Ep 410: Ann Russell, Philip Scambler (March 23, 2012)

Ann has been learning Spanish in preparation for doing some travel in South America.  No mention of what she hopes to visit there, though.

Tonight's challenger is Philip Scambler, a retired school principal.  Now that he is retired, at sheep-shearing time he helps out at the shearing sheds of a friend who owns a large property.  He does not shear the sheep, but does do a variety of other tasks, "particularly the ones which are not too strenuous".


The contestants are reasonably close on the letters, but Ann twice managed to do better.  That gave her a crucial fourteen point lead, and the numbers rounds provided no difference.  Neither managed to get close in the last one which was a little odd, and it could have put Philip back into contention if he'd just done so.  (There's a suggestion that he saw something a little too late.)  Ann buzzed in with an incorrect conundrum answer, and then rather strangely Philip apparently wrote his answer down instead of buzzing in; if he had been in contention, that would have been a bizarre way to avoid winning.  Ann gets her fifth win, 49 to 35.

I was in reasonable form, but just a few seconds slow on the first letters round.  I also cunningly avoided finding the better answer in another round (but nothing nearly as bad as the ETHANOL / METHANOL slip from yesterday), and blanked on the conundrum.  But my numbers work continues to be good this series, and I had a comfortable win.