c4countdown

Gavin Chipper

Great game. Although why have a notepad and not write your words down? (Best joke ever) Also, nice pyjamas Susie! I just came here to say that it was ironic that Antoinette had NOTEPAD but hadn't written it down. I also noticed that Susie was wearing her pyjamas again when I watched it today. Some ...

Gavin Chipper

Algorithm 1: Deduplication vs last letter If the the next letter in the stack matches the last latter from that stack (counting consonant and vowel stack separately), then with 70% probability, instead of giving out that letter, repeat the process. Stack refreshes when it becomes empty. By the last...

Gavin Chipper

About the worst case scenario I can think of is if a white person was playing a black person, and played NI__ER in their first turn, before explaining that the two blanks were both Gs. That would be horrendous but it still wouldn't be against the rules... you'd just lose your turn and probably bing...

Gavin Chipper

(and if you are not in the mood for anagrams, this is a more readable list of bold words.) It talks about the OSPD, which on the Wikipedia says: Although OSPD bears the name Official Scrabble Players Dictionary no countries list their "official" dictionary as the OSPD, whereas the Official Tourname...

Gavin Chipper

Most of these threads haven't been bumped but I'm bumping this one. When Rachel spoke to Dan in Russian at the end, it looked like he responded with some deadly Russian insult, wiping the spit off his mouth or something.

Gavin Chipper

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑
Fri Jul 10, 2020 8:43 am

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑
Fri Jul 10, 2020 7:58 am
Awesome. Do you have wins/points for them?
Here you go: http://wiki.apterous.org/ZoomDown

Thanks!

Gavin Chipper

Awesome. Do you have wins/points for them?

Gavin Chipper

To take out these words, presumably they'd have to make some sort of list first. This would be a pretty offensive list.

Gavin Chipper

Yes, it would be ridiculous to remove words on the grounds of offensiveness. You also have to consider the use-mention distinction. Mentioning the word "nigger" is not the same as calling someone a nigger, for example. Also, people should not be offended by words in isolation - the context and the w...

Gavin Chipper

Who would be the current UCWC? Is anyone keeping track? A bit like https://www.ufwc.co.uk/ where the winner of the first match is champion until defeated (a la boxing) Issue I can see is people who retire unbeaten - not entirely sure how this is dealt with in boxing? Well, I'll make a start. In ser...

Gavin Chipper

It looks like they're up now, although weirdly only three of them appear on the All 4 website, while they all appear on the Android phone app.

Gavin Chipper

A more consistent and even saltiness is exactly what many uses of salt are trying not to achieve. Good examples that you must (but obviously won't) be able to appreciate would be chocolate stuff - a bar of dark chocolate with sea salt or sea salt in a brownie or something. You don't want to make th...

Gavin Chipper

Why is the delete left button called backspace? It doesn't remotely describe what it does. According to Wikipedia, on a typewriter it did literally go back a character, allowing accents to be added to the preceding letter. It doesn't say why it ended up with its current use, but I guess it's the mo...

Gavin Chipper

Why is the delete left button called backspace? It doesn't remotely describe what it does.

Gavin Chipper

May be fast to answer by searching YouTube clips (CBA), but if the word “octochamp” wasn’t coined until 1999, what did the producers and staff call them before then? Did they just say “eight time retiring champion” or somesuch every time? Seems to me they would be a pretty important concept to talk...

Gavin Chipper

The space race was kind of stupid. The whole point was America beating the Soviets There were huge benefits in the fields of science and technology from the space program. If it was just a pissing competition, why go another 5 times (6 if you count the aborted Apollo 13)? I think there's probably v...

Gavin Chipper

Another classic is the Masters game between Mark Nyman and Harvey Freeman . This was Harvey's only defeat. However, upon closer inspection , although he lost by 8 points, 10 of those came from an invalid conundrum, and another 10 from a potentially Hansforded one. As said, this was Harvey's only eve...

Gavin Chipper

Ian Fitzpatrick wrote: ↑
Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:11 am
Have you tried channel 4? I have it recorded under the normal regime for daily Countdown!

Presumably that's why there are no spoilers for these games.

You mean just record it off the telly? I haven't done that sort of thing for years! I'm not sure if I'll fit a VHS tape in!

Gavin Chipper

But if you see it from the point of view of a random person who goes bowling once every 3.7 years, the whole thing does seem a bit weird. I don't get what's weird about it though. You use the proper equipment for the sport. For me it's no different to wearing ice skates to go ice skating or using c...

Gavin Chipper

That's it folks. The great bowling shoe conspiracy has been rumbled. Should have realised it wasn't realistic to expect that different techniques for throwing different objects while standing on different surfaces might require different equipment. It was a good ride while it lasted. I'm off to sel...

Gavin Chipper

The Staedtler logo is the head of Mars (Roman god of war), not just some random shape.

Edit:

Gavin Chipper

Bowling shoes are awesome in that they are designed to help you play the game properly and reduce injury. They weren't just designed to personally annoy Gevin. (That's just a happy coincidence). They allow for a degree of sliding that regular footwear doesn't and you don't want to scuff up the thro...

Gavin Chipper

Anyway, I'm going to add a bit more to my thoughts on the Zionism thing. It seems that Rhys thinks that Jewish people have a right to self determination. The process by which a country determines its own statehood and forms its own government. OK, forget the country thing in this particular definiti...

Gavin Chipper

Yeah, not working.

Gavin Chipper

I would suspect C1 of hacking the computer and subject him to an appropriate interrogation technique, perhaps involving embarquement sur l'eau.

Gavin Chipper

Worth a look. How current times compare with medieval times. A lot of baloney , but worth a watch https://youtu.be/z2RujJ04vxY Feck. Wish I hadn't clicked on that. The dude is a "taxation is theft" libertarian. My YouTube recommendations are gonna be screwed. I always browse the internet in incogni...

Gavin Chipper

Bowling shoes are awesome in that they are designed to help you play the game properly and reduce injury. They weren't just designed to personally annoy Gevin. (That's just a happy coincidence). They allow for a degree of sliding that regular footwear doesn't and you don't want to scuff up the thro...

Gavin Chipper

Matt Morrison wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 29, 2020 7:35 pm
Bowling alleys haven't made you use their shoes for, I dunno, a long time. You just wear your own, as you're in flats.

That said, I still get bowling shoes because they are absolutely awesome.

Awesome in what way?

Gavin Chipper

Irons are definitely joke items.

Gavin Chipper

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:05 pm
Maybe buying your own bowling shoes is the solution

Would they allow that? They'd have to do some bowling shoe test on them.

Gavin Chipper

I refuse to share that. You have Google, don't you? I went to their Twitter page and found a few things about Israel/Palestine, and it was obvious to me that none of the tweets were going to explicitly say what you say they are saying - it would be down to interpretation. So I thought it might just...

Gavin Chipper

James Robinson wrote: ↑
Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:47 pm
Looks like it's Champion of Champions XIV starting tomorrow for the next 3 weeks...

And the More4 shows seem to have vanished too...

Was this on today? Can't find on All 4.

Gavin Chipper

And Black Lives Matter's UK branch have just ruined everything they've done for the last three weeks by posting the notion Jews don't have a right to self-determination on their Twitter feed, including the rather stupid assertion that British politics is "gagged" when disputing it. Can you link/quo...

Gavin Chipper

Well I don't mind the order too much as long as we get our four numbers games!

Gavin Chipper

Bowling shoes. Golfing shoes can be added to that list. Most golfing clothes too. Only a seventies pimp would where some of the getup that's acceptable on the golf course Sure, but you're not made to wear golfing shoes are you? With bowling shoes, you go into a bowling place and they make you give ...

Gavin Chipper

Bowling shoes.

Gavin Chipper

Tom S wrote: ↑
Sat Jun 27, 2020 10:46 pm
Zarte-Philip Grand FInal is probably the strongest ever Grand Final game in my opinion.

That game and Callum v Dylan were both 14-13 in terms of maxes, so it's difficult to choose between them!

Gavin Chipper

Interesting that people talk about records in terms of format when arguably a bigger factor is Lexicon. But it can't really be done. There have been so many dictionary changes, and also on top of that rule changes about American spellings, mass nouns etc. And now that we have the online dictionary ...

Gavin Chipper

People who don't want to know how magic tricks are done. Penn and Teller's Fool Us is back on and I still like it and all but I get sick of them speaking in code. I think it would be a better show if they just told us how it was done. Even the foolers. I want to see Penn and Teller's reaction to th...

Gavin Chipper

Regarding the aitch/haitch situation, where I live there is a rather funny/depressing split along typical Northern Ireland lines for the pronunciation. I taught in a school for a year and intentionally changed my pronunciation of the letter, mainly just to avoid boring conversation. I did randomly ...

Gavin Chipper

I interpreted it the same way as Bradley and wonder if you are both being too generous. Andy needs to tell us. Wouldn't it have been a perfectly reasonable assumption that the lost opportunity for an extra 18 points would make the 146 seem safer? The new format was always going to increase the over...

Gavin Chipper

I'm not Jack's PR agent or anything but I know Jack well enough to know that he'd still go for it. It would be a farce otherwise, it's not a practice game on apterous, it's a record that would presumably have literally stood forever, bearing in mind the upcoming change in format 12 games into the n...

Gavin Chipper

I'm going to give a couple of special mentions for classic games that have not been mentioned here. The first is Clive Freedman v Peter Evans in the CoC II final, which Clive won on a sudden death conundrum after being 14-0 down after two rounds and 17 points down after 9 rounds, and there is a Mike...

Gavin Chipper

OK, having watched the 30th birthday championship again, I'd decided to resurrect this thread. It's interesting reading these choices, and a lot of them seem to reflect the time when people got into Countdown and recentness rather than having any genuine claims on being the greatest - e.g. Tim v Ann...

Gavin Chipper

Having watched this tournament a second time, including the final today (with its record-equalling score and Conor's ascension to all-time greatness), I'm still going with Jack Worsley v Graeme Cole as game of the tournament. Change my mind. (That's what they say these days isn't it?)

Gavin Chipper

Magnificent post by a magnificent guy, Conor. :D ;) Apparently, only 570,000 turned up to watch the final on Friday....................: https://twitter.com/TVRatingsUK/status/307950607879270401 (Well, at least we beat The Common Denominator ) :D :( Still can't see Countdown moving back to 3:10 any...

Gavin Chipper

James Robinson wrote: ↑
Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:32 pm
Apparently, only 570,000 turned up to watch the final on Friday....................: https://twitter.com/TVRatingsUK/status/ ... 7879270401 (Well, at least we beat The Common Denominator)

I wonder what time they were queueing from?

Gavin Chipper

C1 trails by 21 points going into the last letters round. Both contestants offer seven, C1's not written down. He declares a voracious tropical fish. C2 says "Same", and shows his paper to C1. On it are written the words PIRANHA and PIRAHNA. C1, who needs to win the round, asks which spelling C2 is...

Gavin Chipper

Fiona T wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 25, 2020 4:25 pm
6:15 here

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x70wdke

Doesn't show the checking, but Suzie asks for spelling which she doesn't usually do.

I think that was because Philip noticed and that bit was "scripted".

Gavin Chipper

The witch-hunt continues. Rebecca Long-Bailey has been sacked by Keir Starmer from her shadow cabinet position for sharing an article containing "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory". In the article, Ms Peake discussed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. She said: "The tactics used by the ...

Gavin Chipper

Did they silence the swearing today? I couldn't hear it.

Gavin Chipper

This was another contender for best game of the series. Very similar to Jono v Jack - one round in it, and the player on for a max gets the conundrum. Maybe this one edges it because it was a semi-final and because Conor had to face a crucial. I still probably prefer Jack Worsley v Graeme Cole overa...

Gavin Chipper

The "Only show episodes I can actually fucking watch" checkbox on All 4 when I'm looking for the relevant Countdown game. No, I would prefer it if you just listed some random dates that happened to have Countdown on them. Also, why put them in reverse order and why not have the date they were last s...

Gavin Chipper

Peter Mabey wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:40 pm
Has SULPHATED been added to the dictionary used now ? (It is in Collins, and OK for Scrabble, but not Lexico)

Invalid on Apterous.

Gavin Chipper

I was surprised to see today, after Jon was apparently still choosing between PODGIER and FIREDOG in R2 when asked for his word, that he didn't immediately forfeit the round . Haha that's brilliant. I have learnt how not to cheat in the intervening 6 years. I thought the same, but I think because h...

Gavin Chipper

What if he's written SMAUVE?

Gavin Chipper

I think it was Jack's game before that had a target of 725 which Corby pointed out you could get doing 75*58/6. This time you could do 50*58/4. So there you go. Yes, today I did 50 x (8x9-10-3)/4 = 725. Except that equals 737.5 So it does. I would have been better off doing 8 x (9-3) + 10 for the 5...

Gavin Chipper

Fair point. I think you have to have made your decision on what word you're going to offer when you declare your length. I would prefer a situation where someone who had the ability to write down every combination of letters on their paper in 30 seconds couldn't draw every letters round that they d...

Gavin Chipper

Andy Platt wrote: ↑
Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:11 pm
At the time of the crucial I thought Rawlo was the favourite but good nerve by that Hurst guy and, all things considered, a deserved place in the final.

I remember thinking this at the time given Jonathan's conundrums. But Tom Rowell did also take a conundrum off him.

Gavin Chipper

I think it was Jack's game before that had a target of 725 which Corby pointed out you could get doing 75*58/6. This time you could do 50*58/4. So there you go. Yes, today I did 50 x (8x9-10-3)/4 = 725. I'm surprised no-one got it given that it was basically the same round that Jack had to play aga...

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