Ep 53: Liam Bastick, Tristan Leech (September 19, 2012; originally aired October 13, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


This is Liam Bastick's sixth night, and his last appearance until the finals series.  Obviously he is hoping to become a retiring champion, and a win here will move him from fifth to fourth in the rankings.  Richard asks him the frequent question about his strategies, and Liam says something a little interesting: One of the things he has learned while playing instead of watching is that he loses thinking time while picking the letters, so he does better by choosing fewer vowels.  Interesting!  That also explains his rapid-fire consonant choices, to an extent.  No point giving the opponent too much of an advantage over you in that regard.

Tonight's challenger is Tristan Leech, a trainee surgeon at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.  Tristan also DJ's, with the nickname of "Hot Pants".  That obviously leads to further questions; Tristan explains that it began a long time ago when he played the evil Doctor Clown Pants in a staged wrestling event.  Then when he was doing student radio around the turn of the millennium he took it to Hot Pants.  Richard remarks that this was not quite what he expected from a surgeon; Tristan responds that one is expected to exercise a certain amount of decorum at work so it is good to have some outlets to express other sides of his personality.


The game started quietly enough with a pair of shared letters rounds, then Liam pulled ahead in the first numbers round.  He extended that lead in the next letters round, and then again in the second numbers round when Tristan used a number that was not present.  A further gain in the final letters round guaranteed Liam the win, which he rounded off in fine style by solving the conundrum to finish with his best total so far and a 72 to 28 victory.

I dropped two maxima that I should have found (they were easily seen after time once the pressure was off); the rest all went as well as possible, including finding a longer word than David in one round.  A fast conundrum finished things off on a positive note, and I had a decent win.

Ep 52: Liam Bastick, Amanda Mendizza (September 18, 2012; originally aired October 12, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


Liam Bastick is back for his fifth night, with a win almost certainly confirming his place in the finals.  But first the talk is about football, or soccer as it was called here when I was growing up.  Liam has a passion for it, and managed to get a job as a football reporter for Derby County.  That was his second job and he loved it; he did it for four years and it was a great wrench giving it up when he came to Australia.

As an interesting coda to this, when Liam went to an Ashes match at the MCG, the person who sat next to him was a member of the Barmy Army who had swapped places with an Australian who wanted to go and sit with them and see what it was like.  It turned out that the person who was now sitting next to Liam was the person who had taken over that reporting job from him.

Tonight's challenger is Amanda Mendizza, a children's speech pathologist who collects ornamental owls.  She has done so since the early 1980's, and has almost three hundred now.  Mostly they are confined to a cabinet, but some have ended up in the courtyard or even outside.


The contestants started evenly, but two good rounds from Liam saw him get a sizeable lead.  Amanda tried a risky play that came off to reduce the deficit, but she needed to do better in the final numbers round to have a chance.  Liam was safe going into the conundrum; he buzzed in with an invalid word that gave the actual answer away; Amanda solved the conundrum, but Liam took the win, 50 to 40.

I missed a word I should have seen in the first round, but otherwise was in good shape.  I did drop a couple of other maxima but they were tough to spot; more importantly, I found a full monty that David did not.  Always to be cherished, that!  I was a bit slow on the conundrum but managed to get there, and a score above eighty is always nice to have.

Ep 51: Liam Bastick, Chris Ryan (September 17, 2012; originally aired October 11, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


Liam Bastick faces his fourth game tonight, and there's been some pretty strong contenders in recent weeks.  Can he clear the fourth game hurdle and book a probable spot in the finals?  We'll find out, but first we get to discuss his numbers ability as Richard asks how Liam developed those skills.  Liam explains that he was the first child; his mother took time off work and from the age of two to three she taught him the times tables (up to twelve) by rote learning.  He agrees with Richard that it is an important skill to have, and I heartily agree -- having those very basic details down pat makes later developments substantially easier.

Tonight's challenger is Chris Ryan, a secondary school teacher also described as a multilinguist.  Richard asks how many languages Chris knows, and Chris responds that he is up to "about five".  His mother was (is?) Mauritian so his first language was French; when he went to school he had to learn English, and then later some Latin.  In his thirties he learned Irish Gaelic which he got involved in due to the beauty of Irish poetry.  Unfortunately, Richard's comments along the way have perhaps distracted Chris, and we don't find out what the fifth language is.


It was a close game, with honours even in the first round and Liam getting a small lead in the second.  The first numbers game was too hard for both, and when Liam overreached in the next round Chris was able to level the scores.  Chris drew ahead in the next round, and two shared rounds followed; Liam managed to gain on the last numbers round to take a one-point lead into the conundrum; he did well to solve it quite quickly to seal the win, 46 to 35.

I had a decent game except for one round, and the conundrum was too tough for me.  A slightly risky option in another round turned out to be the right decision, so there were definitely some pleasing facets to it.  Overall a satisfactory game but with room for improvement.

Ep 50: Liam Bastick, Rachael Bausor (September 14, 2012; originally aired October 8, 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.


Liam Bastick gets his third appearance on the show, and Richard asks about the strangest job that Liam has had.   When Liam first left university he ended up in a rather unusual job: For forty hours a week he had to time how fast things like tomato sauce, salad cream, and mayonnaisse flowed down a particular ramp.  As Richard puts it, Liam was a viscosity tester.

Tonight's challenger is Rachael Bausor, a deputy CEO who works predominantly in grant and project management at a community centre.  Rachael enjoys playing electronic strategy games and spending time with her five-year-old daughter Chloe.  Richard asks about the kind of strategy games that Rachael enjoys, and she gives examples of expanding a railroad empire across the United States, or running a restaurant, or -- one of her favourites -- running a theme park and designing rollercoasters and things like that.  (I'd be willing to bet that the first and third are Railroad Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon, but the restaurant one has too many possibilities.)


There was some back and forth in the letters rounds and the net result was equal scores to the contestants from those.  But Rachael was not able to get a scoring result in any of the numbers rounds, and that allowed Liam a comfortable lead.  He was safe going into the conundrum, and with neither solving it the final scoreline was 48 to 24 in his favour.

I was down on many letters maxima again, but not too far off the pace.  All in all it was an unexceptional game from me and a comfortable win.

Ep 49: Liam Bastick, Dean Schwab (September 13, 2012; originally aired October 7, 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.


It's Liam Bastick's first night as champion, and Richard comments that music is a large part of Liam's life.  Liam reveals that he owns twenty thousand CDs, which certainly seems like a lot to me.  Liam used to work for the BBC and acquired a good deal of promotional material as a result, which explains part of that.  His partner has suggested to him that he should sell the CDs and buy the house outright; I'm not sure how much second-hand CDs sell for these days, but that may be a rosy view of their worth.

Challenging Liam is Dean Schwab, a football umpire and insolvency specialist with a degree in accounting; Dean is hoping to becoming a chartered accountant by the end of the year.  He is also a keen coin collector, having done so for most of his life (his grandfather got him started).  His pride of collection is a penny from 1904.  (Australia did not have its own currency until 1910, and pennies not until 1911, so it is presumably a British penny.  Such a coin in mint condition might be worth as much as $150, or so a cursory search suggests to me.)


Dean fell victim to a phantom letter in the first letters round, and did not seem able to recover from that.  Liam steadily forged ahead in both facets of the game; Dean managed to get some ground back in the fourth round with a good word that he could easily have made better, but that was it for him.  Liam rounded out a good night by solving the conundrum fairly quickly for a comprehensive 60 to 7 victory.

I... yeesh, this hurts.  I had a reasonable game, really, but I was about five seconds too slow to make it into a fantastic one.  The opportunity was there to outdo both David and Lily in the same game, and not only that but to come out genuinely ahead in a head-to-head against them.  I missed the longer word, though, and an unlikely-to-be-repeated chance went begging.  I could still have salvaged a higher solo total by solving the conundrum, but it was too difficult for me, and what could have been great became merely good.

Ep 48: Esther Perrins, Liam Bastick (September 12, 2012; originally aired October 6, 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.


This is the crucial fourth night for Esther Perrins; if she wins she'll most likely make the finals, otherwise she will more likely miss out.  Richard comments about yesterday's nailbiting game, but basically does not give Esther chance for more than a few sounds of agreement before moving on.

Tonight's challenger is Liam Bastick, a financial modeller from the UK with a PhD in mathematics and qualifications in accounting.  Liam will soon be running a series of lectures around Australia (that was as part of the CPA Congress in 2010).  It is mentioned that Al Gore will also be a guest speaker at the same Congress; unfortunately for Liam, the two of them are speaking at the same time (but in different locations), so Liam suspects that his audience may be rather sparse.  I believe that Steve Wozniak was also a guest speaker at that Congress, incidentally.


The game goes much along the lines one would expect, with Esther having a strong advantage in the letters but Liam able to make up ground in the numbers.  A lot could easily have gone either way, but perhaps the decisive moment was a careless error from Esther in the first numbers round that allowed Liam to tie up the scores.  Esther was able to draw ahead thereafter but never quite get safe, and once more the game was alive going into the conundrum.  Liam managed to get there first, and snuck through for a 48 to 46 victory.

I had a good game, which made a nice change after the dissatisfaction of some recent efforts.  I got to the conundrum in quick time (although still a bit slower than others would have solved it), and only missed one maximum throughout.  I'm not sure I'd have chanced it even if I'd seen it, but I should have been able to do better.  Still, overall I was pleased with how it went.

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.