c4countdown

David Williams

At least in those long-distant days the chances of any individual actually having the virus was probably (literally) a million to one. Frequent hand-washing seemed a good idea when it was first advised. It's a sobering thought that any random individual who crosses your path today is maybe a hundred...

David Williams

I think it's valid. Suppose it was established that having a meal in a restaurant with an infected person gave you a 50% chance of being infected. Sheer chance, different immune systems, whatever. How many people would you expect to be infected if that person spent the same amount of time at a speed...

David Williams

Suppose you have a bottle of poison with five lethal doses in it, and another bottle of 100 pills, five of which are poisonous. If one person consumes the whole bottle they die. If two people share the whole bottle, both of them die. Up to five people it's essentially the same. But if 100 people sha...

David Williams

The report in today's Times is headlined "Woman fined £660 for a crime that 'doesn't exist'".

David Williams

I'd very much hope she was actually fined for doing something against the law, which was aggravated by her refusal to give her name. If the police ask for your name and what you are doing, you are perfectly entitled to respond "Going about my lawful business, officer". (Do not try this at home, or ...

David Williams

I'd very much hope she was actually fined for doing something against the law, which was aggravated by her refusal to give her name. If the police ask for your name and what you are doing, you are perfectly entitled to respond "Going about my lawful business, officer". (Do not try this at home, or i...

David Williams

Johnny Canuck wrote: ↑
Wed Apr 01, 2020 10:38 pm
Don't we want stuff to be avirulent?

But who know's what Nick's throwaway line was when he revealed the answer? Not hard to envisage something inconsequential at the time that would be offensive now.

David Williams

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:41 pm
The police dyed a blue lagoon black to deter visitors. Talk about police state.

Fake news.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-n ... e-22843481

David Williams

But if you were ordering, perhaps you'd say "One beef and two muttons"? And them's the rules. I think the restaurant rule does go too far, and you get some very contrived plurals. It was brought in because words like LAGER were only given as mass nouns, which is simply a deficiency of the dictionary...

David Williams

The trouble with knowing how to solve the tactical positions you will see in a newspaper is that you will only get to one of those positions very rarely, and only if you have outplayed your opponent up to that point. In any case a game between two beginners is usually just a succession of blunders, ...

David Williams

I don't know if the definition of woe is well known, but it's in the NODE so it dates back at least 20 years. Liverpool fan at the OUP?

Lexico wrote:‘the Everton tale of woe continued’

David Williams

Has anyone ever scored less points than a member of the audience before?

David Williams

But so what? That's like saying that Coronation Street is the most popular TV soap, so everyone is expected to know all about it. So, if you expect some clarification as to what the Champions League is, you would also expect some clarification about Coronation Street? I thought the general idea was...

David Williams

Newsreaders assuming knowledge of this sort of stuff is annoying. Also quizmasters. On Pointless Richard Osman says things like "teams in the 2018-19 Champions League" and I have no idea what that means. I know the names of some football teams, so I could have a wild guess, but I have no idea wheth...

David Williams

Reminded by the Dictionary Revival thread. Helen Wrigglesworth, who lost by two points having suffered a 15 point swing through having ROADSIDE disallowed, because the COD10 economised on space by omitting compound words whose meaning was clear. They did give her another go, and dropped COD10 after ...

David Williams

There's more than one way to be unlucky. You can get drawn against a top player in the heats. You can have a valid word disallowed (or your opponent can have an invalid word allowed). You can get an 'impossible' crucial conundrum when you are behind, or a trivial one (50/50 shot) when you're ahead. ...

David Williams

Any clue to be derived from the baby's initials?

David Williams

I'm sure we're all relieved that Chris Evans ensures there is no Bevins number discontinuity.

David Williams

It's very strange though. It used to be in, so someone has taken a conscious decision to take it out. They have noticed that people nowadays are more gouty, not goutier like they used to be.

And I may not have been concentrating all that hard, but did both contestants get 500 as 50/10*100?

David Williams

It may be your (and my) opinion that you can't pluralise an exclamation, but the point at issue is where this is laid down. And the usage in the example sentence could be pluralised. On balance I agree with you, but I'm not seeing quite enough to overrule the onfield decision.

David Williams

Does it say anywhere that you can't pluralise an exclamation? In fact it's being used as a count noun in the example sentence "A big cheerio to Bill, who's not been in the best of health of late." (Haven't watched the programme, so I don't know what was actually said.)

David Williams

Let's not forget that in the second half of the 1970s the top income tax rate was 83% on incomes over £20,000 and the basic rate was 33%. It's not as if a 75% rate is a complete leap into the unknown. The top rate was reduced to 40% in two stages in the 1980s, and the basic rate to 20% over a longer...

David Williams

Didn't think anything of it myself, but the editing didn't do him any favours when he had COOTED disallowed, Jenny Eclair spoke up and said something like "I'm doing my best for you" in his direction, they panned over, and it looked as if he wasn't even listening.

David Williams

Never understood why people are so against Inheritance Tax, even people who are never going to pay it. One objection is that it's supposedly being taxed twice on the same money, yet typically it's someone leaving a million pound house they paid half a crown for during the war, a profit that's comple...

David Williams

If tax rates are very low, increasing them generates more revenue. Keep increasing them, and if you reach a point when a rate increase doesn't increase the revenue, you conclude that going above that point would actually reduce the revenue. There's a rate that maximises the return. Lengthy theorisin...

David Williams

What assumptions have you made about changes in behaviour of those affected? I imagine it's pretty well-documented as to what happened when the top rate went up from 40% to 50% and down to 45%. (I have a feeling it didn't change the total tax take very much, but I haven't checked it out.) The troubl...

David Williams

It's probably always been like this and I've only just noticed, but I see that the budget extends to four of the posher poppies, but contestants have to make do with the basic model. Saves buying new ones every year, I suppose.

David Williams

My first appearance coincided with Susie's first appearance after the birth of her daughter, who would have been about four months old at the time. She had brought the baby with her, and I think her sister was looking after her in the dressing room while filming went on. I mentioned this to her when...

David Williams

Or (25-7)*(50-7+1)

Can anyone tell me if Gloria Hunniford is really good at Countdown or a shameless cheat. Most people I think I can read, but not her.

David Williams

I awarded myself seven points for CAGEFUL without a moment's doubt. Wrongly. Comes up a lot more in daily life than RODENTIAN, I would have thought.

David Williams

One thing I don't understand is why being a committed Christian is a source of comfort. I don't imagine God has changed his views much in the last couple of thousand years, so pretty much everyone in this country is going to hell.

David Williams

Johnny Canuck wrote: ↑
Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:08 pm

David Williams wrote: ↑
Tue Aug 13, 2019 8:44 pm
Did she actually say "Eight eights are ninety-one"? Was I dreaming?
Agreed, pretty amusing. All I can speculate is that she must have remembered that 9 9s are 81 and "spoonerised" that.

Astonishingly, that is a logical explanation of the completely inexplicable!

David Williams

Did she actually say "Eight eights are ninety-one"? Was I dreaming?

David Williams

I rather liked (5+2) x (6+1) x 7 + 100

David Williams

There are severe penalties for selling underweight bread. Your scales are not consistent. So for an order of 12 loaves you throw in an extra 8.33% which gives you what you deem to be a decent confidence level of being within the law. For an order of 144 loaves, for that level of confidence you do no...

David Williams

David Williams

Is it just me, then? It's not kryptonite. It doesn't look anything like what kryptonite would look like if it existed. Giving someone a trophy made of kryptonite would in any case be totally inappropriate and highly dangerous. It wasn't funny the first time Nick said it, yet it comes up every time. ...

David Williams

A fictional, green, crystalline substance, absolutely nothing like perspex. Given as a trophy to convey the message "Well, we've just established you're not Superman, you loser".

David Williams

With these averages, his score would convert to 1048.15 in the old 15 format (still over 131 per game) and 636.9 in the 9-round format (about 79.6 per game). Given that the 8-game record for 9-rounders was 535, that would put him over 100 ahead! I know the current dictionary has more words, but it'...

David Williams

Why has this thread apparently disappeared? You have to search to find it. Is it simply mentioning the name of "she who must not be spoken of"?

PS It's reappeared now!

David Williams

Ryan Lam wrote: ↑
Tue May 28, 2019 3:02 pm
Countdown has finally gone green by dropping the usage of paper (At long last!) and going with a permanent whiteboard!

I trust they also have a single refillable marker pen.

David Williams

What's the average margin in QF1? 50 points? I actually think Seed 8 might score higher against Elliott than some other Seed 1s. You might lose one or two more letters games, but you'd hope for 40 points in the numbers games. If you get a maximum you score points no matter how good your opponent is....

David Williams

Fred Mumford wrote: ↑
Sat May 25, 2019 8:30 am
At least the 8th seed can console themself with having had several good on-screen performances prior to their sadistical and gruesome slaughtering.

Isn't that true of every 8th seed nowadays?

David Williams

Carol?

David Williams

If my opponent has 140 points going into the last numbers game and I've got 40, then you could say picking six small was being negative. If he's got 140 and I've got 125 . . . ? No-one would argue that picking anything other than one large or four vowels every time is negative, would they?

David Williams

Thomas Carey wrote: ↑
Thu May 23, 2019 11:28 am
. . . fastest time to get all 8 conundrums record . . .

It seems to be established that you can't rely on what you see on TV for this.

David Williams

What's this nonsense with the fake going high on the 4-large? If you're doing e.g. 75×50/25, you don't start with 75×50. Poor form. If I've got this right, 75x50=3750 3750/25=150 is poor form, when you could say 75/25=3 3x50=150. But 75/25=3 3x50=150 when you could say 100+50=150 is OK? If you're s...

David Williams

Did Susie actually say that DEATHLY was an adverb? Surely not. Sacking offence I would have thought.

David Williams

It's a pretty small proportion of the non-apterites applying to Countdown who would even consider the possibility of winning a series. And they would be interested enough to do a bit of research, and find sites like this, even though they weren't prepared to put in the hours and the effort. And when...

David Williams

JimBentley wrote: ↑
Mon Feb 18, 2019 5:08 pm
I don't know why you don't comment more, you obviously have strong opinions and you're often quite pithy.

I don't have strong opinions.

David Williams

It's been amusingly shambolic so far, there couldn't really have been a worse start. They haven't exactly put a dream team together, have they? Mike Gapes, for chrissakes. Going to be interesting to see how it develops over the next few days, though, could be some others joining them. Very surprise...

David Williams

Rhys Benjamin wrote: ↑
Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:38 pm
Well I beat both contestants on the second numbers - first and probably only time this CoC...

975 for me, (75 + 2 + 1) x 25 x 50 / 100

Thought Rachel was showboating a bit there. If you start with (25+1)/2=13 it doesn't look quite so clever.

David Williams

Well not really - if you're past the point at which anyone else can make it, it's just formality. Although after Annie dropping out a few series back, someone ought to check the 8 with someone who was there each time. Posting a thread entitled "Julie lost today", which appears in the Active Topics ...

David Williams

Ryan Lam wrote: ↑
Tue Dec 04, 2018 3:06 pm
So, with just six Preliminaries of Series 79 yet to air as of the time of writing, we now know who are the final eight

The existence of this thread before the preliminaries are over is itself a spoiler.

David Williams

I don't know how and when you watch in Australia, but you may not appreciate how rigorous they are in 'pretending' it's a live show. Even though they record them in batches, sometimes months in advance, each one is for a specific date. Each celebrity does five shows, which is one day's filming. So w...

David Williams

I thought the odd thing was that he didn't look particularly nervous at all. And his performance really was spectacularly dreadful. A thought that has occurred to me in the past is that a better measure of performance than how many maximums you get is how many words there are better than what you de...

David Williams

I think the first stage is when people decide that it works better if you accept an amount of gold or silver for something you want to sell, and then use that to buy things that you want. Then people collectively decide that rather than lugging all that metal around they are prepared to have their g...

David Williams

Mark James wrote: ↑
Fri Nov 23, 2018 6:27 pm
"The National Debt is NOT owed to us . . .

Google tells me this is a comment by Eric Stone of Saffron Walden. Credit where credit's due.

David Williams

If every country's economy has a fiscal deficit (and all major economies do) then who is the interest on their loans paid to? I hesitate to give the obvious answer, because you'll only start asking more questions that I won't know the answer to, but they (collectively) pay the interest to the pensi...

David Williams

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑
Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:23 pm
Embarrassingly I work for John Lewis

A lot more embarrassing for them, I would think.

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