c4countdown

We wrap up the week with a new champion, Szelong Ng. Can he get a second win? Hey may need it, because we have a tough stretch of competition coming up very soon.

Join Anthony for the recap later.

PARKADE - R11

Empty humidor for me. Missed DOCUMENT but got the rest.

They put up a 1 second conundrum, presumably to have more time for the Guinness presentation and neither player gets it!
Plus, both pressing just for the hell of it, wasted more time!

Can't believe nobody's put this on here yet but I'm sure Paul said 'spirit' in the zappiest round where there was only one I. The subtitler also put 'spirit'. Szelong also had a 6 so his score is right. They never took the 6 points off Paul and he was 16 ahead going into the conundrum. I wonder if Paul would have buzzed on 28 seconds effectively giving Szelong an extra 5 seconds to solve it, if he had known he could have forced another conundrum if he got it right!

Alt 1st numbers (6+7)x75-(50/25) = 973
Alt 2nd numbers (7x75)-25-10+6 = 496

Well done to the Countdown Team on the 6000th show and world record.

Philip Wilson wrote:Can't believe nobody's put this on here yet but I'm sure Paul said 'spirit' in the zappiest round where there was only one I. The subtitler also put 'spirit'.

I thought that too, but decided that it was feasible that in his accent, SPRITE would sound quite similar.

Someone put this in the You're The Ref thread.

I think since Szelong didn't get the conundrum right, you can't make too much of an argument regardless.

Just listened to it and it sounds quite unambiguously like SPIRIT to me. Hopefully this was checked at the time.

Innis Carson wrote:Just listened to it and it sounds quite unambiguously like SPIRIT to me. Hopefully this was checked at the time.

No doubt it was definitely SPIRIT, my subtitles say it was, Paul certainly sounded like he said that, Nick certainly heard that too. Quite a cock-up on a special show, especially as if Szelong got the conundrum, it should've been a tie (as Philip said above)

But, apart from that, well done on Countdown for 6,000(ish) show, and the Guiness World Record too. Might now decide to get one, since I haven't got one for a good few years.

Congratulations to Countdown on 6000 shows... but I couldn't work out how they'd worked that out either.

According to the wiki this is episode 5987. That number doesn't include the specials, though - on the wiki these have an episode number starting with S. There are 35 of these (excluding those that haven't been broadcast), and there's also this one if you count it. So that makes 6023. Two ordinary episodes were binned before broadcast, so if you discount them that makes 6021. (I'm not counting Catsdown, or the Celebrity Countdown series, or the Masters.) Anyway, I think the 6000th episode was about a month ago.

I think all they're really doing is celebrating the 6000th show when it's convenient. We've all been to someone's birthday party on a day that isn't quite their birthday. This is just like that.

It may be worth pointing out that the presentation at the end was not related to its being the 6000th show, or something close to it, but to there having been 70 series
And of course being OFFICIALLY AMAZING

I've always wanted to do a whole row of smileys

Just want to clarify I did declare 'spirit', not realising the error until I watched it back. I am quite embarrassed about it now. Does this happen much?

Also, just to defend myself regarding the comedy buzz in on the conundrum, the atmosphere in the studio was tremendous and everyone was laughing and joking off camera throughout the episode so at the time it was all a bit of fun which everyone enjoyed.
Apologies if this didn't come across like that on camera.

Paul Bradley wrote:Just want to clarify I did declare 'spirit', not realising the error until I watched it back. I am quite embarrassed about it now. Does this happen much?

Normally Susie will spot if a contestant uses a phantom letter, and if she doesn't then someone behind the scenes will. It's very rare for everyone to miss it - maybe two or three have slipped through the net in 6000 episodes. It's not your fault that it wasn't caught.

In this case the six points alone wouldn't have affected the outcome. Nevertheless, if the production team think Szelong could have won if it hadn't been for the mistake (e.g. he might have got the conundrum) then they'll probably invite him back next series, as they have done in the past with contestants who have lost as a result of a mistake. So he won't be hard done by.

Paul Bradley wrote:Also, just to defend myself regarding the comedy buzz in on the conundrum, the atmosphere in the studio was tremendous and everyone was laughing and joking off camera throughout the episode so at the time it was all a bit of fun which everyone enjoyed.
Apologies if this didn't come across like that on camera.

Of course it came across like that on camera. Ignore Steven.

Yep, it all looked like a lot of fun to me too. Just to clarify with what I said above, I wasn't having a go at what happened with the conundrum buzzing, far from it. I just thought that someone in production might still work out that Szelong was owed 6 points........