c4countdown

Gavin Chipper

Maybe they're not all too busy, but it's not really their main role. It seems a funny mix and match. They're supposedly there to set legislation in Westminster and listen to our local views as well. But I don't think they have any local power so it's mainly just to make us think they care. MPs will...

Gavin Chipper

Cool story. Bit annoying Gevin asked as I was going to make that a backup conversation topic on Saturday in case of awkward silences. You could have pretended not to have seen it if you hadn't posted that reply. Still, there's plenty more on the subject to talk about than that if you're interested!...

Gavin Chipper

One definition of 'best' would be which set used the least number of numbers in total to solve all 899, so count 2 if you can solve with 2 numbers up to 6 if you have to use all 6 ( does that make sense?). It's also something I could extract fairly easily. On that method, the 'best' set is 4, 7, 9,...

Gavin Chipper

Yes, you're absolutely right! I always find it funny how difficult I find it to visualise the simplest things, even when I've seen them hundreds of times before. (I always marvel at the vision of others, like when new developments spring up and all connect into the existing roads and shit like that...

Gavin Chipper

Brilliant final numbers solution from Rachel. S'what I was thinking. How did she do it? I missed today's show but I got the numbers off someone else who watched it. I did ((5+4)*9-5)*8+6 (I think - that's from memory) in about 30 seconds or so. The second one I got in about 30 seconds as well (didn...

Gavin Chipper

I always check those comments. The ones on the Carol Vorderman videos used to be amazing too. The best one I ever read, on a Rachel Riley vid, was something like "I'd love to watch her have a piss while I eat chips out of her nickers". EDIT: I found it, it was actually "i want to dip...

Gavin Chipper

Not so easy to spot a nine though, if you don't know there is one. And a question that just occurred to me: if several people get the same new word in the duel, do they all get the pencil, or only the first person? But this was goatdown and his pick which makes it easier. To be honest, it's surpris...

Gavin Chipper

Had audition today, having sat in traffic on the M62 (to Leeds) getting my 75 times table sorted in my head and then losing it completely in the interview. Is going through your 75 times table while driving more dangerous than texting? It is surely not illegal - yet! When I auditioned, I didn't kno...

Gavin Chipper

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....

Gavin Chipper

Jon Corby wrote:(which I used to play for a living for a few years.... happy days!)

What happened?

Gavin Chipper

Marc Meakin wrote:QANAT as an equaller in round 12.

I hope you checked on Lexplorer - I wouldn't want it to be the case that you QANAT have that.

Gavin Chipper

1,226 sets can solve any target between 101 & 999. I wonder if there's a way of splitting this up further to decide which is the "best". Maybe based on number of solutions (although as discussed previously, this isn't necessarily easy to define). Or maybe if you carry on past 999, whi...

Gavin Chipper

I think Simon has already suggested these idea, but I like them so much, I'm posting them again just to make sure they haven't been missed out/to check when they will be up. -Break down of top letters players by number of vowels, much like the breakdown for top numbers players by larges. -Breakdown...

Gavin Chipper

Gavin - one of the essential points of an election is that it can be seen to be fair. Which means people must understand the rules. Look at the fallout from Bush Jnr's first victory, because of rules which were not clear. So I'm afraid that absolutely rules out (for me) both your suggestions. The r...

Gavin Chipper

I had memorised pi up to 257 decimal places at A-level and it was fun to recite it. Necro'd . Did anyone watch a programme a while back about child "prodigies" where one boy memorised pi to a couple of hundred digits or so and this was hailed as some amazing record by his dad? I was wonde...

Gavin Chipper

Andrew Hulme wrote:I did indeed. First hand of day 3. I had him all in and at risk with my AQ vs his JJ, the board ran out QxxxJ which saved him and he went on the get third! Lucky barsteward

You played Scrabble?

Gavin Chipper

Craig Beevers wrote:Dig time.

England just crushed Australia in the T20 World Cup final. So sweet.

Pity it wasn't Liverpool.

Gavin Chipper

I was thinking more generally - which are the "best" targets and the "best" selections? So the best selections would be ones where you can make the most targets and the best targets would be the ones that you can make from the most selections.

Gavin Chipper

It is quite satisfying, and when someone first showed me I was very impressed and promised to always open my bananas this way forever. But then you get the little crappy bit of banana end at the top rather than the bottom. I used this method about three times (entirely just to impress other people)...

Gavin Chipper

I'll start: don't use cotton buds for cleaning your ears. They are useless. Use Bic pen lids. They're sturdy so you can scrape all the wax off the ear walls, or whatever you call it, they won't fall off, they go in the perfect depth (for me) before it starts getting uncomfortable, and they're cheap...

Gavin Chipper

This sort of thing would happen after every election if the voting system changed. It depends how it was changed. It's the obsession with the need for a majority "government" that seems to be causing the problems. When a party fails to achieve a majority, they then try and join up with ot...

Gavin Chipper

So I have a different solution. I'm not sure it solves the problem, but to me it does intuitively. I want a system that can account for "clones" obviously without looking at policies and making arbitrary decisions about which parties are "similar". So you score all the candidate...

Gavin Chipper

Ian Volante wrote:Why is this perfect game not showing on this high score page?

Sometimes I've noticed that records don't update on records pages for a few days.

Gavin Chipper

First past the post has produced strong government in this country for nearly a hundred years. It is amazing in all this time that there have only been around three elections where the result was a hung parliament. At most elections therefore, if there is a change of government the whole of the rej...

Gavin Chipper

Another system I've thought of involves giving scores again, and the winner goes through automatically, but the scores are rescaled before the second, third and fourth (if there are four seats) seats are decided. When the winner goes through, everyone who gave that candidate a positive score has the...

Gavin Chipper

Charlie Reams wrote:As a quick addendum, the cutest one I've seen yet is this one, which can easily be answered with pen & paper and doesn't require any programming.

Is it 2783915604?

Gavin Chipper

This is quite a simple system and for a brief time I decided it was my winner, but then I started having doubts. Let's say it's four seats in a constituency. Views might be quite polarised and a "right wing" candidate might win with a "left wing" candidate just behind. That woul...

Gavin Chipper

Charlie Reams wrote:
Gavin Chipper wrote:I prefer a system where you give the candidates a score (out of 10, for example).
Me too.

Nice plug.

What do you make of the rest of it?

Gavin Chipper

I've decided I don't like the systems where you rank the candidates in order. I looked at the systems on the Wikipedia and wasn't really happy with them for various reasons. I prefer a system where you give the candidates a score (out of 10, for example). Apparently this is range voting . I see this...

Gavin Chipper

Proportional representation has obvious advantages in that the representation will be more proportional. ;) But this leads to coalitions, which is allegedly a bad thing (is it though?) If the population was more uniformally distributed in terms of voting behaviour, then in a first past the post syst...

Gavin Chipper

The Liberal Democrats have been going on about this a lot recently, so I'm interested in what people here think. How would you have elections run? The Wikipedia is quite informative on diferent voting systems, and I've had a look at a few of them. I'll come back another time with my own thoughts tho...

Gavin Chipper

Kirk Bevins wrote:TOSTADO as a beater in round 7. 14 max game today - never heard of PANCETTA - awesome spot by Lee.

Even after reading it in the next day's spoilers? You're losing it!

Gavin Chipper

Susie did that thing that she's probably completely unaware of where she builds up a contestant's hopes only to dash them a fraction of a second later. COLLATER - "It is there... but only as OR" And I'm not sure GROOVY had completely fallen out of fashion. As far as I'm aware people have a...

Gavin Chipper

That Humble woman definitely said UNDARED rather than UNDEAD in round 4 or whatever it was - unless she hasn't learnt how to speak yet.

Gavin Chipper

Charlie Reams wrote:Both Bob and Kieran nailed it exactly.

This is one of the best puzzles I've seen for ages. I will pester my source for more.

Yeah, not bad actually. Unfortunately I was too lazy/thick to give it any proper thought and read the solutions.

Gavin Chipper

Marc Meakin wrote:As requested http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAP8I75rgtU

I had no idea Charlie did stand-up. I'm sure it's very funny, but I can't hear a fucking word.

Gavin Chipper

Gavin Chipper

Marc Meakin wrote:Fair point, but what about POLITICAL and TOPICAL.
Plus CSW recognizes it.

The basical fact is that it's not there!

Gavin Chipper

Scott Gillies wrote:cheers for the positve comments ben, nice to hear people think i'm good. As for quite a few max games its only 2 lol. my show is on 3rd june for anyone interested.

Two max games is still pretty good! You've obviously improved because I think I beat you a couple of times in the past!

Gavin Chipper

Also, true story: Woman stopped me today (doing the paper round) and said "Oh, you were on Calendar weren't you." I was like "No, Countdown" Anyway we talked abit about other things and then as I was leaving she went "Oh and once again, well done on Calendar". "NO...

Gavin Chipper

Edwin Mead wrote:GELATOS?

Might be GELATI?

Gavin Chipper

I don't think anyone's mentioned Pringles. That can only be a good sign.

Gavin Chipper

but overall Seabrooks make the best crisps, all theirs are great. I ordered a box from them once, with all their flavours in. Some are pretty good, but I wasn't a fan of all of them. The bacon ones were pretty good, but I tend not to like oniony ones, prawn cocktail and various other things. I seem...

Gavin Chipper

Dear Matthew, I am curious to know what I look like when I'm asleep. I want to record a whole night then play it back in fast motion. I've got a webcam on my laptop. No need for infrared or anything. Just need recording software and something that has fast motion playback. Can you show me the way? ...

Gavin Chipper

This beats Ben by nearly 20 minutes.

Gavin Chipper

I often find myself having an allergic reaction to certain crisps (well, they make me sneeze and give me a runny nose), but I've got no idea what it is in the crisps. This is annoying. I used to blame monosodium glutamate (always a good scapegoat) but further research led me to believe it gets a bad...

Gavin Chipper

Welcome back Derek. Glad you've been given permission to speak. ;) Maybe Derek and Charlie were sitting back watching the rest of us fight it out in this thread and decided that by staying out they were clearly the only two sane ones and decided to be mates again. Not forgetting the other several h...

Gavin Chipper

Peter Mabey wrote:
Ray Folwell wrote:Slightly simpler version of the 3rd numbers : (6x25+2) x (10-6)
I do hope Rachel gets well soon
I did it quite differently: (25+6X6)X10-2

Mabey I did it like that too. In fact I definitely did.

Gavin Chipper

Jon Corby wrote:Lol at Rachel's voice today.

I don't know what the filming schedule was, but it would be quite funny for her to have that voice for several weeks on television causing concerned viewers to write in, despite it only lasting a few days in real life.

Gavin Chipper

The basis of your argument rests upon binarisitic distinctions which do not exist. There is no them and us, certainly not from my perspective. There isn't from my perspective either - I was just taking Jon's idea and running with it. What Jon identified, in a somewhat genius moment of parody, are a...

Gavin Chipper

Yeah, I could understand you having a barney with him, since you two don't seem to get on (I think I stuck up for you in the last such incident), but Clive basically slagged him because he didn't take time to speak to him (even though he wouldn't necessarily have known who he was) during a short br...

Gavin Chipper

It's a real shame if he does leave, but if he does then recognise it's because of pillocks like you & Clive, not me. To be honest, Clive's post about Damian was not the shocking revelation that it was built up to be, but I still think he's easily given as good as he's got over the years on this...

Gavin Chipper

Is this forum getting you down? Are you fed up with people not agreeing with you about something, or just being on a forum run by Charlie Reams who you fucking hate? Does it annoy you that sometimes you don't get jokes, or are you just generally unable to occupy a forum that Charlie Reams is on? Th...

Gavin Chipper

Is this forum getting you down? Are you fed up with people not agreeing with you about something, or just being on a forum run by Charlie Reams who you fucking hate? Does it annoy you that sometimes you don't get jokes, or are you just generally unable to occupy a forum that Charlie Reams is on? Th...

Gavin Chipper

Can't seriously say it bothers me Gevin, and if people want to slate me in the comfort of their own cyber-existence, then i'll live with it. I was more referring to you slating me - sometimes I think it's funny because it's so over the top. I suppose what might change my stance is if someone i know...

Gavin Chipper

D Eadie wrote:That's a surprise, because i have, and always will, think of him as an objectional little jerk-off.

PS - and i've not had a beer yet.

You shouldn't be surprised that not everyone thinks the same as you. That would be fucking scary.

Gavin Chipper

Although its "discovery" created this initial backlash, I tend to think "secret" forums aren't the best solution. I'm quite happy to be a member both here and there, and there's no-one that upsets me at either place. I actually sometimes quite enjoy the "banter" with Da...

Gavin Chipper

At the end of the day it's a nerdy Countdown website and if someone here can get under your skin and affect you emotionally then ... really ... there is very little chance you're going make it: pick a tall building with a very short ledge. But sometimes people on that ledge make it back to tell the...

Gavin Chipper

Michael Wallace wrote:The poll options made me all excited that Raccoon might be an option, but alas not

Probably for the best - imagine if it had been an option and you came up as something else. It would have been terrible.

Gavin Chipper

Ryan Taylor wrote:
Julie T wrote: "Bash Week" sounds similar to "Mock the Week". I thought the analogy was funny, Gavin.
I thought as much. I have an allergy. Do I get a laugh? *sigh*

*punches Ryan in the face*

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