c4countdown

David Williams

Wouldn't be surprised if the outcome of Series 61 has more twists than a helter-skelter. Let's see !! A helter-skelter has only one twist, of course. Mind you, when did we last have a series that had more twists than that? I bet there's a few of you that wish you'd thought of applying under a false...

David Williams

There should be two challengers every game. You'd get fewer, more deserving, octochamps, because you'd have to beat sixteen people to do it. And everyone who wanted could have a second go. Obvious really.

David Williams

Digger Barnes was an absolute player. He acted so cool, and after a minute or so of signing autographs, these two smoking hot blonde girls came out of nowhere, threw themselves all over him (literally, one on each arm and kissing his face) and he took them both onto the team coach. Hero. Shows how ...

David Williams

David Williams wrote:I can't see the harm in allowing more people a second go. A couple of dozen a year who showed themselves to be well above average, but were just unlucky. They wouldn't be as nervous the second time round, the overall quality would go up.

Have I missed something? Is this actually happening?

David Williams

It has to be said Le God is excellent in DC. Prove me wrong stattos but I don't recall any other guest getting a numbers game that has defeated the two contestants and Carol/Rachel. He contributes to the games, his anecdotes maybe are a bit weak, but he still comes over really well, although workin...

David Williams

Thanks. Seems pretty obvious now!

David Williams

What's a telecom? I've only got a NODE, and that has telecoms only. Can someone enlighten me.

David Williams

Incomprehensible as it may seem to many on this forum, just because a contestant is aware of Apterous it doesn't automatically follow that he/she will choose to use it to any extent. This certainly applied to at least two of the gang on my recording day (Jackie Baker and myself), so including Innis...

David Williams

Oh, and doing a quick calculation, there may be around 7 or 8 apterous players coming up in Series 61, and perhaps a few who will join after having recorded. We have around 110 contestants per series, so keeping things in perspective is pretty important here. It might be interesting to speculate ho...

David Williams

But again, maybe that's just for you - the casual viewer who doesn't know of the existence of apterous is surely just as likely to be wowed by Innis as you were by the likes Fell and Corby? Nice one. Missed it on first reading. But we used to only get a Corby every few years, now there's one on eve...

David Williams

Jennifer McElroy wrote:Why is he called jellyman?

If only you were interested in football!

It's a bit like the all-time classic. A game at Crystal Palace. A player called Gerry Queen. An altercation. Guardian headline - QUEEN IN BRAWL AT PALACE.

David Williams

Artesian abstainer ascertain steradian rhatanies. Naartjies marinates aerations. Septarian reattains. Fascinating stuff, isn't it? You probably also know that strained resinated gradients tarnished notarised dipterans, and tardiness transited indurates. An hour with the downloaded dictionary. Give m...

David Williams

A topic I'd also thought of raising. I tend to agree with Matthew's conclusion without really agreeing with anything he says. Boring? No, I like watching good players. HOPLITES, LARIATS and SOUTANE? Got them all, and I've never used apterous. I've got quite an extensive vocabulary of words I've only...

David Williams

D Eadie wrote:Matt Le Tiss was fantastic, you'll see for yourselves next week, but suffice to say he's admitted to having seen every edition of the show since Nov 82.

So that's why he never moved. Midweek games, European travel. Would have been awfully inconvenient.

David Williams

You don't really do irony, do you? Or spelling, when it comes to your idols.

David Williams

All I am agreeing with, is that one can very easily have too many retired footballers. I admit that I may well be basing my estimate of the interestingness of retired footballers on a prejudiced assessment of the interestingness of David Beckham, should he ever retire. I don't keep a tally of the D...

David Williams

One wonders who the presenters of Countdown would be today, had he lived.

David Williams

There is an eight letter word, not a proper noun, in common usage for many years, that you can see in letters two feet high all over the place, that was not in the NODE. What is it? Given the total lack of interest, I can reveal that although there are several meanings for REMOVAL in the NODE, incl...

David Williams

Tyron Potts wrote:Is it RINGROAD?

No.

David Williams

David O'Donnell wrote:I remember ROADSIDE wasn't in the NODE or due to some NODE technicality couldn't be accepted.

No, that was the earlier dictionary that left out compound words whose meaning was obvious, in order to save space.

David Williams

Going back to the first post, SOMEDAY is in, SAMOYED is out.

There is an eight letter word, not a proper noun, in common usage for many years, that you can see in letters two feet high all over the place, that was not in the NODE. What is it?

David Williams

Rachel was on Tony Snell's show on Radio Merseyside this morning, explaining that some survey revealed that some percentage of people in your area don't know what things abroad cost and it was a good idea to write down the exchange rate before you go. And doubtless other things, but my toast was rea...

David Williams

People other than Mr Corby do know the answer. What's it worth? Of course said Mr Corby can buy my silence by matching any bid.

David Williams

As in

sf(4) - 4! = 264

264 / 4 / sqrt4 = 33 ?

Personally I've never heard of superfactorials, whereas 44 and .4 are quite familiar.

David Williams

If this is going to go anywhere I think Kai has to say what functions are allowed, rather than what is not allowed. He's clearly using something no-one else is!

David Williams

Best car yet is my current one, an ancient Mercedes Benz A Class 160. It's delightful to drive and offers a very comfortable ride. But even with my seat jacked up so that my head brushes the roof (the 160 is a very small car) I have difficulty reversing. I'm still waiting for a car that I can see o...

David Williams

I'm prepared to wager that 33, and doubtless a few others, can't be done under the restrictions you've set yourselves.

David Williams

I've not been following this too closely, but can someone refer me to where you've done 33 without using decimals.

David Williams

We were given this at school to occupy us for half an hour while our teacher did his pools. I got stuck at (I think) 33. Years later, lying on a beach, I suddenly thought "Decimals! And recurring decimals!!" (I have good holidays.) After that I had another bash and kept a dog-eared piece o...

David Williams

I see what they do as more important than how they do it. What's good for the programme is to show the best available - but not infallibly, so that just once in a while the viewer gets a kick out of beating the experts. And that works well, and has for as long as I've been watching. But the dishones...

David Williams

Matt Morrison wrote:Is it also only old people that put two spaces after a full stop before the next sentence? That really hurts me.

We older people tend to look at a thing called Google before we ask questions like that. Try it, it's really good.

David Williams

You're always putting innocent-looking stuff on here and luring your victims in. Am I really to believe that's not your intention? You're doing my head in.

David Williams

I've read and re-read your last two posts. I just know you're having a go at me, but it's just so subtle I can't see it. Yet obviously I must retaliate. But how?

David Williams

One of my main bugbears, because the two words have useful, distinct, meanings. Jeff, Rachel and Susie are disinterested, the audience is (allegedly) uninterested, and unfortunately some of the celebrities appear to be both.

David Williams

Jon Corby wrote:Before introducing us to the contestants, Jeff reads out a viewer's letter complaining about the lack of audience shots in the current series of Countdown, which is followed by a shot of the disinterested, lifeless audience.

Why shouldn't the audience be impartial?

David Williams

Just scanned this lot after a week away, so I'll stake my claim for "seniority".

I tend to think it's a mistake to go back. Scott Mearns, for example. The reaction so far has rather blown the notion of extracting a fee.

David Williams

I'm sure this has been discussed before (at length, no doubt). I take the view that pretty much anything goes so long as you don't hesitate and don't lie ("PROMATE." "Did you say PRONATE?" "Yes."). I was surprised by how many people thought that you should stick with wh...

David Williams

I'm very surprised you don't remember 'Marples Must Go'. One of my abiding memories of the dying days of the "13 wasted years" of Tory rule. But I think that was more to do with parking meters, and I assume Beeching was merely employed (by Marples presumably) to produce recommendations. I'...

David Williams

Then our friends, the Labour Government who most railwaymen voted for, and who said that we will be well paid when the railways made money, but didn't tell us when it did, was voted out of office. Now we have got the Tories in, and they didn't even try to be friendly. the Transport Minister was Mr ...

David Williams

Yes, I think you must be right. I must admit I thought the original meaning was some sort of medieval religious count noun sort of thing, so I had no doubt that HOMAGES was OK, but that's not quite how the dictionary has it.

David Williams

"Homages? It's definitely a count noun, I don't know if there's a countable sense. Yes, there is." S Dent.

How could there not be a countable sense of a count noun? What if there wasn't? Is there some rule change I don't know about?

David Williams

And it sometimes multiplies a solution by 1. I don't know what algorithm the solver uses, but why is it wasting time bracketing out the solution then multiplying by 1? STUPID! Is it possible that, rather than selecting a random target, it does random calculations on the six numbers till it comes up...

David Williams

[/quote] I'm not sure I'd want to wait til I was 51 to have a large enough natural vocabulary to be good.[/quote] You would if until you were 50 you thought Countdown was a programme presented by William G Stewart in which you started with 15 people and counted down till there was only one left. A c...

David Williams

I feared there would be lots of missed opportunities, but actually it stands up pretty well against today's standards. Six of my opponents were well in the game till near the end, and Carol and Dictionary Corner missed very little. One of the attractions for me was that it was just, in Damian's word...

David Williams

I spoke to Susie on Wednesday night and she said she would overrule the dictionary in cases where verbs are given with the -IZE spelling but not -ISE, since this is inconsistent but OUP are apparently unwilling to fix it. A can of worms, surely. I didn't know the OUP was supposed to be consistent. ...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Thursday 7 September 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (7 wins, 470 points.) C2: Challenger Mark Dermody. DC: Susie Dent and Carol Barnes. CV: Carol Vorderman. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: R T B A E O D C A R02: L I S Q S E U I N R03: P D F R E A O T W R04: 50, 7, 4, 9, 4, ...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Wednesday 6 September 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (6 wins, 411 points.) C2: Challenger Paul Coulson, a retired policeman from Reading. DC: Susie Dent and Carol Barnes. CV: Carol Vorderman. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: S B R M A E O G I R02: T G D N U A E S L R03: J I ...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Tuesday 5 September 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (5 wins, 348 points.) C2: Challenger Mike Pilkington, from St Helens (no relation – he must get asked that a lot). DC: Susie Dent and Martin Jarvis. CV: Carol Vorderman. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: F V J U I A L T G R02...

David Williams

There are two well-known answers to Q1.

David Williams

George Jenkins wrote: I've asked one of my old mates if he is dead, he didn't know but hoped he was.

Well, we all feel like that sometime.

David Williams

Kai Laddiman wrote:39's my favourite.

I'm right behind you on that.

David Williams

Countdown recap for Wednesday 30 August 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (4 wins, 279 points.) C2: Challenger Marion Alexander, a student and mother of one-year-old Richard. DC: Susie Dent and Martin Jarvis. CV: Carol Vorderman. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: N Z T F O A U S E R02: I I Y L S O ...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Tuesday 29 August 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (3 wins, 217 points.) C2: Challenger Rose Agnew, from near Dublin, who Richard decided was just the person to show him and Carol the Temple Bar nightlife. DC: Susie Dent and Martin Jarvis. CV: Carol Vorderman. OT: Other words or...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Friday 25 August 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (2 wins, 145 points.) C2: Challenger Alistair Littlewood, a curate from Bunny, near Nottingham. DC: Susie Dent and Martin Jarvis. CV: Carol Vorderman. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: M Y G E O A N K J R02: P I D E G E B I V R0...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Thursday 24 August 2000. C1: Champion David Williams (1 win, 67 points.) C2: Challenger Tony McGill, from Glasgow. DC: Susie Dent and Martin Jarvis. CV: Carol Vorderman, who proclaims her love for Tom Jones in the introductory banter. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: D S R N O ...

David Williams

Countdown recap for Wednesday 23 August 2000. A show from a time when dictionaries were only available in books, and Romans visited forums. C1: Champion Sheila Reid, a member of the Edinburgh Countdown Club (3 wins, 168 points.) C2: Challenger David Williams, an Arsene Wenger look-alike. DC: Susie D...

David Williams

Phil Reynolds wrote:Ah, the piece of cod that passeth all understanding.

I somehow missed this, and attempted to salute the later piece of plagiarism. So many layers. Best word-play ever. I salute you.

David Williams

Charlie Reams wrote:the novel of talking to relatives you only see once a year

The Brothers Karamazov? My Family and Other Animals?

David Williams

Indeed, I remember that golden age.

When management and staff of the nationalised railway system were motivated not by profit, but were united in their mission to provide a comfortable, efficient and prompt service for their passengers. As George has described so well.

David Williams

As this is clearly being done solely to confuse the French, I think your reaction is rather niggardly.

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