c4countdown

David Williams

In case anyone is still struggling - and it took me a while to be convinced. If it's heads you'll wake up once, if it's tails you'll wake up twice. If you can persuade someone to enter into a wager where you give them £1 every time you wake if it was heads, and they give you £1 if it was tails, they...

David Williams

It's got to be half. Suppose you were given a lethal drug, and only given the antidote if a coin came up heads. If you woke, you'd know it was heads. But that doesn't mean it would come up heads every time. It would come up heads every time given that you woke up . So from your point of view (which...

David Williams

It's got to be half.

Suppose you were given a lethal drug, and only given the antidote if a coin came up heads. If you woke, you'd know it was heads. But that doesn't mean it would come up heads every time.

David Williams

The dictionaries, that is. While they may be a wonderful prize if you own a mansion, there aren't many champions these days who appear to be so fortunate. One suspect most are destined for the winner's mum's attic. Or do people donate them to schools or universities? And now that there's a trophy, i...

David Williams

Jesus that was a good game. Craig as usual was unreal on the numbers, probably the best player ever (or at least, that I've seen). No reason to think he can't beat the#1 seed. BTW on the decrees round, did he ask for a consonant when Rachel gave the the final 'U'? If so, I misheard. I thought you w...

David Williams

One does wonder why Dictionary Corner can't just write words down rather than whisper to each other. Maybe your typical celebrity doesn't read or write so well. When Susie does that, you get your "SEABED" moments and it's no less embarrassing. Best bit of the whole show. Didn't Susie once...

David Williams

One does wonder why Dictionary Corner can't just write words down rather than whisper to each other. Maybe your typical celebrity doesn't read or write so well.

David Williams

If you overheard Susie & the DC guest whisper a good word to each other and nobody realised I guess you could claim it. "In the rules" though? Of course not. That happened to me. After about five seconds the DC guest whispered a word so loudly that my opponent in the challenger's chai...

David Williams

MPs are likely to be too busy to be able to have much impact on their own constituency and while I wouldn't do away with local MPs, I think the idea of it is much bigger than the reality. Busy doing what, exactly? Given the rows of empty seats most of the time, not actually in the debating chamber....

David Williams

POTEENS is consistent with other plural mass nouns, but surely Susie has disallowed it in the past.

David Williams

Mind you, this sort of thing inspired Viz, so it's not all bad: "SAVE ELECTRICITY by shortening the cables to all your household electric appliances."[/url] I once saw, in the middle of a list of genuine tips, the suggestion that you could save the trouble of blown fuses by replacing them...

David Williams

If you come up to temporary traffic lights on red, flash your lights and they will change. My son works for a company that hires them out, and he says this is a complete fallacy. But he would, wouldn't he? It always works for me. Eventually.

David Williams

Given that ~75% constituencies are pretty safe (I admit that I pulled that out of the air, but I don't think anywhere near this many seats change hands in the average election), that's a large amount of people to potentially vote to give their own votes more power. In a seat where 80% of the electo...

David Williams

One good thing about the current system is that you get to vote for an individual. There seem to have been quite a few instances of "good" incumbents surviving against the national trend, and "bad" ones being kicked out. I have ten MEPs. Eight of them are in practice selected by ...

David Williams

Try it!

David Williams

No. What I'm saying is that taking the top card off the shuffled pack is the same as if you didn't complete the shuffle, but left the two halves as separate piles and took the top card off one or other at random. For example, the two piles could be as follows (top on the left) Face down. H C D S H C...

David Williams

Group them so that each of the four thirteens contains one of each of A, 2, 3 etc. in the same order. Also arrange such that they are S, H, C, D, S, H, C, D etc. Cutting changes nothing. Shuffling in this way is the equivalent of starting at one random card and working up or down from that randomly....

David Williams

Sometimes I get frustrated when Rachel's method is very very similar to the contestants and just involves splitmultiplicationising it, yet she presents it in a totally different-looking way. I think usually the contestants don't see the link at all and it's a shame Rachel doesn't get another 10 sec...

David Williams

Sue Sanders wrote:charater assissignation

Neologism of the week. Covers just about anything!

David Williams

I like James (met him at my finals)...think you were with your sister and I asked you to get her to come sit with us but you didn't - I'll hate you forever for that. On the serious side, I'm not sure why you feel c4c sucks and you have to defect, as it were. Cheers Kirk, plus my Mum was delighted t...

David Williams

I watched the whole programme thinking firstly that we'd had a decent run of good contestants of late, and secondly that the challenger looked vaguely familiar. Unlucky, Phil. Might be worth asking Damian for another go while he's in a good mood.

David Williams

Damian Eadie........ irony-free zone.

Good night.

David Williams

Wow... this is amazing. Hilarious, but amazing. I think this one highlight alone is what says it all for me: Blimey - the ugly stick has been welded with relish on today's contestants! If anyone wants to leave here and join there after reading that, then good riddance. You're being a bit unfair her...

David Williams

I was reading the Name My Child thread and thinking that I sometimes feel I don't quite know what's going on. Now I'm sure of it. Anyway, I'm off to join the new lot. I'm voting UKIP as well. David, I am not sure what to make of you at times but this is LOL! I'm the voice of reason. The EEC was set...

David Williams

I was reading the Name My Child thread and thinking that I sometimes feel I don't quite know what's going on. Now I'm sure of it.

Anyway, I'm off to join the new lot. I'm voting UKIP as well.

David Williams

Sysinternals Process Explorer is what you need, an official Microsoft development team thing. It's like an enhanced version of the Task Manager, you can see what is currently taking up memory and CPU cycles, get info on the processes and so on. I don't know much about logging, I've never needed to ...

David Williams

I've never had any real problems, or nothing that System Restore hasn't sorted. However there are times when my computer chunters away to itself for ten or fifteen minutes. Is it possible to find out what it's doing? I'd like to think it was just updating something I know about, like the anti-virus,...

David Williams

I'm pretty strongly of the view that you shouldn't criticise contestants (except for cheating), but I don't see any great harm in noting low scores - so long as you don't go on about it too much. [/url] Completely agree. It's rather like hearing that Liverpool are crap and will prob finish 7th in t...

David Williams

I'm pretty strongly of the view that you shouldn't criticise contestants (except for cheating), but I don't see any great harm in noting low scores - so long as you don't go on about it too much. Low winning scores come about when there aren't many tied rounds, and that can be because of good play. ...

David Williams

Andy Wilson wrote:Anyone else been watching in 3D?

Yes. All you have to do is pay up and go and actually support your team. It looks just like the real thing.

David Williams

One of the unsung successes of recent Governments has been reducing the number of unemployed not by creating jobs, but by persuading people to stay out of the market. Getting people to take gap years, productive or otherwise, is clever, but getting them to borrow money to fund years of education of ...

David Williams

Advice for normal people. First thing is to get through the audition. Remember the selections are not random as they are on the show. There are eight and nine letter words in there. (Don't think I'm giving any secrets away. You can audition more than once, so any second-timer must know this.) Best r...

David Williams

That's how I understand it too. I don't mean to sound morbid and interfering, Jon (but I'll say it anyway!), if I were you, I'd make an honest woman of your beloved, or at least get a good solicitor to draw up a will to make sure she's not left high and dry if the worst happens, or indeed the other...

David Williams

As I understand you are already in a civil partnership whether you had a formal ceremony or not, as the legal implications are (Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid) that if you and your partner split up, in the eyes of the law your partner is entitled to half of your assets due to the lengthy and domes...

David Williams

Been thinking a bit more about the "polite note" in the green room asking contestants to think of the "televisual side of things". I have to say that when a contestant comes on who clearly isn't good at this side of things, all I can think is what a bonus it is that Countdown's o...

David Williams

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular by the way. There are lots of quiet contestants - is the evidence really there that CofC contestants are overall "worse" in this respect than your average contestant? Or, perhaps more significantly, have the viewers noticed/mentioned it? I sometime...

David Williams

The original suggestion was that there be a yearly champion, and the question was whether it was reasonable to have this immediately after the series final. Some good points were made about the practicalities, and most people welcomed the idea - so long as CoC continued. But now it seems that actual...

David Williams

Not quite what I was expecting as a response! However, it does suggest that two of the things 'wrong' with CoC 2000, the need to seed series champions and the exclusion of worthy players, would be solve by doing it annually as Mike Brown suggested. I'm not totally convinced yet. If the series champi...

David Williams

Mike Brown's format is similar to the CoC that Scott Mearns won. That had four series winners, plus two losing finalists. Scott and Kate Ogilvie were given byes to the semis (not sure how that was decided) and they duly won and contested the final. At the time I was new to Countdown, and didn't know...

David Williams

Great idea. Countdown Champion 2010 sounds much better than Series Champion. But am I alone in thinking April 1st has come early. If anyone else had suggested this it would have been ridiculed. We have champions, series champions, champions of champions. We even had a supreme champion once. So what ...

David Williams

D Eadie wrote:All enough to turn anyone insane.

I hadn't noticed any difference.

David Williams

Is there a league table of contributors? Carol must still be way in front for the number of appearances, but is there anyone behind the scenes with an even better count? I know there's been a good few long-servers, which I'm sure is a big factor in Countdown's longevity. Anyone with a full 5000? The...

David Williams

Ryan Taylor wrote:
Kirk Bevins wrote:I shook hands with Davies at the start, after the conundrum and at the end
You liked the feel of his silky smooth Liverpudlian hands too?

Do not be mistaken, do not be misled.
He is not a Scouser, he's from Birkenhead.

David Williams

You realise that if the format ever changes again a new generation deems the new way the only way that counts, and all your stats go out of the window. (This all starts to sound a bit serious. Tongue still firmly in cheek here.)

David Williams

I think David is doing a funny joke about how his percentage maximum is higher, although he was playing a different number of rounds in a different format. Not quite sure why the number of rounds affects percentages, nor how the format differs. Maybe it's similar to the way that football didn't exi...

David Williams

Charlie Reams wrote:It tells you something about the last series that there were 3 new entries into the top 8 octochamps by percentage...

I was 51. And I think you mean top 9.

David Williams

I think it means that there is (or will be) an agreed volume on the contract and this is the minimum he will be charged for, even if he needs less volume because they are going to reserve that amount of space regardless. However, should he need more space, the amount charged will be increased "...

David Williams

There was a ladies' mini-series during Cheltenham week in 2003 which crossed the SC divide, as did the special between Mike Brown and Nita Marr. Not sure if there are any others, but in any event that should be sufficient to make sure that everyone who's appeared in a televised game is linked throu...

David Williams

There was a ladies' mini-series during Cheltenham week in 2003 which crossed the SC divide, as did the special between Mike Brown and Nita Marr. Not sure if there are any others, but in any event that should be sufficient to make sure that everyone who's appeared in a televised game is linked throu...

David Williams

Innis Carson wrote:Unless I'm not noticing something, everyone who played between Judith Young finishing her octorun and Frank Mulvey "retiring" in Series 53 is isolated from the rest. Don't know whether or not any of them have been in co-events or anything though.

Good spot.

David Williams

In the normal run, everyone in a series will be connected, so long as no champion retires undefeated and does not appear in the finals. And successive series are linked by CoC Just had a look, and I see the winner of the last ordinary programme before the Supreme Championship qualified for the serie...

David Williams

Jon Corby wrote:subtlety is a noun, and not to be confused with subtlely, which is a deeply retarded mis-spelling of subtly, which is an adverb.

I actually wrote it initially as subtlity for your benefit, but re-wrote in deference to your sensitive nature.

David Williams

Maybe calling her a racist is a bit much but didn't you think she was a 'hare's breadth' away from saying that "political correctness has gone crazy"? I've been waiting several days for one of the many pedants other than me to pick up on this one. Where are you all? Or is there some subtl...

David Williams

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7052128.ece At one time Question Time always had three politicians and one 'ordinary' person. The wife of a work colleague of mine, who was something big in something like the WI, was once on the panel, and I remember him telling me how hard it w...

David Williams

David O'Donnell wrote:She kept it mathematical anyway since she was all about the lowest common denominator.

One of my favourites for the "Words Changing Meaning" thread. Unless of course you mean she managed to combine all the qualities of all the panellists, which I doubt.

David Williams

Aren't most people on here (including you) just believing what they want to be the case based on very little evidence? No evidence that it isn't Carol making shit up, but what is the evidence that she is making shit up? Anyway, this Carol-bashing is too much for me. I will have to start a new forum...

David Williams

Funny how so many people never really liked Carol anyway. Funny, that is, that they never mentioned it at the time. I can't say I was ever a fan, in the sense that seeing a new programme advertised as "presented by CV" would have me searching for another channel, but I thought she was trem...

David Williams

I don't know the figures, but suppose Rachel gets £100k and Jeff gets more and Countdown gets two million viewers and makes a profit and everyone's happy. If Countdown then goes up to four million viewers it doubles its income, but it still costs the same to produce, so profits rise enormously. But ...

David Williams

Cifras y Letras is the name of Countdown tv show in Spain. I am a Cifras y Letras contestant on Canal Sur 2 channel. I have win 101 times and I must come back to play with new contestants next season. Differences: There are four rounds consisting of a number game followed by two letter games. Words...

David Williams

Does it count as "cheating" or misleading your opponent if you know the best word in an 8 (say in ORANGIEST) and you sit back and obviously twiddle your thumbs to make him declare a nine? No, twiddling your thumbs is genuine. Concentrating like hell, then shouting "Yippee" after...

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