Ep 81: Christopher Weldon, Paul Power (October 29, 2012; originally aired November 22, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


Christopher Weldon is back after the weekend for his third game.  Christopher's day job (as opposed to his scriptwriting) is to write on-hold messages for businesses.  Richard makes the observation that when you hear such a message on the phone you don't generally stop and realise that someone had to have written it, and Christopher agrees; he then adds that much of the time the writer was him.  We also find out that Christopher has an impressive typing speed of around 117 words per minute.

Tonight's challenger is Paul Power, a retired organisational psychologist.  Paul explains that organisational psychology is the study of people at work: Everything from career choice, why people choose certain vocations, through to effective leadership.  Richard asks how psychology is part of this; Paul responds that psychology is the study of people and behaviour, so this is about people behaving at work... hopefully, people behaving well at work.


Christopher found a good word in the first round to establish an early lead; Paul looked to get it back in the second round, but it turned out that he had used one of the letters twice.  A few shared rounds followed, but then an error from Paul in the second numbers round allowed Christopher to push his lead out to twenty points.  Paul finally won a round in the next letters round, but then lost more points in the last numbers round to ensure Christopher's win.  Paul buzzed in quickly on the conundrum, but it was invalid, and Christopher solved it shortly thereafter, finishing with a sizeable 56 to 24 victory.

I had a good game with two bad moments: I got so flustered on the first numbers round that I lost track of my backup plan and finished further away than both contestants, and then I missed a findable better word in the last letters round.  The rest went fairly well -- I was particularly happy with my solution to the last numbers round -- and I solved the conundrum quickly for a change, finishing comfortably ahead.