Ep 50: Liam Bastick, Rachael Bausor (September 14, 2012; originally aired October 8, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


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.


Liam Bastick gets his third appearance on the show, and Richard asks about the strangest job that Liam has had.   When Liam first left university he ended up in a rather unusual job: For forty hours a week he had to time how fast things like tomato sauce, salad cream, and mayonnaisse flowed down a particular ramp.  As Richard puts it, Liam was a viscosity tester.

Tonight's challenger is Rachael Bausor, a deputy CEO who works predominantly in grant and project management at a community centre.  Rachael enjoys playing electronic strategy games and spending time with her five-year-old daughter Chloe.  Richard asks about the kind of strategy games that Rachael enjoys, and she gives examples of expanding a railroad empire across the United States, or running a restaurant, or -- one of her favourites -- running a theme park and designing rollercoasters and things like that.  (I'd be willing to bet that the first and third are Railroad Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon, but the restaurant one has too many possibilities.)


There was some back and forth in the letters rounds and the net result was equal scores to the contestants from those.  But Rachael was not able to get a scoring result in any of the numbers rounds, and that allowed Liam a comfortable lead.  He was safe going into the conundrum, and with neither solving it the final scoreline was 48 to 24 in his favour.

I was down on many letters maxima again, but not too far off the pace.  All in all it was an unexceptional game from me and a comfortable win.