c4countdown

Graeme Cole

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Graeme Cole

Good run, Grant. Don't worry about losing the last game, it's the seven wins that matter.

Graeme Cole

The 8+ club is for people who win eight games, but you're right that in addition Rachel says that Moss hasn't yet found a word less than eight letters long. I wondered at the time how the score could have been 64-0, and I think you're right, it could only be with eight eight-letter words and two uns...

Graeme Cole

It's still down. Beginning to get withdrawal symptoms. Considering that the Apterous-namechecking CoBliviLon article is one of the most viewed/shared on the Independent website at the moment, this is probably quite a bad time for it to be down. Apterous is probably down because of all the extra tra...

Graeme Cole

I think disallowing MATEYS was a bad call, yes. Page xvi at the front of the dictionary says "Plurals formed by adding -s (or -es when they end in -s, -x, -z, -sh or soft -ch) are regarded as regular and are not shown". So the regular plural of LOCH would be LOCHES.... Nope - the CH in LO...

Graeme Cole

Don't understand Susie's offering of SALMONS in round 4. Yes, it's a food, so yes, you can pluralise it, but the plural is still SALMON.

Graeme Cole

Definitely interested in coming to this, although this topic seems to have fizzled out. How do we sign up? Just post a comment in here saying "in"? These are the known details so far, which I'll put in a single post to save everyone having to piece it together from all the previous posts -...

Graeme Cole

Not one word of that has changed since the NODE. I think you must be right that the distinction they make is between the entries for BROWED (on its own) and -SEATER (including the hyphen). But I'm pretty sure the Countdown Rules used to say that words that only appeared in combination were not allo...

Graeme Cole

I think disallowing MATEYS was a bad call, yes. Page xvi at the front of the dictionary says "Plurals formed by adding -s (or -es when they end in -s, -x, -z, -sh or soft -ch) are regarded as regular and are not shown". It goes on to say "Other plural forms are given in the dictionary...

Graeme Cole

By the way: in each goody-bag there was a stopwatch. Over the past few days there have been reports of them beeping every hour with no obvious way to shut them up. Some of you have applied such creative solutions as wrapping it in a towel and shoving it in a drawer. While this is effective, there is...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Wednesday 8 August 2012. Welcome to my third recap this week - James is away watching some football match or other, so I've stepped in today. We kick off with a rant about the AA. Today they sent me a letter saying how they're going to renew my breakdown cover at a 25% discount, ...

Graeme Cole

James Robinson wrote:I'm a bit busy tomorrow night.

Not every day that BARCELONA (OK, the "B" team) come to play the mighty Terriers.

So, can someone take over my recap for tomorrow

One would be most grateful.

Okay, I'll do today's as well.

Graeme Cole

12.9s.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Tuesday 7 August 2012. Great Britain today celebrates its highest gold medal total at an Olympic Games since 1908, and they're still going. Meanwhile, Team Apterous's latest competitor tries what should be, but isn't, the newest Olympic sport... C1: Champion Anthea Rata (1 win, 9...

Graeme Cole

Round 7: C N M Q A A E R E C1: RACEME (6) C2: MENACER (7) Score: 39–21 (max 52) Mark and I had been talking about RACEME and RACEMATE in the pub that lunchtime. I knew RACEMATE from when I had RACEMEN^ disallowed on the show; Susie said RACEMATE was in, but not RACEMEN. After then I learned that ME...

Graeme Cole

Amie says she doesn't want to run another coblivilon No way, that's pretty gutting. We fancied going but it was at pretty much the worst possible time (we've just moved house and CF has just started at a new hospital, so we had no idea what we were going to be doing that weekend (and as it turns ou...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 6 August 2012. The series left off with Chris Marshall winning his eighth game two weeks ago, so today we've got two new contestants. This one was filmed straight after last week's special, so the flange of apterites were still there. Ed and I found some spare chairs among...

Graeme Cole

Jordan F wrote:I will not be able to do this Tuesday's recap due to family commitments. James can do a one off if he'd like to, or if anybody else would like to recap for that one day.

Yoink. I'll do tomorrow's.

Graeme Cole

Here's the recap for the final of CobliviLon 2012, which concluded at about 7am. C1: Edward McCullagh (6/8 wins, 467 points) qualified for the quarter-finals with four wins and 367 points. He beat Adam Gillard and Thomas Cappleman to get to the final. C2: Innis Carson (8/8 wins, 562 points) was the ...

Graeme Cole

Home now. Thanks for putting this event together, Amie. Also thanks to Charlie for letting me hack about with his tournament fixture generation program, which was an integral part of the computer system with all its statistics and things that everyone seemed to like. This was the first ever overnigh...

Graeme Cole

Uploaded from sunny Trafalgar Square... CobliviLon Results All games were 9-rounders except the final which was 15 rounds. The top eight players after six games played in a knockout format. The final was between Edward McCullagh and Innis Carson. They remained level until the conundrum at 113-113, w...

Graeme Cole

Thanks for posting that picture, Grant. I knew there was more than one person taking them.

Graeme Cole

walking down a road AND YHERE WQas am poedestsl thongy and Grameme Cole as stan iding ontop od it and hewad sluicing oranges in hallf and thriowing them at poepole down below and those people wedrre very happy but when ben maloonney caught one har turned ino a massive bear/goril;lla AND MAULRAsd so...

Graeme Cole

Cheers everyone. In contrast with my previous game which took about a decade off my life, this one was, as Mark put it at the time, "the pudding", so it was always going to be a fun day and an enjoyable game regardless of the result. And as Mark points out in his recap of the game, (which ...

Graeme Cole

By the way, it's probably worth mentioning that the deadline for entries is next Tuesday, 31st July.

Graeme Cole

Well played Ryan. Look forward to tomorrow. Loved the "woes" bit.

We have a flashing white baaarrrd....

(Matt Bayfield takes all the credit and/or blame for this idea!)

Graeme Cole

is this event still happening? Yes. Yes, definitely happening, although most of the announcements about it have been on Facebook rather than here. For the Facebook-challenged: This great little olde city pub on Fleet Street, London, will open through the night to host the ultimate endurance Countdo...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 16 July 2012. Not long now until London hosts the sporting event we've all been waiting for, as elite competitors come from afar to do battle against each other. But aside from CobliviLon, there's some kind of athletics tournament going on as well. I can promise you that a...

Graeme Cole

Second teaser: POPSTARS isn't valid.

Graeme Cole

The website is up but the game isn't allowing connections. When I click the "PLAY" link on the main page it shows "Attempt N of 500", where N slowly counts up.

Looks like it stopped working at about 19:35.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 2 July 2012. It's the first show of series 67, and Nick's second series. An aged-looking football sits on the desk in front of Nick as he introduces the show. Just as we're wondering whether it's there for a reason or someone just left it there accidentally, we find out th...

Graeme Cole

Many thanks, Jeff and James. A very enjoyable and well run event.

Graeme Cole

Thomas Carey wrote:a BORGATE is an organised branch of the mafia

Almost - it's actually the plural. The singular is BORGATA.

Thomas Carey wrote:Round 15: T I N Y R O L E S

Round 15: L O O N A T I I C

Wow, two conundrums?

Graeme Cole

Great game. Well done to both. Jonathan did well to come back in the last few rounds from 23 behind to make it a crucial conundrum. To play and win eight heats, then have about half an hour or so before being thrust into the quarter finals, then to go on and reach the final, your 11th game in three ...

Graeme Cole

James Robinson wrote:WE'RE NOW AT 30, THANKS TO THE ARRIVAL OF PLAYER X. (All will be revealed tomorrow. )

Wouldn't that be player XXX?

Is it Apterous Caesar?

Graeme Cole

Congratulations on making the final, Jack. For most of the series I expected this match would be the final, and it was a very evenly matched game. Well done on coming back to win after going behind early on. I wasn't expecting you to pick two six small rounds - I expected you to stick with four larg...

Graeme Cole

Well done Peter, a deserved place in the semi-final. These quarter-finals have been good to watch.

Graeme Cole

Well done Jack. Don't worry about the couple of misses, the nerves are completely understandable. I did the last numbers game with ((50-5)*5+1)*2+6, which is probably what you were thinking of. I didn't even see the easier way. Looked like that was Alison Shipman in the audience who solved the conun...

Graeme Cole

Jack Worsley wrote:Hope this doesn't count as a spoiler but instead of tossing for the choice of chairs, they didn't do that this series for some reason. Instead, the higher seed was automatically given the challenger's chair.

?!

The only explanation I can think of for this is that nobody had a coin on them.

Graeme Cole

Great game. Often the 1v8 quarter final is a bit one-sided, but not here. I'm glad Jonathan won, but I'm also pleased that Rob gave him a good game. Also loved the "eight eight........... eight" bit after Jonathan declared 890 on the last numbers round. At this point I thought Jonathan had...

Graeme Cole

It seems Jim didn't actually get into the studio on this occasion, so he gets off on a technicality.

Also, can we have an annual award for the most subtle comment in the spoiler thread whose aim is to convey that the commenter beat the champion?

Graeme Cole

Congratulations, Jonathan. Great run, and great octototototal. Look forward to seeing you again in the quarter final tomorrow. Fun fact: Jonathan is only the sixth player to get eight out of eight conundrums (the last was Daniel Pati), and only the sixth player to get a word disallowed for it not be...

Graeme Cole

Ryan Taylor wrote:Nice recap! Enjoyed it

Cheers Ryan. Much appreciated.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 18 June 2012. C1: Champion Jonathan Rawlinson (5 wins, 560 points) is getting accustomed to the champion's chair and looks like he'll still be there on Wednesday, and who knows, maybe even in Thursday's quarter-final as well if he becomes #1 seed. C2: Challenger Gavin Dare...

Graeme Cole

The plural of ALIYAH is specified as ALIYOTH (as could clearly be seen on Susie's pen-cam) so presumably ALIYAHS isn't actually valid. I thought LORILET was there in one of the early rounds but that seems to have gone. So as far as I can see, another 14-maxer by Jonathan. Excellent stuff. I did too...

Graeme Cole

I'm not going to be doing my usual recap slot on Monday 30th July. Mark Deeks will be providing a one-off special guest recap.

Graeme Cole

Well played Jon. Great debut. I hope you're still playing when I recap next Monday's show, which you will be if you keep playing like that. I think the last person to get 14 maxes was this chap.

Graeme Cole

What if any of these contestants Google their names and find this thread? Nothing against you particularly Stewart, you're not the only one, but it seems that the done thing on here now is to deride and insult contestants who string together a few wins just because they made a couple of lowish score...

Graeme Cole

I thought he said BOSSING, but it is ambiguous. Hopefully this was checked more thoroughly in the original take. Sounds like BUSING to me. In Susie's defence if I'd been in DC I probably wouldn't have checked it either, because I'd have thought it's obviously BUSSING. Didn't watch this, but Susie s...

Graeme Cole

In round 13, the challenger had BUSING disallowed but it's valid on apterous and I've checked the dictionary and it's in! If that had been allowed, it would have gone to a crucial conundrum, assuming they'd both still have got the final numbers game. Don't know why Susie didn't at least check it. I...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 4 June 2012. C1: Champion Suzi Purcell (7 wins, 619 points) is currently the number 3 seed, and she's guaranteed to be no lower than fourth come the finals. Today she's got the chance to become an octochamp - the first since Peter Lee all the way back in February. C2: Chal...

Graeme Cole

TENTAGE in round 12. I liked Jon Culshaw's bit today where they used the left-hand side of the clock for what must be the first time ever. Took me a while to get the "bonus conundrum" that accompanied it though, I was looking for one word. Also, Suzi deserves to go on to win eight. MEGASTA...

Graeme Cole

I think Suzi was kind and gave Elaine some points on purpose after Elaine having a bad start, this was obvious in the last numbers round when the solution was super-easy and Suzi said she got it wrong. Don't see why she'd have done that deliberately. Elaine had already given her solution and got he...

Graeme Cole

Round 2: S V E L N A S I N C1: INSANE (6) C2: SNAILS (6) DC: SNIVELS (7) OT: VAINNESS (8) Score: 13–13 (max 16) Still nothing to separate the contestants, but DC can go one better with SNIVELS, prompting a Terry Wogan impression from Jon :D Another darrenic 8 goes missed, however. It turns out VAIN...

Graeme Cole

Quite enjoyed this post from yesteryear. Ha. I know you're not sorting through the feature request looking for things that aren't covered in tickets and making extra work for yourself. Therefore I can only assume you've searched Google for "charlie off of apterous's willy" because you hav...

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 21 May 2012. C1: Champion Stuart Wright (3 wins, 283 points) has looked quite strong over his last few games. However, the Monday show has caused a hiccup for many an established champion in the past, especially if it was recorded in the morning, as Tony Atkins suggests in...

Graeme Cole

Jack Worsley wrote:Another 14 max for me today. This time I cocked up on the conundrum as I guessed CILIATION.

At least that's got the right number of letters. I had LOCATION.

Graeme Cole

GLABROUS in R6.

Graeme Cole

Countdown recap for Monday 7 May 2012. At the opening of this show, Rachel shows us a blonde-coloured hedgehog, who was hand-reared by an audience member when its mother died. The hedgehog is called Rachel, and this its first time on television. C1: Champion Catherine Johnson (1 win, 71 points) depo...

Graeme Cole

Round 6: R S R A E C O H Q C1: COARSE (6) C2: CHASER (6) DC: COARSER (7) ROACHES (7) HOARSER (7) OT: ARCHERS (7) CHARROS (7) OCHREAS (7) ORACHES (7) Score: 40–13 (max 46) Very similar to round 9 yesterday, but it's Nick's turn to regret not sticking the other E on the end of his COARSE. :oops: COAR...

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