Ep 409: Ann Russell, James Cooper (March 22, 2012)

On Ann's fourth night the conversation turns to strategies.  She talks about searching for affixes in the letters rounds, and for 100's or 10's in the numbers rounds and hoping that they will lead to a solution.

Tonight's challenger is James Cooper, a management consultant.  James plays Ultimate Frisbee; he gives a brief overview of the general idea, and says that he enjoys playing it very much.


James is unlucky to have an invalid word in the first round -- one of the vagaries of the Macquarie that surprises David -- but thereafter he is generally beaten by Ann's choices.  Ann hits her stride with the letters in the latter part of the game, and although James won the first numbers game he was not able to keep that up and Ann was safe going into the conundrum.  It turned out to be a difficult one that no-one solved, and Ann won 62 to 35.

I had... well, it arguably wasn't actually that bad a game.  But it should have been so much better; two very careless misses -- one of them very costly indeed -- in the letters, plus another where I looked several times at the right idea and missed it.  Fortunately my numbers form kept me in things so that I was ahead at the conundrum but not safe.  It was a very nervous time as I failed to solve it, but with Ann not finding the answer I escaped with an extremely lucky win.