c4countdown

Graeme Cole

Question: Graeme, who is the best Countdown Contestant ever, and what is the most accurate way to rank them all, in your opinion? This is even harder than Gevin's question about his weird scoring system (and because it's Gevin, I need to give clarification about which scoring system) , which I have...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 25 February 2013. C1: Series 54 Champion Conor Travers (17 wins, 1963 points from 18 games) is a Cambridge mathmo. In 2006 he became Countdown's youngest ever series winner at 14. His only loss in 18 games was on a crucial conundrum against Paul Gallen in the 12th Champion...

Graeme Cole

Thanks, Graeme, and my notes seem to concur. They also mention that M21 was the first-ever and that M33 was the second and third (by Clive Freedman, twice). I've added a note to 954 as I think it deserves the recognition for its place in Countdown history. Follow-up question: what was the first 4-l...

Graeme Cole

According to the database, the show was nearly seven years old before anyone thought to pick 4 large . The caveat to this is that series 1 and 2 have hardly any round details associated with them, so we can't say for certain that it didn't happen then. Given that I missed very little of Series 1 an...

Graeme Cole

Most consective crucial conundrums? Most consecutive non-crucials?(I'm guessing series 63 or 64 for that one) The most consecutive games where the conundrum was not crucial was 26, which were the 26 games up to and including this game in series 63, and which included the heat games of Eoin Monaghan...

Graeme Cole

Graeme: I'm interested in how Numbers skills have evolved over the series of Countdown Okay. Who are you, and what have you done with Matt? specifically with regard to the Numbers round picks that contestants have selected. I seem to recall that in the early days, when Countdown was dominated by Sc...

Graeme Cole

Surely a three letter word is the smallest offered ever? But then again, I'm sure I've seen someone just give up and offer nothing; when probably there was a two or a three letter word there? For a given player's offerings during a game (e.g. 7,7,7,6,5,8,8,6,7,8,7) we take the maximum value. (So th...

Graeme Cole

Oh yeah, just realized my query doesn't make sense given that I thought we were talking about declarations, rather than maxes. If we could have stats on declarations over the past few series that would be fun (and arguably more indicative of what sort of change the new format would have on scores)....

Graeme Cole

Who will have the honour of recapping this beast? Also, will there only be one conundrum? Zarte will be entering the round details into a computer. This gets written out to a file. Another program periodically checks the file and uploads it when it changes. You'll be able to see it on a web page, w...

Graeme Cole

Graeme has rigged up a scoring system that will function essentially the same as Aptospeccing. Bloody love Graeme. Awesome. G-Man can you put up a link for that somewhere on the forums/apterous/facebook? Cheers! It's conditional on them being able to access the internet from the venue, something wh...

Graeme Cole

Graeme, what is the average maximum available for a letters round and for a numbers round? Just wondering how much difference on average the proposed format change will make (I'm guessing about 2-3 points). Average maximum points available is 7.7783 for letters, 9.8723 for numbers. However, some of...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Friday 22 February 2013. C1: Series 53 Ginger Ninja Jon O'Neill (11 wins, 1299 points from 13 games) is a Catastrophe Risk Analyst from Rainham, London. He reached his series semi-final in 2005 aged 15. To reach the quarter-final of this tournament, he's beaten Kai Laddiman and D...

Graeme Cole

C4 seem to be struggling to get their afternoons right at the moment, and I hope they soon find a pattern that they can set in stone for a couple of years. I don't really understand why all the shite experimental quiz shows that won't last have to be on in Countdown's slot rather than the other way...

Graeme Cole

I'm guessing that, whenever an Octochamp retires and two newcomers arrive it'll just be random seats instead of a coin toss with the winner deciding if they want to play as Challenger or Champion given it now makes no difference. It makes less of a difference than before, but I think it does still ...

Graeme Cole

I can understand the thought process. With the new timings you can fit three rounds into part one and six into each of the other parts. You could keep the same round order: LLL LNLLLL NLLLNC But that looks a bit disorganised and probably doesn't flow well. So let's change the order so the numbers ga...

Graeme Cole

http://www.apterous.org/chat.php?base=1361308206&dir=earlier The digest of the chat logs is as follows: Channel 4 have required Countdown to change their part lengths from 16, 10 and 10 minutes to 9, 13 and 13 minutes. This means they have to invent a new format. The new format contains 10 lett...

Graeme Cole

CAJEPUT was brilliant. This tournament keeps getting better and better. Congratulations to both of you. It's been said before, but the only injustice here is that one of you had to go out this early.

Graeme Cole

You gotta stop going to these tiebreak conundrums on us people. Some of us actually like having our hearts beat at a normal rhythm. :lol: Agreed, I'm safely sat at home playing along and my heartbeat is racing along, gawd knows what it is like in the tense studio. I am still having trouble hearing ...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 18 February 2013. C1: Series 61 semi-finalist Innis Carson (10 wins, 1185 points from 11 games) is one of the favourites for this tournament. He reached the semi-final of series 61 where he was beaten by Chris Davies in what some say is the greatest episode of all time , a...

Graeme Cole

I was sitting pretty smugly on LEMMATA, and then bam, Chris gets MALAMUTE. Brilliant spot. It's a shame to lose Chris before we get to the final stages, but David did very well to beat him today. Congratulations to both of you on giving us one of the greatest games to watch.

Graeme Cole

Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history? I'm guessing that 68 & 33 should perhaps be disregarded for this question. I've counted letters and numbers rounds as two maxable rounds, so if both players maxed it that counts as 2 ou...

Graeme Cole

Well played again today Jack, jumper theft notwithstanding. When I was watching this game I was very surprised SALMONS wasn't accepted - I'd have been pretty miffed in Chris's situation. I was pretty surprised a few months ago when Susie said she'd allow it. In my view it was a mistake then, which w...

Graeme Cole

Congratulations on the max game Conor, especially with the added pressure of Rachel mentioning it just before R14. Well played to Chris also - even with Conor playing perfectly every round, he never really broke away until part three.

Graeme Cole

Andy Platt wrote:Top 5 sexiest contestants ever?

While I don't have this information in an easily machine-readable form, I can tell you that the word SEX is visible on the far left of the screen at the very start of the Countdown titles.

Will that do?

Graeme Cole

Have there ever been any declarations on Countdown that would be pencils on Apterous today? So, valid as maxes, valid in ODE3 now, still unpencilled. Have there been any declarations (during 15 round Countdown) that had a) never come up on the show before and b) were pencils at the time on apterous...

Graeme Cole

Jack Worsley wrote:Who's used the most phantom letters in a letters round?

18 contestants have offered words with two phantoms. Nobody's managed more.

Graeme Cole

I'm expecting this to take far too much time and effort to be worthwhile answering, but on the off-chance. Are there lucky omens in Dictionary Corner? i.e. - does one produce the highest average scores, and does one (excluding finals week obviously) preside over more future series champions in thei...

Graeme Cole

Dan McColm wrote:I think he's talking about our tendency to offer obscure words!

Graeme Cole

Which contestant(s) with at least one wine has the highest loss:win ratio? Bruce Lambert won one game and lost three. Which contestant(s) have the most consecutive losses? Olivia Lloyd-Potts with five. Could you give a leaderboard of players scoring in most consecutive rounds? If the max for a roun...

Graeme Cole

Edit - Something that the database probably could answer - what is the break down of probabilities of each length of word being the max, and for each length, what is the average number of words of the max length? I can only do the first bit. For each letters round the database stores the most point...

Graeme Cole

Which contestants have done the unholy Trinity of declaring an invalid word for the wrong length whilst using phantom letters? The problem with this one is that for each letters offering in the database, I've got just one "adjudication" column, which has a number in it. If on the wiki pag...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 11 February 2013. C1: Series 63 quarter-finalist Tom Rowell (9 wins, 933 points from 10 games) is a prison worker from Husbands Bosworth. He beat Peter Lee in the first round a few weeks ago after neither player solved the crucial conundrum PAROTITIS for TOPIARIST. C2: Ser...

Graeme Cole

Question: At CO events numbers rounds can be awkward when you have to use those flimsy numbers thingys to get a target which can sometimes be 081 or something, so my question to Graeme is this: Could you make at least 10 more of those electronic numbers gadgets of yours and bring them to future CO ...

Graeme Cole

Who had the fewest and most nines available in their octoruns? 15 rounds: Richard Heald and Chris Wills respectively. SPOTTED AVAIL Chris Wills 4 12 Andrew Hulme 7 11 Julia Wilkinson 3 11 Dave Taylor 2 11 Tony Warren 2 10 Adam Gillard 4 9 Jeffrey Burgin 4 9 Amey Deshpande 4 9 Ryan Taylor 3 9 Chris ...

Graeme Cole

Edit - Something that the database probably could answer - what is the break down of probabilities of each length of word being the max, and for each length, what is the average number of words of the max length? I can only do the first bit. For each letters round the database stores the most point...

Graeme Cole

Johnny Canuck wrote:What are the most frequently offered niners?

RELATIONS is the clear winner, having been offered 18 times. Then it's DELATIONS with 9, ORDINATES with 8 and IDOLATERS and CREATIONS with 7.

Graeme Cole

Jon O'Neill wrote:Which person who lost their first game got the most maxes?

In 15-round games, three people lost their debut with ten maxes. They are David Morgans, Paul Lyne and Christine Smith.

In 9-round games, Tom Bradshaw and Gareth Fuller both lost their debuts with seven maxes.

Graeme Cole

Who has faced the most impossible numbers games? How about impossible to get within ten also? Impossible to get 10 points: Martin Bishop had six, Jack Welsby had five, ten people had four, and loads more people have had fewer. Impossible to get any points: Sweyn Kirkness had three, John Mitchell ha...

Graeme Cole

Can you list all 15-round octochamps in order of total winning margins over eight games? Possibly the number of points accumulated by their opponents too but I'm more interested in the former. Thanks. PS: I love this thread. :D 15-round octochamps in order of aggregate winning margin in prelims: 1....

Graeme Cole

Excellent. And can we have the players who didn't complete octoruns because they ran out of games or stopped early (like John Clarke and Helen Grayson)? Maxes, round counts, and percentage for potential octochamps. Only prelims are considered. Some players (e.g. Cathy Morgan ) are missing some roun...

Graeme Cole

Here's a good one- of all the rematches there have been on the show, which one had the greatest difference (in terms of winning margin) from the original result? In series 30, Ben Cooke ended Sue Renwick's run in her sixth game, winning 60-26 . They met again in the quarter-finals, and this time Su...

Graeme Cole

The longest conundrum answer was 12 letters, which was done four times I was kinda hoping my suggestion of PROFITEROLE for PORTFOLIO was at least a joint record. I blame Dave Myers for that as he had me thinking about food all the time! ;-) Graeme, can you please list the top ten Heptochamps of all...

Graeme Cole

And also xicount totals - so totals from the 11 games of series winners. 15 round series winners by round maxes out of 165: 1. Edward McCullagh 130 2. Julian Fell 129 3. Jack Hurst 127 4. Craig Beevers 125 5. Kirk Bevins 121 6. Chris Davies 116 7. Conor Travers 114 7. Stewart Holden 114 9. Chris Wi...

Graeme Cole

Ben Wilson wrote:No love for we lepers the viscounts?

Boom.

Code: Select all

              MAXES     MAXES*8/6
Ben Wilson       42         56.00
Loz Sands        42         56.00
Ian McMenzie     41         54.67
Phil Wass        41         54.67
Paul Ryan        31         41.33

Graeme Cole

Mark Deeks wrote:I wonder if there's any possible screen time for Countdown's version of Benedict.

Whassat? Pope? Cumberbatch? Eggs?

Graeme Cole

What is the greatest number of consecutive episodes in which the conundrum has been correctly solved? What is the greatest number in which it has gone unsolved? Some episodes have more than one conundrum, so I'll take this as the greatest number of consecutive (un-)solved conundrums. 32 consecutive...

Graeme Cole

The 9-rounder one is going to need a bit more thought to exclude people who had more than one run, so I'll come back to that one another day. It turns out this isn't a problem, as there are no octochamps from the 9-round era who had appeared previously except Darryl Francis, and the round details f...

Graeme Cole

Please list every 15-round octochamp in order of maximums out of 120. Do it for 9-rounders as well (but not out of 120). And a separate xicount list. Or at least top tens. That would be gruesome. Edit - I want pro rata scores for top potential octochamps like John Clarke and Helen Grayson. Here's t...

Graeme Cole

Which octochamp was the most consistent in terms of score in their octorun (i.e. lowest standard deviation)? Who was the least consistent? The most difficult bit about this question is excluding heat games that aren't part of someone's octochamp run, if someone played before and was invited back ye...

Graeme Cole

May not be as useful as the rest of the trivia, but I like coming up with random questions and seeing the scope of your amazing stats, so here goes: What are the alphabetically first and alphabetically last letters selections that have ever come up on the show? With regard to the latter, Round 1 of...

Graeme Cole

Andy Platt wrote:I know it was a dickish thing to do but I was laughing so hard at those 12-letter guesses. Love it.

I'm sure I've gone with CONSCIOUSNESS on apterous before.

Might have been UNCONSCIOUSNESS.

But definitely not UNCONSCIOUSNESSES. I mean, I'm not daft or anything.

Graeme Cole

Graeme, what is the worst ever conundrum guess? Just came to mind with all this talk about HORSEMEAT at the moment, someone guessed ATMOSPHERE in the audience (10 letters) and I just noticed that in one of Darryl Francis's heat games his opponent went for a 7 (DEFTEST) when the solution was STEADFA...

Graeme Cole

Q: Is it possible to program CECIL so that it eliminates impossible targets? In theory yes, if there were some way of telling it what the numbers were. The Instant variant on apterous does this. Edit: actually, it's not as easy as this. If the numbers are 1 1 2 2 3 3 then it can't. Presumably Insta...

Graeme Cole

Nick Deller wrote:Graeme's answered what I meant - and thank you! - but Mark's question's interesting too.

And Gavin's.

In episode 3268, the players matched each other in every round except the second numbers round.

Graeme Cole

Q: Has there been a game in the 15-round era when a player has declared valid words of the same length in all 11 letters rounds? If not, how close have we got? Up to 19th October 2012 (the limit of the data I have), nobody has offered eleven valid words of the same length in a game, but ten people ...

Graeme Cole

Q: Has there ever been a contestant on Countdown whose full name is an anagram of another contestants full name? If not, what's the closest we've come? This has happened twice, if you exclude pairs of people whose names are exactly the same, e.g. Chris Davies and Chris Davies . They are series 5 qu...

Graeme Cole

John Garcia wrote:Statistics can be provided by Graham Cole.

I suppose he's got to have something to do since The Bill finished.

Graeme Cole

Bad luck Mark, on another day that would have been a much closer game. Conor, well played. I think I'd have scored about 55 against you today. By the way, that strange object you keep curiously looking at is called a camera. :D Conor is in his early 20s, just like Jack Hurst Conor attends Cambridge ...

Graeme Cole

John Garcia wrote:Wowsers!

p.s. Does anyone have any stats for how often a countdown game occurs with a max score as high as this one? What proportion of games are we talking? 1%?

Go go gadget graph!

Correct. Just over 1% of 15 round games have a max of 152 or more.

Graeme Cole

So Jack and Conor are engaging in some kind of jumper-off, apparently unaware that Ryan has beaten both of them hands down. Wayne, well played. To get 89 against someone like Jack, especially having not scored in the first three rounds, is some achievement. And congratulations on the 143, Jack. Whil...

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