Ep 132: Barry Harridge, Susan Bee (June 23, 2016; originally aired February 1, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Barry Harridge has made it to the fifth night, and should make the finals even if he loses here.  Of course, he'd rather win.  Richard opens by noting that Barry has been exceptionally good with the words, and mentions that Barry has built up a resource that helps him in this regard.  Barry explains that he has put together a "consogram list", where words are organised by putting their consonants first.  (From later context, those consonants are then sorted and words with identical consonants are grouped together.)  He gives an example with C, N, R, T, where he would mumble to himself "curtain, nectar, citrine..." and so forth.  As a result, he called this list "a thesaurus of mumbles".  (Incidentally, this kind of thing is why I think it's best to pick vowels first against Scrabble players -- taking the consonants early just gives them more time to recall the appropriate parts of such lists.)

Tonight's challenger is Susan Bee, a freelance writer who also works as a museum guide.  Susan works in a house museum; she describes the house as a sort of eccentric Victorian Gothic mansion, set in beautiful grounds with a pleasure garden, vegetable garden, and paddocks.  She sort of trails off after "paddocks", implying there is more to the grounds (as one would expect), but presumably those were the standout features.


Barry gets his usual very fast start, with two excellent eight-letter words.  He followed it up by finding a good solution to the first numbers round, and was 26 points ahead going into the first break.  The remaining letters rounds went a bit each way, with Barry rather surprisingly missing a full monty that Scrabble players would be expected to find, and both contestants were unable to score points in the numbers (Barry due to errors of calculation, while Susan was not able to get within range).  The conundrum was likewise elusive, so those first three rounds made all the difference: Barry won in a surprisingly low-scoring game, 39 to 13.

Barry's start was too good for me, and I was sixteen points behind at the halfway mark.  Fortunately I was able to capitalise on the full monty opportunity, and pick up some useful points in the numbers rounds as well to be safe going into the conundrum.  I was pleased to solve it (particularly after yesterday's invalid answer), and get home with the win in what started off looking like a serious loss possibility.