Ep 419: Ben Fisher, Scott Morrow (April 5, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


I bumped into Daniel Chua at university today, which was nice.  Nicer still was that he recognised me, which isn't bad considering we only met for one day half a year ago.  Hi, Daniel!  (For any newer readers, Daniel was one of the finalists from series 4.)


It looks like we are out of interesting things for Ben to talk about, as Richard asks him about his tactics for the game.  Ben says that something that he did not realise from home is that as a contestant there's actually quite a lot of pressure during the letters rounds when calling out the consonants and vowels.  (I'll mention that I did not feel pressured in that situation, but I did notice that making those decisions was taking away thinking time that I was used to having.)  Ben has reacted to this by settling on one mix and asking for that pretty much every time, so that he does not have to think about that.

He has mostly gone with three consonants, three vowels, consonant, and the vowel/consonant in some order, but there have been exceptions.  Still, he has presumably saved himself some thought during that, which is the point.  That said, I prefer to be more flexible about it so as to take advantage of possibilities that arise as the letters are revealed.

Tonight's challenger is statistician Scott Morrow.  Scott plays African drums; he developed that interest when he did a study tour in Ghana around six years ago.  It was a drum and dance tour, catering to all levels, and he describes it as fantastic from both a musical standpoint and that of getting to interact with another culture.


There were some good words from both players tonight, and Scott pushed Ben throughout.  Admittedly he was helped by Ben making two mistakes in the numbers rounds, but he is still the first contestant to make Ben sweat on the conundrum.  Ben was only two points ahead going into it, but once again solved it quickly to take the win, 42 to 30.

I started out in excellent form, or so I thought, but David brought me back to earth.  I got flustered in the first numbers round and ended up much further away than I would have liked, but the rest was pretty good.  I was just a bit slower to the conundrum than Ben, but did solve it, to round out a mixed but enjoyable performance.