Spoilers for Tuesday 17th December 2019 (Series 81, QF4)

[Ray Wilding]

Morgan Sauer v Andy Evans

[Ray Wilding]

RUBIATES in R4.

[Ray Wilding]

Was after the time, but 100*(6+5)-7*6*4 for a R6 alt.

[Tom S]

Great game like yesterday. Scoring does not reflect the ability of the 2 players who both had their glory moments at different times.

[Ryan Lam]

Final Quarter-Finals of the 2010s with two University students battling out today as mentioned yesterday! (Perhaps I'm running out of things to comment apart from Jon Culshaw's brilliant anecdote about Christmas cards today... )

Letters: Great start before the first commercial break but after that, Andy risks an eight and a nine that are sadly invalid which gave Morgan the chance to take the lead but after the 'Origins of Words' segment, things started to take a reversal course with Andy risking MOLASSED which was in and APORIAS to snatch the lead from Morgan! Evidently, the Apterous machine was certainly kicking in at that point which definitely put pressure on Morgan close to the end!

Numbers: It's easy to fumble when you're nervous and that's probably what happened in Round 3 with neither player getting the target when there were several easy ways out. Later, Morgan decides to try and widen the gap by gambling with 3 Large in Round 9 but that didn't pay off with both of them declaring the same number. Fortunately for him, with Andy failing to get spot on in Round 14, he was still in the game with a nine-point margin...

Conundrum: It's not over yet! Hugely disappointing to me that the Conundrum was not a difficult one and could have appeared on a Preliminary Episode at anytime but the question is who will solve it? Just as the clock hits the halfway mark Morgan buzzes in. If he's right he wins and he does indeed!! With that, all Quarter-Final Conundrums have been solved once again!

As predicted, this was a close game and I foresaw a Crucial Conundrum coming with Morgan to win by less than 10 points. Indeed, this was exactly what happened with the margin at the lowest possible value of just one point! Unlucky Andy, the invalid declarations probably cost him the game and you can't help feel anything but sorry this happened. However, as you leave today, I would like to wish you all the best in your future endeavours in terms of your studies and like John yesterday, thank you for giving such a thrilling episode to watch especially at the end! Who doesn't like an episode where the margin is so close at the end where either player has a chance to win especially when the stakes are this high?

So the Semi-Finals fixtures are known with no upsets still. Come tomorrow, it's the "Battle of the Maths Students". Find out if the Post-grad James or the Under-grad Morgan will emerge victorious and take one out of the two spots in the Grand Final!

Progress:
QF1 (12 December): James Haughton (#1) vs David Law (#8) (147 - 60)
QF2 (13 December): Jamie Wing (#2) vs Tom Silverlock (#7) (121 - 78)
QF3 (16 December): Paul Nixon (#3) vs John Osmond (#6) (117 - 102)
QF4 (17 December): Morgan Sauer (#4) vs Andy Evans (#5) (78 - 77)
SF1 (18 December): James Haughton (QF1 Winner) vs Morgan Sauer (QF4 Winner)
SF2 (19 December): Jamie Wing (QF2 Winner) vs Paul Nixon (QF3 Winner)
GF (20 December): (SF1 Winner) vs (SF2 Winner)

[Toby McDonald]

Slightly easier R3 Alt.: ((10+9+3)*25)+8
SURICATE also in R4