c4countdown

David Williams

What about countries that don't exist any more? I travelled all round Yugoslavia in my student days. Do I get to count all the present-day countries?

David Williams

The first time George went through his working, Rachel wrote down an intermediate sum wrong, so when they got to the last step, it was 8100/25 rather than the correct 8050/25. Rachel seemed to have followed the overall reason why the solution worked, so didn't see a problem with his working, but th...

David Williams

Since you can't know your opponent's declaration before they give it, you can't really second-guess what they are going to say and therefore how you are going to react. So that needs a little thought. Even if you only thought of both your words at the very end of the thirty seconds, you've had a fe...

David Williams

And do you go for COMBERS? After 30 seconds your thought would have been to match your opponent. It may not be a new word you've thought of since, but it's new information you've thought of that's persuaded you it's OK. What's the difference?

David Williams

But yeah, I'm not convinced by that argument really. But I do still think it's okay if you are just choosing between words that you've spotted in time. I can't articulate why though at this moment. You're seven points behind, so losing the round costs you a lot more than winning the round will prof...

David Williams

I just went back and watched Steven's dodgy round, and I assume he's on about Thomas taking a long time to declare after hearing Matthew's declaration of eight. I'm usually hot on stuff like that, so it's funny how it didn't register first time around with me. Is it because I wasn't previously susp...

David Williams

David Williams

she should have been asked to show her workings. No-one ever volunteers this, so why should she? Well that's just an out-and-out lie. Plenty of contestants (probably most) offer their paper without having to be asked. I don't think I've ever been called a liar. I thought I'd have been more indignan...

David Williams

That's a long and convoluted argument, that doesn't alter the fact that both of them ended up saying they had a*c*b rather than a*b*c. But even if I were to accept your conclusion that Tricia's case was more suspicious, all that leads to is that she should have been asked to show her workings. No-on...

David Williams

Yeah, I just pulled up 4od quickly and watched that round. I've only watched it once but it seemed a bit rushed through as if edited or reshot. Or maybe fell into the category of "yeah, yeah, we all got that, easy, let's not waste more time than necessary". *shrugs* So it was obvious Mark...

David Williams

Jon Corby wrote:
David Williams wrote:I await, with interest, your comments on today's show.
Oh crud, I span through it on x2 with subtitles on, what did I miss?

C2 25x8=200 200x2=400 plus something or other
C1 "I just did 8x2 . . ." Rachel "Fine, fine"
The end. (Or something like that.)

David Williams

Just to reiterate, I don't think Tricia cheated on those two numbers games. I'm pretty sure I said at the time that her body language etc suggested she was happy with her solve. What is painfully obvious to me though is that she should have offered her paper to her opponent (I distinctly remember c...

David Williams

Here was someone who clearly did miss the obvious solution and came up with a solution that was very similar, but convoluted. Because he declared first and had made a mistake it was a non-event, but it does show that it's easily done. When Tricia did that she was condemned for blatant cheating. I th...

David Williams

No controversial judgements today. Well, let's give it a go. Round 3: 100, 75, 5, 7, 9, 4. Target: 718. John "100x7. Oh, I've made a mistake." Rachel then pauses for a while, which can only be to give him a moment to think of the obvious solution. Is she encouraging him to cheat? Or would...

David Williams

Incidentally, with all the UNROPED talk in here, I had a feeling that Tricia had already played it. So I checked, and found UNROPE in the recap of her second game. Only me that mentioned UNROPED, but I think we can safely say that if she saw it she wouldn't have thought it was dubious. It's also in...

David Williams

Callum Todd wrote:reducing the points gap between males and females by about 650%

I'm not very good at sums, but if you reduce something by 650% . . . ??

David Williams

It's not against the rules I've got - "You are not allowed to bring anything on to the set . . .", but, from what others have said, it's not allowed.

David Williams

POUNDER and UNROPED used to be a blind spot for me. They both sound a bit dodgy, and I could never remember whether it was one, both or neither that was valid. It's also my view that the only sin is hesitating. If I had UNROPED written down, been unsure but declared a seven, and then seen POUNDER wh...

David Williams

In previous games I've been defending Tricia against various accusations, but I turned to this thread thinking I couldn't defend her this time. And there's nothing! The EMOTES round. C2. "Six". C1. Agonisingly long pause. "Five". Incidentally, I heard JILTED. She might have had ...

David Williams

In previous games I've been defending Tricia against various accusations, but I turned to this thread thinking I couldn't defend her this time. And there's nothing!

The EMOTES round. C2. "Six". C1. Agonisingly long pause. "Five".

Incidentally, I heard JILTED.

David Williams

Gavin Chipper wrote:
James Robinson wrote:The delightfully debonair Anton du Beke is in DC this week, after a 5 year gap.
That's a long time. Was he called Anton Du Beke back in those days, or was he still known as PJon Du Buncan?

Stares blankly. Has a think. Gets there in the end.

David Williams

To be honest I've never noticed, but it would surely be a better approach always to ask the one who declares second to go first.

David Williams

Am I right in thinking that Nick broke with his normal routine in one of the early numbers rounds in making Tricia go first when her declaration matched her opponent's? I noticed that as well, which I'm assuming proves that Friday's shenanigans were discussed to some degree before this edition was ...

David Williams

Are there any instances where someone offered the comparative or superlative of a -Y adjective and it wasn't allowed? Something I forgot to ask David - do you still have your contestant guidelines from that time? We're they as helpful as the set I got which told me to use the dictionary two edition...

David Williams

Game 1636 could be a max for Chris Rogers (summarised). That's quite interesting. I would suggest that it probably would count as a max. Were there specific rules on comparatives and superlatives at the time? Did they tend to just go with the dictionary? I'm trying to be cautious. The section on in...

David Williams

A quick thought on the MINUTE one. Anyone remember the show where a contestant offered SUNDRIES, pronounced as if it were what one might do to tomatoes? He got lucky, obviously, but if you are going to say that MINUTE and MINUTE are two different words for Countdown purposes, you have to disallow SU...

David Williams

C1 trails by 21 points going into the last letters round. Both contestants offer seven, C1's not written down. He declares a voracious tropical fish. C2 says "Same", and shows his paper to C1. On it are written the words PIRANHA and PIRAHNA. C1, who needs to win the round, asks which spell...

David Williams

But similarly, I could ask you where you draw the line in the other direction. Is 3*100 the same as 100*3? 100+3 the same as 3+100? They're not literally the same. And what if someone said they had the same solution but they multiplied by 1 at the end? You avoided my specific questions, but I'll tr...

David Williams

Andy McGurn wrote:I thought she was cheating. It especially seemed obvious on the last numbers game.

http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5222
Which one of the contestants here declared first in Round 5? Did the other one show his solution, or just read it out?

David Williams

9. C2 spots a quality numbers answer which ends by adding one. C1 claims to have spotted the answer also but claims that instead of adding one, divided 9 by 9 to get the final one to add on. Otherwise the answer is exactly the same as C2. As the ref would you just allow this at face value, disallow...

David Williams

4. C2 is 15 points behind going into the last numbers round. He asks for 6 small in the hope of getting a difficult round on which he can beat C1. The round is difficult, but C1 gets it spot on and C2 doesn't. C2 is now 25 behind. Then, just before you go into the conundrum, DC informs you that a m...

David Williams

I don't recall anyone ever saying that their solution was slightly different, but to all intents and purposes the same, and offering their paper to their opponent. It's far more frequent for someone to say they have the same solution but still have to be prompted by Nick to show their workings. I've...

David Williams

Am I the only one who couldn't believe that no-one else had got SIGNORITA? (Until, of course, I tried to look it up.)

David Williams

I would be interested to see a breakdown of the one and a half billion by country. What with it being of no interest to anyone outside the Commonwealth, and the middle of the night in India.

David Williams

Philip Wilson wrote:I went for reflush over flusher too, just seems much more likely to be in.

But FLUSHER also means "having more money".

David Williams

Sean Fletcher wrote:VIRGATE - Describes plant parts that are long and thin.

In some dictionaries, but not in Oxford, apparently.

David Williams

I was a bit disappointed when Rachel got the first numbers, after finding

75 x (9+1) x 4 = 3000
(3000-3) / 3 = 999

LIAISON in Round 1, I think.

David Williams

You may have already tried this, but assuming there is some sort of 'official' Scrabble magazine, how about putting a plea in there? I imagine a fair few of the contestants in the early days were Scrabble players (they were pretty hopeless at numbers anyway), and I reckon 1982 would be about when I ...

David Williams

Are you allowed to have UNINSURE as compared to UNINSURED? Only one U anyway, I think. It somehow both saddens and annoys me when people can't make 864 out of 100, 8 and the means to make another 8. 10 points just thrown away. You have to bear in mind that most people who don't watch Countdown regu...

David Williams

Jordan F wrote:Are you allowed to have UNINSURE as compared to UNINSURED?

Only one U anyway, I think.

It somehow both saddens and annoys me when people can't make 864 out of 100, 8 and the means to make another 8. 10 points just thrown away.

David Williams

Can't see anyone from Europe going over there and winning, for the South American teams every match will be like a home one. In the same way as every England game is like a home game when they are playing in, say, Italy? It's not like the 1930s, when teams had to travel by boat and another continen...

David Williams

I think you used to have 22 in a squad - two for each position. Presumably at some time it was thought that having only two goalkeepers left you vulnerable, because you can't play someone out of position as easily as you can for an outfield position. If FIFA had said you must have three goalkeepers ...

David Williams

Steven M. McCann wrote:I seem to have touched a nerve!

No, just bored because it's raining.

People who use their middle initial.

David Williams

People who don't spell check what their posting! People who don't know the difference between grammar and spelling. People who go on and on and on about their imagined National Lottery misfortunes. Actually, while I might not want to discuss immigration or the reintroduction of national service wit...

David Williams

Yeah, it's just made up. What are they basing it on? http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/historic-and-projected-data-from-the-period-and-cohort-life-tables/2012-based/sty-babies-living-to-100.html Perhaps you could save me the trouble of reading it by having a look at the statistical bulletin ...

David Williams

I think he meant the other 149,999.

David Williams

Ann winning today after being 39 behind is easily the biggest comeback in Nick Hewer's time, and you have to go back to Richard Whiteley's era to find the only one that was bigger. Arguably Ann's was even more remarkable as her comeback didn't include a nine letter word, and she actually lost anoth...

David Williams

http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/playe ... lation.ftl

If you'd just read this and think about it you wouldn't be so shocked.

David Williams

I just think ethics is a much greyer area than you do. Why is it widely accepted (in the UK, maybe not in other parts of the world) that it's OK to appeal for a throw-in when you know the last touch was yours, but totally wrong to suggest that someone should be booked when the referee has given a fo...

David Williams

http://lottery.merseyworld.com/archive/Lott009.html 133 winners shared £16.3m, receiving £122,510 each. This was one of the very early draws, when the lottery was still big news. I remember thinking at the time that there must have been 133 people who thought they were multi-millionaires for a few h...

David Williams

If your opponent buzzes after 29 seconds and gets it wrong, but from his wrong answer you see the right one, is it ethical to buzz in when the clock restarts? You certainly didn't get it in the 30 seconds after the clock started initially. Is it any more ethical to use that extra time than extra tim...

David Williams

https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/lotto/results/prizeBreakdown.ftl?drawNumber=1897&drawSequence=0 It depends. If the sole way to win the lottery was to get at least five numbers then 196 people would have shared £7.9m and got over £40,000 each. I believe half the money goes to good cause...

David Williams

I did use face in face audition for good reason as i can't talk on the phone and also i against with phone audition for two reasons are the applicants can cheating to find good word to try and impress them. Also phone audition don't have facial expression which you won't assessed for how did they f...

David Williams

why would you want to face likely humiliation on TV? The vast majority of contestants must go into it knowing there's a distinct possibility of being humiliated. If you've been watching half a dozen apterite octochamps per series, you'll think it's 50/50 whether you get one or not. If I was new to ...

David Williams

Not really of desperate importance to me, but I think I thought stemming was more systematic. If you've got RETAINS there are very few combinations where you need both the other two letters to make an eight letter word. With RETAINS+B+C, say, you've already got BANISTER and CANISTER The point of VES...

David Williams

I can see that it's slightly weird that Sainsbury's should be next door to Tesco, and fairly weird that you have to visit two shops and seek a second opinion before buying a frozen pizza, but I'm a bit lost as to the weirdness of anything else. Maybe the role of the headphones means you have misread...

David Williams

The first numbers game was a 99%er, slightly surprisingly for a game with 2 discrete solutions. Both were fiendish though, so it's fair enough. Muchos kudos to those that got it within 30 mins, never mind 30 secs. When Rachel said it was "Very, very difficult" I think we all knew she must...

David Williams

I would have thought memorising all the eight and nine letter words containing RETAINS could well be efficient. It must happen quite a lot. It must be reassuring to know you'll never miss TRAPESING or SIGNATURE, NAARTJIES or RAINSWEPT. And then you find you're not infallible when you get beaten with...

David Williams

As a non-apterite, can someone just enlighten me on a point. Many years ago I wondered about trying to produce a list of all eight letter words including the letters RETAINS. With no on-line dictionary it wasn't a great success, but at some point I came across VESTIARY, which is the only eight lette...

David Williams

Better for whom? If I was a challenger, up against a champion who went for four large, say, I'd go for something else. And if he went for four vowels (and I suspected him of having memorised the 2000 most common words), I'd go for something else. As a viewer I much prefer scratching around for an un...

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