Ep 126: Avi Chanales, Louise Kuchmar (June 15, 2016; originally aired January 24, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Avi Chanales gets his turn in the champion's seat tonight, having prevented Oli from successfully retiring last night.  Richard opens by saying that, even as a small child, Avi had always enjoyed the idea of travel and different countries.  Avi says that he used to have a map over his bed, and before he went to sleep he would memorise the locations of the various countries, as well as their flags along the bottom.  Richard suggests that this meant that Avi would put himself to sleep by counting flags instead of sheep.

Tonight's challenger is Louise Kuchmar, an office manager with a background in psychology.  Louise also sings as lead vocalist of a wedding band, so she gets to go to a lot of people's weddings, which she loves.  If I'm getting the timing right, not long after this show aired Louise helped form the acapella group Mint26, and a little over a year later they appeared on Australia's Got Talent (audition video).


It was a low-scoring and see-sawing game tonight.  Avi was a little unlucky that his answer in round one was invalid, then a shared round followed.  The first numbers round stumped both contestants, with Avi having a very unexpected invalid declaration, then a couple of invalid answers from Louise allowed Avi to take the lead.  The lead swapped twice more in rounds seven and eight, and it was Avi who was ahead going into the conundrum.  He managed to solve it, and so won a close contest, 37 to 23.

I had a nearly-maximal game tonight, just dropping the one maximum.  A nice change after the previous two games!