c4countdown

Stewart Gordon

"We took it from the French and kept it."
I guess I should love the way Susie has implicitly acknowledged the nonsensicality of the term "borrow" as we never seem to give "borrowed" words back.

One of my primary school teachers would sometimes write a long subtraction sum on the blackboard and have ...

Stewart Gordon

Another instance of the definition Susie gave being totally different from the one I'm familiar with. To tokenise, to me, is to break a text string down into its tokens, typically algorithmically as part of processing computer code.

Stewart Gordon

Susie's definition of zeugma didn't really hit the mark. The essence is that a word is used a single time with different meanings in relation to different referents.

I first came across the term as a question on Eggheads (in which the host mispronounced it as "zoigma", presumably wrongly thinking ...

Stewart Gordon

Susie didn't mention the medical sense of 'tender', describing a (typically injured) body part that is painful to the touch. I was confused by this use until I eventually learned what it means in this context.

Stewart Gordon

When he realised he'd declared 7 but had GRANTERS which is an 8, why didn't he just say GRANTER?

Stewart Gordon

How has not one spoiler thread for the whole of May been started already?

It seems that the idea that the 4th may be with you was too well-known to merit a mention at the beginning. But how was the talk about female sitcom characters relevant to the day?

Now to the point ... Susie managed to ...

Stewart Gordon

Oxford Dictionaries Premium only gives the double t spellings for -ing and -ed:
VERB (possets, possetting, possetted)

[NO OBJECT]
(Of a baby) regurgitate curdled milk:

Hope that addresses the confusion.
It just reiterates what I'm confused about - the very way ODP is inconsistent with everything ...

Stewart Gordon

Great work Charlie! Is it now on a reliable server, meaning

it won't go down again?

Stewart Gordon

Wiktionary gives only POSSETS, POSSETING and POSSETED as the inflected forms of POSSET.

Of the OneLook hits, only a few give verbal inflections for POSSET, and they all have them as POSSETING and POSSETED likewise. POSSETING itself has five hits, including the OED, and POSSETTING only one (TFD ...

Stewart Gordon

What has PERMEATE to do with Paul Gascoigne???

Stewart Gordon

They just specify which usage is the more common. If it's 50/50, who knows? That makes no sense. Why does the dictionary have to give one xor the other? Normally we expect both the comparative and the superlative to be in if either is.

Also - just remember Susie can’t explain absolutely ...

Stewart Gordon

The minuter / minutest thing came up again today, but it wasn't explicitly discussed. MINUTEST was given as a beater in one round, and then in the very next letters round minuter was offered by a contestant but rejected by Susie. It would have made sense for her to say at that point about the ...

Stewart Gordon

I'm puzzled that, in the talk about the (nick)name Titch, there was no mention of the character in a series of children's storybooks by Pat Hutchins. Surely this is where a fair number of people know the name from?

Stewart Gordon

Nice one :)

Please could you put in the major holiday dates, e.g. Easter, bank holidays, other major religious ones, etc.? Just so that it's easier to avoid potential clashes.
School holiday dates might also be useful.
The trouble with including school holiday dates is that they vary between ...

Stewart Gordon

Susie arguably made a reference to Harry Potter (referring to the "dark arts") but didn't mention Avada Kedavra, which is apparently derived from abracadabra. I'm made to wonder if there's some deliberate irony in taking what originated as a charm against illness and fever and turning it into a ...

Stewart Gordon

Gavin Chipper wrote: Mon Sep 08, 2025 4:28 pmIf she'd said "four" she would have been closer arithmetically speaking, if not conceptually so.

Also closer geometrically speaking.

Stewart Gordon

I'd thought various words with JECT in them must be related (INJECT, REJECT and TRAJECTORY also come to mind) but had no idea that JET was related. Though it seemed obvious to me that JETTISON and JETSAM are related.

I notice that Susie didn't talk about the word JET itself, which going by various ...

Stewart Gordon

So a PUNSTER is someone who frequently makes good puns.

What's someone who frequently makes bad puns (I'm sure many of us remember such a person) called?

Stewart Gordon

Yet others say it's specifically a woman. One of these gives the diametrically opposite etymology: "woman who is 'with' ". However, none of these dictionaries lists "midhusband" at all. Any idea what term those dictionaries have for a man doing the same job?

You seem to have a bee in your ...

Stewart Gordon

Susie tells us that a midwife is "a woman who is with another during birth".

I was taught that, because it means "with woman", a man doing the same job would still be a midwife.
Further to this, the majority of OneLook hits are to the effect of "a person, usually a woman". Wiktionary states that ...

Stewart Gordon

Susie tells us that a midwife is "a woman who is with another during birth".

I was taught that, because it means "with woman", a man doing the same job would still be a midwife.

Stewart Gordon

Both this forum and wiki.apterous.org (not sure if they're hosted on the same server) have been very temperamental today. I first noticed around midnight. Pages loading only about half the time if even that, and posts here nearly always failing. I didn't try Apterous itself.

Stewart Gordon

Worth pointing out that -IZE is actually not an American spelling, contrary to popular belief. -IZE is in fact an Oxford spelling. In most (but not all) verbs, both spellings are correct in UK English. The US do tend to use -IZE, but it is not an Americanism. Yes, I'm fully aware of this, and I ...

Stewart Gordon

Susie seemed to think GLAMORISE was an example of an American spelling becoming naturalised into UK English.

But this can't be the case, as that would surely be GLAMORIZE?

Rather, it seems to be a case of the U being dropped when forming a derivative, like in HUMOROUS, INVIGORATE, etc.

Stewart Gordon

I think Susie confused DIALOGUE wtih DUOLOGUE....

Stewart Gordon

That’s it. A target of 100 should be totally, utterly and categorically banned. I quit.
My recollection is that the range of allowed targets was originally 100 to 999, but was subsequently changed to 101 to 999.

I see it was in 2010 that "The target can range anywhere from 101 to 999" was added ...

Stewart Gordon

I'm not sure what happened there - I could've sworn I only drafted that message and didn't press the Submit button!

But still, I wonder if the clue made a lot of people here think of the same thing it made me think of.

Stewart Gordon

What's the relevance of pizza to the first TTT? The first thing the clue made me think of is MARGARITA due to the similarity with MARGHERITA.

Stewart Gordon

"You picked the fine time to collect small guitars."
Does anybody get this clue? "Small guitars" is obvious but the rest of the clue? Colin didn't stop to explain it or seek an explanation.

And I'd thought it was spelt UKULELES....

Stewart Gordon

Were DC not ELOCUTING about round 7 because they weren't given the chance? No, but because it's not in the dictionary I'm not at all convinced that's the reason. A word not being in a particular dictionary may be a barrier to giving the word as one that was available, but frequently it isn't a ...

Stewart Gordon

Were DC not ELOCUTING about round 7 because they weren't given the chance?

Stewart Gordon

I think there was also an inconsistency because words that end in Y (e.g. BRANDY) had their plurals specified so BRANDIES was allowed but not LAGERS. Is this right? Was LAGERS ever disallowed? If it was, it shouldn't have been.

Susie is right on poteens imo, poteen (and moonshine) refer to ...

Stewart Gordon

For the first TTT, I saw first CONIFERS and then FORENSIC. I began to think the clue was maybe a reference to clues used to solve a crime.

But FIRCONES and CONIFERS are very apt anagrams - I wish I'd sooner realised this myself!

Stewart Gordon

When I went to school, a NOCTURNE was a musical piece suggestive of the night. One of my piano books even explained that it means "night song".

Stewart Gordon

I'd like to know how RUNTIME came to mean the time only of a film or a DVD, and not of a VHS cassette, a Blu-ray disc, a TV programme or any audio medium.

But I'm much more familiar with the computing sense - more or less, the execution of a program as distinguished from the compilation of it. I'm ...

Stewart Gordon

Booking myself in now.

Why do you have "(map)" at the end of the address but no actual map there?

Stewart Gordon

I completely disagree, because she didn't mention the photographic process. She said "we talk about Lumières in France". Maybe the photographic process was invented in France, but I don't see that anybody would say "Lumières in France" meaning this. She was quite clearly, as I hear it, claiming that ...

Stewart Gordon

(Just corrected a tpyo in my earlier comment.)

But does the name of this movement derive from the names of people, or the French word for light? I would have thought the latter.

OTOH, the Lumière photographic process is named after two brothers.

I've just rewatched it and Susie clearly said ...

Stewart Gordon

Susie's comment disallowing LUMIERE was puzzling. It would seem she looked at everything except the definition. A quick search tells me that Lumière, capital L, is a photographic process, not a light show in France. So I would make out that Graeme was trying the French word in the hope that it's ...

Stewart Gordon

(50 − 4 × 4) × (10 + 6 + 1)

Spotted well after the time. I probably should've tried factorising by 2 sooner than I did....

Stewart Gordon

Why is ETHANOLS valid? Simply because the dictionary lists ETHANOL as a noun and doesn't explicitly label it as a mass noun? That's weird.

When I went to school, ethanol was one specific chemical compound - there were never different varieties of it.

Stewart Gordon

That puts me out of it.

Hopefully there'll be a next time....

Stewart Gordon

I'm pretty sure the true meaning of "Hobson's choice" is a "this or nothing" choice, rather than literally no choice at all. According to what I was taught, Mr Hobson himself is reputed to have said to his customers something like, "You're having the horse nearest the stable door, or none at all ...

Stewart Gordon

I think the problem with the first numbers round was not so much too many even numbers as too many powers of 2, such that you couldn't divide them to get an odd number.

Stewart Gordon

When Mr Murray told us on 29 Jan that it's National Colin Day, one of the first things I wondered is whether this has anything to do with the 'name days' celebrated in some religious traditions.

Of course, the other thing I noticed quite quickly is that it's at the time of year that COLIN is held ...

Stewart Gordon

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. A hinny is the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey.

Strangely, the Road Traffic Act considers a mule, but not a hinny, to be an animal.

Stewart Gordon

My method for the last numbers game (seen only just within the time):
75 × 3 + 7 + 100 ÷ 50 − 25

Not sure whether Rachel was just showing off....

Stewart Gordon

Marc Meakin wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2023 5:51 pm
Stewart Gordon wrote: Sat Dec 16, 2023 3:10 pm
Marc Meakin wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 9:24 pmIf lunch is provided the downside is the catering cost will up the entry fee or any prize fund
Huh? How do you mean it will up any prize fund?
If lunch is provided then the cost of providing the lunch will affect any prize pot surely

Affect, yes, but up? How?

Stewart Gordon

Marc Meakin wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 9:24 pm If lunch is provided the downside is the catering cost will up the entry fee or any prize fund

Huh? How do you mean it will up any prize fund?

Stewart Gordon

As TCap says, get the players to look away if need be. Put the conundrum in the right orientation on the table and cover it with an object other than your hand. Something like a phone works well. Don't have the object physically touching the conundrum paper though. Place one edge of the phone in ...

Stewart Gordon

Does anybody have some low effort high impact suggestions for reducing the % of botched printed conundrum reveals?

I had a botched conundrum given to me in at least 5/8 of the events I attended in 2023 which had paper conundrums.

Reasons for botched conundrums reveals could be any of (but not ...

Stewart Gordon

We've had two events recently with lunches organised - Edinburgh where the bridge club had lovely sandwiches, soup and cakes, and Newcastle where there was a cafe where we pre-ordered. That's good to know - shame I didn't manage to make it to those two events.
Both were great (for someone with no ...

Stewart Gordon

Over the years, these have varied from event to event. Different arrangements I can remember are:
something served to us from an on-site kitchen (mainly at Ben's early events)
an on-site buffet lunch
making use of restaurant facilities at the venue
going together somewhere down the road to get ...

Stewart Gordon

Should be noted that on number ordering, it's only since Rachel took over that the large numbers have always been on the left. Carol always did it in reverse order of how the contestant said it (which I personally prefer) so there are several examples of large numbers NOT being in the middle. Off ...

Stewart Gordon

During the final, either display the scores or announce them after every round .
There's really no excuse for not doing this. This brings me to my next point: Always have the letters and numbers in clear view, be it on a screen or on a board. It defeats the whole point of having a final if people ...

Stewart Gordon

I'd love to come but am not sure at the moment – I have potentially a lot of travelling to do in July! Have you got enough of your fancy letters/numbers boards to go round?

Stewart Gordon

REMEDIALS in R12?

Stewart Gordon

Back in Methuselah's time, 100 was probably considered young.

Didn't it turn out Methuselah's age was actually given in months? Hmm. It seems virtually all translations give it as 969 years. Looking at those on Bible Gateway , it seems the only exceptions are:
* GNT states "years" for time lived ...

Stewart Gordon

Could be that it’s considered a common expression Considered by whom? To me, it's neither common nor an expression. and it’s not a new word? So what? Newness and obscurity have little to do with each other. Way back in the Series 7 final, no definition of ATTABOY was given then either so not the ...

Stewart Gordon

Philip A wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2023 9:23 pm
Stewart Gordon wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2023 9:11 pm No definition of ATTABOY was given. This is bizarre.
Why is it bizarre?

Because normally when DC give a word people are likely to be unfamiliar with, they do give one, of course.

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