Spoilers for Friday 26th June 2026 - Series 93 Grand Final

[Philip A]

Welcome to the climax of what has been a remarkable series. Patrick Thompson and Charlie Harrison enter this Grand Final with 10 solved conundrums out of 10 (for the first time ever) in Series 93 inclusive and they've each notched up over 1,200 points as well. Let battle commence.

[Philip A]

I didn’t know Patrick was good at snooker!

Some friendly selections, but you still have to solve them. It was undoubtedly a peak Grand Final, but Patrick’s peak edged Charlie’s. The conundrum was spot on too. Patrick’s tribute at the end summed up his win.

REDOUNDS in particular was excellent.

[Gevin Chapwell]

CoC confirmed for next year by Colin.

[Philip A]

CoC confirmed for next year by Colin.

Will be interesting to see if next series’ Grand Finalists will be invited to that CoC or not.

[John Garcia]

Great final! Commiserations to Charlie, who was near flawless. Looking forward to the CoC already, where my money will firmly be on Patrick!

[Ryan Lam]

Man, I can't believe what I watched was not a dream. This was the epic finale that we wanted to end off with, and it did not disappoint. My commentary is going to be full of stuff at this rate and I'll get it up on Sunday!

[Gevin Chapwell]

Not that I think it was a Hansford, but there was a dramatic pause before Patrick gave his conundrum answer.

[Gevin Chapwell]

How old is Patrick by the way? And Luke Selway while we're at it.

[Phil H]

How old is Patrick by the way? And Luke Selway while we're at it.

To answer imprecisely, Patrick played in last year's 40+ tournament on Apterous and Luke played in this year's edition.

[Robert Ring]

I'm sorry for the runner-up, in one of these insane games I had a bad feeling that as soon as one player "slips" they can't come back.

But i was still pulling for him to make the conundrum.

[Philip A]

I'm sorry for the runner-up, in one of these insane games I had a bad feeling that as soon as one player "slips" they can't come back.

But i was still pulling for him to make the conundrum.

I entirely agree. This felt like a Champion of Champions final in all but name. But I thought all the conundrums in these finals were pitched just right.

[John Garcia]

I entirely agree. This felt like a Champion of Champions final in all but name. But I thought all the conundrums in these finals were pitched just right.

I thought the first 3 conundrums in the finals were too easy (I got them in <5, <5 and <15 seconds and I'm not that good at conundrums). I also thought the grand final conundrum was a bit on the easy side (as evinced by both contestants getting it almost right away). But as I say better too easy than too hard with conundrums, and both players were exceptional.

[Ryan Lam]

This review is dedicated to Patrick Thompson’s late brother-in-law, James (you’ll see why at the end), along with Mel Schilling who appeared on the show as a Dictionary Corner guest in February this year. Both passed away from cancer recently and I’m sure they would have loved to see how this episode turned out. May their legacies live on forever in our hearts and minds, and they are dearly missed.

This is it, an episode that is destined to be a classic as remarked by Colin Murray, but will it be one for the books? Fantastic opening shot of the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy similar to what we saw for the Series 90 Grand Final in December 2024, but this time it’s even better, with the shot showing all the Series Champions names from Series 76 (Stephen Read) (coincidentally the first ever Series where I started watching every single episode and joined the Wiki) to Series 92 (Jase Cullen). As per Rachel pointed out, the Series 93 Grand Champion will have seven letters in their first name, eight letters in their last name and the last three letters of their surname will be “son” . Nice way to defuse the tension that’s expected here, and as per what our Finalists Patrick and Charlie mentioned, tactics will be at play here. We’ve only got 40 minutes to crown the winner, and I’ve already mentioned some of their stats already, so with one last handshake for luck, may the best player win!

First Third: I expected no breakaways to happen in this segment of the finale and I was right. Both get EIDOLONS in R1 and URTICATE in R2, both of which I didn’t spot or know the definition beforehand! High standards it is, and next, you know the game by now, Patrick’s not going for anything else apart from his favourite 4 Large. Easy for a Grand Final, and I correctly predicted both would go down the 48 × 7 method despite there being other methods.

Second Third: Back from the break and it’s REDOUNDS from both in R4. Jeez, I can’t even keep up, I didn’t get that word and ended up conceding! But it’s the next three rounds that definitely blew us all away. OPERATING in R5, a ridiculously easy 6 Small puzzle in R6 (to the point Rachel crossed her arms in disbelief) and then SECTIONED in R7. Can we get an “End Round Early” button similar to Apterous here as both Patrick and Charlie got it in around five, three and two seconds respectively? Colin really asked the Countdown Gods to give a Max, and the speed at which both are getting their words/numbers is so fast that I nearly sweared in the Daily Chat upon seeing the second nine-letter word mere seconds after them. Here comes the last 4 Large from Patrick, and if you see 24 × 11 or 66 × 4 this should be a piece of cake. Alas, Charlie couldn’t see the solution and revealed his mind drew a blank for almost the whole round, allowing Patrick to breakaway at a critical moment!

Last Third: I kid you not, my hands were shaking quite badly at this point as I watched this final part and played along. Patrick’s got a century by R10, and then Charlie by R11, double century game already even before Origins of Words and that deserves a round of applause by its own as expected. Nice spot of OSTERIA by Patrick too in the latter round. No one can rest on their laurels yet as the last two letters round arrive. With an excellent spot of MELAENA by Charlie in R13, no one can break the highest score achieved on Countdown with the game being still a ten-point difference, and Colin acknowledging that Patrick is on a Max Game still (which I believe the Countdown Production Team must have checked before he was allowed to say this). This is it, the last Numbers Round will make or break this whole game, 6 Small as expected…and oh my word, this isn’t worthy of a Finals, just give us all the hard conundrum at this point! This is so nerve-wrecking and a nail-biter. The combined score is now 264. If Patrick or Charlie gets this, the record will be broken which I’m confident one of them will. If Charlie gets it, an even more nerve-wrecking tiebreak conundrum will occur. If not, Patrick wins the Series outright and gets a max game to his name.

Not that I think it was a Hansford, but there was a dramatic pause before Patrick gave his conundrum answer.

Here we go…ECCAUTHOR it is. 1.25 seconds in, I hear Patrick’s buzzer, with Charlie being beaten by a split second, followed by a brief pause. Turns out there was a slight adjudication where the Countdown Team had to determine if he hesitated too much and had to be timed out, which he ultimately did not. The wait literally gave me the Japanese version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” suspense (go search on YouTube if you want to find out more). With the answer of CARTOUCHE, “OH MY GOSH HE’S DONE IT!!!” as I punched the air and yelled at my screen. A Max Game achieved, in a GRAND FINAL of all places!!! This is not a dream, this is the fantastic finale we all waited for and got it! (P.S. It later turned out Charlie didn't have the correct answer and he reached the buzzer in an attempt to "Hansford" the conundrum.)

This game was always going to head into Crucial Conundrum territory and my prediction it was that it was going to be a high scoring game, but never would I have imagined the score would be this high and break so many records in the process. I predicted Patrick to beat Charlie by a margin of ten points as I thought they would tie all the way right until the last possible moment with Patrick snatching the conundrum, but the gap was 20 points due to the miss from Charlie in R9.

This is no doubt one of the strongest Series as well even with the ODP Cull, and it gives me hope that there are people out there whom we've yet to see their true potential and do well far in the future.

I ended off the Series 92 Grand Final review last year by saying this quote above, and my theory of seeing this is now in full display! There’s so many records broken, and what we can see are as follows:
1) First Ever Maximum Game achieved for a Grand Final, and the second highest Grand Final winning score, only to Ronan Higginson’s 150 in Series 87 back in June 2023
2) Highest Cumulative Score, beating the record set in January 2019 by two points (272 from Zarte Siempre and Tom Carey)
3) Highest Ever Losing Score, beating the record set in January 2016 by two points as well (125 from Andy Platt)
4) Both contestants scored over 125, the first time it has ever happened

What an insane finish that was! I know, we probably will all say the same thing, both of them deserved to win, but unfortunately Charlie had to be relegated to the Runner-Up status since there had to be one. From your blindfolded Rubik’s Cube solve which you beat Harry Savage earlier in the month, to a perfect conundrum solving streak in your Preliminaries at just the age of 20, considering that you’ve only be an Apterite for around 1.5 years! The two-year waiting game for a young Series Champion continues, but you can go home proud that you now have the highest losing score in the history of the show with 127 points, toppling a ten-year record held by Andy Platt. As what you mentioned in the Discord Chat as well, it was difficult to keep this whole episode’s affair a secret, but now you can say whatever you want to now. As I would like to quote you, “I'm absolutely honoured to be a part of it and couldn't have lost to a better opponent. The whole experience from heats to finals was wonderful and I got to meet so many lovely people. If you're thinking of applying, please please do, you won't regret it” (the last point which in turn was also echoed by Callum Ridley too). Well said, and you documenting the whole application process was definitely an encouragement to future contestants to take that first step to going on the show. Thank you also for supplying so much stats to Colin during the commercial breaks and I’m sure this indirectly led him to listing them out too at the end, I bet your conversations must have been interesting no less! Finally, I wish I and those in the Daily Chat could given you a hug like what Colin wanted to do if we were there, but I’m sure that the person you most deserve a hug from, is from your girlfriend Charlotte Robson (who barely missed out on the Series 89 Finals) whom I’m sure you watched the show with and it’s great to see where she is now, hosting an online radio show. Congratulations, I wish both of you nothing but the best in your lives together, and who knows, we’ll see her again in another eight years or so!

As for Patrick, 11 years ago you faced James Judge and lost in what Colin termed a “dreadful” appearance (sadly I did not watch that episode so I can’t judge what happened, no pun intended). However, what you did was to turn your weakness around over a decade, and to now deliver the best score of the Series, a max game, fastest Xicount to solve all 11 conundrums, become Series Champion and being the third highest Xicount on record in terms of points (and the first to get that high up without scoring 1000 points and above in the Preliminaries!), really, “there’s just no weakness” as Colin quipped in one of your Preliminaries. Like Susie, I’ve run out of superlatives (and adjectives) to describe your performance this one heck of a Grand Final, so go ahead to lift that trophy up and have your name engraved, because you deserve it! But guess what? Moments after lifting it however, he got emotional and immediately dedicated it to his late brother-in-law, James, who passed away at the age of 41 from Bowel Cancer. He’s not just crying, you’re not just crying, I’m cutting onions and tearing up too (I have a colleague who has Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer and he’s only 42, so I know how Patrick felt and I truly empathise with him). As Colin remarked at the end, the show is also about the six-letter word “family”. It’s not just about geniuses coming on the show and battling it out to win, but it’s also about personality and it’s about everyone. Condolences on your loss and I hope his widow will muster the strength amidst her grief to raise her kids up without a father as we end the Series on a poignant note. Thank you as well for being like Ronan Higginson three years ago, to allow Charlie to raise the trophy with you at the credits scene as we close off the show, you truly are a true champion for the ages.

…to be honest today's game, was the BEST I'VE EVER WATCHED IN MY LIFE! 17 January 2019 will be a day that everyone in the community will never forget for many days, months and years to come. This game is definitely a 101/100 on my scale that's for sure!

What an epic ending to an epic game and an epic Series. I really cannot believe all this wasn’t fantasy even a couple of days later when this post goes out. I was looking back at the Championship of Champions XV Quarter-Finals #4 review which I wrote all those years ago when I termed it the best episode of all time after Zarte and Tom’s record breaking game. If that was the best game at the time, then this Grand Final here has topped that, and this is no doubt now the BEST I’VE EVER WATCHED IN MY LIFE! 26 June 2026 will now be a day that everyone can look back on, to see what the show can produce and that this game is also another 101/100 on my scale! Mark my words, this will be the best episode of the 2020s if no episode in the Championship of Champions XVII in 2027 beats that. "Wait what did I say?!" you might think? That’s right, Colin confirmed it right at the end of the show that it’s coming your way, and that Patrick and Charlie have been cordially invited for it. Fantastic news and we’re heading for exciting times next year! I’m sure all of us cannot wait for this and we’ll all have loads to talk about then! Finally, as a closing note, last but not least, I would like to thank Tom Bashford here too for providing a candid shot of all eight Finalists posing with each other after this episode and as a fitting wrap up to the first half of 2026. I’m sure all eight of you have made friendships that will last a lifetime, and may you cherish that for the rest of your days!

Up next, Series 94 begins on Monday, 29 June, and we seem to be in the same spot when we started this year, when yet another four-time winner, Karen Pearson, is off to continue her run. Will she survive until Thursday and become the first Octochamp there, or will someone stop her just like what happened 21 years ago? The second half of 2026 is about to begin, and of course if you’re interested in football, so is the Round of 32 in the World Cup! Anything can happen, so keep your eyes peeled! Stay safe for the rest of the Summer too!

Progress:
QF1 (18 June 2026): Patrick Thompson (#1) vs Tom Bashford (#8) (118 - 64)
QF2 (19 June 2026): Charlie Harrison (#2) vs Megel Barker (#7) (120 - 86)
QF3 (22 June 2026): Luke Selway (#3) vs Callum Ridley (#6) (102 - 76)
QF4 (23 June 2026): Daniel Face (#4) vs Ian Kinsella (#5) (102 - 107)
SF1 (24 June 2026): Patrick Thompson (QF1 Winner) vs Ian Kinsella (QF4 Winner) (138 - 99)
SF2 (25 June 2026): Charlie Harrison (QF2 Winner) vs Luke Selway (QF3 Winner) (128 - 86)
GF (26 June 2026): Patrick Thompson (SF1 Winner) vs Charlie Harrison (SF2 Winner) (147 - 127) (Record-Breaking Game!!!)

[Tracey Anne Mills]

One of the best finals I have ever watched, the recap is now up just needs more editing.