c4countdown

The instructions said to come here first to introduce myself... so here I am.

Had audition on Tue, spent most of yesterday playing on Apterous, ended up that I dreamt in anagrams last night. Woke up at one point trying to work out whether SLANTIE was anagram of ALISTEN, neither of which are words (I think). Have just noticed that both are anagrams of SALIENT though.

I really ought to be doing other things such as work, housework, childcare, practising for the show (haven't heard yet but am hopeful), so may not appear here much. Or rather, SHOULD not. We'll see.

Hi Clare and welcome to the forum.

No link to your website?

Are you teasing me? Check out my signature!

Clare Sudbery wrote:Are you teasing me? Check out my signature!

Ah sorry, my fault - I have signatures turned off after some idiot thought it would be a good idea to have one which filled up the whole screen...

Edit: I wonder what else I've missed out on in other people's sigs then

Welcome - certainly an entertaining website.....

Kevin

For those that have sigs turned off:

Website: claresudbery.co.uk
Blog: Boob Pencil
Scrabble

Welcome, Clare. You're right - you do start thinking in anagrams after a while. As I observed when playing you on Apterous yesterday, 'Hi Clare' is an anagram of Charlie...

Clare Sudbery wrote:Woke up at one point trying to work out whether SLANTIE was anagram of ALISTEN, neither of which are words (I think). Have just noticed that both are anagrams of SALIENT though.

And ENTAILS.

Incidentally, if you put your website address in your profile, then it'll be linked to from all your posts without needing to have it in your signature.

Let us know as soon as you hear anything from the audition.

Welcome Clare, saw your name on apterous and wondered who you were, now you've solved the mystery. Good luck with getting a place on the show.

Welcome Clare. Just had a quick look at your website - loads of info there, and how interesting you sound! Or as an author, is it partially made up...? Yes, fingers crossed for getting an audition.

Clare Sudbery wrote:Woke up at one point trying to work out whether SLANTIE was anagram of ALISTEN, .

Do you mean slainte? Oh and welcome btw.

Lesley, I already had an audition... and just heard, I passed. I'm going to be on the show! V. exciting.

And no I didn't mean SLAINTE, I just invented two respectively-anagrammatic words (SLANTIE, ALISTEN) in my sleep. God knows why. But yes, SLAINTE is in there as another real-word anagram. Are there any more?

So anyway, here's to being on the show. Slainte, everyone!

Oh and yes, everything on my website is true. If anything it's played down in mind of the fact that everyone and their partner, including inlaws, can access my site... but anyway, I'm rubbish at lying and rubbish at keeping secrets. Have a tendency to blurt everything out at slightest provocation.

Oops, I misread. Well, woo hoo!!! Congrats on passing the audition. *does a little victory dance in your honour* Look forward to being kept up to speed and hearing all about your experience!

Clare Sudbery wrote:Lesley, I already had an audition... and just heard, I passed. I'm going to be on the show!

Congratulations Clare - keep us informed about recording and transmission dates etc.

Oh and yes, everything on my website is true. If anything it's played down in mind of the fact that everyone and their partner, including inlaws, can access my site... but anyway, I'm rubbish at lying and rubbish at keeping secrets. Have a tendency to blurt everything out at slightest provocation.

Yeah, me too. When I was single my website used to be a lot more untrammelled than it is now, but my partner got a bit uncomfortable when he realised that his relatives were starting to take a keen interest in my murky past so I cleaned it up a bit.

Hi, Clare!

Welcome to the forum!

There is a separate thread for people to post in and introduce themselves, but I won't hold that against you.

I hope you enjoy posting here!

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Clare Sudbery wrote:Lesley, I already had an audition... and just heard, I passed. I'm going to be on the show!

Congratulations Clare - keep us informed about recording and transmission dates etc.

Welcome to the forum Clare and congratulations on passing the audition

"There is a separate thread for people to post in"

Is there? Bother! I specifically looked for one, as well. Is it well-hidden, or was I just being dim?

Have just updated website home page, as realised it was a bit out of date.

Phil, nice to have company.

Thanks for the congrats everyone, I'm so pleased Countdowners are such a friendly bunch. Very much looking forward to being on the show and currently desperately racking my brains for a way to sort out childcare (I have a 5-month-old) so that I can stay in the hotel and socialise if that arises. But I presume they only put people like me (who live within commutable distance of Leeds (ie in Manchester)) up if your filming spans two days?

Aha, just spotted the intro thread. with it having a separateb section all its own my eye skipped over it, assumed it was just header info. was looking at the stickies instead.

nb when my spelling and punctuation takes sudden tumble it is cos i have baby on one arm...

No problem, Clare! That is certainly ok!

Your avid Countdown fan and American (Seattleite, more specifically,)
Jason Larsen

Congratulations on passing the audition Clare, but I told you as much didn't I?

If you're filming on 16, 17 or 18th February then my mummy and daddy will be there to watch you

Jeff'll probably need a separate show just for your introduction though actually...

Oh, I didn't catch that, Jon, I'm sorry!

Clare, congratulations on passing the audition to appear on Countdown recently!

If you're not satisfied that you will win anything worthwhile, after your tape date you should go on Millionaire, maybe!

I wish you luck, Clare!

Ha well, it's funny but I really wouldn't give two hoots if there were no prizes at all. I just want the fun of playing Countdown on the telly. As it is I will be very excited if I win a teapot.

As for Millionaire, I'd love to be on that show, but it's stupidly hard to get on the show, and THEN you have to get through the fastest-finger bit, AND I happen to be utterly rubbish at general knowledge. I'm a puzzle freak, have been doing puzzles of all kind since I was a kid (my whole extended family are mathematicians and physicists, girls and boys alike, which may have something to do with that - my parents met whilst doing maths degrees at cambridge), but tend to get stuck in my own little bubble and forget to pay attention to what the rest of the world is doing. It's entirely possible that I would fail at an under-£1000 qu in Millionnaire; I'm that bad.

Clare Sudbery wrote:"There is a separate thread for people to post in"

Is there? Bother! I specifically looked for one, as well. Is it well-hidden, or was I just being dim?

I presume they only put people like me (who live within commutable distance of Leeds (ie in Manchester)) up if your filming spans two days?

Don't worry Clare, I did exactly the same thing when I joined the forum i.e. never spotted the intro thread, and Jason picked me up on it as he has you. I feel a bit better now someone else has done it as well!!

Re: putting you up, I should think they'd be happy to put you up from the night before your recording date until whenever you finish your run.They did with me anyway.

Good lady, Clare! It's all about making yourself satisfied!

In regard to you, I don't think it would be hard to dial Millionaire's contestant hotline, but everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

You sound like a very well-rounded person, Clare!

"I should think they'd be happy to put you up from the night before your recording date until whenever you finish your run."

Oh right, that's cool

...although I might have to decline the night-before bed cos I have to minimise time away from (currently) 6-month-old baby and can travel to Leeds in half an hour or so.

"I don't think it would be hard to dial Millionaire's contestant hotline"

That's not the hard bit. The hard bit is getting through the lottery of being hat-picked against all the other millions who have also dialled the hotline. Although you do also have to answer a qu on the hotline, and as I said my general knowledge is rubbish.

Jason Larsen wrote:I don't think it would be hard to dial Millionaire's contestant hotline

It isn't. But that isn't what Clare (rightly) says is "stupidly hard".

My own experience may be illuminating. Over the last ten years, I've probably spent many hundreds of pounds on the UK's Millionaire contestant hotline. The one time that I was successful, I'd blitzed the line for a couple of weeks, calling around 20-30 times a day, in an effort to up my chances of getting through the first, random, selection in which 100 potential contestants are picked for a given show. To be one of the lucky 10, I then had to be one of those who got closest to the right answer with this question: "What is the area in square miles of the island of Barbados?"

Thanks to an extraordinary fluke (the details of which I'm reluctant to disclose) I knew the exact answer to this. Two days later:





In fact, the phone selection process is even tougher than outlined above. Officially, all 100 callback contestants are asked an obscure question with a numerical answer - like the Barbados one above - and the 10 who get nearest to the right answer go on the show. What actually happens is that, to ensure they don't end up with two contestants from the same town, they split the country into 10 regions and call back 10 people at random from each region - the single closest answer from each of the regions then gets to go on the show. And a different "nearest to" question is used for each region, probably to minimise the likelihood of applicants colluding with each other.

Things have changed a bit since I went on, and they now apparently have regional auditions for contestants in addition to the phone line, but I've never seen any publicity about how to apply for these (probably because I hardly ever see the show any more). The couple of times that I've seen it since they changed the format from 15 questions to 12 (supposedly to make it "easier" to win a million), I've felt that it's actually harder to win the kind of sums people regularly used to achieve in the old days, as the questions seem to get tougher more quickly.

Phil Reynolds wrote:
In fact, the phone selection process is even tougher than outlined above. Officially, all 100 callback contestants are asked an obscure question with a numerical answer - like the Barbados one above - and the 10 who get nearest to the right answer go on the show. What actually happens is that, to ensure they don't end up with two contestants from the same town, they split the country into 10 regions and call back 10 people at random from each region - the single closest answer from each of the regions then gets to go on the show. And a different "nearest to" question is used for each region, probably to minimise the likelihood of applicants colluding with each other.

Hmm, if they asked the same question to all 100 you'd also stand a chance of coming 18th nationally but 1st in your region, so in some cases it's easier. Assuming everyone had equal ability at numerical guesstimate questions (not true, but not too far from the truth given the type of question asked) your chances either way would be 1 in 10. If you felt you were extremely good the regional selection process would be less favourable as you stand more chance of being eliminated by someone else's fluke (ahem ) but they're still picking the same number of people from the same number of applicants so someone else's chances would be commensurately increased. Probably anyway, you always stand a non-trivial chance of making a tit out of yourself when reasoning about probability.

Interesting insight into the selection process though, did you win any money?

Clare Sudbery wrote:"I should think they'd be happy to put you up from the night before your recording date until whenever you finish your run."

Oh right, that's cool

...although I might have to decline the night-before bed cos I have to minimise time away from (currently) 6-month-old baby and can travel to Leeds in half an hour or so.

That should be fine, just tell them on the form they send you how many nights at the hotel you will require (within reason obviously) and they'll sort it.

Paul Howe wrote:Interesting insight into the selection process though, did you win any money?

No, despite the teaser at the start of my account of the experience.

Anyone know if you get offered tickets for the audience, and if so how many? Looks like I may have a few supporters want to come watch, including my parents...

Clare Sudbery wrote:Anyone know if you get offered tickets for the audience, and if so how many? Looks like I may have a few supporters want to come watch, including my parents...

You should do. Not sure if they have any restriction on number (I think I ended up with about a dozen).

Congratulations, Phil!

But, I do notice one thing about you. I've seen two pictures of you, and you look very different in each one!

Why is that?

Clare Sudbery wrote:Anyone know if you get offered tickets for the audience, and if so how many? Looks like I may have a few supporters want to come watch, including my parents...

Usually one guest is automatically allocated a seat in the audience, for anyone over and above that you will need to phone or email the audience coordinator. I was able to book 10 guest tickets for the recordings of the series 58 finals so I'm sure you'll be fine as long as you don't leave it till the last minute. But you'll get a load of paperwork in the post that will tell you all this (and more) anyway so don't worry.

Jason Larsen wrote:I've seen two pictures of you, and you look very different in each one!
Why is that?

Because I am an unrivalled master of disguise.

Phil, you didn't have your beard then, did you?

Jason Larsen wrote:Phil, you didn't have your beard then, did you?

True. And I was wearing glasses, carrying about ten extra pounds and was in colour.

I can't believe it's 2009 already!

Phil Reynolds wrote: "What is the area in square miles of the island of Barbados?"

Thanks to an extraordinary fluke (the details of which I'm reluctant to disclose) I knew the exact answer to this.

I was fifteen away just now, which I reckon might have been good enough.

Ian, it wasn't The Price is Right, it was a question to qualify for Millionaire!

Yes, I know the more recent version of The Price is Right in the UK was canceled.

"I was fifteen away just now"

How the hell did you manage that?

Clare, what did I tell you?

We're not playing The Price is Right!

Jason Larsen wrote:Clare, what did I tell you?

We're not playing The Price is Right!

You're right!

Yes

Clare Sudbery wrote:"I was fifteen away just now"

How the hell did you manage that?

Slightly educated guess! It's not a big place, I reckoned that it was roughly 12-15 miles in diameter, assuming it's roughly circular, and I guessed 182 square miles, the actual being 167 I think.

Just spent my early years staring at maps before I worked out what girls are for.

Ian Volante wrote:I reckoned that it was roughly 12-15 miles in diameter, assuming it's roughly circular, and I guessed 182 square miles, the actual being 167 I think.

The question actually put to me by the WWTBAM researcher was: "According to Collins 21st Century Dictionary, what is the area of Barbados in square miles?", the precise answer to which is 166.

Clare Sudbery wrote:Lesley, I already had an audition... and just heard, I passed. I'm going to be on the show! V. exciting.

And no I didn't mean SLAINTE, I just invented two respectively-anagrammatic words (SLANTIE, ALISTEN) in my sleep. God knows why. But yes, SLAINTE is in there as another real-word anagram. Are there any more?

Hmmn the Scrabble players know these ones like the back of ther hand but here goes: ENTAILS, SALIENT, SLAINTE, ELASTIN, SALTINE - for some reason I think there are two more but I cannot remember them.

SANTILE? I have no idea if that's a word or not.

Chambers Anagrams gives ELASTIN & STANIEL - I don't know if they're in ODE2r.

David O'Donnell wrote:

Clare Sudbery wrote:Lesley, I already had an audition... and just heard, I passed. I'm going to be on the show! V. exciting.

And no I didn't mean SLAINTE, I just invented two respectively-anagrammatic words (SLANTIE, ALISTEN) in my sleep. God knows why. But yes, SLAINTE is in there as another real-word anagram. Are there any more?

Hmmn the Scrabble players know these ones like the back of ther hand but here goes: ENTAILS, SALIENT, SLAINTE, ELASTIN, SALTINE - for some reason I think there are two more but I cannot remember them.

STANIEL, EASTLIN, TENAILS, are the others in scrabble I think.

...Zyzzyva gives one more- NAILSET.

What are we trying to play?

How many Countdown-valid anagrams can you find of SALIENT?

If NAIL was an adjective, I know you could find at least one!

Jason Larsen wrote:If NAIL was an adjective, I know you could find at least one!

Not quite Jason, as you need to use all the letters of the word SALIENT.

I think they have all been mentioned above by Ben and David.

Some words that end with the letters E-S-T are adjectives because they describe nouns that are the same.

Joseph Bolas wrote:Not quite Jason, as you need to use all the letters of the word SALIENT.

What Jason said was correct - if NAIL was an adjective, there'd be one - in NAILEST.

YEAH also if LANTY was a countable noun (or verb) you could have LANTIES

And if HORSE could be spelt using those seven letters, you could have HORSE.

The local bowling alley is the LANIEST place in town.

That's right, Mr. Corby!