c4countdown

Ian Volante

Paul Howe wrote:Can we have another bug report thread?

Only joking mate, think everyone appreciates all the work you put in

Now you're just being vexatious! Naughty person.

Ian Volante

Jason Larsen wrote:You're not too crazy about Gyles, are you, Ian?

All the twenty-odd years I've been watching countdown I've found him pretty tedious.

Ian Volante

Jason Larsen wrote:Is Gyles Brandreth one of the people who will never appear on Countdown again because he doesn't like Carol's mistreatment?

I, for one, have my fingers crossed.

Ian Volante

British Isles (if you include the Channel Islands), then in the north it's Yell I think in Shetland, west is either Rockall (dubious) or somewhere in Kerry (I'm told it's not Valentia, but it's out that way), south I'm not actually sure now I think about it, Jersey is it? East is of course Lowestoft...

Ian Volante

Are you discounting YESTERDAY as having two Y's and therefore can't come out in a 'normal' round with the current letter distribution (as we know it)'? Edit: Hmm, it would appear it was never released in this country by The Beatles. But it's been covered 8 billion times. There must have been a song...

Ian Volante

Peter Dale wrote:Sadly, that 'something' will be missing forever.

I reckon that if you went back and watched an episode from say, 1987, you'd be amazed at how much better it is these days.

Ian Volante

Since Apterous is sticking various numbers of fingers up at me, I'll trawl through my mp3 collection of all the number ones. You can look up the years yourselves: Alma Cogan - Dreamboat Andy Williams - Butterfly Elvis Presley - Surrender Fleetwood Mac - Albatross Steps - Heartbeat Will Young - Everg...

Ian Volante

Does anyone else get any of the following messages when they try to log into Apterous: Login Failed: java.net.SocketException: Connection reset Login Failed: java.net.SocketException: Connection reset by peer: socket write error Login Failed: java.io.IOException: Could not log in EDIT: It's working...

Ian Volante

My korfball commitments should have finished by that time, so I'm in.

Ian Volante

Ben Wilson wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:So what's causing this recent spate of thread-bumping?
You, by the looks of things. [/reams]

I blame Sunday.

Ian Volante

Matt Morrison wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:
Martin Gardner wrote:I was gonna say that Kai's only 12, he's a bit young! But that would be hypocritical as I had my first girlfriend when I was about 7.
"Had"?
near the top of my list of favourite ever posts

I think I broke the thread...

Ian Volante

So what's causing this recent spate of thread-bumping?

Ian Volante

The letters rounds in today's daily duel (Sun 18th) are three consonants/six vowels. Is that not outwith the rules of Countdown? I thought the max vowels per round was five (and the max consonants six). Indeed it is outside the rules, but then the duels are often there to provide something different.

Ian Volante

Martin Gardner wrote:
Kate Richardson wrote:Kai, a bit of harmless flirting does nobody any harm, you should try it sometime
I was gonna say that Kai's only 12, he's a bit young! But that would be hypocritical as I had my first girlfriend when I was about 7.

"Had"?

Ian Volante

ABSTEMIOUS and ABSTEMIOUSLY too.

Ian Volante

Matt Morrison wrote: Can add to that with a few:
URBANITES, TRUANCIES, UNFAIREST, UNWARIEST

I'm not finding it especially easy looking at the screen to do this one, need to go and sellotape some letters onto dice!

UNFAIREST isn't in - I got this rejected earlier tonight

Ian Volante

I've heard of people posting false information on Wikipedia, sure! A false statement I put on Wikipedida last October still survives to this day. Not a huge achievement I know, but given that the site is mentioned in the media relatively often, quite a big whopper surviving so long is pleasing. It'...

Ian Volante

Korfball. Not while having sex. Given some of our opponents, this is a shame.

Ian Volante

I don't remember the name of the pub, but it was in Livingston. I was there on business for 2 days, so stayed one night, during which there was a quiz. The winning team were The Mad Hatters and they all wore "silly hats". When I saw your old avatar with the jester's hat, which seemed to b...

Ian Volante

Stats look fine to me. Maybe I am good at this.

Ian Volante

SRC: Opening socket... SRC: Opening socket ostream... SRC: Opening socket istream... AWT-EventQueue-2: [Login failure] [java.net.SocketException: Software caused connection abort: recv failed]java.net.SocketException: Software caused connection abort: recv failed at java.net.SocketInputStream.socket...

Ian Volante

Wow, quite a turnaround from III! From memory (I've not looked at the scores yet) I went for a lot of the most obvious words, just to see.

Any chance of some overall stats now I've had a decent result?

Ian Volante

Nope, that's not me! I usually only present quizzes these days. Which pub would that be?

EDIT: Unless it was a one-off, which is entirely possible. I get drafted into friends' teams on occasion.

Ian Volante

Aye, same as what happened last night.

Ian Volante

Ben Wilson wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:They wouldn't let me do Slayer. Too obscure apparently!
Pah. Though to be fair at my (alas failed) audition they only just accepted Van Halen.

What a bunch of miseries! Maybe they've improved, cos at first they accepted it, but then it got vetoed higher up the chain.

Ian Volante

Ben Wilson wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:
Jimmy wrote:And your specialist subject is?
Metallica
Respect.

They wouldn't let me do Slayer. Too obscure apparently!

Ian Volante

Jimmy wrote:And your specialist subject is?

Metallica

Ian Volante

No doubt - relentless self-promotion is something I'm good at

Ian Volante

i watched the new countdown for the first time today and is it me or is there just no personatlity at all on there? no banter like there used to be. it was rather boring to be quite honest. i dont think i will be able to watch it again. Hi Carol. :D Are you building up to your thousandth post Dinos?

Ian Volante

Boobless!

Oh, wrong calculator thing.

Ian Volante

Apart from when I was on obviously.

Ian Volante

My strategy is to basically look for the most obvious way, just to get close at least, details can come later. If it's obviously a bit tougher, I suppose I just try whatever first comes to mind. Panic never helps though!

Ian Volante

I think it's the best it's been in ten years.

Ian Volante

Charlie Reams wrote:Appreciation? Incorporation?

Yes, appreciation works actually.

Ian Volante

Apart from my friends, a couple of biddies got me to sign the numbers round sheet on my way out of the studios, but that's all really! We'll see what happens next month with my arguably higher-profile Mastermind appearance.

Ian Volante

6th of December, cos it's a nice day.

Ian Volante

Phil Reynolds wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:neglection (what's the word I'm looking for?!)
Neglect?

Non-neglect sounds wrong though as an antonym for neglect. That'll be cos it doesn't exist I suppose...

Ian Volante

Now having seen two shows, it's really reminding me of what the show was like a few years ago while RW was still about, and before Carol particularly became a TV personality in her own right. Things are back to focussing on the contestants and the game, and not so much the institution of the show as...

Ian Volante

Dan Vanniasingham wrote:I'm puzzled why anyone would play Blind otherwise, so ignored that ramification.

People do like a challenge round here. Although I have seen bugger all people playing blind, so fair point.

Ian Volante

Heather Culpin wrote:Was it really like that or was applause edited out?

To my mind, there's only usually applause for a hell of a word. Or maybe there's a concious effort to reduce the Deso-style playing to the crowd maybe?

Ian Volante

Anyway, my "better technical solution" for the letters would be to do them as the conundrum is currently done - show all 9 for a second or two, then blank the lot. I reckon that'd be an improvement, although still unideal. This of course entails pre-choosing numbers of vowels/consonants w...

Ian Volante

The Daily Fascist gets a bit too graphic:

"When asked how she was feeling Miss Riley gushed"

Ian Volante

Was indeed good to watch. I was disappointed that ZEEDONKS isn't a word from the ENCODES round though

Ian Volante

"I was fifteen away just now" How the hell did you manage that? Slightly educated guess! It's not a big place, I reckoned that it was roughly 12-15 miles in diameter, assuming it's roughly circular, and I guessed 182 square miles, the actual being 167 I think. Just spent my early years st...

Ian Volante

Phil Reynolds wrote: "What is the area in square miles of the island of Barbados?"

Thanks to an extraordinary fluke (the details of which I'm reluctant to disclose) I knew the exact answer to this.

I was fifteen away just now, which I reckon might have been good enough.

Ian Volante

Clare Sudbery wrote:P.S. IE7, Windows XP Professional.

Are you on the Java v.11? That causes problems like that. Using v7 seems to eliminate any freezes for me.

Ian Volante

Lucy Gowers wrote:@ Ben - Didn't think you could surpass the fat baby avatar (wasn't so keen on Janet tho') but you've managed it.

Top man!

Bamber Boozler isn't it?

Ian Volante

My worst brain switch-off in quite a while. Bah.

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=19202

Ian Volante

When I was preparing to go on the show I googled words that weren't in dictionary.com and found some that should really be consigned to a dictionary of not so common usage. HIELAMAN, with 126 matches before you get to results that are too similar to be displayed, was probably the worst offender, an...

Ian Volante

Some solid scoring there...

Ian Volante

Lemmy from Motorhead. Or Ozzy Osbourne for that matter.

Ian Volante

Phil Reynolds wrote:Before I plunge into today's Duel, can someone explain what 'Hypercountdown' is please?

Simply Countdown with twelve letters instead of nine.

Ian Volante

Ah so you're not a native, and moved there after I left. :-( Did you go there to go to uni then, or did your family move there? I go up as much as I can, but less and less over the years, espec after having a kid at school re school hols etc. I would never have left but I met my husband in 92 when ...

Ian Volante

I'm now in charge of a korfball club Is that korfball, as in the sport mostly played in (and thus dominated by) the Netherlands and Belgium? If so, I didn't even know the game was played in Scotland. It is indeed, there are five clubs here now. I was new to the game in 2007, but am enjoying it grea...

Ian Volante

Having now played today's duel, was the fact that the rounds kept starting automatically as soon as I'd finished the previous one done purposely with this thread in mind, or is it a bug? It was certainly intense...

Ian Volante

The detector is already starting to chafe my nipples. I vote for one that doesn't involve me shaving.

Or am I just a guinea pig for version two?

Ian Volante

To Ian Volante: Hi Ian, I noticed you're from Edinburgh, my home town. :D Had a look through your posts and Wiki for info on you (in a non-stalkerish way) but couldn't find any. (Adopts Cilla Black voice) So, if you don't mind saying, how old are you and where are you from? I'm 37 and grew up in th...

Ian Volante

The only one I remember risking was MOONIES, was stuck for much else to be honest. I knew it would be capitalised, but I thought it might be there referring to dropping one's trousers too...

Was also slightly tempted by DICKLESS, but thought better of it!

Ian Volante

Charlie Reams wrote:
Joseph Bolas wrote:
Ben Wilson wrote:I'm stumped as to what photo was used though.
What picture did they use?
Good question.

I'm stumped.

Ian Volante

Further pedantry would state that midnight is simply 12 midnight, it's not 12am as it's not ante meridien until a minute later.

Now I write however, I'm thinking that this argument only applies to midday. Oh knowledgeable ones, put me out of my misery, for everyone's sake.

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