Ep 87: Leif Cooper, Rod Goulding (November 6, 2012; originally aired November 30, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


Leif Cooper is back for his third night, and has displayed some consistently excellent letters form throughout.  Can he keep it up?  The answer shortly, but first we find out that he plays hockey for the Mentone Hockey Club, and has done so for eighteen years.  Richard asks if Leif is seriously competitive, but Leif demurs a little; he says that he is competitive, but does not play in a very competitive grade.

Tonight's challenger is Rob Goulding, described as an electrical engineer who owns a satellite installation business.  That is what is said, anyway, but I'm choosing to assume that he installs satellite dishes / antennae and associated infrastructure rather than satellites themselves.  If I'm wrong about that then I am seriously impressed by his line of work.  But we don't get to find out about that, as Richard informs us that Rod loves sport.  Rod played basketball and rugby union at school, and also did some cross-country running.  He enjoys watching any kind of sport, and in particular is a Hawks supporter in the AFL and favours the Newcastle Knights in the NRL.


Both contestants started out well with a couple of good words; really good finds in round two, in fact.  Leif hit form with the numbers tonight, and continued to show excellent form in the letters.  In contrast, Rod failed to live up to the promise of those first two rounds and consistently slipped behind in the remaining letters rounds.  Leif was assured of the win going into the conundrum, but neither ended up solving it; Leif still finished with a commanding 61 to 24 victory.

I started off with a good game, hitting maxes for the first two-thirds of the match.  Perhaps the frustration of not being able to pull clear of Leif got to me, as my last two main rounds were not as good as they could have been.  There were better options to be had that I found after time, although I'd still not have found David's word in the last letters round so the maximal game was never an option.  I needed the conundrum in order to be safe, and was happy to solve it relatively quickly to nudge into the seventies again.