Rounds: Here.
I've changed my mind despite previous comments, so here's the details for episode 88 earlier than forecast. For anyone who has not yet seen it due to it being skipped for the US election coverage, here are the links again: Part 1; part 2; part 3. Thanks again to commentor Victor for finding this. Also, in case it was missed, here is the episode 90 post.
Leif returns for the important fourth-night showdown, although this season has had many six-game contestants and even four wins may not be enough. Richard wheels out the technique question, noting that Leif always starts with a consonant in the letters rounds. Leif agrees, and expands on this although it honestly does not make a lot of sense to me: He likes the vowels split up rather than clumped, and there are more consonants than vowels, so he chooses the consonant first. That is kind of backwards, really; if he started off with a vowel then he could spread the vowels out further. But perhaps he also dislikes clumps of consonants.
Tonight's challenger is Phil Moore, an I.T. manager who has lived on three different continents. His father was an aircraft engineer so the family travelled a lot when Phil was young (presumably the job involved his father working in rather different locations). He was born in France, then moved to the United Kingdom, then Africa (first South Africa, then Zimbabwe), then back to the United Kingdom, and finally settled in Australia at last. It's left him with an interest in travel, but it's not so easy now as he has two young children.
Phil took the lead in the first round with a word which turns up a lot in this game but can be hard to spot. Leif struck back in the second round, finding the unique best answer. Three shared rounds followed (neither contestant having any luck with the numbers round), then Leif extended his lead in the next numbers round. Phil was able to get back some of that ground in the final letters round, and then both solved the last rather easy numbers round. Leif was ahead but not safe going into the conundrum, and his usual technique of writing down the letters worked against him, as Phil solved it while Leif was still doing so. Phil won the game, 45 to 37.
I had a rather mixed game, starting off with a good find but then missing many better options. In fact, I did not get another maximum until the last numbers round; the other two numbers rounds included rather bad mental slips from me and I ended up two away in each case. The better words were rather findable in most cases, too, so overall this was not a good result. I did manage to beat Phil to the conundrum solution, but only just. It was a somewhat disappointing game, to be honest, but I had managed to do enough for the win.
Showing posts with label Phil Moore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phil Moore. Show all posts
Monday, 12 November 2012
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Ep 90: Phil Moore, Brett Chaiyawat (November 9, 2012; originally aired December 3, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Phil Moore is back for his third night, and with the finals series so close he is the last contender for a finals berth. Richard asks which facet of the game Phil favours, and Phil responds that before he started he thought that he handled them equally well, but now he thinks that his letters are actually better. He adds that his children (Ellen and John, who are still in primary school) like to do the numbers.
Tonight's challenger is Brett Chaiyawat, an auditor who enjoys playing games based on thinking and strategy. That covers a wide range of territory, but the one he specifically mentions is a card game based on Star Wars. Brett expounds that the strategic part comes where you have, say, a thousand cards to choose from and you have to choose sixty of them to make up the deck which you will play with. He adds that he has done pretty well in that game, being number one in Australia and then representing Australia in the world championships. That was in 1997, I believe, but I can't find much useful information about it online.
It ended up being a rather low scoring game, with each contestant having an invalid word, an invalid numbers solution, and nothing to declare in a numbers round. No round had both contestants scoring, and although there were some pretty reasonable words found the scores were still in the low twenties going into the conundrum. Neither managed to solve it, and it was Brett who emerged with the win, 25 to 21.
I had one of my best games for a while, with only one round not maximal. I saw the best answer after time but might not have risked it in practice. I took around six seconds to solve the conundrum, and I'm OK with that. A good game on which to finish the week.
Phil Moore is back for his third night, and with the finals series so close he is the last contender for a finals berth. Richard asks which facet of the game Phil favours, and Phil responds that before he started he thought that he handled them equally well, but now he thinks that his letters are actually better. He adds that his children (Ellen and John, who are still in primary school) like to do the numbers.
Tonight's challenger is Brett Chaiyawat, an auditor who enjoys playing games based on thinking and strategy. That covers a wide range of territory, but the one he specifically mentions is a card game based on Star Wars. Brett expounds that the strategic part comes where you have, say, a thousand cards to choose from and you have to choose sixty of them to make up the deck which you will play with. He adds that he has done pretty well in that game, being number one in Australia and then representing Australia in the world championships. That was in 1997, I believe, but I can't find much useful information about it online.
It ended up being a rather low scoring game, with each contestant having an invalid word, an invalid numbers solution, and nothing to declare in a numbers round. No round had both contestants scoring, and although there were some pretty reasonable words found the scores were still in the low twenties going into the conundrum. Neither managed to solve it, and it was Brett who emerged with the win, 25 to 21.
I had one of my best games for a while, with only one round not maximal. I saw the best answer after time but might not have risked it in practice. I took around six seconds to solve the conundrum, and I'm OK with that. A good game on which to finish the week.
Ep 89: Phil Moore, Mita Navidad (November 8, 2012; originally aired December 2, 2010)
Rounds: Here.
Due to the US election coverage, episode 88 was not aired in the usual order and so there is a gap in my record. A particularly annoying gap, too, as Richard comments later in the show that it was a game with a nail-biting finale. Leif Cooper must have lost it, as there are two new faces tonight.
Update: Commenter Victor points out that this is one of the few episodes available on YouTube, so I will be able to cover this after all. The links are: Part 1, part 2, part 3. Thanks, Victor!
The returning champion is Phil Moore, an I.T. manager and business technology student. Richard observes that I.T. is often sedentary work, but that Phil is actually pretty fit. Phil explains this as being due to him riding around 45 to 50 kilometres per day when he is cycling.
Tonight's challenger is Mita Navidad, a science and maths graduate who went to Germany to complete an internship with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company. Mita was working for the structures and engineering department, and she says that the best thing about it was that every day she got to see fighter planes fly past her window on their test flights. It was, of course, very noisy when that happened and not much work got done. She found it exciting to be working at the cutting edge of science.
The contestants started out fairly evenly, finding the same word in the first round. In the second round Mita made the first-time player error of using a letter twice, but she got those points back in the following numbers round. The second third of the game was all Phil, though, as he found the two best words and solved the numbers game to have a lead of over twenty points. The final third saw them matched again, giving the game to Phil. Neither could solve the conundrum, and the final scoreline was 44 to 20 in his favour.
I blanked a bit on the first round, missing some longer options that I knew must be there. I probably was never going to match David's result in the thirty seconds, though. For the rest of it I played optimally all the way up to the conundrum, but that took me over two minutes to solve. A rather tough conundrum tonight, I'd say. That kept my score out of the seventies, but a mid-sixties score was still pretty welcome.
Due to the US election coverage, episode 88 was not aired in the usual order and so there is a gap in my record. A particularly annoying gap, too, as Richard comments later in the show that it was a game with a nail-biting finale. Leif Cooper must have lost it, as there are two new faces tonight.
Update: Commenter Victor points out that this is one of the few episodes available on YouTube, so I will be able to cover this after all. The links are: Part 1, part 2, part 3. Thanks, Victor!
The returning champion is Phil Moore, an I.T. manager and business technology student. Richard observes that I.T. is often sedentary work, but that Phil is actually pretty fit. Phil explains this as being due to him riding around 45 to 50 kilometres per day when he is cycling.
Tonight's challenger is Mita Navidad, a science and maths graduate who went to Germany to complete an internship with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company. Mita was working for the structures and engineering department, and she says that the best thing about it was that every day she got to see fighter planes fly past her window on their test flights. It was, of course, very noisy when that happened and not much work got done. She found it exciting to be working at the cutting edge of science.
The contestants started out fairly evenly, finding the same word in the first round. In the second round Mita made the first-time player error of using a letter twice, but she got those points back in the following numbers round. The second third of the game was all Phil, though, as he found the two best words and solved the numbers game to have a lead of over twenty points. The final third saw them matched again, giving the game to Phil. Neither could solve the conundrum, and the final scoreline was 44 to 20 in his favour.
I blanked a bit on the first round, missing some longer options that I knew must be there. I probably was never going to match David's result in the thirty seconds, though. For the rest of it I played optimally all the way up to the conundrum, but that took me over two minutes to solve. A rather tough conundrum tonight, I'd say. That kept my score out of the seventies, but a mid-sixties score was still pretty welcome.
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