c4countdown

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 3 June 2013. C1: Champion Chris Ball (1 win, 88 points) is a retired teaching assistant from Chellaston, Derby. She's looking for her second win today to have a chance of making the finals. C2: Challenger Mill Pritchard is from Westward Ho! He's a keen birdwatcher! He prev...

Graeme Cole

Philip Wilson wrote:Hi, so is it ok to ask a question about a certain contestant here? This has been bugging me for weeks now!!

Don't see why not.

Graeme Cole

What do we make of Rachel deliberately showboating these numbers games? Is it better to provide a more "obvious" solution? I think it's officially called 'doing an Andy Platt', isn't it? ;) It's quite entertaining when you've got it with a 'standard method', but when I can't even get that...

Graeme Cole

In this game last week, DC found RAMEKINS, SERAGLIO and EXORDIA. The day before , they found LITHARGE and RINGDOVES. So they're announcing their fair share of obscure words and contestant beaters. It's easy to suggest that they deliberately try to avoid showing us obscure words, but I think it's mor...

Graeme Cole

One more question for Graeme; is Joe the first octochamp in the show's history to start and finish his run on the same day of the week? No - these players all did the same, including Sharon Bridge, who started on a Monday in March 1994 and finished on a Monday the following July. http://wiki.aptero...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 27 May 2013. C1: Champion Joe McGonigle (7 wins, 622 points) is a croupier from Stockport who's already done enough to reach the quarter finals. He hasn't got a century yet, but today he has the chance of becoming the series' fourth octochamp. C2: Challenger Rachael Bagot ...

Graeme Cole

Well done to Joe for becoming an octochamp, he had a couple of tough games but he got through. One thing I'm curious about is that his 716 seems in particular to be one of the highest scores for having never scored a century, anybody want to check that? Only Nick Wainwright (726) and David von Geye...

Graeme Cole

I have been trying really hard to remember exactly what happened in regards to Joe's first numbers... from what I can recall, after I'd messed up and Nick asked him to declare his working, Joe just stared at the board for several seconds before Nick stopped him and told him he'd taken too long. But...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Wednesday 22 May 2013. Round 3: 50, 25, 10, 4, 4, 5. Target: 920. C1: 925. Timed out by Nick. C2: 920. Mistake in working. RR: 920. (50 - 4) x 4 x 5 (10) Score: 13–13 (max 23) Unlucky there for mark who presumably was about to do (25 - 10 /5) x 4 x 10 ... or indeed (25 - 10 /5) ...

Graeme Cole

Also: the computerised number-picking animation and sound effect which must have seemed dated, even then.

Graeme Cole

Round 14: 25, 1, 4, 2, 8, 7. Target: 825. C1: 825. (8 x 4 + 1) x 25 (10) C2: 825. ((4 + 1) x 7 - 2) x 25 (10) Score: 78–49 (max 124) Both contestants figure out what is needed to multiply by 25 to make 825, and that is 33. Joe's method is slightly more efficient than Mark's, but there's no points f...

Graeme Cole

By the way what are the rules on referee errors? If a referee miscounted a break and insisted he was right, would that be final? If so, you could have a total clearance of -79. And yeah the game would end because the referee says so. Edit - Is a football referee required to keep count of the scores...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 20 May 2013. C1: Champion Joe McGonigle (2 wins, 174 points) is a croupier from Stockport who doesn't seem to get much of an introduction, so I'll just make up stories about him. Interestingly, Joe's cat invented lederhosen. C2: Challenger Mark Goldsmith from Weston-Super-...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 13 May 2013. C1: Champion Ian Burn (1 win, 78 points) is a software engineer from Purley on Thames, who swam in Loch Ness once. C2: Challenger Joe McGonigle is a croupier from Stockport. DC: Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth. RR: Rachel Riley. OT: Other words or solutions. R0...

Graeme Cole

Guy Barry wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote:RR: 983. 10*100-((4-1)*3-10) (10)
Huh?
"3" is a typo for "9". There was no 3 in the selection.

Thanks. Fixed.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 6 May 2013. C1: Champion Eileen Taylor (7 wins, 651 points) is a retired personnel officer from Sydenham, London. At 74, she's one win away from being the show's oldest ever octochamp. Whatever happens in this game, she'll be #3 seed at the end of it; only an impossible wi...

Graeme Cole

Awesome. I'm just pissing about in work while there's no calls so haven't seen it yet, but great to confirm she did the business. Deserved from the moment she beat Jill, you gotta say. Agreed. On another point, it might just be me imagining it but there seems to have be quite a few occasions this s...

Graeme Cole

Apologies if I'm asking too many questions, and sincere thanks for answering my earlier ones, but... What is the most frequent max score for a 15-round game, and would it be possible to make a graph featuring number of games vs. max score? The most frequent max in all "Old 15" games is 11...

Graeme Cole

James Robinson wrote:Interesting also that Eileen didn't score in the last FIVE rounds today I wonder how many people have won by doing that. My guess is none.

It's happened once before.

Graeme Cole

Good to see this event is happening again. I fully intend to come along.

Graeme Cole

Why are the high-value colours near the non-baulk end where they're easier to get to after potting reds? After you've potted a red, it's likely to be easier to pot the black or pink than one of the baulk colours, but you get more points for the easier shot than for the harder one. Surely it makes m...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 29 April 2013. C1: Champion Eileen Taylor (2 wins, 190 points) is a retired personnel officer from Sydenham, London. When she appeared on the show back in series 22 in 1991 , she was pipped by a single point. So far she's made the most of her second chance - on Wednesday s...

Graeme Cole

I saw this in the Mirror yesterday and if that figure is accurate, I would say it is worrying for a show that is a British institution. I believe that if you are going to get increased figures you need to put Countdown on at a later time and back when it was on at 4:15-4:30 all those years back I t...

Graeme Cole

You'd think they'd get bored by mentioning this all the time, clearly not: http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/countdown-ratings-slump-clock-ticking-1855954? Well, at least it's not that bitch from the Daily Mail. :P Anthony? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315744/The-final-Countdown-Fall-v...

Graeme Cole

Why are the high-value colours near the non-baulk end where they're easier to get to after potting reds? After you've potted a red, it's likely to be easier to pot the black or pink than one of the baulk colours, but you get more points for the easier shot than for the harder one. Surely it makes mo...

Graeme Cole

Trivial questions for the great minds around here, but anyway, here's two for the weekend. With the World Snooker Championship on the telly, We all know the maximum* total clearance break is 147, but what is the smallest total clearance break available? (*actual maximum break is 155 with the use of...

Graeme Cole

Yes, the database is just a MySQL thing on my desktop computer, it doesn't get updated automatically. Currently the database doesn't have any games in it after 1st March 2013, the end of the 30th birthday championship. Do you have your own extraction method, or do you still welcome my input? If you...

Graeme Cole

PAINEDER in R12.

Graeme Cole

Great standard today from both players. 98 is the fourth highest losing score in a prelim.

I too was surprised by Eileen's 3-large pick in R14. But I didn't get 145 and she did, so fair play to her. Hope she wins a few more.

Graeme Cole

I spotted the TAXIS-TAXIES discrepancy years ago. *smug*

Graeme Cole

And we've all seen people going going way above 1,000 during a numbers solution, but what's the highest intermediate number you can get to and still get back to a legitimate target. (ie the classic 937.5 solution being you up to the vicinity of 93,750, but how high can you go and still get back to ...

Graeme Cole

A couple of Countdown related things I've been pondering.... Is it possible to have a legitimate letters selection where the max is a 2 (or 1) letter word? Perhaps something like... U U U U X J Q Z K In theory you could have something like UUUUUQKZV, a selection which contains no valid words at all...

Graeme Cole

How come mine and Giles stats aren't loading yet in those tables, does the whole series have to be completed first? For the record, mine was 21/28 ( translated equivalent out of 24 = 18 ) and Giles's was 26/32 ( translated equivalent out of 24 = 19.5 ), and that's if we include the two rounds where...

Graeme Cole

Thanks for doing that. Is the data available for 9 rounders? It is, mostly. Gaps in the data for early series make it a bit fiddly though, as do octoruns of more than eight games due to draws, so I've ordered it by percentage. The "numbers rounds" column is the number of numbers rounds th...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 22 April 2013. C1: Champion Jill Hayward (1 win, 85 points) from Christchurch, Dorset, saw off John Gardner on Friday. C2: Challenger JJ Burrows is the third contestant in a row whose name begins with J. In fact his first name doesn't have any other letters. He's from Guil...

Graeme Cole

My Countdown pencils. These were words I got as maxes which had not previously been offered as maxes. * means the pencil was shared with my opponent. Game 1: RECOMBINE*, EUCHRING, PINATA, LORICATE Game 2: SPATE, BRUSHES*, UNROLL, CAUDATE Game 3: POETISES Game 4: MAHOUTS, POKIES Game 5: CARIOUS, COME...

Graeme Cole

How many numbers maxes have all the octochamps/xicounts had? 15 round octochamps (counting heats only): NUMBERS MAXES 1. Jack Worsley 23 1. Jack Hurst 23 3. Edward McCullagh 22 3. Chris Cummins 22 5. Jim Bentley 21 5. Steven Briers 21 5. Mark Deeks 21 5. Eoin Monaghan 21 5. Jon O'Neill 21 10. John ...

Graeme Cole

Graeme, could you please post a table off all old 15 octochamps' estimated totals in the new 15 using the following formula: (average points scored per numbers round - average points scored per letters round) x 8, + original total, then rounded to the nearest whole number? How much the new format c...

Graeme Cole

Graeme. How many different conundrum words have there been; furthermore, how many conundrum-able words exist? There have been 3,555 unique solutions in 6,192 conundrum rounds for which we know the answer. Not sure how many conundrummable words exist. A conundrummable word is any nine-letter word wi...

Graeme Cole

Jordan F wrote:Wow. Over 25 years between Countdown appearances. Is that a record?

Yes. Recently I found that Monica Sutcliffe had the longest gap between two appearances, but John's is larger: 9,257 days.

Graeme Cole

Congratulations on a fantastic octorun, Giles, especially on achieving a score that beats the existing record by a margin greater than what would be expected from the format change. That sets a good early benchmark for the new format, which I expect won't be beaten for a long time.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 15 April 2013. C1: Champion Giles Hutchings (6 wins, 733 points) has already scored more points in six games than some octochamps have managed in eight. His target is two more wins with a total of at least 156 points to overtake Andy Platt as #1 seed. C2: Challenger Rob Tu...

Graeme Cole

Ned Pendleton wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote:
Ned Pendleton wrote:Or has any octochamp been behind in six out of their eight?
Nope, you're unique with that.
What's the second most games an octochamp's been behind in?

Great stuff Graeme!

11 octochamps fell behind in five of their eight games, most recently Liam Shaw and Rose Boyle.

Graeme Cole

Ned Pendleton wrote:Or has any octochamp been behind in six out of their eight?

Nope, you're unique with that.

Graeme Cole

Bit of a narcissistic Ask Graeme post this, it came up when we were chatting after CoRea. I'm aware I'm the third lowest total scoring octochamp ever, I was wondering if I have any other rather negative accolades. For starters, in my first game I had my first two words disallowed (caribous and gold...

Graeme Cole

I hate to say it, but I told you so... they seem to be doing as little Countdown as possible. It's not meant to be taken seriously. They're comedians doing a mashup with a comedy panel show. You don't book a bunch of professional comedians and just have them play a word game and make the occasional...

Graeme Cole

One episode that sticks in my mind is the one where a contestant, given DISCULOUR as the conundrum, incorrectly buzzed in with "discolour". To my surprise, the Wiki tells me that this happened not once, but twice: http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_269 http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_1075 ...

Graeme Cole

Here's how I did against Giles and Zulphi I think his name was Zulfi Ebrahim. Yeah I noticed too that the camera people didn't show his nameplate fully at the start. And I was a little annoyed at there being that weird darrenic 8. I think it has come up on apterous for me once last year. I reckon t...

Graeme Cole

Mark Deeks wrote:MEETER is valid on Apterous and always has been. CONTROVERSY.

Valid now, but wasn't then. Looks like it's been added since 22 March.

Graeme Cole

Round 5: E E U D B M R P O DC: PROUD (5) BURPED (6) ROMPED (6) I know it's invalid and ROMPED is probably what was meant, but I was pretty certain Susie said RUMPED. And so was the subtitler! :) I too was unsure about whether she said RUMPED or ROMPED. I checked RUMPED and found it was invalid so I...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 8 April 2013. C1: Champion Giles Hutchings (1 win, 129 points) is a student at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. Last Wednesday we saw him score 129 points, the highest debut score ever. C2: Challenger Mike Lee is a travel agent from Barnsley. He tells a story about hav...

Graeme Cole

It would be interesting to know how many apterites there were in each series: looking at averages across all games is presumably going to considerably dilute any apto-effect. Could you look at median winning margin in heat games of series finalists? http://greem.co.uk/countdown/stats/median_finalis...

Graeme Cole

Hope this hasn't been asked already... has the number of 'thrashings' gone up over time (and especially since the dawn of apterous)? I'm thinking in terms of increased winning margins (as a percentage). Be nice to have some kind of evidence as to whether apterous really is 'killing Countdown'. :) W...

Graeme Cole

Congratulations Giles - highest debut score ever. The previous highest was 124 by Jonathan Coles.

Here's a screenshot to commemorate the achievement.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 1 April 2013. C1: Champion Peter Fenton (1 win, 89 points) is from Leeds, studying for an MA, and teaching English as a foreign language. C2: Challenger Eric Uphoff is a retired customer liaison manager from Bradford. DC: Susie Dent and Julia Bradbury. RR: Rachel Riley. OT...

Graeme Cole

Using the Countdown Tools difficulty rating system for numbers games, what is the most difficult numbers game ever solved on the show? I'm not going to be able to do this one because I don't know how the Countdown Tools difficulty rating works. The database doesn't store the arithmeticians' declara...

Graeme Cole

Well played Andy, very impressive run and entertaining to watch (for the right reasons). Looking forward to seeing you in the finals. Presume it's too early for recording dates? Haven't been in the audience since it moved to Media City, could do with grabbing a day or two off and puting that right....

Graeme Cole

Congratulations Andy. 11th highest octotal ever, and the seventh person to do it with all centuries.

Graeme Cole

Very easy conundrum I thought, even I got it, in about 1 sec... Strange ending RE conundrum too??? Quite a few technical things went wrong in the studio that day and revealing the correct solution prematurely before anyone in the audience could answer it was one of them. Are you sure that was a mis...

Graeme Cole

Also derivatives don't get the same treatment as the main word. You get a lot of -NESSES words on Unlimited on Apterous - words that would be mass nouns if they had their own entry. Most of these are probably over nine letters though. I'm trying to think of an example that wouldn't be. WETNESSES. A...

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