Ep 113: Matthew Thomason, Ryan Turk (May 27, 2016; originally aired Janury 5, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


It's Matthew Thomason's fifth night, and a win here should put him into the finals.  His scoring has been decent, too, so even a loss tonight would stand him a decent shot at it, provided he scores adequately in the process.  Richard wheels out the question about technique, suggesting that perhaps we are running short of anecdotes for Matthew to tell, unlikely though that would seem -- he strikes me as somewhat of a raconteur.  In any case, Matthew indicates that there is no technique; he has done crosswords, including those by a certain DA, for many years, and he does the Target, but there doesn't seem to be a strategy behind any of it.  Sometimes he just sees a word, and other times he does not.

Tonight's challenger is Ryan Turk, an I.T. network engineer who was once verbally abused by Jim Courier, the famous tennis player, while Ryan was working as a line umpire for the Australian Open.  As Ryan relates it, he had called a ball out, and Courier responded by running over to him and screaming in his face.  There was a certain amount of instant karma here, though, although this may not have been apparent at the time: Ryan had reconsidered his call and decided that the ball was in, and was going to correct himself, but was not able to do so after that behaviour.

(This matter is covered in the ITF's Rules of Tennis, in appendix VI: Role of Court Officials, and I imagine that the line umpires are also given explicit instruction about this.  The relevant case decision is: If a line umpire realises a mistake, a correction should be made as soon as possible provided it is not as the result of a protest or appeal of a player.  Also, the result must stand in such a situation: A chair umpire must never overrule as the result of the protest or appeal by a player.)


The contestants started out with matching words in the first round, but Matthew found an excellent word in the second round to take the early lead.  He did so again in round four, pushing him clear by more than a conundrum.  The remaining letter rounds were shared, but Ryan made some good tactical choices in the numbers rounds to score points there and take over the lead going into the conundrum.  It was not enough, though, as Matthew continued his streak of very fast conundrum solutions to secure the win, 52 to 48.

I had decent results in most rounds, but unfortunately hit an invalid word in round two that set me back a bit.  I was a touch too slow with the right approach in the second numbers round, but overall managed to do enough to be comfortably clear of the contestants.  So far the winning run is continuing.