Ep 414: Margaret Zimmer, Louise Broadbent (March 29, 2012)

Margaret likes ten-pin bowling; she would not say (as Richard suggests) that she is pretty good, but she does have flashes of brilliance.  Occasional strikes, and once she managed to get four of them in a row.

Tonight's challenger is Louise Broadbent, a personal care assistant.  In her case, this involves working with people who have had spinal injuries and enabling them to stay in their own home after the accident.  So she aids them in physical tasks that are now difficult or impossible, and helps around the home also.


It's a very close game tonight, with the only difference being two letters rounds (one going each way).  Their three numbers answers are identical, in fact, and so it comes down to the conundrum with Margaret a single point ahead.  It is a tough one, but Louise finds the answer and takes the win, 61 to 52.

I could not hit the high notes tonight, only getting the best letters round once; additionally, I ended up deeply confused on one of the numbers rounds and ended up further away than the contestants.  The net result was that I could have been caught by Margaret on the conundrum.  I was relieved to get to the solution first and scrape home the win, although since Louise was the one to solve it I would have won in any case.

Ep 413: Margaret Zimmer, Vishal Gandhi (March 28, 2012)

Margaret likes train travel, but somewhat longer than normal commuting journeys.  She recently took the Ghan from Adelaide to Darwin with a friend.  They had a fantastic time; it took two and a half days to make the trip, and since they were in economy class the cabin was just big enough for them to put the bunks down in order to sleep at night.  Margaret calls it an "interesting time", adding that it was really great and they met lots of interesting people.

Tonight's challenger is civil engineer Vishal Gandhi.  Apparently he has quite a good memory; at work there are monthly meetings, and he is able to recall the contents of them from a couple of years back.  That could be very helpful on occasion, for sure.


Margaret got off to an early lead, and kept extending it in the ensuing rounds.  Vishal scored only twice overall, once with a just-barely-in-range answer in the last numbers round, and even though the conundrum proved to be too difficult for them both Margaret cruised to a 37 to 10 victory.

I had another pretty good game, including finding a full monty at last.  The rounds I missed were difficult finds, and although I also missed the conundrum that full monty kept me happy.  Another comfortable win, and a pretty decent week so far.

Ep 412: Donald Piggott-McKellar, Margaret Zimmer (March 27, 2012)

It took a day and a half, but they finally allowed access to this episode from the website.  Hopefully there will not be a repetition of these difficulties for a while.

Since Ann successfully retired last game, we have two new contestants tonight.  Taking the champion's seat is Donald Piggott-McKellar, a civil engineer.  That's a pretty familiar surname, and indeed it turns out that Donald is the brother of Christopher Piggott-McKellar, who was on the show late last series and only just missed out on making the finals.  Viewers with decent memories may recall that Christopher expressed a loathing of skinny black ties; it should come as little surprise that Donald has chosen to wear one on the show.  (Donald admits that he does not like them much either, but circumstances warranted wearing one.)

Taking the challenger's seat is primary school teacher Margaret Zimmer.  She has been teaching really young children for the past nine years; Richard asks what it is she likes about that.  Margaret responds that she likes how they come in knowing nothing, and then when she looks at what they know at the end of the year she can say that she taught them all of that.  That she has made a significant impact and set them up for the rest of their education.


It's fairly close tonight; Margaret gets an early lead in the second letters round, but invalid words in the next two let Donald overtake her.  He then has an invalid word of his own in the last letters round to drop behind again, but takes the lead once more in the numbers round.  It all comes down to the conundrum, and Margaret solves it first to take the win, 38 to 34.

I had a good game this time; maybe the delay helped somehow.  Only two rounds offered improvements, and I'd not heard of the word for one of those.  The other round I was floundering and perhaps fortunate, as there is a tempting but invalid longer word which I did not even see.  I had a rare quick solve of the conundrum for a nice change, and finished just two points behind David and Lily.