Ep 35: David Jones, Kiao Inthavong (August 24, 2012; originally aired September 17, 2010)

Rounds: Here


Disclaimer: While I have not seen this episode before, I did play through the blue book (episodes 1 to 50) around ten months ago when I was scheduled to be a contestant on the show.  Additionally, I did a quick flick through it a few months back to collect words for my posts about word validity.


David Jones is back for his third night, with a win here seeing him halfway to retirement.  Richard notes that David is a keen cricket player and asks more about that.  David responds that he has been playing for a number of years now, first in England for his school and then his local club.  Since moving to Australia it seemed like a great way to get involved in local life so he now represents Parkville District Cricket Club.  Richard checks whether David is a batter or a bowler, and David says that he is almost exclusively a bowler but concedes that he will don the pads if required.

(For those interested in statistics, here are his bowling details.)

Tonight's challenger is Kiao Inthavong, a research fellow who lived and worked in both Cambodia and Bangkok for a year.  Kiao has a PhD in computational fluid dynamics, which ties in nicely with Lily's areas of study.  Kiao's work involves using computers to try and visualise how air and particles move; he specialises in looking at how drug particles move in nasal sprays.  That line of work has led to him having the nickname of "Doctor Snot".


As mentioned before, I'll be referring to David Astle throughout as DA to avoid confusion about which David is which.


David and Kiao were pretty well matched, but Kiao risked a little more and ultimately that turned out to be unwise as he ended up with three invalid answers.  The oversight in the numbers (a miscalculated total) probably did not cost him anything, but the two letters rounds did.  David was safe after the last letters round, and when Kiao solved the conundrum first (the first losing contestant to do so in some while; the last time was in episode 12) the final score was 50 to 39 in David's favour -- the difference of 11 being exactly the amount that David scored due to Kiao's invalid words.

There were some difficult letter mixes today, although one of the rounds looked like it might finally produce a full monty (it's been a disappointing week on that front) but did not.  I mostly navigated them well, but missed one tricky maximum.  I solved the conundrum in decent time, however, and finished comfortably ahead.