Ep 2: Chris Scholten-Smith, Nick Taubert (July 10, 2012; originally aired August 3, 2010)

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.


Chris is the show's first carryover champion, but the talk with him today is just about yesterday's game coming down to the conundrum.  Did we already run out of things to say about him?  I noticed that the contestant introductions so far have been a bit more information-dense than in more recent episodes; maybe they started off by mentioning everything and then realised that this left them poorly placed for later shows with the same contestant.  Or maybe it was just that they felt more like talking up yesterday's show at this point.

Challenging Chris is Nick Taubert, an administrator for a superannuation company.  Nick also works for a children's charity, and has played indoor soccer for eight years.  But it is another recent experience of his that Richard chooses to ask about: For the past year Nick and his housemates have been participating in couch surfing, where people who are travelling stay on their couch for a night or two.  Nick describes it as a brilliant way to meet people from all over the world.


This game was a much more one-sided affair than last night's effort, with Nick twice seeing phantom letters and ending up with invalid words.  Chris had an invalid word of his own in the first round, but picked up gains in both letters and numbers rounds to be safe after round seven.  The conundrum proved to be too difficult for both contestants and Chris gained his second win, 47 to 19.

I had a reasonable game today, but missed several better answers with the letters.  Two of those I found not long after, and a third I should have seen as it is a frequent appearer on the show.  That was a bit disappointing, but my answers were still adequate.  The conundrum was also too difficult for me -- vastly harder than last night's doddle -- but I still finished with a solid win.