Ep 77: Dom Saric, Rebecca Daley (October 23, 2012; originally aired November 16, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


This is Dom Saric's sixth night, so the last we'll see of him before the finals.  Retiring undefeated is his goal, of course, and speaking of goals Richard mentions that Dom is a big soccer fan.  Dom has been playing outdoor soccer since the age of six, and picked up indoor soccer in the last five or six years.

Tonight's challenger is Rebecca Daley, a student of biomedicine who recently came to Australia from America.  Rebecca met her boyfriend on New Year's Eve in New York City, where she was living at the time.  They lived there while he finished up law school in the vicinity, and then the next New Year's they moved to Australia so that he could start work here and she could start studying.


Dom finished on a high note, or at least on a comprehensive victory.  He found some good words throughout, with Rebecca unable to match him in any of the letters rounds (in part due to two invalid words).  He had the better of the numbers rounds, and when he solved the conundrum quickly the final scoreline was an imposing 57 to 7 in his favour.  Dom successfully retired, the sixth person to do so.

I had a good game, except for one major problem that cost me that rare chance of outscoring David and Lily.  That was a truly careless slip of the mind that gave me an invalid numbers round -- always frustrating when that happens.  I was much slower than Dom to see the conundrum, also, so there were a couple of features that needed improving.  The strong plus here was finding a longer word than David in one round (and a second such after time, but for the same round); that is always something to be cherished.

Ep 76: Dom Saric, Billy Lowe (October 22, 2012; originally aired November 15, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


The SUMS Puzzle Hunt is over for the year, and it felt like a major struggle this time.  I'll try and get these posts back into schedule soon; apologies for the various delays.


Dom Saric returns after the weekend, trying to move up the finals rankings.  If he can win tonight then he'll advance a spot or two, anyway.  But first, Richard mentions that Dom is a kickboxer; Dom says that he did kickboxing for about three years, and in particular the style called Muay Thai.  He explains that it is one of the more traditional styles found in Thailand, and he chose it because it is fairly practical, good for discipline, and great for fitness.

Taking up the challenge tonight is Billy Lowe, a project engineer who moved to Australia from Singapore ten years ago.  Richard mentions that one of Billy's favourite books is the atlas, and asks more about that.  Billy explains that, aside from the colourful maps and pictures, he enjoys looking at the strange and peculiar place names.  In particular, one of his passions is finding place names without vowels; he makes specific mention of the Croatian island Krk.


Dom found a lovely word to start off the game, and then extended his lead in the second game.  Billy was not able to get anywhere with the first numbers round and Dom's lead was already over twenty at the first break.  Billy managed a bit better in the letters in the rest of the game but continued to give up points in the numbers.  He was not able to take any points off Dom, and Dom reached the half-century mark once again in the final numbers round.  Neither was able to solve the conundrum, and Dom finished a comfortable winner with a 51 to 12 scoreline.

I was all over the shop today.  It's quite the turnaround after last week; I'm not sure if puzzle fatigue is to blame or not.  It seems like I made many errors; first I missed a very familiar word, then later I strangely decided against the best option.  A bizarre oversight in the numbers round caused me to drop another maximum, and then I had an invalid word.  I rounded it all out by not solving the conundrum within time, finishing with my lowest maximum count for seven weeks (and equal lowest solo total this series).  Somehow it was still enough, but I really want to do better tomorrow.

Ep 75: Dom Saric, Damian Foong (October 19, 2012; originally aired November 12, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


Tonight is the crucial fourth night for Dom Saric.  Can he win and get a likely finals spot?  We'll find out soon, but first Richard points out that English was not Dom's first language.  Dom agrees, adding that he was born in Croatia, and so his first language was Croatian.  When he first went to primary school here in Australia he attended English as a second language classes for two years; somehow he ended up loving the language and even took four units of English for the HSC.

Tonight's challenger is Damian Foong, a public servant with a degree in biomedical science and a diploma in languages.  Damian spent three years living and working in rural Japan; that was as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, an initiative of the Japanese government.  While in Japan he worked as an assistant language teacher in government schools in Ibaraki prefecture.  He adds that even though it was quite close to Tokyo he had rice paddies all around his apartment -- it was very, very rural.  The nearest train station was two cities away!  Damian looks at it all positively, saying that he got the benefits of living in the countryside in terms of developing a greater understanding of Japanese culture and language than he may have done in the city.


Damian had the frequent first-game problem of a phantom letter in the first round, and then Dom won the next two rounds to build a good-sized lead.  Another good word from Dom in the fifth round extended the lead further, but Damian managed to peg back that lost ground in the next numbers round.  Damian needed to solve the last numbers round to have a chance but he was not able to make anything of it; Dom solved the conundrum to make the margin even more impressive, finishing with a 45 to 16 victory.

I was doing fairly well up until the last numbers round; I had dropped one maximum, it turns out, but David had also missed it.  But a miscalculation in that round left me scrambling and I was not able to get to the target within time -- a rather disappointing miss.  My conundrum speed was a bit slower than I wanted but got the job done, pushing the score up to the seventy mark again.

Ep 74: Dom Saric, Yvonne Wake (October 18, 2012; originally aired November 11, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


This is Dom Saric's third night on the show, and Richard asks Dom where he sees his medical studies taking him.  Dom responds that he is currently leaning towards a career in psychiatry; that is what has interested him the most out of the different blocks he has done so far.

Tonight's challenger is Yvonne Wake, a retired French teacher who enjoys solving cryptic crosswords, reading biographies, and travel books.  Yvonne visited France two years ago, and is going again next year (which would have been 2011).  She thinks that Paris is the most beautiful city; she has seen many European cities but it is Paris that she adores.  She adds that there is nothing better than strolling along the Seine chatting to the bouquinistes in French.


Dom got out to an early lead thanks to the first three letters rounds, where in each case Yvonne was limited to five-letter words.  She managed to match him on the remaining two letters rounds, but since they had identical results on the numbers rounds she had fallen too far adrift by the conundrum.  In the event, neither solved it, and Dom gained his third win by 50 points to 31.

I played a reasonable game today, but did miss three longer words that could have been findable.  My conundrum speed was a little slow but I got there, and the numbers behaved themselves for me.  I needed to find one of those longer answers to bump my solo total up to the week's running theme of 75, but it was still a satisfactory total.

Ep 73: Dom Saric, Robert Lukunic (October 17, 2012; originally aired November 10, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


Dom Saric gets his  turn in the champion's seat tonight, and Richard asks him where his studies have taken him.  Dom responds that he went to Vienna last year as an elective, where he did some trauma surgery, plastic surgery, orthopaedics, and tumour surgery.  Richard asks about differences in approach, but Dom says they did things much the same their as here; the only differences he can think of might be in the logistics and how the hospital is run.

Tonight's challenger is Robert Lukunic, who works in logistics and has a degree in architecture.  Robert is particularly interested in both astrology and astronomy, which Richard remarks is unusual.  Robert says that it started with primitive man looking up at the heavens; lacking the scientific approach of today they came up with the myths of the idea of astronomy, like dividing the sky into the 12 zodiac signs and trying to make sense of what they saw around them.  (The way he mentions astronomy here rather than astrology is a little confusing, but I think what he means is that they were attempting to do astronomy but without the right framework of scientific thought they ended up with astrology.)

Robert continues that he thinks the two subjects were blended together strongly in the beginning, one influenced by the other.  Then with the advent of the scientific method, and advances in telescopes and computers and such, astronomy "has really taken off".


Robert started off with a good word that was a little risky but it paid off.  That was, unfortunately, the highlight of the game from him.  He failed to score points in any other round, and Dom swept through them comfortably, including a fairly quick solution to the conundrum.  The final scoreline reflected the disparity, with Dom winning by 52 points to 8.

I had another good game, although I very carelessly dropped a maximum on a late letters round.  Later checking showed that it did not cost me an optimal round, atlthough it was close.  The numbers worked out pretty straightforwardly, and I solved the conundrum in rapid fashion to end up with my third score of 75 in a row.

Ep 72: Dennis Callegari, Dom Saric (October 16, 2012; originally aired November 9, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


OK, so I haven't managed to do that well at getting the short versions out.  Oh, well, back to delayed long ones instead.  Incidentally, I have been relying on the closed captions recently for the spelling of contestants' names, but have unfortunately discovered that they are not always correct; I have corrected the spelling of Dennis Callegari's surname in the previous post.


Incidentally, this show was first aired on David's birthday (his 49th, to be specific).


Dennis Callegari gets his turn in the champion's position tonight.  In addition to his more serious writing, Dennis writes clerihews and posts them on his blog (he also has another blog, although that does not seem to be solely about clerihews).  As he explains, a clerihew is a simple four-line poem with the AABB rhyming scheme, invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley.  (What he does not say is that they are biographical and generally a little absurd.)  Dennis quotes one that he wrote a little earlier:

He knew he wasn't Anglo-Saxon
But Michael Jackson
Was at a loss
As to why he wasn't Diana Ross

Tonight's challenger is Dom Saric, who is currently completing a bachelor of medicine and surgery.  Dom notes that he has been a student for the past twenty years straight, from primary school to high school to an undergraduate degree and then postgraduate studies.  Richard asks when Dom will stop studying and "get into other action".  Dom responds that he doesn't think that he will ever stop studying, because he will be going into medicine and that's an ever-changing field.  So he expects to be studying for the rest of his life.


Ooh, there was some good play tonight.  Dennis faltered early with an invalid word in the second round, but then struck back strongly with two excellent words in the following letters rounds.  Dom was in trouble but managed to win the final two rounds to snatch victory at the last, 53 to 47.

I had a pretty good game tonight.  I dropped two maxima early on, but otherwise everything fell into place nicely.  One of those maxima was an excellent word from David, but the other was a numbers round that was tough but solvable; I always am a bit disappointed when that happens.  But still, another solid game and decent speed on the conundrum makes this a satisfactory game.

Ep 99 [SF2]: Naween Fernando, Dom Saric (May 17, 2012; originally aired December 16, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


The pre-game chat rehashes some more past performance statistics.  Naween has a high score of 94, and over the course of his main games found ten eight-letter words (and two nine-letter ones).  Dom has solved four conundrums.


It turned out to be an extremely close game; they each declared an invalid word, and otherwise were matched in the main rounds.  Dom took a single point lead into the conundrum, but no-one expected it to go unsolved so that was not much of a factor.  Dom missed his chance to wrap up the game in the final numbers round and Naween came good to solve the conundrum a little shy of eight seconds in; he must have been relieved to win by 62 points to 53.

I am very frustrated with my performance on the letters rounds today, missing at least three better answers that I would have found easily on a better day.  In fact, I did find one of them, but talked myself out of it.  My numbers performance was good, but there's only so much poor wordwork that it can compensate for.  In the end I managed to take a lead into the conundrum but was not fast enough to solve it before Naween did (as expected), but at least I only lost to one of the contestants tonight.  This could so easily have gone much better, and I hope that I can sort out whatever my issue is before tomorrow's grand final.

Ep 97 [QF4]: Liam Bastick, Dom Saric (May 15, 2012; originally aired December 14, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


This is the last quarterfinal of series one, and it is interesting to see the other contenders.  I recall Liam from website comments; he's kept statistics about the episodes from the beginning, it seems, and occasionally mentions an interesting snippet there.

So, taking the champion's position is fourth seed Liam Bastick, a financial modeller with a PhD in mathematics.  He won his six games and successfully retired.  Richard mentions that on one episode Liam did something "unforgettable".  Liam explains that he elected to celebrate the fiftieth episode in style; he had no idea about the conundrum but decided to press the buzzer at the 29.5 second mark.  A kind of reverse-GANDISEEG gambit, if you will.

A little later in the show it is mentioned that Liam scored points on 17 out of the 18 numbers rounds that he faced, which is an excellent record.

In the challenger's position is fifth seed Dom Saric, who is currently undertaking a bachelor's degree in medicine and surgery.  Richard says that in the television control room Dom was affectionately known as Dom the Dominator.  The other thing Richard notes is that Dom found a lot of medical words; mention is made of TRIAGE, PRONATE, AMPOULE, and PARANOID.


Dom had some good finds in the letters, and Liam fell off the pace somewhat.  After the fifth round he was in deep trouble twenty points off the pace, and a miss in the next numbers round put him thirty points adrift.  That meant that he needed a full monty to have a chance; the letters were almost, but not quite, cooperative, and that was the game to Dom.  Liam picked up some points in the last numbers round and, had he solved the conundrum, would have only lost by two points.  But the conundrum proved too difficult for both contestants again, and Dom wins by 46 to 34.

I hit the top notes right until that last letters round, where I was about twenty seconds too slow to see the best answer.  I'd have taken even an optimal opponent to the conundrum, but it also defeated me; still, I had done enough for a comfortable win in this instance.