Ep 376: Cem Gurkan, Rhonda Jefferson (February 6, 2012)

Cem is interested in photography, and particularly likes black and white photography.  He enjoys taking photographs, developing, and printing, although in these days of digital photography there's less call for the latter two and he hasn't done them recently.  His preferred subject matter is buildings, and he enjoys being able to give photos as presents to his friends.

Tonight's challenger is Rhonda Jefferson, a retired physiotherapist who was become a farmer.  Richard points out that Rhonda has gone from living in a beachside suburb to a farm -- he calls it a "tree change" -- and that is a significant shift in environment.  Richard calls her a very practical farm worker; Rhonda has learned to drench cattle, and inject them, and "do all sorts of things".  She adds that she's very much enjoying living in a lovely little village (Exeter, in the southern highlands region of New South Wales).


Cem was a bit unlucky in this game; a fairly reasonable word was deemed invalid (more fuel for my claims about the risk of comparatives) which meant 6 points to Rhonda instead of 7 to him -- a 13 point turnaround.  Also, he made a careless slip in a numbers round (of a type that is easy enough to make -- he knew he was one off the target, but wrote down the wrong one); that cost him 7 points as well.  Those two rounds were the only main rounds on which Rhonda outscored him, and he managed to outscore her in a later one to give him a chance going into the conundrum.  Rhonda did solve it very quickly, however, for a slightly fortunate 61 to 45 victory.

I was in passable form today; the first two rounds could have been better, but there wasn't much likelihood of improvement elsewhere.  I got beaten to the conundrum, but only just, so it was definitely a quicker solve than usual for me, and a relatively comfortable win.  The numbers were very friendly today, which certainly helped.

As usual, details after the jump.

Ep 375: Alice Wheeler, Cem Gurkan (February 3, 2012)

Alice likes to rock-climb "anywhere there's cliffs".  She likes the climbing up, but she likes abseiling down even more -- she absolutely loves that feeling of falling down.

Tonight's challenger is bank manager Cem Gurkan.  Before becoming a bank manager he has had several somewhat different jobs: He used to own a cafe; he was the manager of a toy store; and his first job was as an analyst in a small start-up high-tech company.


Alice hits the fourth game wall here; three of her first four letters rounds are invalid, and the valid one is beaten by Cem's selection.  She is 27 points behind after the first five rounds, and although Cem follows up with some invalid options of his own to allow her closer, the final numbers round is too easy and Cem has an unbeatable lead going into the conundrum.  Once again it remains unsolved -- it has been a tough week for the conundrums! -- and Cem takes the game 47 points to 33.

This was another case of me finding answers around the point that time ran out, but today I mostly had enough time to get them written down.  I actually had a pretty good game except for one round where the only seven I managed to find turned out to be invalid.  I still could have lost the game at the conundrum stage, but fortunately I solved it to seal the win.

As usual, details after the break.