Ep 117: Jack Dell, Janine Huan (June 2, 2016; originally aired January 11, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


It's Jack Dell's third night tonight, and Richard informs us that Jack used to be involved in amateur dramatics.  Jack says that they did melodramas "and things like that" and he was sort of the comic hero.  But now the only local theatre companies are singers, and no-one wants to hear him sing.

Challenging Jack tonight is Janine Huan, an integration aid in a primary school.  Janine is also fond of cryptic crosswords, and in particular the ones that David makes.  As she says, she likes David's ones in particular because most of the others have lots of anagrams in them, whereas David will challenge the solver with such things as Greek mythology, chemistry, and French.  She does sometimes solve them, too.

(I'll add that I've noticed this pattern, too: Less experienced cryptic composers will generally head straight for an anagram as their first thought about how to clue a word.  It makes them much more solvable when half the clues are anagrams.  David, on the other hand, is much more parsimonious with them, generally only having a handful in each crossword.)


This game was quite the swinging one!  Jack started out with an unanswered full monty, and that's often a death blow.  Janine got a small amount back in the next round, but Jack took the points in the next two rounds to be twenty four points ahead at the halfway mark.  Somehow, Janine rallied, and was the sole scorer in the remaining four main rounds; that not only enabled her to catch up, but also put her ahead by seven points going into the conundrum.  We don't see turnarounds of that magnitude very often!  But Jack just barely managed to hang on, solving the conundrum first to steal the victory, 40 to 37.

I found that first full monty thanks to Jack's body language, and thereafter was able to keep clear of both contestants.  I slipped up in the first numbers round and missed a solution, but pegged that back when Lily likewise stumbled in the second.  But my dreams of another tie with David and Lily were gone when I missed the game's second full monty.  Oh, well, there's always next game...