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Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 2:55 pm
by Andrew Hulme
lol <3 Kirk! Have there ever been any declarations where the contestant knew the word from real life?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:48 pm
by Grant Waters
JackHurst wrote:Which contestant(s) with at least one wine has the highest loss:win ratio?
:o Gosh I hope Graeme hasn't been keeping a record of contestants' alcohol consumption before recording their shows? ;)

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:30 pm
by Graeme Cole
Zarte Siempre wrote:I'm expecting this to take far too much time and effort to be worthwhile answering, but on the off-chance.

Are there lucky omens in Dictionary Corner? i.e. - does one produce the highest average scores, and does one (excluding finals week obviously) preside over more future series champions in their heats than anyone else?
If we list all the DC guests in order of the average joint score in all 15-round heat games they appeared in, the top five are:

Code: Select all

Tony Christie                  178.60
Steve Davis                    178.20
Clare Balding                  174.25
Ingrid Tarrant                 171.80
Jonathan Maitland              167.00
These five were only in DC for one week. If we restrict the table to only those guests with more than five appearances, we get this:

Code: Select all

Sue MacGregor                 164.20
Joan Bakewell                 163.80
Kathryn Apanowicz             162.80
Dr Hilary Jones               161.90
Matt Le Tissier               161.40
Gyles Brandreth has presided over more future series champions in their prelims (8) than any other guest.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:39 pm
by Graeme Cole
Jack Worsley wrote:Who's used the most phantom letters in a letters round?
18 contestants have offered words with two phantoms. Nobody's managed more.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:42 pm
by Graeme Cole
Mark Deeks wrote:Have there ever been any declarations on Countdown that would be pencils on Apterous today? So, valid as maxes, valid in ODE3 now, still unpencilled.
Kirk Bevins wrote:Have there been any declarations (during 15 round Countdown) that had a) never come up on the show before and b) were pencils at the time on apterous, i.e. the contestant knew the word from life or, if an apterite, had never offered it before as a max.
Anything regarding apterous pencils is a dead end I'm afraid - I don't have access to the apterous database, only the one I made from the wiki.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:47 pm
by Innis Carson
Mark Deeks wrote:Have there ever been any declarations on Countdown that would be pencils on Apterous today? So, valid as maxes, valid in ODE3 now, still unpencilled.
There has definitely been at least one - MYOGLOBIN remains unpencilled.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:08 pm
by Graeme Cole
Andy Platt wrote:Top 5 sexiest contestants ever?
While I don't have this information in an easily machine-readable form, I can tell you that the word SEX is visible on the far left of the screen at the very start of the Countdown titles.

Image

Will that do?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:38 pm
by Mark Deeks
Innis Carson wrote:
Mark Deeks wrote:Have there ever been any declarations on Countdown that would be pencils on Apterous today? So, valid as maxes, valid in ODE3 now, still unpencilled.
There has definitely been at least one - MYOGLOBIN remains unpencilled.
Well fuck a duck, Michael Calder. That's a brilliant spot.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:29 pm
by Andy Platt
Nice one Graeme.

MYOGLOBIN is incredible! Worth remembering as BOOMINGLY^.
Surprised it's not a listed conundrum on apterous as I've heard of it through biology and there are many much more obscure words included as a conundrum online.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:43 am
by JackHurst
If we had a graph, consisting of all contestants joined to other contestants they had played, what would be the largest connected bit of the graph? Which player in that part has the least degrees of separation from any other player? Finally, how many degrees of separation am I away from that player?

Finally finally, can you answer this question again after the championship has finished?

Thanks <3

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:54 am
by Innis Carson
JackHurst wrote:If we had a graph, consisting of all contestants joined to other contestants they had played, what would be the largest connected bit of the graph? Which player in that part has the least degrees of separation from any other player? Finally, how many degrees of separation am I away from that player?

Finally finally, can you answer this question again after the championship has finished?

Thanks <3
There was a discussion about this a while back, and it seems to be the case that all contestants are linked in this way, apart from a small isolated group in Series 53. So that answers the first part of the question at least, would be interesting to know the answer to the other part.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:27 pm
by Nick Deller
Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 6:40 pm
by Ben Wilson
Nick Deller wrote:Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history?
I'm guessing that 68 & 33 should perhaps be disregarded for this question.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 6:47 pm
by Nick Deller
Ben Wilson wrote:
Nick Deller wrote:Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history?
I'm guessing that 68 & 33 should perhaps be disregarded for this question.
Fair point, though 68 isn't in the Graemebase anyway. Not sure what to do about series which started with a CoC, also.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 6:47 pm
by Kirk Bevins
Ben Wilson wrote:
Nick Deller wrote:Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history?
I'm guessing that 68 & 33 should perhaps be disregarded for this question.
For a curio, include these series and see how they compare with regular ones.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 8:16 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Nick Deller wrote:Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history?
Yes. Good question.

For series with CofCs, specials etc. I think it would be best to disreagard the CofC games. They're not really part of the series after all, but just categorised like that. They could even be given their own separate rating like series 33.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 1:45 pm
by Zarte Siempre
After the great answer to my last question:

How many people have won a game, after missing a 9 that their opponent didn't miss?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 1:53 pm
by Jon Corby
Zarte Siempre wrote:After the great answer to my last question:

How many people have won a game, after missing a 9 that their opponent didn't miss?
I remember Paul Howe doing this in his heats, the lady he was against got DESPERADO in round 1. You've gotta be thinking your time's up when that happens.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:42 pm
by Andy Platt
Which contestant was the most successful after declaring an invalid word in round one of their first game?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:49 pm
by Andy Platt
Andy Platt wrote:Which contestant was the most successful after declaring an invalid word in round one of their first game?
Stewart Holden with UNMAILED. Although he did manage to pull it back in round 2 with a 9er...


Cheers Graeme

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 4:37 pm
by Mark Deeks
Zarte Siempre wrote:After the great answer to my last question:

How many people have won a game, after missing a 9 that their opponent didn't miss?
Me. Incidentally, that round would also answer my previous question - DISPERSER is unpencilled.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:13 pm
by Grant Waters
Andy Platt wrote:Which contestant was the most successful after declaring an invalid word in round one of their first game?
Well I'm not in Stewart Holden's league but my first declaration was mascule. It's valid in Latin as it happens but I was probably getting mixed up with MACULES.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:53 pm
by Graeme Cole
Ben Wilson wrote:
Nick Deller wrote:Measured by (number of maxed rounds/number of rounds played), which was the best series in Countdown history?
I'm guessing that 68 & 33 should perhaps be disregarded for this question.
I've counted letters and numbers rounds as two maxable rounds, so if both players maxed it that counts as 2 out of 2. For conundrums I've only counted them once - they're either 0/1 or 1/1. As expected, the top of this table is dominated by CoCs. The highest ordinary series is series 29, in which 43.92% of offerings were maxes.

Top 20:

Code: Select all

Championship of Champions XII         66.90 
Championship of Champions XI          58.39 
Championship of Champions IV          57.36 
Championship of Champions XIII        57.24 
Championship of Champions V           57.03 
Championship of Champions VI          57.03 
Championship of Champions VII         54.69 
Series 33 (Supreme Championship)      53.83 
Championship of Champions III         53.15 
Championship of Champions I           52.94 
Masters Series 1                      50.59 
Championship of Champions IX          49.06 
Masters Series 2                      47.74 
Special episodes                      47.00 
Championship of Champions VIII        45.31 
Junior Championship                   45.10 
Series 29                             43.92 
Series 27                             43.36 
Series 63                             42.91 
Series 31                             42.88 

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:05 pm
by Nick Deller
Ooh that's interesting, thank you! 29, 27 and 31 all in the top four regular series suggests 1993-1995 as an unsuspected and surprising golden era for the show, and I can't really remember why that would be the case.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:35 pm
by Ian Volante
Nick Deller wrote:Ooh that's interesting, thank you! 29, 27 and 31 all in the top four regular series suggests 1993-1995 as an unsuspected and surprising golden era for the show, and I can't really remember why that would be the case.
That's when I most enjoyed watching. Isn't that the time of the likes of Saldahna?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 2:30 pm
by Nick Deller
Ian Volante wrote:
Nick Deller wrote:Ooh that's interesting, thank you! 29, 27 and 31 all in the top four regular series suggests 1993-1995 as an unsuspected and surprising golden era for the show, and I can't really remember why that would be the case.
That's when I most enjoyed watching. Isn't that the time of the likes of Saldahna?
It's a little bit after Saldanha's time. The winners of those series were Darren Shacklady, David Elias and David Acton respectively though, so definitely three quality players.

It's also my own general era. :-) In between times, Series 28 was the series with me, Chris Hawkins, Wayne Kelly and Balding Blackpool Bloke, and I've always had it in mind as having been a pretty decent one.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 1:25 pm
by Lee Kelly
What is the longest undefeated streak in countdown.. i know jack hurst is on 14 at this time and just wondering who and what is the best undefeated streak??

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:12 pm
by James Robinson
Lee Kelly wrote:What is the longest undefeated streak in countdown.. i know jack hurst is on 14 at this time and just wondering who and what is the best undefeated streak??
If you discount the Master Series, which a lot of people do, then it's Harvey Freeman, who never lost a match on the show, and he played 19 of them :!: :!:

His only loss was to Mark Nyman in the Masters, when Nyman got the final conundrum (according to Mike Brown) on ZERO seconds :!:

But for genuine unbeatenness, if that won't do, ask Graeme. :D

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:39 pm
by Gavin Chipper
How many rounds have all of the octochamps scored points in out of the 120 or 72? Basically everything I asked about the maxes but changed to just whether they scored anything in the round.

Also, instead of maxes, how would everyone have scored with the following system - with letters, 1 point for a max, 1/2 for one off the max, 1/4 for two off the max (halving each time), regardless of whether their opponent beat them. For conundrums, just 1 point if they got it and nothing otherwise. For numbers, 1 for a max, 1/2 for one off, 1/3 for two off, 1/4 for three off (denominator goes up by 1 each time). Obviously they can't score if their opponent beat them because no valid method is verified. It seems intuitively right to have the drop-off less in the numbers than the letters. So as above, all the same information as with the max stats - thanks in advance!!!

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 5:36 pm
by Matt Morrison
Gevin Scoring v0.5

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 9:11 am
by Clive Brooker
Gavin Chipper wrote:Also, instead of maxes, how would everyone have scored with the following system - with letters, 1 point for a max, 1/2 for one off the max, 1/4 for two off the max (halving each time), regardless of whether their opponent beat them. For conundrums, just 1 point if they got it and nothing otherwise. For numbers, 1 for a max, 1/2 for one off, 1/3 for two off, 1/4 for three off (denominator goes up by 1 each time). Obviously they can't score if their opponent beat them because no valid method is verified. It seems intuitively right to have the drop-off less in the numbers than the letters. So as above, all the same information as with the max stats - thanks in advance!!!
Can you give Gevin access to the database please?

If you're going to start crediting players (or groupings of players) for what they did whether they scored in a round or not, you may be unfairly penalising them for trying to match their opponent with a word they know is probably invalid, which it could be argued shows better awareness and stronger gameplay.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 5:46 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Clive Brooker wrote:
Gavin Chipper wrote:Also, instead of maxes, how would everyone have scored with the following system - with letters, 1 point for a max, 1/2 for one off the max, 1/4 for two off the max (halving each time), regardless of whether their opponent beat them. For conundrums, just 1 point if they got it and nothing otherwise. For numbers, 1 for a max, 1/2 for one off, 1/3 for two off, 1/4 for three off (denominator goes up by 1 each time). Obviously they can't score if their opponent beat them because no valid method is verified. It seems intuitively right to have the drop-off less in the numbers than the letters. So as above, all the same information as with the max stats - thanks in advance!!!
Can you give Gevin access to the database please?

If you're going to start crediting players (or groupings of players) for what they did whether they scored in a round or not, you may be unfairly penalising them for trying to match their opponent with a word they know is probably invalid, which it could be argued shows better awareness and stronger gameplay.
No system is perfect, and you'll be able to find scenarios like that in all of them. I don't think your scenario would happen too often anyway. If you're looking at maxes or points scored, for example, then people will lose out from playing safe when their opponent has declared first so they know they will score anyway.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:01 pm
by Adam Gillard
Graeme, what is the average maximum available for a letters round and for a numbers round? Just wondering how much difference on average the proposed format change will make (I'm guessing about 2-3 points).

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:30 pm
by Jon O'Neill
Adam Gillard wrote:Graeme, what is the average maximum available for a letters round and for a numbers round? Just wondering how much difference on average the proposed format change will make (I'm guessing about 2-3 points).
Some sort of distribution around the average would also be quite useful.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:33 pm
by Michael Wallace
Jon O'Neill wrote:
Adam Gillard wrote:Graeme, what is the average maximum available for a letters round and for a numbers round? Just wondering how much difference on average the proposed format change will make (I'm guessing about 2-3 points).
Some sort of distribution around the average would also be quite useful.
On this subject, it would be pretty sweet to see series-by-series breakdowns, to see if an apto-effect can be identified.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 10:09 pm
by Graeme Cole
Adam Gillard wrote:Graeme, what is the average maximum available for a letters round and for a numbers round? Just wondering how much difference on average the proposed format change will make (I'm guessing about 2-3 points).
Average maximum points available is 7.7783 for letters, 9.8723 for numbers. However, some of the maxes for earlier games might be wrong as they use the ODE2r rather than the COD. If we just look at 15 rounders, the average maximum in a letters round is 7.9277. If we look only at 15 rounders since the start of 2011 (the introduction of the ODE3) it's 7.8368.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 10:13 pm
by Michael Wallace
Oh yeah, just realized my query doesn't make sense given that I thought we were talking about declarations, rather than maxes. If we could have stats on declarations over the past few series that would be fun (and arguably more indicative of what sort of change the new format would have on scores).

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 2:11 pm
by Johnny Canuck
If Jon O'Neill's 122 is the highest score without a nine, what is the highest without a nine or an eight (no words of more than 7 letters)? What is the highest without a nine, eight or seven (has this ever happened at all)? Also, what is the shortest longest word length ever offered by a contestant in a game?

Thanks to Gavin Chipper for having inspired this question. Apologies if you're too busy with other questions right now.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 5:59 pm
by Dave Preece
Surely a three letter word is the smallest offered ever? But then again, I'm sure I've seen someone just give up and offer nothing; when probably there was a two or a three letter word there?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 6:05 pm
by Conor
Dave Preece wrote:Surely a three letter word is the smallest offered ever? But then again, I'm sure I've seen someone just give up and offer nothing; when probably there was a two or a three letter word there?
For a given player's offerings during a game (e.g. 7,7,7,6,5,8,8,6,7,8,7) we take the maximum value. (So the max length of a word offered during the show). In that example, it's 8. He's wondering which player had the smallest maximum value in a game.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:23 pm
by Dave Preece
Conor wrote:
Dave Preece wrote:Surely a three letter word is the smallest offered ever? But then again, I'm sure I've seen someone just give up and offer nothing; when probably there was a two or a three letter word there?
For a given player's offerings during a game (e.g. 7,7,7,6,5,8,8,6,7,8,7) we take the maximum value. (So the max length of a word offered during the show). In that example, it's 8. He's wondering which player had the smallest maximum value in a game.
Arrr, right, I see - sorry - new to all this.

Q. What is the shortest word declared in any round, I've seen a three, surely no one has ever declared a two?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:30 pm
by James Robinson
Dave Preece wrote:Q. What is the shortest word declared in any round, I've seen a three, surely no one has ever declared a two?
Yeah, no-one has gone lower than 3 in terms of declaration or winning points. :geek:

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:26 am
by Mark Ivey
Here's a question that's come to mind...

Have the words COUNTDOWN or CONUNDRUM ever popped up in a game (either during the letters or as the conundrum)?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:44 am
by Johnny Canuck
I happen to know the answer to this one, so I'll step in.

Turns out the conundrum solution for the first-ever series final was CONUNDRUM. Since the name "conundrum" for the last round is never mentioned in Episode 1 (you can see it on YouTube), that might have been when they decided to call them conundrums in the first place.

DONUTWONC = COUNTDOWN was used as a conundrum in this match from Series 46.

AFAIK, neither of these have ever come up in a letters game. However, in Round 2 here, we were one consonant/vowel pick away.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:45 am
by Thomas Carey
Mark Ivey wrote:Here's a question that's come to mind...

Have the words COUNTDOWN or CONUNDRUM ever popped up in a game (either during the letters or as the conundrum)?
COUNTDOWN would have if Phil bloody Watkins had picked a final consonant. http://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_4145

Edit: ninja'd by Johnny.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 5:19 am
by Dave Preece
Good spot!

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 11:12 am
by Matt Bayfield
Graeme: I'm interested in how Numbers skills have evolved over the series of Countdown, specifically with regard to the Numbers round picks that contestants have selected. I seem to recall that in the early days, when Countdown was dominated by Scrabblers, it was very rare that anyone would pick anything other than 1 or 2 large. Nowadays, the 6-small specialists, and those who have put in effort to learn 4 large tricks, have come to the fore, realising how much of an advantage it confers to go for these traditionally more difficult selections.

For each series, what percentage of Numbers games have been 1 large, 2 large, 3 large, 4 large, and 6 small?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 12:06 pm
by Andy Platt
Matt Bayfield wrote:Graeme: I'm interested in how Numbers skills have evolved over the series of Countdown, specifically with regard to the Numbers round picks that contestants have selected. I seem to recall that in the early days, when Countdown was dominated by Scrabblers, it was very rare that anyone would pick anything other than 1 or 2 large. Nowadays, the 6-small specialists, and those who have put in effort to learn 4 large tricks, have come to the fore, realising how much of an advantage it confers to go for these traditionally more difficult selections.

For each series, what percentage of Numbers games have been 1 large, 2 large, 3 large, 4 large, and 6 small?
This.
The advent of web technology etc is very significant.
Even if a contestant isn't using apterous, they can still find websites with numbers tricks etc.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 3:12 pm
by Peter Mabey
James Robinson wrote:
Dave Preece wrote:Q. What is the shortest word declared in any round, I've seen a three, surely no one has ever declared a two?
Yeah, no-one has gone lower than 3 in terms of declaration or winning points. :geek:
What were the selections available :shock: :o :?:

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 4:33 pm
by Liam Tiernan
Most consective crucial conundrums? Most consecutive non-crucials?(I'm guessing series 63 or 64 for that one)

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 6:50 pm
by Graeme Cole
Michael Wallace wrote:Oh yeah, just realized my query doesn't make sense given that I thought we were talking about declarations, rather than maxes. If we could have stats on declarations over the past few series that would be fun (and arguably more indicative of what sort of change the new format would have on scores).
Looking over series 46 to 67, it doesn't vary much. In the following table, only valid declarations are counted, and, in the case where the opponent's word was longer, the number of points that would have been scored otherwise are counted.

Code: Select all

Series  Average raw letters round score
    46  6.5655
    47  6.6532
    48  6.6655
    49  6.4315
    50  6.5692
    51  6.6875
    52  6.6582
    53  6.6728
    54  6.6059
    55  6.5168
    56  6.6033
    57  6.5465
    58  6.4486
    59  6.4981
    60  6.5070
    61  6.6052
    62  6.4805
    63  6.6236
    64  6.4590
    65  6.4398
    66  6.3961
    67  6.5213

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 6:54 pm
by Graeme Cole
Dave Preece wrote:
Conor wrote:
Dave Preece wrote:Surely a three letter word is the smallest offered ever? But then again, I'm sure I've seen someone just give up and offer nothing; when probably there was a two or a three letter word there?
For a given player's offerings during a game (e.g. 7,7,7,6,5,8,8,6,7,8,7) we take the maximum value. (So the max length of a word offered during the show). In that example, it's 8. He's wondering which player had the smallest maximum value in a game.
Arrr, right, I see - sorry - new to all this.

Q. What is the shortest word declared in any round, I've seen a three, surely no one has ever declared a two?
I refer the honourable gentleman to... :-)

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 7:07 pm
by Adam Gillard
Graeme Cole wrote:
Adam Gillard wrote:Graeme, what is the average maximum available for a letters round and for a numbers round? Just wondering how much difference on average the proposed format change will make (I'm guessing about 2-3 points).
Average maximum points available is 7.7783 for letters, 9.8723 for numbers. However, some of the maxes for earlier games might be wrong as they use the ODE2r rather than the COD. If we just look at 15 rounders, the average maximum in a letters round is 7.9277. If we look only at 15 rounders since the start of 2011 (the introduction of the ODE3) it's 7.8368.
Thank you!

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 7:09 pm
by Gavin Chipper
What is the average score that an octochamp gets in the letters and the numbers rounds?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 7:34 pm
by Graeme Cole
Matt Bayfield wrote:Graeme: I'm interested in how Numbers skills have evolved over the series of Countdown
Okay. Who are you, and what have you done with Matt?
Matt Bayfield wrote:specifically with regard to the Numbers round picks that contestants have selected. I seem to recall that in the early days, when Countdown was dominated by Scrabblers, it was very rare that anyone would pick anything other than 1 or 2 large. Nowadays, the 6-small specialists, and those who have put in effort to learn 4 large tricks, have come to the fore, realising how much of an advantage it confers to go for these traditionally more difficult selections.

For each series, what percentage of Numbers games have been 1 large, 2 large, 3 large, 4 large, and 6 small?
According to the database, the show was nearly seven years old before anyone thought to pick 4 large. The caveat to this is that series 1 and 2 have hardly any round details associated with them, so we can't say for certain that it didn't happen then.

Graph is as follows, but take series 1 and 2 with a pinch of salt. Only series games are included, not CoCs and specials and so on. The Supreme Championship (series 33) is included, but perhaps surprisingly the numbers picks don't seem to be much different from other series around that time. As expected, the favourite pick is 1 large, and in the very early days it was almost unheard of for anyone to pick anything other than 1 or 2 large. 6 small went through a period of being intermittently more popular than 2 large in the 1990s, but 2 large seems to have made a comeback more recently.

Also, I've not included series 67 because complete details aren't in the database. I do now have all of series 67 in machine-readable form (thanks Clive), I just haven't got round to working it into my database yet.

Image

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 7:39 pm
by Jon O'Neill
Awesome. Great question. Great answer.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 8:12 pm
by Michael Wallace
Graeme Cole wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:Oh yeah, just realized my query doesn't make sense given that I thought we were talking about declarations, rather than maxes. If we could have stats on declarations over the past few series that would be fun (and arguably more indicative of what sort of change the new format would have on scores).
Looking over series 46 to 67, it doesn't vary much. In the following table, only valid declarations are counted, and, in the case where the opponent's word was longer, the number of points that would have been scored otherwise are counted.
Neat, thanks. Any chance you could run the same but only include the finalists?

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 8:55 pm
by Graeme Cole
Liam Tiernan wrote:Most consective crucial conundrums? Most consecutive non-crucials?(I'm guessing series 63 or 64 for that one)
The most consecutive games where the conundrum was not crucial was 26, which were the 26 games up to and including this game in series 63, and which included the heat games of Eoin Monaghan, Daniel Pati, Tom Rowell and Peter Godwin. The special between Charlie Reams and Junaid Mubeen provided the crucial before this 26-game drought. If you exclude all specials, this run of non-crucials would have been 33 games long: between here and here.

The most consecutive games with crucials was 7, which happened twice: the seven games up to and including Episode 231 and the seven games up to and including Episode 1743.

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:00 pm
by Mike Brown
Graeme Cole wrote: According to the database, the show was nearly seven years old before anyone thought to pick 4 large. The caveat to this is that series 1 and 2 have hardly any round details associated with them, so we can't say for certain that it didn't happen then.
Given that I missed very little of Series 1 and 2 (even though I didn't start recaps straight away), I'm pretty certain that this is the first ever occurrence, especially as I noted "MB's dream" next to it at the time (sad, I know). What was the first 4 large in a non-Masters game? (sorry if I've missed it in the veritable sea of stats!)

Great stuff, Graeme, loving it...

Re: Ask Graeme?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:06 pm
by Graeme Cole
Mike Brown wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote: According to the database, the show was nearly seven years old before anyone thought to pick 4 large. The caveat to this is that series 1 and 2 have hardly any round details associated with them, so we can't say for certain that it didn't happen then.
Given that I missed very little of Series 1 and 2 (even though I didn't start recaps straight away), I'm pretty certain that this is the first ever occurrence, especially as I noted "MB's dream" next to it at the time (sad, I know). What was the first 4 large in a non-Masters game? (sorry if I've missed it in the veritable sea of stats!)

Great stuff, Graeme, loving it...
Episode 954 was the first in a non-Masters game.