c4countdown

Peter Thomas wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 5:48 am Hi Graeme, I was wondering how many octochamps in the fifteen round format have scored less than 100 each game? (I originally posted this on March 8th, but there have been no replies. Sorry if my original wording was a bit abrupt.)

I wouldn't worry Peter - Graeme normally visits every few weeks and answers a whole batch of questions - I'm sure he'll get to yours next time he visits!

Hello Graeme, I wanted to ask
1. Who are the perfect number round players, getting maximum points for each number round they've been in? There are likely many who did so in 1 episode but then lost with the letters, so any who you think did a lot will do.
2. What's the shortest word ever played, has any 1 letter words shown up?

Has any player ever scored more than Alex Robertson (115/92% of max) while winning only one match?

Steve Hyde wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 4:13 pm Has any player ever scored more than Alex Robertson (115/92% of max) while winning only one match?

My boy https://wiki.apterous.org/Jamie_Ilett-Jones

Anyone heard from him recently? He's not been to events in a while

There was reference to the fact that yesterday's game featured two players born in the 21st century. My quarter-final game was the 1st finals game to feature two players born after the millennium. I'd also wager that it is the game with the smallest age difference between two players (5 days), but obviously this is very hard to verify, unless anyone can remember anything being mentioned on previous shows?

Tom S wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 11:02 am There was reference to the fact that yesterday's game featured two players born in the 21st century. My quarter-final game was the 1st finals game to feature two players born after the millennium. I'd also wager that it is the game with the smallest age difference between two players (5 days), but obviously this is very hard to verify, unless anyone can remember anything being mentioned on previous shows?

Graeme Cole is one day younger than me and we played eachother at Colin 2024 if that counts?

.

Just realized that's crap. Why would roughly one in 23 games based on the birthday problem? Dingus.

I'd say it's not unlikely there are closer ones based on the number of games there have been.

There have been over 8000 games of Countdown. It's difficult to get a distribution of ages - but 20,000 days covers nearly 55 years and while not all contestants are within 55 years of each other, a uniform distribution over 55 years doesn't take into account peaks in the distribution and would likely underestimate the number of close birthdays.

And with those numbers - 8000 and 20,000 we're looking at 5 days probably not being the closest without needing to do any real maths.

Edit - But to do a bit more maths, if one contestant is born on a specific day, then there are 9 days the other contestant can be born on to be +/- 4 days (i.e. closer than the 5 days suggested as a potential record). Using the 20,000 days thing, it would be a 9 in 20,000 chance. So the chances of this not happening over 8000 games would be (19,991/20000)^8000 = 0.0273. So a greater than 97% chance of there being two players born 4 days or less apart. And I think that's an underestimate. And probably quite a big underestimate.

Does Graeme work on the TV show ? If not, what's this thread about ?

Jamie Weisenberg wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 9:44 pm Does Graeme work on the TV show ?

No.

Jamie Weisenberg wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 9:44 pm If not, what's this thread about ?

A very long time ago, I wrote a loose collection of Python scripts to scrape all the results and rounds we have on the wiki into a database. Over the years I've refreshed and updated it, usually after each series, and I use it to answer questions like "what valid word has been disallowed most often for not being in the selection?" to which the answer is EXILED (7 times).

Peter Thomas wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 2:02 am Hi Graeme, I was wondering how many octochamps in the fifteen round format have scored less than 100 each game? (I originally posted this a couple of weeks ago, but there have been no replies. Sorry if my original wording was a bit abrupt.)

15.

Here are all the 15-round octochamps whose maximum heat game score was less than 100:

https://wiki.apterous.org/Chris_McHenry (99)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Nick_Wainwright (99)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Adam_Rolston (99)
https://wiki.apterous.org/David_Von_Geyer (98)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Chris_Marshall (98)
https://wiki.apterous.org/David_Law (97)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Danny_Pledger (96)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Steven_Turnbull (96)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Jeffrey_Burgin (95)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Joe_McGonigle (95)
https://wiki.apterous.org/James_Slater (95)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Joe_Zubaidi (93)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Alan_Duval (93)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Steve_Wood_(Series_61) (92)
https://wiki.apterous.org/Ned_Pendleton (92)

Graeme Cole wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 10:02 pm
A very long time ago, I wrote a loose collection of Python scripts to scrape all the results and rounds we have on the wiki into a database. Over the years I've refreshed and updated it, usually after each series, and I use it to answer questions like "what valid word has been disallowed most often for not being in the selection?" to which the answer is EXILED (7 times).

Ah, makes sense now.