Ep 421: Ben Fisher, Mathew Thomas (April 9, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


Win or lose, this is Ben's last night for a while.  Richard notes that Ben has solved the last four conundrums, and has done a lot of tweakage in his numbers rounds.  Ben says that when he first started watching the show he could never get the numbers, but Lily's tutelage has managed to teach him tweaking.  Lily is pleased by that, as you would expect.

Tonight's challenger is Mathew Thomas, a taxi driver and teacher.  The teaching that he does is English as a second language; he calls it "survival English", enough to allow the students to catch trams, fill in forms... to do the everyday things that native English speakers here might take for granted.


Ben gets off to a poor start, with an invalid word in the first round.  He somehow ends up with nothing to declare in the first numbers round, and when Mathew finds a good word to outscore him in the next round, Ben is 18 points adrift.  That possibly pushes him into trying for too much, and his next round is also invalid; he gets some back in the next two rounds but still needs to outpoint Mathew in the final numbers round to have a chance.  He makes an error in the accounting, though, and Mathew is safe going into the conundrum.  It proves to be too tough for both contestants, and Mathew takes the win, 32 to 21.

I had a decent game, but could not find the high notes.  Rounds two and three were the disappointing ones where I should definitely have done better.  Once more I was slow on the conundrum, but at least it was closer this time -- just over forty seconds, as it turns out.  It was all enough for a comfortable win, but still plenty of room for improvement.

Ep 420: Ben Fisher, Zaid Abbas (April 6, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


This is Ben's fifth night, and a win here will almost certainly earn him a place in the finals.  Ben went to Glasgow over the Christmas/New Year period to attend the wedding of some of his friends.  They kitted him up in the full kilt and his family's heritage tartan.  Richard lists the components of such dress and Ben agrees that they had him in all that "... and not much more".  Heh.

Tonight's challenger is Zaid Abbas, a software engineer.  Zaid plays "three or four" instruments, but has never had formal musical training.  He learned the keyboard when he was very young, just playing by ear -- he would listen to a song and then emulate it.  From there he kept building up his repertoire, moving on to more complicated songs.  Since then he has picked up the guitar, and drums, and is hoping to expand further.


There were good moments from both contestants tonight; the numbers targets were all high, but the contestants were always close with Zaid having slightly the better of it.  Unfortunately for Zaid, three of his words were invalid and Ben outscored him on the others, and that was just too much ground to give up.  One of those invalid words could easily have been the optimal answer (more on this in round 5), though, as he had found a good word.  Ben also found a great word in the last letters round and was really fast on the conundrum once more, to take a comprehensive 60 to 24 win.

I was off-kilter all night; whatever I did today that affected me, I hope I avoid it in the future.  I blanked badly on the first round, found an excellent word on the second, then went chasing after the wrong thing in the next numbers round and ending up declaring the wrong total.  The next three letters rounds should have produced eights but I missed them all, and I did not solve the conundrum either.  The last two numbers rounds were not enough to keep me out of trouble, and I ended up losing to Ben by a point.  That's right on the one-in-twenty mark that is my quota, but I'm still very disappointed by my performance since I was playing well below my best.

Ep 419: Ben Fisher, Scott Morrow (April 5, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


I bumped into Daniel Chua at university today, which was nice.  Nicer still was that he recognised me, which isn't bad considering we only met for one day half a year ago.  Hi, Daniel!  (For any newer readers, Daniel was one of the finalists from series 4.)


It looks like we are out of interesting things for Ben to talk about, as Richard asks him about his tactics for the game.  Ben says that something that he did not realise from home is that as a contestant there's actually quite a lot of pressure during the letters rounds when calling out the consonants and vowels.  (I'll mention that I did not feel pressured in that situation, but I did notice that making those decisions was taking away thinking time that I was used to having.)  Ben has reacted to this by settling on one mix and asking for that pretty much every time, so that he does not have to think about that.

He has mostly gone with three consonants, three vowels, consonant, and the vowel/consonant in some order, but there have been exceptions.  Still, he has presumably saved himself some thought during that, which is the point.  That said, I prefer to be more flexible about it so as to take advantage of possibilities that arise as the letters are revealed.

Tonight's challenger is statistician Scott Morrow.  Scott plays African drums; he developed that interest when he did a study tour in Ghana around six years ago.  It was a drum and dance tour, catering to all levels, and he describes it as fantastic from both a musical standpoint and that of getting to interact with another culture.


There were some good words from both players tonight, and Scott pushed Ben throughout.  Admittedly he was helped by Ben making two mistakes in the numbers rounds, but he is still the first contestant to make Ben sweat on the conundrum.  Ben was only two points ahead going into it, but once again solved it quickly to take the win, 42 to 30.

I started out in excellent form, or so I thought, but David brought me back to earth.  I got flustered in the first numbers round and ended up much further away than I would have liked, but the rest was pretty good.  I was just a bit slower to the conundrum than Ben, but did solve it, to round out a mixed but enjoyable performance.

Ep 418: Ben Fisher, Kylie Alexander (April 4, 2012)

Ben lived in the UK for a few years; I hope he watched Countdown there.  He explains that like many backpackers, or indeed other people who go there, he got his "Heathrow injection" and started putting on some pounds.  In that first winter there wasn't much to do so he decided that he would run the London Marathon.  Ben spent about four months training, and then come April he entered it.  He completed the event in four hours and seven minutes; he had hoped to do it in under four hours but hit a wall (figuratively, I assume) at around 22 miles.

Tonight's challenger is Kylie Alexander, who is studying to be a GP.  Kylie is currently a registrar, and as a registrar has worked in quite a variety of places.  She mentions Kakadu in the Northern Territory, the Riverland on the south coast of South Australia, and now in the Adelaide Hills.  As Richard points out, Kylie has been away from the cities; he asks if she intends to work in a regional area, and she responds that she does.


Ben is in good form again tonight, with some good results in both facets of the game.  An invalid word from him was a small blemish but the game was essentially won at that point.  He finished off the game with an excellent four-second solution to the conundrum, and a 63 to 21 win.

I had some good and some bad tonight.  I was just in time on the first letter round, a bit too slow on the second and third, but then found the elusive full monty in the fourth.  I was not quite equal to the challenge of a tough numbers round, and nowhere near solving the conundrum.  Nonetheless, some of those good results saw me comfortably home, and any day with a full monty is a good one.

Ep 417: Ben Fisher, Ian Wanless (April 3, 2012)

As you may recall from last night, Ben has trekked through Africa.  He was there during New Year's Eve of 2006, and celebrated much as one might expect.  When he woke up the next day he thought that he had a terrible hangover, but as the day progressed delirium and fever set in; he found out at the end of the day that he had actually contracted malaria.  But he went to the snake clinic and was given some four-month old medicine, and was good within twenty-four hours.

I recognised tonight's challenger from early opening shots, although it has probably been twenty years since I last saw him.  It's mathematician Ian Wanless, who represented Australia in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1987 (the year prior to me).  He works in the field of combinatorics, which he jokes is the methods of counting when you run out of fingers and toes.  Ian adds that people might have done permuations and combinations at school, and that's the start, but then you move on to more advanced techniques.  He mentions that it has a lot of applications, such as gene sequencing, designing codes for communication, and experiments with physical trials.  More information about some of it may be on his homepage.


It's decent wordwork from both contestants tonight, with sixes and sevens throughout.  Ben finds the longer words, but Ian gets back some of that ground in the first numbers game to stay in contention.  Ian tries the six small option in the second numbers game but the target is impossible to score on.  He tries it again a second time, and is unfortunately a touch too slow to get a solution down; Ben outscores him and is safe going into the conundrum.  Ben rounds out a good night's play by solving that conundrum after seven seconds, and is a deserved winner by 53 to 26.

I was on track for most of this, but I tried an archaism in one round that unfortunately turns out not to have made it into the Macquarie.  Two other rounds offered longer words than I found, one of them relatively common but not mentioned by David.  I finished it off with my fastest conundrum solution for a long time (subjectively, at least), and a comfortable win.

Ep 416: Craig Hill, Ben Fisher (April 2, 2012)

Richard's opening spiel includes a very large number of spoonerisms, which he impressively delivers.  As part of that it is noted that Lily's name spoonerises to Silly Learner.

Craig enjoys cricket, and says that he used to play until recently.  He liked getting out in the sun and spending some time with the guys.  Unfortunately, in the last game he played, he was on the fielding side and stood closer to the bat than turned out to be wise.  On the first ball of the game he discovered the limits to his reflexes and (in Richard's words) "tried to eat the ball".  It made a bit of a mess of his face and he lost a front tooth, but he's recovered now.  He does not know if he'll make it back out onto the cricket field any time soon, however.

Tonight's challenger is commercialisation manager Ben Fisher.  Ben loves to get out and see the world -- he thinks it has a lot to offer. He has been on treks across Africa, treks through the Grand Canyon, and did a driving trip around Northern Ireland not so long ago.  Richard asks what the perfect ingredients are for Ben's kind of travel; Ben responds that he likes to travel with someone who is willing to be spontaneous and do something on the spur of the moment.  He adds that planning can sometimes get in the way of the most amazing experiences.  He finishes with an exhortation to people who travel to take the opportunities when they arise.

Later conversation reveals that Ben plays trivia regularly at a pub, and on at least one occasion a few months back he noticed that Lily was on one of the other teams.


The contestants were fairly close throughout; Ben gained in two early letters rounds but Craig got some of that ground back in the first numbers round.  They were mostly matched for the rest of the game, but Ben found a good solution to the last numbers round to be safe going into the conundrum.  Ben buzzed in with an incorrect answer, but Craig was not able to solve it either; Ben finished the victor, 55 to 40.

I had a very good game, but felt obliged to risk a nine that I didn't entirely like and it turned out not to be valid.  The other seven main rounds were optimal, though, and that was enough for a comfortable win even though the conundrum likewise eluded me.