Ep 255: Judithe Hall, Brad Tucker (February 6, 2015; originally aired August 19, 2011)

Rounds: Here.

Disclaimer: I watched this episode when it first aired, and although I did not recall any of it I cannot rule out memory being a factor.


Judithe returns after yesterday's solid win over Shyam.  Richard asks how the unusual spelling of her first name came about; Judithe explains that both of her parents had names with an 'e' on the end, and decided that she should not be left out.  There's a little further banter about possible other names with 'e' appended.

Tonight's challenger is Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist.  Richard mentions the terms "dark energy" and "supernovae" and asks if that is the kind of thing that Brad studies.  Brad affirms that, explaining that the supernovae (which he describes as "bright stellar explosions") are used to figure out what dark energy is.  He adds that they think that dark energy is a force that is causing the universe to expand, and indeed to increase in that expansion.


It was quite the close game tonight.  Brad did not seem as comfortable on the letters as he would have liked, but fortunately for him Judithe did not quite match her performance from yesterday.  She twice picked up a small lead from the letter rounds, but each time Brad was able to gain back that ground on the numbers.  It turned out that both contestants were tied going into the conundrum, and with neither solving it the tiebreaker conundrum was wheeled out.  Time ticked down again, then in an echo of yesterday's game Judithe found the solution with only a handful of seconds left on the clock.  She scraped by with the win, 51 to 41.

I had an excellent game tonight, except for a bit of a brain freeze on the last numbers round.  Brad liked the heavyweight mix, which is sure to make Sam happy but I seem to be a bit rusty on it.  That stopped me from having an optimal game, and fretting over that may have contributed to my poor performance on the second conundrum.  Still, my score made it into the eighties, and that's a rare occurrence.

As usual, details after the jump.