the next few rounds but was not able to peg Barry back at all.  Barry was safely ahead going into the conundrum; he buzzed in with an incorrect answer, but still finished a comfortable victor, 54 to 15.

I managed to match David and Lily throughout, but then messed up on the conundrum by buzzing in too early.  So close!

Ep 130: Barry Harridge, John Marsiglio (June 21, 2016; originally aired January 28, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


It's Barry Harridge's third night, and Richard notes that Barry organises Scrabble tournaments, on quite a major scale.  He asks how Barry has managed that; Barry responds that he has been involved with Scrabble for many years, but never been a very good player.  What he does do is invoke the power of computing, having written programs to help look up words and see if they're available, or sort out the details of who should be playing who in the next round, or make results available on the internet.  Richard suggests that Barry might be understating his ability, given the quality of some of the words he has found so far.

Tonight's challenger is John Marsiglio, who has a science background and works for the Environment Protection Agency.  Naturally enough, Richard enquires as to what is involved in that.  John explains that they assess proposals by people who may want to build a new factory, or engage in some similar project, and make sure that those proposals meet the relevant environmental criteria for Victorian policies.


This game started out similarly to Barry's previous games, with him taking the first two letters rounds handily and then having some issues with the numbers.  John was able to steady in the middle third, matching Barry throughout, but was not able to recoup lost ground.  Barry sealed the win in the final letters round; John pegged back the scoreline a little in the final numbers round, but neither solved the conundrum and the final score was 45 to 31 in Barry's favour.

I was just unable to get clear of Barry for most of the game, in part due to a very poor miss in the first numbers round where I ended up with nothing to declare.  It was only in the last numbers round that I managed to outscore him, and that raised the possibility of a tie if he beat me to the conundrum.  Happily I got there quickly enough, but it's definitely been a shaky set of matches for me against Barry so far.

Ep 129: Barry Harridge, Nathan Boadle (June 20, 2016; originally aired January 27, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Barry Harridge gets his turn in the champion's chair, and Richard opens by saying that, back in Barry's teaching days, there was a time that Barry "brought together the letters and the numbers".  Barry explains that he had a mathematics class to teach, and the class included both computer science and literature students; they did some work with Lewis Carroll's symbolic logic, and on the final exam they were asked to use this symbolic logic to analyse the fundamental premise of Catch-22.

Tonight's challenger is Nathan Boadle, a circus performer, trainer, and fitness coach.  Nathan used to be part of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, a circus for people between eight and eighteen that is based in Albury, where Nathan grew up.  His main area of performance was aerial, so he could swing off anything that hung from the roof.  Richard simplifies this a bit to Nathan being a trapeze performer, which Nathan mostly goes along with.


The game started out much like yesterday's game, with Barry dominating in the letters and the first numbers round being too easy to pose a problem for either contestant.  Barry was a daunting thirty-one points ahead after five rounds, and it looked like we were slated for another blowout.  But a tricky numbers round gave Nathan a chance, and then two invalid answers from Barry allowed Nathan to close the gap to just seven points going into the conundrum.  Barry recovered to solve it quickly and scrape through with the win, 51 to 33.

Ep 128: Avi Chanales, Barry Harridge (June 17, 2016; originally aired January 26, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Avi Chanales is back for the crucial fourth game tonight, and Richard turns the topic of conversation back to Avi's childhood fascination with countries and flags.  After Avi had mastered the flags he went on to the capital cities; he printed out a list of all the capitals and taped it above (his bed, presumably -- he breaks off here to point out that he had a bunk bed).  He started with Afghanistan and went on from there.

Standing in Avi's way is Barry Harridge, a retired secondary and university mathematics and statistics teacher.  Barry was also very much involved in the early days of computing, back in the days of punched cards.  As he puts it, "you had to sit at this great... enormous great machine, punch away at the cards, and you fitted, say, about twenty or so characters on one card.  Then you'd start another card, and so on.  You might have about fifty or so cards; submit it overnight, get it back the next morning, and then find you'd left a comma out."  It was certainly a time-consuming way to work.


It was quite the one-sided game tonight.  Barry consistently outdid Avi in the letters rounds, and the numbers rounds were easy enough that both solved them.  Barry found the full monty on offer, too, and had the game wrapped up going into the second break -- an impressive achievement!  The conundrum ended up proving too difficult for both contestants, but Barry had still scored quite highly in his 75 to 30 win.

I was just able to keep ahead of Barry thanks to a couple of good finds, but nearly lost it at the end when I dropped a findable maximum and could not solve the conundrum.  Fortunately for me he was not able to gain on those rounds, or I could have had my first loss for the series.

Ep 196 [QF3]: Barry Harridge, Oli Bryant (May 23, 2012; originally aired May 2, 2011)

Disclaimer: I watched this episode when it first aired, and although I did not recall any of it I cannot rule out memory somehow being a factor.


Taking the champion's seat in this third quarterfinal is retired mathematics teacher Barry Harridge, the third seed.  Richard notes that in Barry's first episode he solved all three of the numbers rounds and found a nine-letter word.  Barry does not remember that part so much as having done some silly things in later games.

In the challenger's seat is sixth seed Oli Bryant, a sustainability consultant.  Oli solved four of the six conundrums during his time on the show.


There were some good results from each, and a lot of adjustments to the relative difference in scores as only the last numbers round yielded shared points.  Barry had the better of the letters, helped along by a good eight-letter word in the second round and a couple of invalid offerings from Oli; on the other hand, Barry also had an invalid word in one round and could not match Oli's seven-letter word in the first round.  The net result from the letters was seven points to Barry, but he conceded seventeen points to Oli in the numbers and trailed by precisely ten points going into the conundrum.  That could have led to a tiebreaker conundrum, but Oli was the first to solve it, sealing the win by 47 points to 27.

I did fairly well, finding best results on the letters rounds, although not always the most common ones.  I bobbled slightly on the second numbers round, and failed to solve the conundrum within time, but otherwise had optimal results and a fairly solid win.