Ep 411: Ann Russell, John Morris (March 26, 2012)

Richard asks Ann for particular memories of her performance so far.  Ann has enjoyed it, of course, and mentions that she has discovered something about herself: Her ability to recover from blunders so that she can treat each game separately and not dwell on what she has done in the past.  She did not know that about herself, so it has been a good learning experience.

Tonight's challenger is John Morris, an economist and geologist.  John has been on several trips -- partly tied in with his geological interests -- that have tended to have a theme about them; generally, dinosaurs and volcanos.  He mentions one trip to Boulia, near the Queensland/Northern Territory border; he says that area used to be an ocean and had pliosaurs swimming around there.  So the trips were about finding fossils or evidence of volcanic activity along the way; Richard compares it to a game of I Spy.


For the first four letters rounds Ann managed to outdo John by a letter each round.  He turned the tables in the final letters round but he had already conceded far too much ground to hope to catch up.  Ann solved two of the numbers rounds also (with the third proving too difficult for both contestants), which put it beyond any doubt.  The conundrum went unsolved and Ann gained her sixth victory with a 47 to 16 scoreline, becoming the series' second retiring champion.  She'll be back for the finals, presumably, unless we keep getting retiring champions at this rate!

I was slow on the conundrum, but I got there.  I did as well as possible on the numbers, and almost so on the letters.  I actually had every best answer written down (one of them outdoing David) but talked myself out of two of them, including the full monty.  Ouch.  A comfortable win and a good game, but it hurts to have the perfect game within grasp and throw it away like that.