Ep 54: Bassem Abousaid, Jayanthi Viswanathan (September 20, 2012; originally aired October 14, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


There are two new contestants tonight since Liam successfully retired yesterday.  Taking the champion's position is Bassem Abousaid, an I.T. professional who loves professional wrestling and even commentates at wrestling events.  Bassem has been interested in wrestling since it was televised in the 80's and has been commentating for it since 2004.

(I remember the professional wrestling back then!  I used to sneak out of bed on Tuesday nights after my parents had gone to bed and stay up all night watching television; the wrestling was one of the shows in the lineup.)

Taking the challenger's position is Jayanthi Viswanathan, a secondary school mathematics teacher who is the author of a textbook on introductory calculus.  Her aim is to make calculus accessible and fun; Richard asks how she manages that, and Jayanthi responds that she tries to take the jargon out of it and introduce calculus to students in a way that makes sense and builds upon what they have learned in previous years.


Bassem fell victim to a phantom letter in the first round, and never really made much progress after that.  He managed to match Jayanthi twice in letters rounds, but had another invalid answer that left him trailing significantly.  Neither contestant really dealt that well with the numbers but Jayanthi had the better of it, and she finished it all off by solving the conundrum for a 50 to 12 victory.

I had a decent game tonight, twice beaten by David but managing to outdo Lily in one numbers round to end up just ahead on the solo aggregate.  That's always a result to be happy about, and I got my second score in the 80's this week thanks to a reasonably straightforward full monty.