c4countdown

Gavin Chipper

Perhaps not as freak as the 83, but Conor being the youngest champion at 14 is higher than it could have been given that Allan Saldanha (10), Andrew Perry (11) and Tim Morrissey (12) were all number one seeds. So maybe not an unbreakable record across the parallel universes in the same way as 83, bu...

Gavin Chipper

83 is the record score for a 9-round game (and is unlikely to be broken now that they don't use the format any more), but if we could visit a few dozen parallel universes, we might find that among those universes, 83 is the lowest record score for a 9-rounder. In other words, I'd say it was statisti...

Gavin Chipper

11 points for the conundrum in those days?

Gavin Chipper

Elliott Mellor missing just 27 points in his entire octorun will be very hard to break. Interestingly, in Conor Travers's last 7 games, starting with the beginning of his 30BC run and finishing with the special v Jack Worsley, he missed 29 points. His max count in those games was 12, 14, 15, 15, 15,...

Gavin Chipper

Should that be 15th?

Gavin Chipper

Also Helen Grayson retired unbeaten in series 1 but came back to lose in series 6, after retiring unbeaten for a second time after winning 7 games instead of 8 (and was still number 1 seed on points ahead of octochamp Francis).

Gavin Chipper

Cool. If other people are getting the train in the London direction, I imagine they would do the same.

Gavin Chipper

There's a train out of Hykeham at 14:37 and getting that will save a lot of time relative to the next one so I'm going to aim for that even if it means leaving the prizegiving a bit early. Apologies in advance!

Gavin Chipper

The minuter / minutest thing came up again today, but it wasn't explicitly discussed. MINUTEST was given as a beater in one round, and then in the very next letters round minuter was offered by a contestant but rejected by Susie. It would have made sense for her to say at that point about the asymme...

Gavin Chipper

I think it's fairly normal.

Sudden Brief Unilateral Tapering Tinnitus (SBUTT) also known as fleeting tinnitus.

Gavin Chipper

Sometimes I might get a sudden weird feeling in my ear or a tinnitus type thing that then passes a few seconds later, but I don't think I've ever gone deaf.

Gavin Chipper

I've watched a few films in the relatively recent past so here goes: The Hitcher : This is just a pretty terrible film. Essentially a poor man's Duel . The Innocents (1961 version) : I thought this was quite a good ghost story. I didn't find it brilliant when I watched it though. I then watched a Yo...

Gavin Chipper · Re: COLIN XXI- Countdown in Lincoln, 24-25 January 2026 Excellent, thanks.

Excellent, thanks.

Gavin Chipper

What time does the Hangover finish?

Gavin Chipper

Tell you what actually - you could have a points champion like I originally suggested and also have the FOCAL finals. Two separate trophies for two separate things and people can decide for themselves which is worth more. So in terms of rough equivalence: COLIN winner: Wimbledon champion, Monaco GP...

Gavin Chipper

Reece Prescod is joining the Enhanced Games . I thought it was anything goes but apparently: The Enhanced Games launched as a concept in 2023, with some doping measures permitted under medical supervision. Only substances approved by the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can be taken...

Gavin Chipper

General discussion thread. Put predictions if you want. It seems that Anne, who got stuck in a shop shutter last year, has died. Though it's a weird article, and it's only mentioned in passing.

Gavin Chipper

If anyone is considering writing a Trump biography I have a title for you - From Tosspot to Despot.

Gavin Chipper

That first numbers could be done more easily with 75×8-7+100/25 = 597.

Also in the 690 round the challenger did the classic 5×50/25 to make a 10 instead of 50/5.

Gavin Chipper

294 was also just 49×6. (50-1)×(9-75/25) = 294.

I've heard rumours you could do 42×7 as well.

Gavin Chipper

Ian Volante wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 12:51 pm
Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sat Dec 27, 2025 6:32 pm
Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Sat Dec 27, 2025 5:49 pm

Depends on the competition
Does it? What sort of competitions are you thinking of?
What have you got against canicross?

Well there was that guy who used to steal most of the first places at my local parkrun by having his dog drag him round...

Gavin Chipper

America first.

Gavin Chipper

Philip Wilson wrote: ↑Sat Jan 03, 2026 3:34 pm
Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sat Jan 03, 2026 2:07 pm It could come up in the very next round.

Indeed. Am I right in thinking a teaser solution did that once?

Maybe, probably not an invalid one though?

Gavin Chipper

It could come up in the very next round.

Gavin Chipper

I doubt you complained too hard when you saw yesterday's offering.

Gavin Chipper

The BBC have produced their list.

Gavin Chipper · Re: COLIN XXI- Countdown in Lincoln, 24-25 January 2026 Done.

Done.

Gavin Chipper

You can't be a good distance runner without also having good top speed. You'll find yourself reaching a limit, or at least massive diminishing returns, where people who are less aerobically fit than you will move through those times more easily.

Gavin Chipper

Each date is not equally likely to fall on each day of the week. You have the usual 28-year cycle with 21 normal years and 7 leap years, and within that everything is balanced. However, when the year ends in 00, it's only a leap year if the first 2 digits make a number that's divisible by 4. So 2000...

Gavin Chipper

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Sat Dec 27, 2025 5:49 pm
Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sat Dec 27, 2025 4:08 pm People who enter their dog into competitions.
Depends on the competition

Does it? What sort of competitions are you thinking of?

Gavin Chipper

Now that I've completed my year's work, I've been considering whether I'm still motivated enough to do the championship again next year. There are now about 100 CO-events and it seems like a lot of effort. Also I wonder if it would be more logical to do a best 8 or something like FOCAL does, but tha...

Gavin Chipper

Jon Elmer's new time added. Hopefully it's up to date going into the new year. Right, I'm going to put up a ranking list of Countdown/Apterous parkrunners. I'll check it every so often to see if anyone's beaten their PB, and if anyone is really insistent that they don't want to be on the list, then ...

Gavin Chipper

Here is the new age-graded list. All those who improved their times (see above) also improved their score here, and we had the same new entries. I don't think anyone just improved their percentage without improving their time. There is also an improvement from Jon Elmer but he got a new PB on 20th D...

Gavin Chipper

People who enter their dog into competitions.

Gavin Chipper

That's what I wanted to see - proper live solves in the app. And as you both said, shows that the others definitely aren't live, but may well be how he solved them himself. And this is way beyond ordinary. We realised when using the app with our nephew, probably when he was 4 or 5, that even knowin...

Gavin Chipper

Chris Rea won't be driving home for Christmas; he's on the road to Hell.

Gavin Chipper

Well I think as we discussed off forum, the fact that he solved that easier one in more time than the other harder ones pretty much shows the other ones to be not legitimate. He may have solved some of them in some amount of time, but the filming would have been afterwards and a "reconstruction...

Gavin Chipper

I'm surprised by the 3 v 4 vowel stats. My impression is that while Apterites pick 4 vowels, pretty much everyone else picks 3 most of the time.

Great work as always.

Gavin Chipper

Yeah, I first heard of it when it got mentioned in the final. Hope all is well and that he'll be back soon, and maybe picking apart my posts on here as well!

Gavin Chipper

Good game, good series, good players. More often than not, Brett would have run Jase closer but a great series performance in any case and still a good game.

Gavin Chipper

I dunno - magnesium is one of the less obscure elements, just hard to spot though. If you mean having studied the periodic table as a word list, then yeah I would agree.

Gavin Chipper

Definitely feels like some working out beforehand then filming for some. Like fair play if he's coming up with this method in 2 seconds, but seems unlikely: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSKpqO7CKnC/. Clearly is very smart though, and fluent with numbers. Unless it is entirely as it seems, would love...

Gavin Chipper

Midfoot not in in the last letters disappointingly enough.

Gavin Chipper

Fake, not really that impressive in the general scheme of things, and you have to wonder about the personality of the geezer setting this up.

As John says above, he's clearly not spending any time working it out. Obviously scripted.

Gavin Chipper

Haha - apologies if it came across that way! Most champions are in their 20s and 30s these days and I wasn't sure how old Fiona was but must be more than 45.

Gavin Chipper

How old is Brett? He'd be one of the older champions for a while presumably if he won. Not sure how his age compares with Fiona Wood.

Gavin Chipper

This was the only QF I won playing at home.

Gavin Chipper

I looked up this week's guest, Nisha Katona, and apparently she founded the Mowgli street food restaurants. I went to one once, and wasn't impressed!

Gavin Chipper

Oh yeah.

Gavin Chipper

Another one from your era, comedian Stanley Baxter aged 99.

Gavin Chipper

I didn't mean to insult the Beachy Board of course and agree with Fiona that it's a thing of beauty.

Gavin Chipper

Obviously everything I say here is in the context of all the events I've been to being well-organised enjoyable events. What I said here : One thing I would say though is that, I don't think drinks really make good prizes because they don't travel well. I mean, I didn't get a prize and I got a lift ...

Gavin Chipper

The PB list is now updated. Improvements from Jonathan Rawlinson, Paul Nixon, Thomas Carey, Matthew Tassier, Matt Gould, Adam Curran, Samuel Louis, Dave Robjohns, Jon O'Neill, Melody Coupe, Lauren Hamer, Tom Rowell, Adam Dexter (13). New to the list we have Steve Anderson, George Carey, Sheamol Obed...

Gavin Chipper

While discussing that particular numbers round, I would just like to say that I really like how Rachel continued both contestant's methods to arrive at the correct answer. This is much better imo than using a completely different method, which is what she sometimes does. As a viewer I think it is m...

Gavin Chipper

Standard method for that first numbers was clearly 100×50/8-75/25=622. Positively jumped out.

Gavin Chipper

The hall of fame: 2017 - Gevin Chapwell (405 points) 2018 - Gevin Chapwell (410 points) 2019 - Gevin Chapwell (440.6 points) 2020-2022 - Callum Todd (6027 points) 2023 - Thomas Carey (5375 points) 2024 - Thomas Carey (7769 points) From 2017 to 2019, the scoring range was between 0 and 100 points pe...

Gavin Chipper

Linford Wood : 3 (1). Gevin Chapwell - 20:01 (71.94%) (750 points) 45 (2). Samuel Louis - 24:59 (51.63%) (500 points) 76 (3). Mike Springett - 26:51 (48.42%) (250 points) Jubilee, Bedford : 2 (1). Dan Byrom - 19:56 (64.72%) (800 points) 4 (2). Thomas Carey - 21:12 (60.85%) (600 points) 13 (3). Brad...

Gavin Chipper

ANCESTOR as an equaller in the CARTOONS round.

Gavin Chipper

Not sure if this link works. In lieu of the official video here is my gig on a relatives phone https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17YZ8qcbgK/ I think it's friends only. Would it be possible to make it set to everyone for a wider audience? You could friend request me 😄 I will try and work it out in th...

Gavin Chipper

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Fri Dec 05, 2025 7:37 pm Not sure if this link works.
In lieu of the official video here is my gig on a relatives phone
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17YZ8qcbgK/

I think it's friends only. Would it be possible to make it set to everyone for a wider audience?

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