c4countdown

Graeme Cole

Based on current usage, the ODO is about to revise the main sense of the term "the British people" to mean "the subset of Leave voters who happen to agree with the person speaking".

Graeme Cole

These "notably good players" have every right not to play in the tournament if they don't want to. However, it seems like petty elitism to me. It's like if the best Countdown players at a co-event were to complain about having to play lower-rated players in the first round because they might not pic...

Graeme Cole

Note: I wrote this in May, and for some reason I never finished or posted it. Today I remembered it was there in my Drafts folder. So, five months late, here's a post about Lateral, a game show series which has long since finished. Here's a new YouTube-based quiz show which really ought to be on re...

Graeme Cole

I wasn't even there, but by magic I still have the results. STANDINGS Players are ranked by wins, then points. P W Pts 1 Jack Worsley 6 6 415 2 Bradley Horrocks 6 5 409 3 Tom Carey 6 5 362 4 Callum Todd 6 4 410 5 Tom Chafer-Cook 6 4 388 6 Jason Turner 6 4 336 7 James Robinson 6 4 328 8 Tracey Mills ...

Graeme Cole

Thank you Graham. Can you , though give a good reason why, for example NASA won't go send anybody up no more. I mean it's 50 years next July, since the moon landings , wouldn't it be good to go back once more. My theory is that it's so dangerous that it was a miracle that the other landings were so...

Graeme Cole

Relevant Mitchell and Webb sketch. There is no telescope powerful enough to see small spacecraft-sized objects on the moon from Earth. However, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed the landing sites . Wikipedia has an entire article full of third-party evidence for the Apollo Moon land...

Graeme Cole

Jennifer Steadman wrote: ↑
Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:10 pm
How many selections in Countdown's history could you get the word GRAEME from?

126, with round 10 in this game being the most recent one up to the end of S78.

Jennifer Steadman wrote: ↑
Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:10 pm
Have there ever been any rounds with GRAEGRAE in the selection?

Sadly not.

Graeme Cole

Hi Graeme, Ple......ting. Thanks. In addition to this, would it be possible to demonstrate the reverse - who has picked most schizophrenically across their episodes? 14 players have picked all five possible numbers choices at some point or other. They are Wayne Kelly, Mark Murray, Michael Calder, J...

Graeme Cole

Graeme Cole wrote: ↑
Wed Oct 10, 2018 7:29 pm
new 15-rounders

We've had the current format for over 5 years now. When am I going to stop calling it the "new" 15-rounder?

Graeme Cole

Lowest debut score for an octochamp? (57 happened recently which must be close to the 15 round record. I guess do whatever with previous runs). I've counted the "debut" score as the score the octochamp got in the first episode of their octorun, and ignored any previous runs. In my database, which g...

Graeme Cole

Hi Graeme, Please forgive me for asking a question motivated primarily out of self-interest, but I remember being told after my heat games that I was the first person to pick 6 small on all 16 opportunities during an 8-game heats run. I was wondering if you could give us an up-to-date breakdown of ...

Graeme Cole

Hi Graeme, Remembering my wife's amazing comeback against Neil Stephenson, 21 behind with 4 rounds to go and winning by 22 points, is there any other players that have come from behind better than that. :D :) ;) The biggest ever comeback in terms of the biggest deficit in the game by the eventual w...

Graeme Cole

My thoughts on conundrums, and setting them. Some of you may have heard these from me in person, perhaps several times, but this seems a suitable thread in which to write it all down so I can stop going on about it at events. tl;dr: Don't choose obscure words for conundrums as a lazy way of making t...

Graeme Cole

Just a quick irrelevant Q: Who was the DC guest for the final day of recordings (a.k.a today's) - Wiki states Jon Culshaw but the ticket states and has stated for a while that it was Rufus Hound. Thanks :) Jon Culshaw is in the various pictures people have posted on Facebook, so it was probably him...

Graeme Cole

I saw a strange comment from L'oisleatch McGraw earlier on this thread, where he moaned about the CoC lineup... and, in a bizarre twist, tried to blame the production staff members for not having enough "charisma". Crazy shit! I didn't accuse them of not having charisma. Read it again. Okay, here's...

Graeme Cole

e) I saw a strange comment from Countdown Team earlier on this thread, where they moaned about their inability to secure Moose for COC... and in a bizarre twist, tried to blame the fan community for their inadequacy. Crazy shit! Please own your failings, and in future do a better job at incentivisi...

Graeme Cole

I wonder if anyone's been to the Vatican City but not to Italy?

Graeme Cole

Essentially the question was, what if what's shown on TV isn't the same as what happens in the studio. C1 and C2 are level going into the conundrum. Nobody gets it. They're given a tiebreak, and C1 gets it. The first conundrum is cut out for some reason. Does it count as a tiebreak? I think this is ...

Graeme Cole

I've never organised an event, so I'll leave the advice about event planning to someone else, but since you ask about the "best" format to use, here are my observations from events I've attended over the years. Personally I prefer Edinburgh (or "Lincoln") style, but a recent poll on Facebook shows a...

Graeme Cole

Q: in event of a TB which is cut from broadcast (such as my first show), will this go down as a margin of 10 or a TB? Here’s how it will work: … In the event of a tie-break conundrum, this will be taken to be a 0 point win. ... Best of luck! I don't think that answers the question as well as you th...

Graeme Cole

I need specific. Where people are sending me ranges I'm taking the middle value. (If anyone who gave a range reads this, I will allow them to pick a number within their range to be more specific, but otherwise, middle value) People have actually done that? What kind of lunatic would send you a rang...

Graeme Cole

I sent Zarte a list of my predicted winners and margins for each game. It was decided entirely by random dice rolls. My only goal is not to come last in the prediction game so that at least one person loses to random chance. But at least my entry complied with the rules.

Graeme Cole

What if... It wouldn't remove the perhaps disproportionate advantage you get from finishing mid-table at a large event compared to winning a smaller one Then why even invent such a weird system? There are systems that sort that problem out with adding weird arbitrary numbers on the end as an aftert...

Graeme Cole

That the mechanic was simple to explain to anyone who happened to ask, to the point where they could reasonably work out exactly how they'd done on the day. And equally that it would be easy to follow in terms of looking over the spreadsheet. For this reason, things with a curve (except perhaps a c...

Graeme Cole

I agree that the current scoring system does reward the top positions at smaller events less than it should compared to the middling positions at large events. However, I'm not convinced that the points value of an event (number of points given to the winner) needs to be decided in advance of the ev...

Graeme Cole

Rhys Benjamin wrote: ↑
Thu Aug 09, 2018 11:33 pm

Ray Wilding wrote: ↑
Thu Aug 09, 2018 12:15 pm
Please no... I don't wanna go back to PAINEDER/PAINEDEST, CANEDER/CANEDEST, CAGEDER/CAGEDEST and so on...
All of those are 2 syllables, though, if you take “-ed” as a second syllable as I do.

Are you one of those infuriating people who say "Horn-ed Viper"?

Graeme Cole

I'm sure I used to read books regularly as a child, but some time around Year 9 at school, the Reading Record was introduced, on which you were meant to record all the books you read, the details of them, what you thought of them, etc. I just ignored it. Then at some point my English teacher was puz...

Graeme Cole

Terrible idea. That co-event with 4,000 people was an utter shambles. The event started on time at 11am, with 3,998 people present, Tom Carey at home having got the date wrong, and Anthony Endsor wandering round a similarly-named town a hundred miles away. So far so average, but things went downhill...

Graeme Cole

Well, it's Sam who spotted it, I can't take credit for that. This is an amazing spot. I've run some queries on the database to see if I can find any other strange patterns. To start with, I've only looked at "new CECIL", that is, starting from this game in 2013 when the introduced the new displays,...

Graeme Cole

Bryan's buzz was after the 30 seconds lit up on the clock, and after the "boom", but perhaps before the echo of the "boom" had finished tailing off. If he'd got it right, would it have been accepted? Are the buzzers not automatically disabled when the time runs out?

Graeme Cole

The arguments about not having a random draw could end up with some people deliberately throwing their last prelim in their original series if they want to play the long game. I don't follow Rhys - can you explain? Taking cue from Graeme, I'm going to a logical extreme here, but if you imagine the ...

Graeme Cole

At the last CoC, the QF’s were Winner 1 v 2, Winner 3 v 4, etc., and this time you’ve reverted to the 1 v 8, 2 v 7, etc. And yes, I realise that in the previous one before that, it was reverted again, and hasn’t been consistent all the way through the history of the show. Some might say there might...

Graeme Cole

Some believe that 100 is not a valid target since if the number 100 is in the rack and the target is also 100 then there is no computations to be done. Using this assumption (many believe that this is the case with C4 countdown) there are only 898 targets. The valid targets are between 101 and 999 ...

Graeme Cole

Thomas Cappleman wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:57 pm

Elliott Mellor wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:39 pm
Very nice, what'll your specialist subject be (if you can say)?
Doing the New Testament letters

The only advice I can give is to never put a sock in a toaster.

Graeme Cole

Congratulations, both of you. Great final. Highest scoring final ever, and the fourth-highest-scoring of any type, the top three coming in CoCs and the 30th Birthday Championship (this one, this one and this one).

EORTHMAN in R8?

Graeme Cole

Zarte Siempre wrote: ↑
Sun Jun 17, 2018 12:28 pm

Graeme Cole wrote: ↑
Sun Jun 17, 2018 9:31 am
Callum Todd 69 - 34 Zarte Siempre
This is incorrect. Must have been 69-54, as it was a crucial.

Fixed.

Graeme Cole

STANDINGS Players are ranked by wins, then points. P W Pts 1 Callum Todd 6 5 428 2 James Robinson 6 5 383 3 Jen Steadman 6 5 365 4 Jonathan Wynn 6 5 362 5 Zarte Siempre 6 4 371 6 Graeme Cole 6 4 344 7 Tim Down 6 4 341 8 Jeff Clayton 6 4 310 9 Mike Brown 6 4 296 10 Robin McKay 6 3 377 11 Tom Carey 6 ...

Graeme Cole

Guys for when that British game show service comes out in July, if it'll have the 30bc, for anyone who watched it, when Nick is explaining the contestant's history in the show do we get a brief footage of them in the show like we did for the supreme championship? No, I don't think they did that, at...

Graeme Cole

Guys for when that British game show service comes out in July, if it'll have the 30bc, for anyone who watched it, when Nick is explaining the contestant's history in the show do we get a brief footage of them in the show like we did for the supreme championship? No, I don't think they did that, at...

Graeme Cole

Here are the results and final standings. Oliver Garner and Mark Murray played in the final, and Oliver won 65-47. STANDINGS Players are ranked by wins, then points. P W Pts 1 Oliver Garner 6 5 389 2 Mark Murray 6 5 384 3 James Robinson 6 5 373 4 Tom Cappleman 6 5 354 5 Eddy Byrne 6 5 350 6 Paul Erd...

Graeme Cole

I thought Clarkson hadn't been too bad as host, but that howler with the ibex question was unforgivable. As examples of What Not To Do As A Quiz Show Host go, saying (exact words) "I'm not even going to look at the screen" before confidently telling the contestant they've got the answer right must b...

Graeme Cole

The first guy ended up being the best one. Didn't take the game-ending risk that the others did. I didn't think he was that bad anyway. Yes. Some people on Facebook's Quiz Discussion Group were bemoaning the general knowledge level of the contestants (as you'd expect from a group of quizzing enthus...

Graeme Cole

And well done personally on your performance as captain, encouraging your team throughout (despite what the Mail claims!) I had no idea what this was a reference to, so I looked for it. Anyone else can find it too, so I won't help the Mail by linking to the article. Suffice to say that all they've ...

Graeme Cole

I'd have thought a low-budget remake of Blockbusters themed entirely around internet and old-computer-game-related questions was a pretty niche interest, but I guess the Venn diagram intersection between fans of old technology and fans of old game shows isn't exactly small. Enjoy: https://www.youtub...

Graeme Cole

I'm in.

Graeme Cole

0.068 tonnes.

Graeme Cole

Yesterday: Crap standard of play today. "2 good players" mmm...yeah.... No disrespect intended but it stretches the definition of good a bit... And today: Quality still at a low level today. At least some rise in play today with an alright challenger.. Still quite dire though Sigh. Barbed comments l...

Graeme Cole

The little "4" logo in the corner of the screen has moved from the top left corner to the top right corner.

Graeme Cole

In Round 1 of this game , the first three letters drawn were QXZ. Have all four of the "difficult" letters (those three plus the J) ever appeared in the same round? If not, how many times have three of them appeared? No selection has ever had J, Q, X and Z in it. 18 selections have had three of tho...

Graeme Cole

Turns out this thread is still a thing. Following on from the infamous FREEDRUTH incident, how many times has a conundrum answer been used more than once in a series? I know PROUDSTEP => SUPPORTED was also used twice, about 2-3 weeks apart, during or around the time of Robbo's original run in Series...

Graeme Cole

Pete Cashmore puts the view that the long-running game show Countdown has become "a hunched, wan shadow of its glorious former self". Dull, past its prime, and out of new ideas, Pete Cashmore is a former series champion.

Graeme Cole

I hope nobody at the Express or Sun is reading this. What if they found out that thousands of past contestants, including us, received the same guidelines about wardrobe and game procedure when they went on the show and didn't give them to the press, on the paper-thin pretext that we didn't think it...

Graeme Cole

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 17, 2017 3:20 pm
Detectors

Detectorists!

(Edit: clip I wanted to include with this post but couldn't find at the time.)

Graeme Cole

I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm genuinely curious: All spots for the Series 77 finals are now claimed, and there are still seven heats left in the series. If someone wins the next six games and loses the seventh and last heat, and six wins proves to be enough to make it into the...

Graeme Cole

I just came on here to paste the results in, thinking I was doing it really early. Then I find that Ben has been even keener and has already done it.

Still one result to go, though...

Rob Foster won the final against Jen Steadman, 76-42.

Graeme Cole

The conundrum round is filmed with both contestants positioned in clear view of the camera, so it's relatively easy to see who's hand pressed first in these instances. We look back on the hard-drive and see that Graeme pressed first. Not ideal, but fair. Thanks for clarifying. I take back the bit a...

Graeme Cole

I was in the studio for this one, the conundrum was actually very controversial. I think Nick said 'good luck to you both' or something on those lines after asking to roll the crucial conundrum. So the board flipped a good second or two before the clock began, and I think they both tried to buzz. G...

Graeme Cole

If you want even more commentary on the New Crystal Maze, Iain Weaver's Weaver's Week article has done a similar analysis of the series. The main difference is that he realised the series was over at the time he wrote his article, and when I started this thread on Thursday I thought we were still in...

Graeme Cole

Good essay. They've made those games harder as well - you have to get two out of three, when Mumsie would have been happy with just one (content warning: wrong aspect ratio). For the new maths game, the Jailer puzzle in the Medieval zone, it looks like they're still tinkering with the format. In mo...

Graeme Cole

Also in the Aztec Zone... you know that game with the balls on the circular tray suspended by four pulleys? I'm not sure if it's a nice idea with the difficulty pitched wrong, or if the teams have just been rubbish at it. It seems infuriatingly fiddly. You decide: [1] [2] I think this game is ridic...

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