Ask Graeme?

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Michael Wallace
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Michael Wallace »

Graeme Cole wrote:If the letters are shuffled face up, that could explain it. Humans can't consciously generate truly random sequences, mainly because repeated occurrences of the same thing don't look "random" enough to us.
I can't be the only one who has been in the audience and seen the shuffling take place (although this was about four years ago). It was definitely face up and, as you might expect, featured a lot of what looked like deliberate splitting up of runs of consecutive letters. I assumed it was well known (and seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do for TV, given how horrendous properly shuffled board game games are).

Would be fun to see whether the 'horror' letters Q, Z, J and X also tend to be separated.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Ian Volante »

Michael Wallace wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote:If the letters are shuffled face up, that could explain it. Humans can't consciously generate truly random sequences, mainly because repeated occurrences of the same thing don't look "random" enough to us.
I can't be the only one who has been in the audience and seen the shuffling take place (although this was about four years ago). It was definitely face up and, as you might expect, featured a lot of what looked like deliberate splitting up of runs of consecutive letters. I assumed it was well known (and seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do for TV, given how horrendous properly shuffled board game games are).

Would be fun to see whether the 'horror' letters Q, Z, J and X also tend to be separated.
Aye, and the stats strongly bear this out - the official response puzzles me!
meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Ciaran Thompson »

Michael Wallace wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote:If the letters are shuffled face up, that could explain it. Humans can't consciously generate truly random sequences, mainly because repeated occurrences of the same thing don't look "random" enough to us.
I can't be the only one who has been in the audience and seen the shuffling take place (although this was about four years ago). It was definitely face up and, as you might expect, featured a lot of what looked like deliberate splitting up of runs of consecutive letters. I assumed it was well known (and seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do for TV, given how horrendous properly shuffled board game games are).
I've seen the show being filmed several times but never personally saw any shuffling going on, apart from people sitting in front of me continually moving in their seats and partially blocking my view lol. However, in 2002 (which I know was 11 years ago), there was an ITV programme about what goes on behind the scenes of the nation's favourite game shows. Countdown featured on it, with Richard showing what the back of the clock looks like with its various mechanisms, and how they do the conundrum etc. Anyway, it did show one of the guys shuffling the letters face-up on a table. Strange I know, but I remember things like that from all those years ago.

Unlike the number cards, the back of the letter cards are plain black and if you shuffle them faced-down, then there would be letters upside-down all over the board. Although that has happened with the S, and also the M being put the wrong way around and appearing as a W and visa versa. In the 1997 Christmas special, which had Richard playing against Carol, one of the rounds had four consecutive E's. It's probably the only time it has happened. Richard cleverly spotted TEEPEE, which is also probably the only time that that word has appeared on the show.
Last edited by Ciaran Thompson on Tue Mar 19, 2013 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Johnny Canuck »

Ciaran Thompson wrote:In the 1997 Christmas special, which had Richard playing against Carol, one of the rounds had four consecutive E's. It's probably the only time it has happened. Richard cleverly spotted TEEPEE, which is also probably the only time that that word has appeared on the show.
The selection was RLERTEEPE, which, as it happens, can also be scrambled (minus one letter) to form the first and last names of a certain Series 66 finalist. Question for Graeme: Has any other selection ever contained a contestant's full name?
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Adam Gillard »

Johnny Canuck wrote:
Ciaran Thompson wrote:In the 1997 Christmas special, which had Richard playing against Carol, one of the rounds had four consecutive E's. It's probably the only time it has happened. Richard cleverly spotted TEEPEE, which is also probably the only time that that word has appeared on the show.
The selection was RLERTEEPE, which, as it happens, can also be scrambled (minus one letter) to form the first and last names of a certain Series 66 finalist. Question for Graeme: Has any other selection ever contained a contestant's full name?
I know that Round 1 of this game, and probably many other rounds of many other games, contained the name of one of my opponents.
Mike Brown: "Round 12: T N R S A E I G U

C1: SIGNATURE (18) ["9; not written down"]
C2: SEATING (7)
Score: 108–16 (max 113)

Another niner for Adam and yet another century. Well done, that man."
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Dave Preece »

Greame...

What percentage of 9 letter words have been found in the first round?

I seem to recall a hell of a lot scored in the first round, how does it compare with all rounds, please?

And what are the stats for possible nines too, please?
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Johnny Canuck wrote:How many times has the same target come up in two consecutive numbers rounds? And in any of those instances, has it been possible to solve the rounds with exactly the same solutions twice in a row? (e.g. 100 6 1 8 3 2 -> 801 and 100 50 75 25 1 8 -> 801 could both be solved with 100x8+1)
Ten games have had two consecutive numbers rounds with the same target. A further game had two numbers rounds with the same target but they weren't consecutive.

In none of those cases was it possible to solve both rounds exactly with the same solution, but in this case you could have got one away with (7+1)*25.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Dave Preece wrote:Greame...

What percentage of 9 letter words have been found in the first round?

I seem to recall a hell of a lot scored in the first round, how does it compare with all rounds, please?

And what are the stats for possible nines too, please?
Number of nines available in 15-rounders, by round number:

Code: Select all

   ROUND    COUNT
       1      179
       2      155
       3      182
       4      164
       6      146
       7      150
       8      174
       9      177
      11      179
      12      154
      13      163
More nines have been available in rounds 1, 3, 8, 9 and 11 than the average over all rounds, but not significantly so.

Number of nines spotted by either player in 15-rounders, by round number:

Code: Select all

   ROUND  SPOTTED        %
       1       56    31.28
       2       35    22.58
       3       48    26.37
       4       44    26.83
       6       46    31.51
       7       46    30.57
       8       45    25.86
       9       46    25.99
      11       48    26.82
      12       42    27.27
      13       49    30.06
When it comes to actually spotting the nines, contestants seem better at it in rounds 1 and 6 than in any other round. No idea why. The counts are small enough that the fluctuation could just be statistical noise.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Dave Preece »

'Statistical noise' like it!

;-)
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Clive Brooker »

Ian Volante wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:I can't be the only one who has been in the audience and seen the shuffling take place (although this was about four years ago). It was definitely face up and, as you might expect, featured a lot of what looked like deliberate splitting up of runs of consecutive letters. I assumed it was well known (and seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do for TV, given how horrendous properly shuffled board game games are).
Aye, and the stats strongly bear this out - the official response puzzles me!
Also puzzled.

The "shuffling" thread from COC13 is here. The only explanation I can come up with is that if a spokesperson from Countdown were to say in an open forum that the selections are manipulated in any way that would be seized upon by the media, and we'd soon see "Countdown is fixed!" or similar.

Personally I'd quite like to see the unpredictability that genuinely random selections bring. After a few weeks, when the viewers have had time to notice the change and write in to complain, Susie can delegate OOW to Rachel for a day and she can give an explanation of what true randomness is, and assure us that whatever we may think, Countdown has always done it this way.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Clive Brooker »

Using the Countdown Tools difficulty rating system for numbers games, what is the most difficult numbers game ever solved on the show?
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Dave Preece »

Are there any stats you can get on Carol v. Rachel on their % performances solving numbers games?
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Chris Philpot »

Dave's question about Carol v Rachel is very interesting. I hope you don't mind if I pose one of my own.

What is the closest that a letters selection, in the order displayed on the board at the start of the 30 seconds, has come to matching a conundrum scramble from elsewhere in Countdown history?
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Keith Bennett »

Original first sentence contained spoiler, sorry, leading to the question "what's the highest cumulative winning margin by any octochamp"?


Re earlier discussions about letter shuffles, which I've only read today, I've always had the impression that when a brand new DC guest arrives the first set of letters is a favourable selection. Obviously nobody can be sure how many Cs and Vs the first picker will go for but if (say) the first 6 Cs were relatively common ones and the top 5 vowels included a couple of Es and no U, there would be a good chance of an 8 or 9 appearing. It's a totally subjective observation I know, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's a bit of tweaking on such occasions, and I wouldn't blame them if there was.
Last edited by Keith Bennett on Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Dave Preece »

A blind man on a galloping horse can see tweaking happens, a lot!
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Brian Moore »

Keith Bennett wrote:Spoiler now removed! (Good point, Keith.)
Oh, I needn't bother watching Thursday's or Friday's shows then.

Could we keep the questions of stats of current series out of this thread, please?
Last edited by Brian Moore on Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Andy Platt »

Graeme has made this list previously, Keith, and it was 544 points by Eoin Monaghan.
Maybe you could retroactively edit the font colour of your post with a little warning, not that it helps Brian too much unfortunately :(
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Ben Wilson »

Looking back over this thread, I stumbled across this game- http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4992 -which must surely hold the record for 'most disallowed words in a row but still won', but I'd love to know what the record for 'most disallowed words but still won' was.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Jack Worsley »

Ben Wilson wrote:Looking back over this thread, I stumbled across this game- http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4992 -which must surely hold the record for 'most disallowed words in a row but still won', but I'd love to know what the record for 'most disallowed words but still won' was.
I think this episode must surely be the record.
http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5499
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Jack Worsley wrote:
Ben Wilson wrote:Looking back over this thread, I stumbled across this game- http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4992 -which must surely hold the record for 'most disallowed words in a row but still won', but I'd love to know what the record for 'most disallowed words but still won' was.
I think this episode must surely be the record.
http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5499
Yep, along with episode 3443.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Keith Bennett »

Brian Moore wrote:
Could we keep the questions of stats of current series out of this thread, please?
Apologies Brian (and anyone else) - hadn't thought that one through. But there again don't quite understand why you promptly re-quoted it so that anyone looking at the most recent post would immediately see it. You could simply have posted the last line, point made, job done.

I've now edited it - maybe you can do the same.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Brian Moore »

Keith Bennett wrote:I've now edited it - maybe you can do the same.
Thanks Keith. Done.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Gavin Chipper »

I'm not sure what that post originally said, Keith, but if it still says that it led to the question x, then that still looks pretty spoilerific to me.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Keith Bennett wrote:Re earlier discussions about letter shuffles, which I've only read today, I've always had the impression that when a brand new DC guest arrives the first set of letters is a favourable selection. Obviously nobody can be sure how many Cs and Vs the first picker will go for but if (say) the first 6 Cs were relatively common ones and the top 5 vowels included a couple of Es and no U, there would be a good chance of an 8 or 9 appearing. It's a totally subjective observation I know, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's a bit of tweaking on such occasions, and I wouldn't blame them if there was.
I'm not sure why they'd bother doing this, but here are the stats anyway.

I've broken it down by five-year (ish) periods. The DEBUT columns show the average max in a new DC guest's first letters round over that five year period. The AVG columns show the average max in every letters round over that period. These are given for both Gevin scoring and normal scoring.

Code: Select all

                                   GEVIN SCORING      NORMAL SCORING
                          DEBUTS   DEBUT     AVG      DEBUT     AVG
1982-11-02 to 1987-11-01      22    7.09    7.06       7.50    7.41
1987-11-02 to 1992-11-01      20    7.15    7.14       7.60    7.50
1992-11-02 to 1997-11-01      18    7.00    7.12       7.50    7.48
1997-11-02 to 2002-11-01      62    7.69    7.30       9.15    7.82
2002-11-02 to 2007-11-01      58    7.50    7.39       8.12    8.00
2007-11-02 to 2013-03-01      68    7.26    7.30       7.66    7.83
Everything looks pretty ordinary except the period 1997-2002. There seem to have been plenty more nines on DC guests' debut days than expected during this period: 10 out of 62 DC guest debuts started with a nine being available, which is 16%, when for the same period only 5.8% of letters rounds had a nine available. Can this be explained by coincidence? If we say that the probability of getting a nine is 5.8%, the binomial distribution formulae tell us that the probability of 10 or more rounds in 62 having nines is 0.29%. Interesting, but not completely outside the realms of chance, especially as we've divided Countdown's history up into six parts and there was a chance of getting a result like this in any of the other five parts as well.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Charlie Reams »

Andy Platt wrote:They told me that it would only activate in sync when Nick presses the conundrum scramble reveal button and wouldn't have any effect before that
I was told the same thing, but I was pretty doubtful that it was true because the buzzers are so low tech, so I quizzed whoever it was (can't remember now) a bit harder and no one could tell me how that would actually work. So my suspicion is that you can buzz any time. Someone should try!
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Charlie Reams wrote:
Andy Platt wrote:They told me that it would only activate in sync when Nick presses the conundrum scramble reveal button and wouldn't have any effect before that
I was told the same thing, but I was pretty doubtful that it was true because the buzzers are so low tech, so I quizzed whoever it was (can't remember now) a bit harder and no one could tell me how that would actually work. So my suspicion is that you can buzz any time. Someone should try!
The buzzers must get disabled automatically when the other contestant buzzes, and when the 30 seconds are up, so it doesn't seem far-fetched to me that they're only enabled when the clock starts. Whether you can hold down the buzzer before the clock starts, in order to make an immediate buzz as soon as Nick presses the clock start button, is another matter.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

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Push switch? Like cheap torches?
The forum's resident JAILBAKER, who has SPONDERED several times...
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by JackHurst »

Which contestants have had the most appearances in the challengers chair?

Which players have been in the most episodes?

Which players have spent the most time on screen? (for simplicity say an episode is directly proportional in length to the number of rounds in that episode)
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Re: Ask Graeme?

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JackHurst wrote:Which contestants have had the most appearances in the challengers chair?
A quick look suggests Conor wins with 8, closely followed by Kirk who has been challenger 7 times out of 16 of his appearances. Jonathan Rawlinson is also on 7, with an impressive 6 consecutive episodes in the challengers chair.

Who has the most consecutive episodes in either chair?
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Jojo Apollo »

Matthew Tassier wrote:
Gavin Chipper wrote:Yeah, I'd say it would increase average scores, but decrease the chances of a 146 or 146-beater. However, 146 can be beaten with three 9s, so essentially there's only a 3/11 chance that by reducing the letters rounds to 10 you'd actually take away one of your nines. So the extra numbers could still boost your score even in this case.
Surprisingly it appears that the change to 10/4/1 actually increases the chance of a 146+ max being available.
Using Graeme's letters round max distribution and assuming 1 large/2 large numbers picks (i.e. 98% chance 10 max, 2% chance 7 max) the chance of 146+ being available is increased from 2.14% to 2.89%

This can probably be explained by the increase in the chance that 2 available 9 letter words are enough to get you to a 146 max.

I'd also like to take the chance to thank Graeme for his great work on this thread, a delight to any stats-geek.
Ah just the answer I was looking for. Cheers :)
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Jack Worsley »

JackHurst wrote:
JackHurst wrote:Which contestants have had the most appearances in the challengers chair?
A quick look suggests Conor wins with 8, closely followed by Kirk who has been challenger 7 times out of 16 of his appearances. Jonathan Rawlinson is also on 7, with an impressive 6 consecutive episodes in the challengers chair.

Who has the most consecutive episodes in either chair?
Kai Laddiman has made 14 appearances and has had the champion's chair every time! Surely a record.
http://wiki.apterous.org/Kai_Laddiman

Not sure about the record for the challenger's chair. The champions and challengers chairs were only introduced in the mid-to-late 90's (can't remember exactly when) so before then, it was not uncommon for people to play all of their heats as "contestant 2", which we now know as the challenger's chair. I would imagine Jonathan's 6 would be a record or close to one since this was introduced.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Standard deviations of octotals
15-round octoruns by number of maxes
Xicount runs by maxes
15-round octochamps by winning margin and points against
Octoruns by number of nines available

The above posts have all been edited to include Rose Boyle, Heather Styles and David Barnard, which means they're up to date to the end of series 67. Also Kevin Thurlow and Richard Pay have been added as they didn't get counted last time. Turns out if you manually exclude Peter Lee and Kirk Bevins' first games, you're also excluding games from Kevin Thurlow and Richard Pay which means they no longer get counted as octochamps. Whoops. Fixed now.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Gavin Chipper »

Would you be able to do 9-round xicount max counts? Thanks!
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Dave Preece »

Was about to ask the same!
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Clive Brooker wrote:Using the Countdown Tools difficulty rating system for numbers games, what is the most difficult numbers game ever solved on the show?
I'm not going to be able to do this one because I don't know how the Countdown Tools difficulty rating works.

The database doesn't store the arithmeticians' declarations so I'll come back to the Rachel v Carol thing another day.
Chris Philpot wrote:What is the closest that a letters selection, in the order displayed on the board at the start of the 30 seconds, has come to matching a conundrum scramble from elsewhere in Countdown history?
No letters selection has ever exactly matched a conundrum scramble. None have come very close, either. Of all letters rounds whose selections are anagrams of a conundrum, three of them needed only four letters to be moved to match a conundrum scramble. They are: round 12 of episode 3125 with the conundrum TREADONTO in episode 5513; round 9 of episode 3909 with the first conundrum INTERCODE in the series 10 final; and round 8 of episode 5450 with the conundrum TENTODINE in episode 5391.

Incidentally, no letters selection on the show has ever come up more than once in the same order.
JackHurst wrote:Which contestants have had the most appearances in the challengers chair?
As Jack W says, the convention of putting the champion on the viewer's left and the challenger on the viewer's right hasn't always existed. It seems to have started a short way into series 37 in 1997, which is much later than I'd have guessed. David Trace has the highest number of appearances in the right-hand chair at 15 - all his heats, finals and CoC matches were in that chair. Damian Eadie also has 15 (edit - 16) appearances in that chair, if you count this special (which the database doesn't because it can't cope with two players in one seat).

Edit: the other day I fixed a load of mistakes on the wiki, mostly to do with scoring, that I found using this database. One of the anomalies I found was that in Suzanne Miles's CoC game with Damian Eadie, the episode page had the two players the opposite way round from on the series page. The CDB recap for this game showed Damian on the left, so I changed the series page accordingly. However, having referred all the way back to Mike Brown's handwritten notes, it seems Damian was on the right in this game after all, and the episode page was wrong. I've refixed the wiki, which hopefully is now correct. This gives him a record 16 games in the right hand chair if you count the two-a-side special.

Clive Freedman has the most appearances in the left-hand chair - all 19 of his broadcast games were in that chair. The only one that wasn't was a Masters game that was never shown.
JackHurst wrote:Which players have been in the most episodes?
Conor Travers, Allan Saldanha and Tim Morrissey all played in 21 episodes. Masters episodes, although they were split over five days, count as one episode.
JackHurst wrote:Which players have spent the most time on screen? (for simplicity say an episode is directly proportional in length to the number of rounds in that episode)
If we can count Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman as players (they did play in one episode) that easily gives them the most on-screen time. King Dick is said to have more broadcast hours than anyone else on British television apart from the girl on the BBC test card. If we don't count them, Mark Nyman and Damian Eadie, in that order, are highest thanks to their many DC appearances.

If we only count rounds where the person was playing, then the top ten players by number of rounds played are as follows...

Code: Select all

    1.  Conor Travers            312
    2.  Chris Wills              282
    3.  Mark Tournoff            255
    3.  Jack Hurst               255
    5.  David O'Donnell          241
    5.  Kirk Bevins              241
    5.  Jonathan Rawlinson       241
    8.  Charlie Reams            240
    8.  Tom Hargreaves           240
   10.  Paul Gallen              225
   10.  Jon O'Neill              225
   10.  Nick Wainwright          225
Arguably, tiebreaks shouldn't be counted. That would put David O'Donnell, Kirk Bevins and Jonathan Rawlinson on 240.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Clive Brooker »

Graeme Cole wrote:
Clive Brooker wrote:Using the Countdown Tools difficulty rating system for numbers games, what is the most difficult numbers game ever solved on the show?
I'm not going to be able to do this one because I don't know how the Countdown Tools difficulty rating works.
I was messing about really, trying to judge how much interest there might be in this sort of question. Not much by the look of things.

Naturally I don't know how WTP's ratings are calculated either, but I managed to rig up a script to capture them all. For some reason, there seems to be a gap in the scale between 99% (the most difficult 1% of games) and 89%. There have only been 16 99% games on the show, none of which was solved. That's nowhere near 1% of the total, probably because the hardest games are deemed to be those with unlikely looking divisions which are more likely to be needed in the 3- and 4-large games which are chosen less often. Moving to the next hardest, in the 119 89% games, 5 of the 238 attempts have been successful. And if I group games into bands 5% wide (0% - 4%, 5% - 9%, etc) the success rates for those bands forms a monotonic scale, suggesting that WTP's approach is a reasonable match with reality.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Chris Philpot »

Brilliant stuff as ever, Graeme!
Clive Brooker wrote:Moving to the next hardest, in the 119 89% games, 5 of the 238 attempts have been successful.
Out of interest, do you have the rounds themselves available/wiki links? Great bit of research!
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Tom »

Apologies if this has been asked before, but when it comes to tie-break/sudden death conundrums, does anyone know if they just use the next one on the list or if there is a reserve conundrum for each game?

I guess in heat games it wouldn't matter an awful lot but in series finals conundrums typically are harder in semis than quarters so wondered if anything was set in the eventuality that there would be a tie-breaker?

Also, I have only ever seen sudden death conundrums a handful of times including the 30th BC; does anyone know if there has had to be 3 conundrums at the end at any one time?

TH
Probably the second tallest ever series finalist.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by James Robinson »

Tom wrote:Also, I have only ever seen sudden death conundrums a handful of times including the 30th BC; does anyone know if there has had to be 3 conundrums at the end at any one time?

TH
In that case, Tom, it has certainly happened twice; here (in the Supreme Championship, no less!): http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_1861 and here: http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4483
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Charlie Reams »

Tom wrote:Apologies if this has been asked before, but when it comes to tie-break/sudden death conundrums, does anyone know if they just use the next one on the list or if there is a reserve conundrum for each game?

I guess in heat games it wouldn't matter an awful lot but in series finals conundrums typically are harder in semis than quarters so wondered if anything was set in the eventuality that there would be a tie-breaker?
For the finals there are definitely separate tie-breakers. For the heats probably not.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Clive Brooker »

Chris Philpot wrote:
Clive Brooker wrote:Moving to the next hardest, in the 119 89% games, 5 of the 238 attempts have been successful.
Out of interest, do you have the rounds themselves available/wiki links? Great bit of research!
If I've copied them correctly, the links are as follows:

3901 R5
4843 R10
4977 R5
5210 R14
5633 R14
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Mike Brown »

Hope this hasn't been asked already... has the number of 'thrashings' gone up over time (and especially since the dawn of apterous)? I'm thinking in terms of increased winning margins (as a percentage). Be nice to have some kind of evidence as to whether apterous really is 'killing Countdown'. :)
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Post by James Robinson »

Mike Brown wrote:Hope this hasn't been asked already... has the number of 'thrashings' gone up over time (and especially since the dawn of apterous)? I'm thinking in terms of increased winning margins (as a percentage). Be nice to have some kind of evidence as to whether apterous really is 'killing Countdown'. :)
Well, in this category, it's 1 pre-Apterous and 4 post-Apterous.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Clive Brooker »

Mike Brown wrote:Hope this hasn't been asked already... has the number of 'thrashings' gone up over time (and especially since the dawn of apterous)? I'm thinking in terms of increased winning margins (as a percentage). Be nice to have some kind of evidence as to whether apterous really is 'killing Countdown'. :)
Why be so quick to blame Apterous? Making the assumption that the majority of contestant applications come from the viewing audience, it must be the case that a higher proportion of applicants are accepted nowadays than in the glory days of 4 million plus.

On the other hand, given the easy availability of online resources, perhaps the average applicant is stronger nowadays. Can there be many whose play is not influenced by Apterous? Even if there are more thrashings than before, maybe Apterous is saving Countdown.

It will be interesting to see what Graeme finds.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Mike Brown »

Clive Brooker wrote:
Mike Brown wrote:Hope this hasn't been asked already... has the number of 'thrashings' gone up over time (and especially since the dawn of apterous)? I'm thinking in terms of increased winning margins (as a percentage). Be nice to have some kind of evidence as to whether apterous really is 'killing Countdown'. :)
Why be so quick to blame Apterous?
I'm not, hence the smiley. I was really just referring to the 'Is Apterous killing Countdown' threads from a while back, although I do think there's been a trend towards more severe beatings, which is probably due to a number of factors, one of which is the increase in apto-aware players.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Mike Brown wrote:Hope this hasn't been asked already... has the number of 'thrashings' gone up over time (and especially since the dawn of apterous)? I'm thinking in terms of increased winning margins (as a percentage). Be nice to have some kind of evidence as to whether apterous really is 'killing Countdown'. :)
With regard to any change in the number of "thrashings", it depends how you look at it. Here are some graphs measuring various things over all 15-round series. The first series to conclude after apterous was created was series 59.

The graph of average winning margin by series doesn't show any great increase, except perhaps for series 63.
Image

Instead of looking at the average winning margin, let's look at how many times somebody's won with a large margin. If for each series we look at the percentage of games in that series that were won by more than 50 points, we get this...
Image

There's a lot of natural variation, in both the pre- and post-apterous days, but series 63 and 64 do stick out a bit.

As well as measuring how many games there have been with a wide margin of victory, let's look at the other end of the scale as well. Here's the percentage of games that went to crucial conundrums, for each series.
Image

Post-apterous, the graph of crucial conundrums seems to fluctuate more, but crucials aren't necessarily significantly more or less likely now than before.

If I have to find a conclusion from all this, it would have to be that if you didn't know when apterous started, you couldn't point to any specific position on any of the graphs above and say "look, that's obviously when apterous started". There have always been high-quality players, one-sided games, and players prepared to invest the time to practise for the show - before apterous they just found other ways to practise (playing over MSN, using the handheld game, etc). Series 63 and 64 had lots of hugely talented apterous players and that's reflected in the graphs, but they're only two series out of the nine that have happened since apterous started, all of which have featured apterous players. So while there's some evidence of the impact of apterous on increasing the one-sidedness of games, this impact is actually quite small, only really detectable for two series about two years ago, and often overstated.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Michael Wallace »

It would be interesting to know how many apterites there were in each series: looking at averages across all games is presumably going to considerably dilute any apto-effect. Could you look at median winning margin in heat games of series finalists?
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Post by JackHurst »

I would like to see the evidence for wins of more than 60, 70, 80, 90. I suspect there might be a point at which we do see a sharp increase in the last 3 or 4 years
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Graeme Cole »

Michael Wallace wrote:It would be interesting to know how many apterites there were in each series: looking at averages across all games is presumably going to considerably dilute any apto-effect. Could you look at median winning margin in heat games of series finalists?
Image

This graph counts the winning margins of all heat games in which one or both of the players became a series finalist. "Series finalist" means anyone who played in the series quarter-finals or beyond. Heat games where a series finalist lost still count as a positive margin. I decided to do it that way otherwise it's tricky to decide which way the margin should be if a finalist plays another finalist in the heats. If a finalist does play another finalist in the heats, that margin is only counted once.

Series 61 and 63 are the obvious highlights. I suggest that one of the reasons people noticed more "thrashings" in series 63 is that it came immediately after the 15-round series with the lowest median margin in finalists' heats. If you wanted to put a Penelope spin on it, you'd have said "the median margin in finalists' heats is up 153% from last series!"
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Matt Morrison »

Graeme Cole wrote:Series 61 and 63 are the obvious highlights. I suggest that one of the reasons people noticed more "thrashings" in series 63 is that it came immediately after the 15-round series with the lowest median margin in finalists' heats. If you wanted to put a Penelope spin on it, you'd have said "the median margin in finalists' heats is up 153% from last series!"
Or more likely up 253% because it was two and a half times higher :)
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Post by Gavin Chipper »

Matt Morrison wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote:Series 61 and 63 are the obvious highlights. I suggest that one of the reasons people noticed more "thrashings" in series 63 is that it came immediately after the 15-round series with the lowest median margin in finalists' heats. If you wanted to put a Penelope spin on it, you'd have said "the median margin in finalists' heats is up 153% from last series!"
Or more likely up 253% because it was two and a half times higher :)
Oh I see - you're being Penelope. I was confused for a minute.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Mark Ivey »

Has there ever been a show where there has been two or three numbers games which have only required a single working (for instance, 106 - 100,6 and any other four)?

Also, full kudos to Graeme and everyone for this thread. It's an amazing font of information.
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Post by Guy Barry »

I have a question about the rules, and also one about an individual episode.

(1) What happens if both contestants make the same declaration, but neither has written their answer down?

(2) When did the following incident take place and what were the details? (I may not have remembered them completely right.)

There was a numbers game which neither the contestants nor Carol managed to solve. For some reason, Richard Whiteley kept pressuring Carol to come up with the solution, not only through that episode but through the next one as well. Then, two (or maybe three) episodes later, Richard opened the programme by announcing the solution, which involved multiplying numbers to make an intermediate total of four or five digits (this was in the days before "four large" was commonplace). There were astonished cheers and applause from the audience, and Carol asked how he'd worked it out, to which he mumbled something about "Pentium" and "mouse". Whether he'd been fed the answer by the production team I don't know - the whole thing was shrouded in mystery.

I think it may have been late 90s, but I'm really not at all certain.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Mark Deeks »

Mark Ivey wrote:Has there ever been a show where there has been two or three numbers games which have only required a single working (for instance, 106 - 100,6 and any other four)?

Also, full kudos to Graeme and everyone for this thread. It's an amazing font of information.
I'm pretty sure there was once a numbers game with a target of 100, with a 100 in the selection.
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Post by Andy Platt »

Guy Barry wrote:(1) What happens if both contestants make the same declaration, but neither has written their answer down?
This happened to me and Alex in round 14 of this game as neither of us had time to write down our method - what they do is just pause filming, ask the contestants to use the next five or ten seconds or so (they're not really that pressuring about it actually, to be honest) to write it down, then they cut the filming back to Nick and you'd just declare again without saying "not written down".
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Thomas Carey »

I've always wondered what would happen in this scenario: (again not really about stats, but meh)

Selection: R E T I N U X A S
C1 declares 7
C2 declares 8, not written down
Nick: OK, C1, word please.
C1: URINATES
Susie: That's an 8.
C1: D'oh!
Nick: What's your 8, C2?
C2: URINATES, but i hadn't written it down.

What would they do?
cheers maus
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Jon O'Neill »

Thomas Carey wrote:I've always wondered what would happen in this scenario: (again not really about stats, but meh)

Selection: R E T I N U X A S
C1 declares 7
C2 declares 8, not written down
Nick: OK, C1, word please.
C1: URINATES
Susie: That's an 8.
C1: D'oh!
Nick: What's your 8, C2?
C2: URINATES, but i hadn't written it down.

What would they do?
8-0 to C2 and anything else is crazy.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Matt Morrison »

Yeah, though it would be refilmed to produce an easier-to-watch 8 points for C2 I'd imagine.
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Clive Brooker »

The 16 99% numbers games (the most difficult on William Tunstall-Pedoe's crossword tools scale) seen on the show are:

153/4 100,3,7,9,9,7 : 442
1002/13 50,75,25,7,8,3 : 939
2050/8 75,100,50,1,4,1 : 994
2083/8 75,6,3,6,8,9 : 848
2980/4 75,25,2,1,8,5 : 957
3015/8 25,100,1,7,4,3 : 951
3254/5 50,75,100,25,5,1 : 867
3257/5 25,50,75,100,10,5 : 876
3295/10 25,50,75,4,2,9 : 855
3772/14 75,100,4,2,1,3 : 842
4439/5 100,75,50,25,1,3 : 595
4627/14 100,8,6,3,6,4 : 987
4729/10 25,75,2,1,5,5 : 947
4919/5 100,1,9,4,9,5 : 785
4982/10 50,9,6,10,6,8 : 733
5545/14 50,25,5,6,10,4 : 587
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Re: Ask Graeme?

Post by Ian Volante »

Clive Brooker wrote:William Tunstall-Pedoe
Bet he got bullied.
meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles meles
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