c4countdown

Slightly late but (75×25-10)/(9+6-10)=373 in round 6.

DISBURSAL - Jeez, not exactly an everyday word.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:53 pm DISBURSAL - Jeez, not exactly an everyday word.

It’s the finals. For as long as they can be worked out, instead of being a case of knowing the word or not, it’s correct at this stage to pick obscure words for conundrums. Expect belters next Champion of Champions.

Philip A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:56 pm

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:53 pm DISBURSAL - Jeez, not exactly an everyday word.

It’s the finals. For as long as they can be worked out, instead of being a case of knowing the word or not, it’s correct at this stage to pick obscure words for conundrums. Expect belters next Champion of Champions.

It's what they do, but I wouldn't say it's correct.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:59 pm

Philip A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:56 pm

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:53 pm DISBURSAL - Jeez, not exactly an everyday word.

It’s the finals. For as long as they can be worked out, instead of being a case of knowing the word or not, it’s correct at this stage to pick obscure words for conundrums. Expect belters next Champion of Champions.

It's what they do, but I wouldn't say it's correct.

It is most definitely correct. Lots of quiz competitions adopt this discipline. They want to amaze the audience.

Felt sorry for Craig. The scoreline just shows how much the pressure increases in the finals compared to the heats. Well done to Dan, good words and a tricky conundrum was well solved.

Well, like I said before, this is Anne Robinson's second and final set of Finals she will preside as the host of Countdown, but at least Rachel's here to witness it plus the fact that she gets to see contestants for the very first time as she was still pregnant in the first half of the Series! First up, we've got "Guy with the long hair and resort-like shirt but still jobless" Dan Byrom (Sorry if I offend anyone, I had to take a jab at the last part) and "Obsessed with deodorants but it's his job" Craig Fawcett. Anne still remembers the chatter from their preliminaries, hey if there's one thing good about her to say before she leaves, she somehow remembers all this months later. Jay's multi-tasking as Susie unfortunately has COVID-19 when these episodes were recorded, pity her though

Letters: Bad luck to Craig who blanks out at the start in R1, and you can't help but feel sorry he didn't know CAPITOUL, which was what Dan had existed in R4. Midwave was another risk that didn't work out in R5 and so did homerun in R10, the pressure really must have gotten to him On a positive note though, he had SEXTERS and SALLIED in R7 and R8 respectively. Meanwhile, Dan did quite well in the last third, with HEROUM in R10 and OPGAAF in R12, amazing!

Numbers: I just knew Dan was either going for 6 Small or 4 Large given this is the Finals and he went with the latter. Craig doesn't deviate with his selection at all given his even split in his preliminary matches. Apart from R14, ironically the 4 Large rounds were easier to solve here. Both had their slips, Dan in R6 and Craig in R9 but with the former perfectly solving the other two Numbers Rounds, the gap just widened.

Conundrum: Early on, I knew the answer most likely started with DIS-, and I was unscrambling it on paper in real-time like Dan was! I got the answer a fraction of a second after he buzzed in after I literally thought the answer was quite similar to DISPERSAL, just that the middle three letters were different. With that, Dan still maintains a record of winning his games with at least 100 points each!

Philip A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:19 pm Felt sorry for Craig. The scoreline just shows how much the pressure increases in the finals compared to the heats.

I have to agree with what Philip said, the score doesn't define what Craig had achieved earlier on. I thought the margin would have been around 50 points but it was so much wider at 79 points. Poor Craig, he's been stopped by two Octochamps which is bad enough, but at least he'll get to have an eco-friendly souvenir (so much for describing it as "Kryptonite" in the past...) to commemorate this match and his achievement of making it into the Finals. Thank you for getting us fascinated into a topic in which so many of us use everyday but don't think about how it's made, I hope you will enjoy your job in the years to come! Who knows, if you feel like it years down the road, don't hesitate to try again another time like some of our former finalists have, I'm sure you'll have the potential to go even further provided you don't face too tough opponents!

To end off the week, it's "A regular Policeman on the show but with a different surname this time round" Matt O'Connor versus "All about German, his teachings and of course, his wife who is in the same profession too" Dan Hall. Let's see how contestants who appeared from previous Series play out here from tomorrow...

Progress:
QF1 (09 June): Dan Byrom (#1) vs Craig Fawcett (#8) (106 - 27)
QF2 (10 June): Matt O'Connor (#2) vs Dan Hall (#7)
QF3 (13 June): Steve Hyde (#3) vs Ronan Mackrory (#6)
QF4 (14 June): Ryan Carlsen (#4) vs Adrian Fletcher (#5)
SF1 (15 June): Dan Byrom (QF1 Winner) vs (QF4 Winner)
SF2 (16 June): (QF2 Winner) vs (QF3 Winner)
GF (17 June): (SF1 Winner) vs (SF2 Winner)

Great game by both, congratulations to Dan for winning, but unlucky for Craig who couldn't get going but be proud of what you have achieved. Best of luck to all the finalists competing in series 85.

Philip A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:01 pm

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:59 pm

Philip A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:56 pm

It’s the finals. For as long as they can be worked out, instead of being a case of knowing the word or not, it’s correct at this stage to pick obscure words for conundrums. Expect belters next Champion of Champions.

It's what they do, but I wouldn't say it's correct.

It is most definitely correct. Lots of quiz competitions adopt this discipline. They want to amaze the audience.

I disagree. I think it's more annoying for the audience. Better are words that are hard to unscramble but still fairly unobscure.

Fwiw, disbursal isn't that obscure to me. Plenty of usage in finance related fields

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:40 pm Fwiw, disbursal isn't that obscure to me. Plenty of usage in finance related fields

They do like to pick terms in specific subjects (maths/science/finance/law/historynetc) in finals, I notice.

So no finals episode will ever have the trifecta of Anne, Rachel and Susie. Mind = Blown.

Cool Dude method for last numbers: ((9 + 2) * 100 + 8 + 4) / 2 = 556

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:40 pm Fwiw, disbursal isn't that obscure to me. Plenty of usage in finance related fields

Yeah, I got it pretty quickly and I'm pretty terrible at conundrums

Fiona T wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 6:40 am

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:40 pm Fwiw, disbursal isn't that obscure to me. Plenty of usage in finance related fields

Yeah, I got it pretty quickly and I'm pretty terrible at conundrums

For me, a bad conundrum is one that is either so hard neither player gets it (what was the point?) or so easy both get it instantly (a test of reactions). If just one gets it, preferably after a think, that's a good conundrum. That probably means making them more difficult in the finals. So that was a good conundrum in my book.

David Williams wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 7:37 am

Fiona T wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 6:40 am

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:40 pm Fwiw, disbursal isn't that obscure to me. Plenty of usage in finance related fields

Yeah, I got it pretty quickly and I'm pretty terrible at conundrums

For me, a bad conundrum is one that is either so hard neither player gets it (what was the point?) or so easy both get it instantly (a test of reactions). If just one gets it, preferably after a think, that's a good conundrum. That probably means making them more difficult in the finals. So that was a good conundrum in my book.

You can't judge a conundrum on such a small sample size. In another QF, no-one might have got it. Would it have then been a bad conundrum?

In any case, one of the things people complain about is the word learners having too big an advantage. Obscure words surely make that worse.

Looking at Dan's heats, he took 20.25 seconds to get PROMENADE, SPONSORED went unsolved, 11.5 seconds to get BUCKWHEAT, 19.75 to get CORNFLOUR. From where I'm standing, they look like better conundrums.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 8:45 am You can't judge a conundrum on such a small sample size.

Words one individual is unfamiliar with is a pretty small sample.

David Williams wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:32 am

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 8:45 am You can't judge a conundrum on such a small sample size.

Words one individual is unfamiliar with is a pretty small sample.

I asked at least one other person and they hadn't heard the word either. I'm pretty confident most people don't know this word. Maybe people working in finance (see above) but still very much a minority.

Tbh, no idea how I know the word, but I didn't think it was obscure

I didn't know the word, but the ordering of the letters felt natural and it sounded right, and I couldn't see any likely alternatives, meaning I could buzz in with confidence.

I'd say that's a good conundrum for a finals.

Fiona T wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:32 am Tbh, no idea how I know the word, but I didn't think it was obscure

Are you sure you're not thinking of DISPERSAL?

Damian Eadie is very good at choosing conundrums.

Dan Byrom wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:38 am I didn't know the word, but the ordering of the letters felt natural and it sounded right, and I couldn't see any likely alternatives, meaning I could buzz in with confidence.

I'd say that's a good conundrum for a finals.

I think its similarity to DISPERSAL helped it "sound right", and possibly gave some viewers a false sense of familiarity with the word.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:30 pm

Fiona T wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:32 am Tbh, no idea how I know the word, but I didn't think it was obscure

Are you sure you're not thinking of DISPERSAL?

Nope. Have probably come across it when doing expenses or similar!

Took a total guess with DISBURSAL, then thought to myself that it probably meant the same as DISPERSAL