Second Quarter-Finals today to mark the start of Summer 2019 as well!
Before I start proper, an alternative to R14: (100 × 4 × (1 + 1)) - 7
Letters: Top of the game and Dinos starts off brilliantly with DANEWORT in R1! After the last letter popped up in R4, I went
; how many times has a near identical combination happened? No surprise Sandra decides to go with what she knows and Rufus ends up in a time loop.
Dinos sadly falls for the invalid muralizes in R5 but bounces back with PROACTIVE in R7. What?!
Aerations isn't valid anymore from R10??!! (That was disheartening to know it was removed from ODO as I recall seeing that word still in Lexplorer around Christmas last year
) Luckily, Dinos recovers strongly with NURSEDOM in R11 and his most confident nine today, FARMHOUSE in R13.
Numbers: Dinos must have been practicing a lot for six small given that we didn't really see him use that much in the Preliminaries, yet CECIL decides to come up with easy targets for both his pickings. The only one that definitely required extra thinking today was in R6 which tbf, I couldn't see the solution.
Ray Wilding wrote: ↑Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:02 pm
That double solution conundrum was terrible, SLIPCOVER has been in since at least the ODE3, and it's a much more common word than COVERSLIP.
Conundrum: This conundrum was difficult to the point I blanked out and both contestants didn't have the correct answer...or so that's what I thought until Ray sounded the alarm on the daily chat. Upon checking Lexplorer, I realised this was a bad oversight by the producers because SLIPCOVER was also another valid answer! It's troubling to find such an error in a Finals game and imagine what would've happened if both contestants were in crucial territory instead!
I had predicted a margin of around 45 points with Dinos winning this match and it did eventually hover around that mark with the margin standing at 47 points. Sandra, you were absolutely a nice contestant and was very friendly towards Dinos (Even joking to him to "Give me a break" with all his nines, both valid and invalid
). Sadly, it's the end of the road for you and I will always remember you in this game for your "RATION"-ish declarations.
As Nick said, "Have fun playing together when you get home"
and keep in touch! (Although they really didn't have a weekend irl as filming continued the next day.)
Off for the first weekend of the Summer but come Monday with the Third Quarter-Finals, it's "Rollover from Series 79 and left Viewers waiting more than a month to see him return" Brendan Whitehurst against "Incredibly lucky to have survived against all the odds to become an Octochamp" Steven Turnbull. The final week of Series 80 is about to begin!
Progress:
QF1 (20 June):
Elliott Mellor (#1) vs Mark Decouto (#8) (
109 - 73)
QF2 (21 June):
Dinos Sfyris (#2) vs Sandra Pilson (#7) (
118 - 71)
QF3 (24 June): Brendan Whitehurst (#3) vs Steven Turnbull (#6)
QF4 (25 June): Maggie Barlow (#4) vs Fiona Titcombe (#5)
SF1 (26 June): Elliott Mellor (QF1 Winner) vs (QF4 Winner)
SF2 (27 June): Dinos Sfyris (QF2 Winner) vs (QF3 Winner)
GF (28 June): (SF1 Winner) vs (SF2 Winner)