Standard of contestants
Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:39 pm
I'm just wondering what people think about the standard of the contestants now versus the standard of the contestants throughout the history of Countdown. It's something I think about relatively often. A few things of note:
Early Series only had about 40 episodes which is why there weren't as many Octochamps... or one of the reasons. Obviously once you've got 1 Octochamp in that's already 8 out of 40 games played, so you can't have more than about two.
At the very start contestants were mainly from Scrabble clubs and things, so they didn't know the Oxford dictionary that well. I've seen on TCDP some players that have submitted valid Scrabble words that are not valid in Countdown.
What got me interested was looking at Harvey Freeman's games on the Countdownwiki. Obviously they're of a very high standard but I'd probably put him below recent Series winners and Octochamps who seem capable of getting every optimal solution, or maybe 12 in 14 rounds. The most recent recap I read was Hilary Hopper vs. Kate Ogilvie in a 9 round game and again, either of them could have lost by 30 points to a recent Octochamp.
So to sort of rephrase the question, do you think that the computer aids and online forums and games today mean the the best contestants - I'm talking about 800+ Octochamps rather than every single contestant - are significantly better than the best contestants from the 90s and 80s. Solely judging from recaps from the CDP and the Countdownwiki, I say yes.
Martin
Early Series only had about 40 episodes which is why there weren't as many Octochamps... or one of the reasons. Obviously once you've got 1 Octochamp in that's already 8 out of 40 games played, so you can't have more than about two.
At the very start contestants were mainly from Scrabble clubs and things, so they didn't know the Oxford dictionary that well. I've seen on TCDP some players that have submitted valid Scrabble words that are not valid in Countdown.
What got me interested was looking at Harvey Freeman's games on the Countdownwiki. Obviously they're of a very high standard but I'd probably put him below recent Series winners and Octochamps who seem capable of getting every optimal solution, or maybe 12 in 14 rounds. The most recent recap I read was Hilary Hopper vs. Kate Ogilvie in a 9 round game and again, either of them could have lost by 30 points to a recent Octochamp.
So to sort of rephrase the question, do you think that the computer aids and online forums and games today mean the the best contestants - I'm talking about 800+ Octochamps rather than every single contestant - are significantly better than the best contestants from the 90s and 80s. Solely judging from recaps from the CDP and the Countdownwiki, I say yes.
Martin