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.
Emily is back for her third night, after two strong games. Richard opens the chat by asking about her daughter, Ashley, who is 14 months old (at the time of filming, presumably). It turns out that they watch Letters and Numbers together (and it is the only show that they do). Richard enquires, a little optimistically, about whether Ashley is showing any signs of playing the game. Emily expresses her doubt about Ashley being able to solve the conundrum at any point in the near future, and on further questioning says that there are no signs as yet of Ashley having a preference for the letters or the numbers.
Tonight's challenger is Jodi-Ann Menzies, who apparently loves to sing. She guesses that enjoyment started at school, where she sang in the choir, and then she "graduated" into an adult choral group. She's now taking private singing lessons. Apparently her favourite place to sing is in the car; David interjects to point out that doing so is called "car-aoke". Oh, dear.
Emily took the early lead in round 1, but thereafter it was almost all Jodi-Ann's way. Emily's risky option in the second round was invalid, and Jodi-Ann managed to outdo her in the first numbers round to gain the lead. Jodi-Ann found good words thereafter, and went into the final numbers round an even 20 points ahead. Emily kept her hopes alive with a good solution in that round, but still needed to solve the conundrum in order to force the tiebreaker. It had all the setup for a major comeback, but the person who buzzed at the 30 second mark was not Emily, but Jodi-Ann, who came through with a 49 to 29 victory.
I had good results tonight, but twice had the disappointment of seeing a better word without having enough time left to get it down on paper. It's been a long week -- I'd forgotten how much time these posts take to write up. Fortunately there's the weekend to recover.
As usual, details after the jump.
Showing posts with label Emily Hawker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emily Hawker. Show all posts
Friday, 13 February 2015
Thursday, 12 February 2015
Ep 259: Emily Hawker, Daniel McNamara (February 12, 2015; originally aired August 25, 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.
There's no pre-game chat with David and Lily this episode, which might be the show attempting to make up time after the earlier episodes filmed that day. Fortunately, we still get to hear from the contestants.
Richard praises Emily's previous exceptional game, and asks if she was fuelled by chocolate. Emily laughs and agrees that she was, and is most of the time. Asked about when the love of chocolate began, she suggests that it have formed in utero, as her mother is also a big chocolate lover. In any case, she has loved chocolate as long as she can remember, and was even the secretary of the Chocolate Lovers Society at university.
Tonight's challenger is Daniel McNamara, who wrote a program to help him practice for the show. Further explanation reveals that this was a program to solve numbers games and to work out whether there is an exact solution or not. (I agree that can be useful, but I think that there's more benefit using a programs simply to quickly generate games to play; one can learn a little technique from seeing solutions -- and I certainly found that somewhat useful myself -- but there's far more benefit to simply playing through lots and lots of rounds.)
Daniel used this program for a few days before the auditions, and adds that he thinks there's a lot of room to expand the program to make it more efficient, and a fuller approach to solving those problems. I'll take this opportunity to point out the "Countdown" numbers game solver website, which I use occasionally.
Daniel starts off with a risky and ultimately invalid play in the first round, and thereafter there is very little difference between the contestants. In fact, there was only one other round where a difference in scores happened; that time, Emily took the risk. It paid off for her, however, and so she took an unassailable lead into the conundrum. It was another tough one, and neither contestant found the answer within time. That gave Emily her second win, 53 to 40.
I felt off my game tonight, particularly on the numbers rounds where I only just got answers down in time on two of them, and was too slow for the solution on the third. An oversight on the letters in one round saw me fail to declare a better option, and I was also beaten by the conundrum. The statistics make it seem like I played better than I did; I was struggling in many of the rounds.
As usual, details after the jump.
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.
There's no pre-game chat with David and Lily this episode, which might be the show attempting to make up time after the earlier episodes filmed that day. Fortunately, we still get to hear from the contestants.
Richard praises Emily's previous exceptional game, and asks if she was fuelled by chocolate. Emily laughs and agrees that she was, and is most of the time. Asked about when the love of chocolate began, she suggests that it have formed in utero, as her mother is also a big chocolate lover. In any case, she has loved chocolate as long as she can remember, and was even the secretary of the Chocolate Lovers Society at university.
Tonight's challenger is Daniel McNamara, who wrote a program to help him practice for the show. Further explanation reveals that this was a program to solve numbers games and to work out whether there is an exact solution or not. (I agree that can be useful, but I think that there's more benefit using a programs simply to quickly generate games to play; one can learn a little technique from seeing solutions -- and I certainly found that somewhat useful myself -- but there's far more benefit to simply playing through lots and lots of rounds.)
Daniel used this program for a few days before the auditions, and adds that he thinks there's a lot of room to expand the program to make it more efficient, and a fuller approach to solving those problems. I'll take this opportunity to point out the "Countdown" numbers game solver website, which I use occasionally.
Daniel starts off with a risky and ultimately invalid play in the first round, and thereafter there is very little difference between the contestants. In fact, there was only one other round where a difference in scores happened; that time, Emily took the risk. It paid off for her, however, and so she took an unassailable lead into the conundrum. It was another tough one, and neither contestant found the answer within time. That gave Emily her second win, 53 to 40.
I felt off my game tonight, particularly on the numbers rounds where I only just got answers down in time on two of them, and was too slow for the solution on the third. An oversight on the letters in one round saw me fail to declare a better option, and I was also beaten by the conundrum. The statistics make it seem like I played better than I did; I was struggling in many of the rounds.
As usual, details after the jump.
Wednesday, 11 February 2015
Ep 258: Cameron Begley, Emily Hawker (February 11, 2015; originally aired August 24, 2011)
Rounds: Here. (Sorry for the delay; SBS's content delivery was having troubles again, only getting a small way into the video before failing. It was better after dinner.)
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. However, for other reasons one of the rounds was spoiled for me, which I'll get to in due course.
Cameron is back, taking his turn in the champion's seat. Richard reminds us again about how tight the last game was, and there's a little chitchat about that. It's appropriate, I guess, but it does rob us of the chance to find out more about Cameron.
Tonight's challenger is -- oh, hey, it's Emily! I recognised her, and that meant I recalled a comment Sam made about one of her games, and that meant I knew what was going to happen in one round. But I digress. Emily has a degree in linguistics and finance, and Richard observes that seems to be a perfect combination for Letters and Numbers. Hard to argue with that! Emily started off in finance, and specifically studied Japanese and French for a while, but then decided that the study of language was more interesting than the study of languages themselves.
Emily got off to a cracking start with a full monty, and an unanswered full monty is generally enough of an advantage to win regardless of what else goes on. But Emily kept piling on the points, while Cameron was unable to make any progress at all. His first two words were deemed invalid (one of them should technically have been accepted, by my reading), and indeed he never managed to match Emily in the letter rounds. Unlike last night, the numbers did not save him; he was only able to manage five points overall, while Emily steamed past sixty. The game was over at the second break, which is extremely early for that to happen. The conundrum proved too difficult for both contestants, preventing Emily from reaching the 70's, but she was very happy with her 67 to 5 victory.
It's a rare day when two full monties are available, but that was the case here. I found them both, but the second one was the "prior knowledge" case I've alluded to; without that knowledge, I am pretty sure I would not have seen it within time. Aside from that, I matched David and Lily throughout, and had decent conundrum speed to boot. Just one tough numbers round marred the optimal result, but it was still very good and put my final total into the 90's.
As usual, details after the jump.
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. However, for other reasons one of the rounds was spoiled for me, which I'll get to in due course.
Cameron is back, taking his turn in the champion's seat. Richard reminds us again about how tight the last game was, and there's a little chitchat about that. It's appropriate, I guess, but it does rob us of the chance to find out more about Cameron.
Tonight's challenger is -- oh, hey, it's Emily! I recognised her, and that meant I recalled a comment Sam made about one of her games, and that meant I knew what was going to happen in one round. But I digress. Emily has a degree in linguistics and finance, and Richard observes that seems to be a perfect combination for Letters and Numbers. Hard to argue with that! Emily started off in finance, and specifically studied Japanese and French for a while, but then decided that the study of language was more interesting than the study of languages themselves.
Emily got off to a cracking start with a full monty, and an unanswered full monty is generally enough of an advantage to win regardless of what else goes on. But Emily kept piling on the points, while Cameron was unable to make any progress at all. His first two words were deemed invalid (one of them should technically have been accepted, by my reading), and indeed he never managed to match Emily in the letter rounds. Unlike last night, the numbers did not save him; he was only able to manage five points overall, while Emily steamed past sixty. The game was over at the second break, which is extremely early for that to happen. The conundrum proved too difficult for both contestants, preventing Emily from reaching the 70's, but she was very happy with her 67 to 5 victory.
It's a rare day when two full monties are available, but that was the case here. I found them both, but the second one was the "prior knowledge" case I've alluded to; without that knowledge, I am pretty sure I would not have seen it within time. Aside from that, I matched David and Lily throughout, and had decent conundrum speed to boot. Just one tough numbers round marred the optimal result, but it was still very good and put my final total into the 90's.
As usual, details after the jump.
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