Ep 4: Chris Scholten-Smith, Chaitanya Rao (July 12, 2012; originally aired August 5, 2010)

Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show.  Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.


Chris returns for his fourth night, and the pre-game chat has nothing much to it -- just some banter about his book plans.

I was surprised to see that I recognised tonight's challenger (and this kind of experience is one reason why Letters and Numbers will play better to Australian audiences than Countdown will).  He is Chaitanya Rao, described as an electrical engineer who has spent five years studying his PhD in the US.  He was studying mathematics and then migrated into electrical engineering, which he carried on into postgraduate study.  That's a lot of time spent as a student, which is why he says that if he wrote an autobiography it would be titled "Finally in the real world: A young man's delayed journey".

(I know Chaitanya from the mathematical olympiad training, as I was involved in that training back at the time; he ended up representing Australia in the 1994 International Mathematical Olympiad, where he gained an honourable mention.)


It was an unpromising night for the letters rounds, with nothing longer than seven on offer.  Chris continued his pattern of one invalid answer per game, but picked up a little on the letters rounds as Chaitanya only once exceeded five.  Chaitanya did well on the first numbers round -- a round that proved too tough for Lily within time -- to get within one of the target, and that gave him a single point lead going into the final numbers round.  The victory was there for the taking, but he missed his chance and both contestants were still in contention at the conundrum.  It was Chris who solved it first to record a 47 to 38 point victory for his fourth win.

I started off with an invalid word when I simply could not see one of the more plausible options of that length, which was a shame.  Thereafter I was optimal, including safely (but fortunately) navigating the numbers round that caused Lily to falter.  Coupled with a two second conundrum solution, only that invalid first round prevented my second optimal game in a row, and had I just settled for a safer shorter word I could have outpointed David and Lily.  Still, a good game all things considered.