Ep 118: Jack Dell, Jonathan Goodman (June 3, 2016; originally aired January 12, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


It's the crucial fourth night for Jack Dell, and we find out that his name is not actually Jack, but rather Alan.  He has three brothers (older ones, by inference), and when they were all home the eldest brother would be given a job by one of the parents.  He'd look at the next brother and say, "Good on you, Jack", thereby delegating the job.  That brother would also be "Good on you, Jack" to the next one, and you can see how this goes.  When it reached Alan he had no-one to pass it on to, and so became the designated Jack.  It seems the name ended up sticking.

Tonight's challenger is Jonathan Goodman, an American bioiphysics student studying in Australia.  Jonathan has had a few misfortunes when travelling, and in the past year has managed to miss three flights and left his luggage on the carousel twice.  He only provides details about one of those incidents: The second time he missed a flight, he got to the gate and was all ready to go... and then he fell asleep.


It was a close game tonight, with the contestants always being near to each other.  Jack took the early lead with a good find in round one, then a couple of shared rounds followed.  Jack overreached in round four, which allowed Jonathan to narrow the gap to a single point, and then Jonathan found another good word in round five to take the lead.  He lost it just as quickly with a numerical error, recovering when the final numbers round went more in his favour.  Jonathan had a small lead going into the conundrum, but Jack continued his good form on those to snatch victory, 50 to 44.

I was mostly on target tonight, but I also took the risky and incorrect option in round four.  Aside from that I only dropped one other maximum, and a fast solution to the conundrum gave me another solid win.