c4countdown

Graeme Cole

Am i the only one whose getting sick of seeing apterites gobble up so many opponents, surely the countdown producers should be putting apterites up against each other in the heats rather than keeping them separate, otherwise its just completely predictable as you know the likes of Andy Platt are go...

Graeme Cole

I don't think disallowing DOTAGES is necessarily wrong. If the Countdown team asked OUP about it, and they replied that you can only talk about people in their dotage, and there's no usage case for "dotages", it shouldn't be allowed. I wonder, though, how often OUP gives specific guidance ...

Graeme Cole

Gavin Chipper wrote:Did Carl Williams use Apterous?

Not that I'm aware, although it was suspected that he might have done. I asked him whether he did and he said he'd heard of apterous but didn't play on it.

There is an apterous profile with his name, but I think that was Ed messing about.

Graeme Cole

Standard deviations of octotals 15-round octoruns by number of maxes Xicount runs by maxes 15-round octochamps by winning margin and points against Octoruns by number of nines available The above posts have all been edited to include Rose Boyle, Heather Styles and David Barnard, which means they're...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 25th March 2013. C1: Champion Andy Platt (4 wins, 443 points) is looking like an early favourite for the series after four wins, all centuries, last week. Since his last appearance on Friday, when he won 109-7, the fourth highest winning margin ever, he's become slightly m...

Graeme Cole

They told me that it would only activate in sync when Nick presses the conundrum scramble reveal button and wouldn't have any effect before that I was told the same thing, but I was pretty doubtful that it was true because the buzzers are so low tech, so I quizzed whoever it was (can't remember now...

Graeme Cole

Andy Platt wrote:Follow up to recent apto-chats, it's pretty self explanatory. Tried to make it well balanced but biased towards being hard. Generous time limit should compensate

http://www.sporcle.com/games/andyp99x/some-anagram-shiz

Got them all, with a couple of lucky guesses, with 32 seconds left.

Graeme Cole

Re earlier discussions about letter shuffles, which I've only read today, I've always had the impression that when a brand new DC guest arrives the first set of letters is a favourable selection. Obviously nobody can be sure how many Cs and Vs the first picker will go for but if (say) the first 6 C...

Graeme Cole

Looking back over this thread, I stumbled across this game- http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4992 -which must surely hold the record for 'most disallowed words in a row but still won', but I'd love to know what the record for 'most disallowed words but still won' was. I think this episode must sure...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Friday 22 March 2013. C1: Champion Andy Platt (3 wins, 334 points) is an apterite and a bilingual telesalesperson from Salford. So far he's got three centuries from three games. C2: Challenger Carl Anderson is a "vocal entertainer" from Eccles. Nick clarifies that this ...

Graeme Cole

Pretty sure it's me but I'm still not convinced I want to. Anyone else fancy it? I'd ask Conor again but he probably has uni work to prioritise. I can do today's, but I think we'd prefer to have guest recappers filling in, who aren't involved in the game, rather than regular recappers. Still, if no...

Graeme Cole

Pretty sure it's me but I'm still not convinced I want to. Anyone else fancy it? I'd ask Conor again but he probably has uni work to prioritise. I can do today's, but I think we'd prefer to have guest recappers filling in, who aren't involved in the game, rather than regular recappers. Still, if no...

Graeme Cole

Andy Platt wrote:Question. Has anyone ever tried to have Countdown as a special subject on Mastermind?

Not as far as I know. I keep saying James Robinson should. I don't know enough about how narrow the specialist subject can be to know whether they'd accept it though.

Graeme Cole

Tom wrote:Dix pois to our champion.

Graeme Cole

John Brackstone wrote:was rotarian there -and is it capitalised?

Capitalised.

Graeme Cole

Well played again Andy. Just about to watch it back, I'm hoping my dickish behaviour on the conundrum got edited! Got away with it 8-) Cheers Damian et al Oh, come on, you can't say that and not tell us what happened. I noticed DC offered PELAGE but not PELAGES. PELAGES is valid on apterous, but the...

Graeme Cole

Greame... What percentage of 9 letter words have been found in the first round? I seem to recall a hell of a lot scored in the first round, how does it compare with all rounds, please? And what are the stats for possible nines too, please? Number of nines available in 15-rounders, by round number: ...

Graeme Cole

How many times has the same target come up in two consecutive numbers rounds? And in any of those instances, has it been possible to solve the rounds with exactly the same solutions twice in a row? (e.g. 100 6 1 8 3 2 -> 801 and 100 50 75 25 1 8 -> 801 could both be solved with 100x8+1) Ten games h...

Graeme Cole

Never mind Jasper, great debut Andy. Funniest episode I've seen in a while.

Graeme Cole

"unusual that both players pronounced their offerings "HOMAGE", like it would be in French" This seems to be the trendy way to say it these days. The French would of course spell it 'hommage'. "a record-breaking comeback" What is the record comeback on the show? The bi...

Graeme Cole

I was quite surprised that, when declared in R1, BASTARD wasn't bleeped out. Yes, a bit of double standards there, especially since BASTARDS was bleeped out in Series 61 . Weird. I guess BASTARD is considered a techincal term while BASTARDS is an insult... or someone just dropped the ball. Either w...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 18 March 2013. C1: Champion Sam McElhinney (3 wins, 233 points) was the champion when we left off last Monday. He works in the T-shirt industry in Leeds. C2: Challenger Ricky Roberts is a full-time carer from Eastham, Merseyside. He was previously a probation service offic...

Graeme Cole

On the subject of shuffling face-up - What - Statistically are the chances of getting THREE available nine letter max rounds in a row? How often has this happened and has there ever been more? I couldn't even begin to work out what the exact probability is, but three consecutive letters rounds in t...

Graeme Cole

One of the questions on the programme was "What is the common denominator between Superman and Canterbury?" The answer was Kent - surname of Superman's alter ego and the county where Canterbury is located. Before that came up, I thought Reeve would be the answer - Christopher Reeve played...

Graeme Cole

Beyond that, everything is shuffled like a pack of cards, nothing is ever messed with, we get what we get. There is certainly a precedent, because in my very first game 10 years ago, me and my opponent were informed before the game started that the J and Q had been removed, and lo and behold, they ...

Graeme Cole

Graeme, not sure how hard this would be to do but could you make a list of all players who've had at least one 13+ max game, and their amounts of 15, 14 and 13 max games? 15s 14s 13s Conor Travers 3 2 2 Kirk Bevins 2 0 3 Jon O'Neill 1 0 2 Jonathan Rawlinson 0 3 0 Paul Gallen 0 2 3 Edward McCullagh ...

Graeme Cole

We've seen that there's no evidence that the letters are deliberately arranged to produce longer words or higher scores. Isn't it that there is evidence, but no evidence that it's done for particular games over others? How do you mean? The only thing I can see evidence for is that clusters of ident...

Graeme Cole

Are there any other anomalous rounds other than the 2-vowel round I mentioned (anyone find that?) since the rule was introduced? I'm sure it was brought up and Damian said they spotted it, but allowed the round to continue because it was a decent selection anyway. http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4...

Graeme Cole

What are the top – say – 100, mean letter max games, and at what stage in what comp were they please? If we list all the games in order of their letters max, quite a few games are on joint 99th with 103. So we'll include all 15 rounders with a letters max of 103 or more, which is 136 games. The bre...

Graeme Cole

Maybe ten years ago there was a suggestion that for a couple of months one of the letters (possibly J) never appeared once, suggesting it had been mislaid. Is this true, and if so was the length of absence statistically significant? No letter has been unseen for more consecutive rounds than J. It a...

Graeme Cole

Is there a link between some of the great players playing in final stages to the distribution of 'nice' letters for the production to ensure big scores for pulicity purposes? The short answer is "no". Here's a table of average max letters scores by episode type, for all 15-rounders. Only ...

Graeme Cole

Mark Ivey wrote:Great thread, very interesting to see all these facts and figures. Ok, here's a question:

What is the highest winning score posted by a challenger who's gone on to lose in their second game?

113 by Bernie Corrigan.

Graeme Cole

Can we do - what's the lowest highest number that's come out in a selection? So in 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, the highest is 3, and that would be the lowest possible. The always-unsolvable selection 1 1 2 2 3 3 has never happened, but 1 2 3 3 4 4 has happened once. Or, how often has no number been higher th...

Graeme Cole

In a related theme, in the guidelines I noticed that it said (and I wish I had the exact words in front of me, but I don't) that a failure to conform to these rules (and I remember they are official rules ), would result in the round being scrapped and the contestant having to pick them all again. ...

Graeme Cole

In what proportion of games (separately for 9 and 15 rounders) are all the numbers games rendered "worthless", by both contestants maxing them all? Actually I know you can only go by points rather than true maxes so yo uwon't be able to get whether a 7 is the true max. So maybe two separa...

Graeme Cole

Series 66 had the highest proportion of five-vowel picks of any series since 1985, because Jonathan Rawlinson was in it. (No, really - 43 of the 82 five-vowel letters rounds in that series were in his games.) I suspect Series 68 might break the record. In the semifinal between Jack Hurst and Jonath...

Graeme Cole

Is it possible to work out the most consecutive letters rounds an individual contestant has gone without having a nine available? I've gone 95 and counting and I was wondering if this was close to a record. Not quite the record, but you're a close second. Players with more than 70 consecutive lette...

Graeme Cole

So you could actually lose a series grand final, perhaps, after having a word disallowed, that is - in fact - included in the collection of dictionaries that the winner - ironically receives - for beating you? Yes, and that's also true the other way round - you could win by getting a word that's in...

Graeme Cole

I just don't understand exactly why Ian went for six small when he admitted that he wasn't a fan of the numbers. You should only really go for 6S for one of a number of reasons... you're between 10-20 ahead and want to play the tactics and hope you get a difficult/impossible solution, you're within...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 11 March 2013. C1: Champion Sam McElhinney (2 wins, 163 points) lives in Leeds and is originally from Galway. He's here mainly thanks to spotting the crucial conundrum UNHELPFUL on Thursday less than a second before our very own Philip Jarvis. He also beat Juliette Bains o...

Graeme Cole

The one concern I have with Graeme's numbers is the suggestion that there were 2 Ks in series 51 and 52. In the 15-round era we have only seen 2 Ks 8 times, 5 during a 2-week period in series 46, and the other 3 in a single week in series 49. If there were 2 Ks available for a prolonged period at a...

Graeme Cole

Is it possible to get a letter distribution frequency for each letter over the data you have? The letter distribution has changed quite a few times over the years. To start with, let's look at series 66 only. The frequency with which each letter appeared in that series is as follows. VOWELS A 1081 ...

Graeme Cole

Andy Platt wrote:OK so could it be that Nick's button both starts the clock and enables the contestant buzzers?

Edit: I could just have invented this from somewhere

Yes, that's what I mean. I think the buzzers are enabled whenever the clock is running.

Graeme Cole

There's no reason why Graeme in particular should know the answer to this, but it seems like a good a place as any to ask it: Can you press the conundrum buzzer at any time? Would it ring and light up if Nick was just chatting away at the start? Or would it stop the clock in normal rounds? Can't be...

Graeme Cole

Unlucky Phil, that was a close game, though I know you're pleased you got your hands on the teapot at last.

Like Sam I also had WAITED instead of AWAITED in round 12, but I'm going to blame the letters randomly disappearing half way through the round.

Graeme Cole

What numbers game had the best solution that was the furthest away from the correct solution? IE 25 1 1 2 2 3 with a target of 999 (You can only possibly get 399 away from the target)! Can't do this one I'm afraid. The database table I made doesn't include the optimal solutions, only the highest nu...

Graeme Cole

Graeme: you remarked in today's recap about Rachael's long wait to resume her position in the champion's chair - and I think we're all looking forward to that. But which contestants took the longest time on screen between starting and concluding a) an octochamp run and b) any champion's run? I've t...

Graeme Cole

As far as I know there's no such specific thing as an "octochamp's goody bag". They get the same stuff as given to other champions. Incidentally, mine contained an ODE3, What Made The Crocodile Cry, the little clock, the pen, the mug, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in CD form, and t...

Graeme Cole

So yeah, pretty much the same but with 100% more teapot.

In before Gevin.

Graeme Cole

Speaking of which, as I said before, it'd be sad for me to see either of these two lose This. I wanted to see Phil get his teapot after ten years of waiting, but at the same time Rachael deserved to win more than four games. Still, people have qualified for the finals before with four wins, and the...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 4 March 2013. C1: Champion and apterite Rachael Moran (3 wins, 238 points) won the last preliminary of series 67, and is back after nearly a three-month absence due to the 30th anniversary championship. She's an "aspiring writer" from Liverpool, or "writer&q...

Graeme Cole

By the way, on the subject of the timings, the conundrum wasn't really solved at 5.11pm today. I think it was between 11.20pm and 11.25pm. I'll fix that manually.

Graeme Cole

Michael Wallace wrote:For which rounds did Rachel host? I'm doing some stats and figure it would be fun to see if there was a Rachel effect.

All the rounds from 393 onwards. The 56-minute gap between round 392 and round 393 was when Mark and Innis were on or near the main stage.

Graeme Cole

Oh, one more thing: it was featured on Radio 4's PM today. Starts at 42:20.

Graeme Cole

So we've just had the final of the greatest Countdown tournament ever made, on the same day as this marathon 25-hour 450-round game . I'd have expected exactly one of these games to go to a crucial conundrum. This did happen, but it was not the one I expected. Before the game, Mark, Innis, Zarte and...

Graeme Cole

Congratulations Conor, and huge respect to Jack for the graciousness he showed in defeat. This tournament must surely settle the question of Countdown's greatest player once and for all. Conor has the most max games (three, and all consecutive), the joint highest score, and was beaten on only one ro...

Graeme Cole

I'm in there but not signed in, too lazy to sign up to Justin, sure I used to have an account back in the day for football streaming but can't seem to see details. Ah right. I wondered how you could reply to what I'm saying in there in here. Anyway, I've made it sans-serif. Didn't take Matt Bayfiel...

Graeme Cole

Mark Deeks wrote:The live recap will be available at http://green.co.uk/countdownmarathon for those who wish to spec.

Nearly.

http://greem.co.uk/countdownmarathon

Graeme Cole

Just before this game started, I was chatting to Jono on Facebook messenger while he was in the green room. Then he had the idea of sending me the selections as they happened so I could play along despite not being there. Thanks Jono! (The green room beat me, of course.) Congratulations to both of y...

Graeme Cole

No idea if this is just me.

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