c4countdown

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner wrote:POMADED, the contestant had POMADE as well.

Martin

From what I remember from seeing Susie, POMADE is a mass noun and therefore POMADES is only allowed from the verb POMADE. That's what made me think of it.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Craig Beevers wrote:Heh that's gotta be a bit humiliating when Des gets it.

I did [75 + (9-8)] * 10 = 760, 760 + 50 - 3 = 807.

I have a feeling it was probably Damian in the commentary booth that got it, I noticed Des indicated with his hand that it wasn't him that got it, in my opinion.

Martin

Martin Gardner

POMADED, the contestant had POMADE as well.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Jason Larsen wrote:Oh, you're talking about football!

I've heard that Manchester is a pretty good team!

United or City?

Martin

Martin Gardner

Looking at recent games, a very good tip would be to just check your own solutions. How many times this series has a player gone for a word and found that not all the letters are there? From example we had AROMAS recently when there was only one A. So my tip is to write the letters down and make a m...

Martin Gardner

INTRUDES as an equaller. REUNITES and UNRESTED too. I was hoping UNDERSITE might be a word, but it isn't! Seriously another very good performance by both players in a Series that has been mainly high quality throughout. All we need now is another 800+ octochamp, I think for us hard core viewers tha...

Martin Gardner

I didn't say that. As you can see from your own cut and paste thingy , i said that 3-month Supremes event "alienates many viewers who are unable to compete". That's not the same as the viewers wanting to win every game from home in a normal series. In a normal series, viewers will match m...

Martin Gardner

I know Damian said that the players prefer to be able to beat the contestants at home, is that at the expense of good players? When, where? And which players - you mean viewers, right? . Yes I meant viewers, sorry. From the Series 66 post: On the negative side, hmm.......the list is pretty big real...

Martin Gardner

Jason Larsen wrote:No, I like her and I think the reason why she hasn't been responding to me lately is because she has been so busy.

Do you get that response from a lot of women, Jason?

Martin

Martin Gardner

But in that 5th game, the player mightn't have come up with any "brilliant spots" or "tough numbers solutions". It may sound farfetched, but it can happen. As "your" player may not have done in his 4 winning games.... I'm really not understanding your angle on this at ...

Martin Gardner

I know Damian has said once or twice that the viewers don't give a toss about who's playing they just want to have a go at the letters and numbers themselves (paraphrased). I think like any game in the sport and games arena, good players are better to watch than bad players. If there are two shit pl...

Martin Gardner

No comment on the game, just thanks you Jim and Veronica for tirelessly doing a recap every Monday.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Well if you're rated zero (no games played) and you beat two players ranked 150 and then lose to a player ranked 200, that's 150 + 150 + 200 then + 50 + 50 - 50 which is 550 550 / 3 = 183, which I believe is always rounded to the nearest number. So over 100 games it's the total of your last 100 oppo...

Martin Gardner

Possibly, you could argue that ABSP ratings are too static, I think BW went from 159 to 162 when he won his tournament. If this were a tournament in France he'd be about 190. I hate the French rating system, basically win and losses don't matter, you put the players in order before the start of the ...

Martin Gardner

Yes I think you're right.

Martin

Martin Gardner

In fairness the best way to take luck out of Scrabble would be to get rid of the 50 point bonus when you play all the letters. It works the same way as the 18 point bonus in Countdown. You get some games, not every game far from it, where player A picks up 3 bingoes in 4 moves and player B has maybe...

Martin Gardner

I've seen discussions about this on F1 forums as well, and it seems that some people equate casual viewers with retards. That's a bit far isn't it? It's nothing to do with intelligence if people don't watch every day they probably don't understand the system. As you correctly point out, I don't wat...

Martin Gardner

Yes they do get added.

Martin

Martin Gardner

I think Damian's alluded to this so I thought I might bring it up. How much does the average viewer know about Countdown? I mean do they understand about points and wins and seedings and stuff like that? I'm not really sure, I think a lot of people just think that the winner stays on and then when h...

Martin Gardner

Yeah to be honest that wasn't a good performance from you, but still I think six wins may be enough to make the finals. There are 31 shows left by my count, thanks to Damian's advice. So while it's possible that three players will pass you to make the finals, it's not all that likely. But I think th...

Martin Gardner

Don't know if anyone else carried on watching - but the welsh guy's last question was (along the lines of) "An hour of which of these sports burns the most calories? Rugby, Basketball or Tennis?" Apparently the answer is rugby (the guy got it wrong, as did the remaining 3 of the 100), but...

Martin Gardner

In fairness as a reply to my previous post, I think if you play fewer games on the ISC, you can afford to take them more seriously. But I just play for a bit of practise, I try and see the words as quickly as possible and if I don't see them, I don't play them!

Martin

Martin Gardner

Yes good performance, you'd have beaten me on the final numbers game, Ben.

Martin

Martin Gardner

I'm not even trying to suggest a reason, I'm just saying looking at only the 15-round series, the highest ranked Octochamps tend to beat the lower ranked ones, hence the reason that the #1 seed won the first six series, and eight out of twelve in total. It doesn't invalidate anything you've said, I'...

Martin Gardner

Things that annoy me on the Internet Scrabble Club That the jerk who runs it hasn't done any serious work on the program for 3 years, so it lacks such "advanced" features as being able to change your own password, and yet he still charges hundreds of people for subscriptions. Best of all,...

Martin Gardner

Excellent performance Ben, shame about the first numbers as that cost you the century. If course if he hadn't have got it, you'd have got the century anyway.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Matt Coates wrote:MORMONS? as an equaller

Capital letter, sorry

Martin

Martin Gardner

This thread is supposed to be about who the best ever contestants were, not the ones who happened to win a one-off game or who got lucky on the conundrum. That's why you have to largely go on performance - the results are mostly the product of chance, it's like working out the best poker player bas...

Martin Gardner

Things that annoy me on the Internet Scrabble Club People who accuse you of cheating when you're 100 ahead, but not 100 behind. People who says it's "just luck" - surely having good letters, or average ones for that matter, is of no help if you miss all the best words. Similar to Countdow...

Martin Gardner

I actually got the third numbers from my extremely comfortable armchair;

25-6+2=21
21*4 = 84
84-1 = 83
83*10 = 830

Martin

Martin Gardner

Actually this summer I hope to work as a personal French tutor, I'll find out next Monday how I've done on my practice exam but I'm certainly hoping for 90%. You have to remember of course I'm about six years older than my peers and I read in French on the Internet for a few hours every day, so it's...

Martin Gardner

Can anyone tell us when the quarter-finals of this series are? Cheers

Martin

Martin Gardner

I think humility is a good thing but it is just a game. It's not like you even win money. If you're in the final of the World Series of Poker Main Event there might be $100 000 that depends on which player goes out next, so it's very serious. On Countdown you win a 24 volume dictionary. I would neve...

Martin Gardner

I think Carol gets some unfair stick on here sometimes (not referring to this thread in particular but just making a general point). She occasionally misses easy numbers games, but after doing the same thing every other week for 22 years I doubt she puts full effort every time, and she manages to f...

Martin Gardner

Joseph Bolas wrote: EDIT: 554 variant = ((10 + 5 + 7) x 25) + 3 + 1

Yeah I came up with this straight away and was a bit surprised that Carol went a completely different way. Basically 10+7+5 is the only way to get the 22, then you've got 3 and 1 left!

Martin

Martin Gardner

Christine got the conundrum in about 15 seconds.

Martin

Martin Gardner

By the way, you don't think Paul just used a deck of 52 queens of hearts?

Martin

Martin Gardner

TSUNAMI, a bit of Japanese for you.

Martin Gardner

Inspired by the great Kirk Bevins, I've decided to download an application form for the weakest link (just type Weakest Link BBC website or something similar into Google to get the link) and I'll be filling it in after my my penultimate exam next month. I don't really care how well I do, I just want...

Martin Gardner

Benji Hanks wrote:For the record, I saw Ambient in the ?3rd? round, but didn't want to risk it as wasn't 100% as to whether it was ent or ant.

Ambient is fine.

Martin

Martin Gardner

I'm rather predictably Mglovesfun, will play any dictionary for a laugh.

Martin

Martin Gardner

No seriously I'm not Gevin.

Martin Gardner

You could do that, or I'll do it all for free. Provided everything you suggest is doable, it literally takes seconds to make one list.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Damian E wrote: I was born in '69 - so i was a kid in the 80's. And an ugly one at that.

I don't get it either.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Well it is only nine letters, not up to nine letters. I'm using a French program called Aide aux jeux de lettres which I can use any dictionary with, as long as it's correctly formatted. I can come up with almost any word list using the features in combination. Just don't ask for definitions because...

Martin Gardner

No actually he was on second and eliminated everyone but one, and both of them got the last question right, so now he's only got to get rid of one player, but if he gets any question wrong he's automatically out.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Oh bollocks we've got to wait until next week to find out now. I'm sure it's not recorded live (as if they're all going to go back to work for a week and come back next Saturday!) so come on Chris, what happens?

Martin

Martin Gardner

Just a note to let you know that Series 47 champion Chris Wills is trying to win £130 000 on 1 vs. 100. He's already won Countdown, The Weakest Link, BrainTeaser and has appeared on Mastermind and 15-to-1 but didn't win either of those.

Martin

Martin Gardner

While I'm here, the biggest frequency of each letter in a nine letter word are : A: 4 times, 25 examples one of which one is ACHALASIA B: 3 times, 12 examples of which one is BEDABBLED C: 4 times, the only example if CACHECTIC D: 4 times, the only example is DISBUDDED E: 4 times, 42 examples of whic...

Martin Gardner

Using the Countmax dictionary, I've come up with some statistics (or really, oddities). There are no nine letter words with 7 vowels, (Y is counted as a consonant) but there are 21 with 6 vowels : AQUILEGIA ARAUCARIA AUBRIETIA AUDACIOUS AUDIOBOOK AUDIOTAPE AUDITORIA AUTOROUTE BEAUTEOUS BOOBOISIE DIO...

Martin Gardner

You'll need to provide more details. Which bit doesn't work? I can see how that would be helpful, yes! On downloading and unzipping and then double clicking on the icon, I get : "This application has failed to start because MFC71.DLL Re-installing the application may fix this problem." Wh...

Martin Gardner

I'm just looking on the Countdown Corral. I have a couple of issues. First of all the recap writer is absolutely brilliant, but as the for wiki an alternative one for 9 rounds and 14 rounds would be useful. I'd like to put all the games on Mike's site on the wiki but all of them are either 9 or 14 r...

Martin Gardner

I know there's AUDIOTAPE and a few others with 6 vowels, I could run it through my program and tell you, not counting the Y as a vowel. Ok so here it is, using the Scrabble dictionary unless someone wants to send me a text version of the Oxford, all capital letter, one word per line. Unless they get...

Martin Gardner

I thought it was a bit of a flat game to be honest. I think they chose only 3 vowels in almost all the letters game, when a vowel would have probably given some sevens and eights. The quality of the game was good, but the selections really weren't.

Martin

Martin Gardner

Btw I thought that UPSTROKE was excellent earlier in the game

Martin Gardner

Joseph Bolas wrote:R4: ZLOTIES

Yeah I got that as well.

Martin

Martin Gardner

CANOODLER isn't a word then?

Martin

Martin Gardner

I suspect Richard Priest's average score of 99.57 is the highest ever for someone who didn't become an Octochamp which makes him one of the best non-Octochamps ever. I think he'd be the favourite against one of the Octochamps unless he's #8 seed then he's playing DOD who averages 110 points a game. ...

Martin Gardner

In fairness when it comes to putting Paul Gallen at the top of the list as the best 15-round contestant ever, it's worth noting that he was a lot better in the CofC than in Series 52. By that I mean, his performance in the CofC was the best ever by any player. But seriously one difference now is tha...

Martin Gardner

How about KENTIA as an anagram of INTAKE? And yes Jo Brand's anecdotes are annoying although I like her as an entertainer overall.

Martin

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