c4countdown

COHUD on Saturday was fantastic and hopefully this week's episodes will match or better the quality seen there.

So, we now head into (what will hopefully be) a full week of Countdown, but after last week's mysterious pulling and replacing strategy, I'm not taking anything to chance

Dan Skelton (presumably no relation to recent DC guest, Helen) is our new champion, thanks to his nail-biting win on Friday. Can he win some more games this week, I wonder, hopefully in less nail-biting circumstances

Making her DC debut this week is the actress/comedienne/journalist/TV presenter, Maureen Lipman.

Join Graeme for his recap later on.

HERNIAS to beat the corner.

This one's not mine but ATENOLOL is there in round 8. It's a drug of sorts

ATENOLOL in round 8.

Edit: Damn, too late!

Yeah but at least you spotted it

Edit: terrible conundrum scramble, was really slow with that because it threw me.

Also, how did this Dan guy win on Friday? I wouldn't like to make a habit of criticising contestants as I know it can be tough to deal with being on TV, but he was truly terrible.

Don't foget this is presumably an early morning start after a late evening finish the night before for Friday's show and
he probably didn't sleep much overnight.

Alt to hernias of NEARISH. Alt second numbers (75-(9-4))x(9-4)+3 and alt last numbers (75-2-3-9)x4

Andy Platt wrote:Also, how did this Dan guy win on Friday? I wouldn't like to make a habit of criticising contestants as I know it can be tough to deal with being on TV, but he was truly terrible.

Yeah, and if he didn't get the conundrum, he'd have had the lowest ever score for a 15-round champion (in heats).

PERIANAL in round 1, MISUSED/MOUSSED in round 2, CORKAGE in round 4, FORMATE in round 5 and URBANE in round 11.

2nd Numbers Alt.: ((75 + 9 + 3) x 4) + 9 - 4 = 353

NEBULAR and DEADEST - I forget which rounds

Peter Mabey wrote:NEBULAR and DEADEST - I forget which rounds

If you mean round 11, there was no L for NEBULAR.

Andy Platt wrote:Edit: terrible conundrum scramble, was really slow with that because it threw me.

Surely this means it wasn't that terrible?

I think it's good that they occasionally have scrambles where many of the letters are in the right place, just to send a message that you can't always rely on the opposite being true. I believe the apterous conundrum scrambler checks scrambles to make sure they don't look too much like the answer. So, for example, if on apterous you see ING spelt out in the scramble, you know the answer isn't an -ING word. No such help on Countdown.

Andy Platt wrote:Also, how did this Dan guy win on Friday? I wouldn't like to make a habit of criticising contestants as I know it can be tough to deal with being on TV, but he was truly terrible.

Disagree on "truly terrible". He wasn't that bad on Friday. Sure, we've seen better, but there's been much worse. Today his worst moments seemed to be the misdeclaration of MOVIES and forgetting to put a D on the end of SEDATE (despite still winning the round). Anyone can make those mistakes, particularly the second one. Everyone has good days and bad days. Same argument applies to people who say "how did so-and-so pass his audition" - nobody performs at the same level all of the time.

I think Tony has a point, too. The first recording day of a block starts and finishes later than the others. So if you're on one of those days, you turn up in the early afternoon, finish at about 9pm, and then you have to be back at 9.30 the next morning to be plonked half-asleep in the champion's chair for the first game of the day. All of a sudden it becomes much easier to think words aren't in the selection when they are, and miss numbers rounds you'd otherwise see in 5-10 seconds. (Citation: my fifth game, where all of the above happened - I only won it thanks to a bit of luck in the third part.)

It wasn't only Dan who seemed really nervous to me, but June did also. For example, it was well into the game before she allowed Rachel to say what the first letter was before asking for her second, and she didn't acknowledge Rachel at all at the beginning like other contestants do. These things must have been due to nerves, but with Dan appearing to have been touched with the same stick it came across to me that the usual calming procedures from the crew etc did not happen. This didn't do a lot to inspire me, for one, to bite the bullet and apply to be a contestant, I'm afraid.
I'm not saying anything was bad or wrong, but just how today's programme came across to me.