Ep 27: Naween Fernando, Jim Bailey (August 14, 2012; originally aired September 7, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


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.


The chat with Naween boils down to "you did well yesterday".  That feels like a waste of an opportunity, quite frankly.

Challenging Naween is Jim Bailey, a self-employed executive recruiter (or headhunter, less formally).  Jim enjoys skiing, swimming, and golf, and once came within a hundred metres of enjoying -- or at least experiencing -- bungee jumping.  He was in Queenstown with the family for skiing and thought he'd look it up, but was not able to bring himself to go through with it.


A tough opening round saw the contestants share points, then Naween moved ahead in the next letters round.  He extended that lead in the numbers round, and continued to forge ahead in several ensuing rounds.  He was safe before the last letters round with Jim never managing to score unanswered points off him, and although the conundrum proved too tough for both contestants Naween still scored well in a 60 to 21 victory.

I had a good game tonight, although I did miss a couple of longer options that I feel I should have found.  Against that, I found a full monty tonight and got to the conundrum first, ending up with a comfortable win that made me pretty happy.