Spoilers for Wednesday 2nd April 2025 (Series 91, Heat 63)

[Philip A]

Title contender if George octos. Overcame round 1 nerves to win with a century. That conundrum was horrible in my opinion.

[Graeme Cole]

Title contender if George octos. Overcame round 1 nerves to win with a century. That conundrum was horrible in my opinion.

What's horrible about it? There may be a couple of plausible-but-wrong anagrams, but it's a normal, everyday -ING word. Perfectly fair, I think.

If it was one of those crapshoot conundrums where you could spot both alternatives but it's still a coin-flip, like BACKCROSS/CROSSBACK, or HEADPOWER/POWERHEAD, then sure, those are bad conundrums. It would be even worse if there was a plausible-but-wrong answer which looks more like a word than the correct answer, such as WHACKABLE/WHALEBACK. Those can get in the bin. But in today's conundrum, even if you see RECOSTING or SECTORING first, you'll be unsure about them. If you spot ESCORTING, it's obvious that's a real word and must be the answer.

[Philip A]

Title contender if George octos. Overcame round 1 nerves to win with a century. That conundrum was horrible in my opinion.

What's horrible about it? There may be a couple of plausible-but-wrong anagrams, but it's a normal, everyday -ING word. Perfectly fair, I think.

If it was one of those crapshoot conundrums where you could spot both alternatives but it's still a coin-flip, like BACKCROSS/CROSSBACK, or HEADPOWER/POWERHEAD, then sure, those are bad conundrums. It would be even worse if there was a plausible-but-wrong answer which looks more like a word than the correct answer, such as WHACKABLE/WHALEBACK. Those can get in the bin. But in today's conundrum, even if you see RECOSTING or SECTORING first, you'll be unsure about them. If you spot ESCORTING, it's obvious that's a real word and must be the answer.

There’s also corseting, which isn’t in despite CORSETED being in.

Yes, a common word, but there’s many plausible guesses which are words in other dictionaries: sectoring and corseting might not be used as much as escorting, but they are all words. It is equally as unsuitable as those examples in my opinion.

And another point: ODP is not what viewers recognise as a dictionary, as it’s neither visible nor mentioned.

FWIW, I’d have set the scramble as SECTORGIN to mitigate at least one of the traps.

I personally wouldn’t even set traps like that in a heat game: that I would save for knockout matches.

A bit hard and unfortunate on George I think, especially as he notched up a very good 13-round score on his impressive debut.

[Gavin Chipper]

Title contender if George octos. Overcame round 1 nerves to win with a century. That conundrum was horrible in my opinion.

I beat him by quite a bit which is my barometer. I'd need to see a big improvement to say title contender. Rounds were quite flat. Not sure DC beat me in a round unless I'm forgetting something.

I think when you're a good player (like you) it's maybe harder to distinguish between players further down the pecking order.

[Philip A]

In all seriousness, he maxed 10 rounds and none of his answers in rda 1-14 were disallowed – plus transferable skills from the aforementioned maths competitions he’s entered.

Do not underestimate the non-Apterites!

[Gavin Chipper]

Not everyone who has maths credentials is good at numbers remember! Time will tell but he missed the first one and the others were relatively straightforward.