c4countdown

Adam Gillard

So pleased to see Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce bowing out with her 25th global medal, particularly after the debacle in Paris where she was one of the athletes affected by being initially denied access to the stadium. I've always loved watching her race; she's such a distinctive character both on the tra...

Adam Gillard

Are people in military bands:
1) Soldiers who happen to be good at playing an instrument?
2) Musicians who happen to have got a gig with the military?
3) Something else?

Adam Gillard

For many years I had an old Mac computer that failed to load apterous through the Java console periodically after an update. Every time that happened (probably more than five times), I reported it to Charlie, and every time he invested effort to get it up and running again for me within a week or so...

Adam Gillard

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sun Jul 13, 2025 10:39 pm What if a plural happened to end in an S but wasn't just a case of sticking an S on the end?

DIAGNOSES, to pluralise one of the words from the quoted contestant guidelines. Or something like TORTRIX -> TORTRICES.

Adam Gillard

Just seen the news from his family via Facebook. I remember meeting him at a Co-Event in London. He loved Countdown and Tottenham Hotspur, which I share with him. He also loved his music and seeing his favourite artists live in concert.

Rest in peace, Vik.

Adam Gillard

People who quote themselves on social media. The top line is usually some non sequitur like "It's a good point" or "Never thought about it this way" and then they're quoting themselves.

Adam Gillard

How are you?

Adam Gillard

At least one. I was walking somewhere with a family member in heavy rain and because of the weather and the traffic we were delayed by around 15 seconds in crossing a wide dual carriageway. Suddenly there was a noise like thunder booming and an enormous tree fell across the entire width of the road ...

Adam Gillard

Jenni Falconer seemed quite excited about it when she mentioned it on the radio this morning.

Adam Gillard

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2025 2:23 pm Arctic (bears) from the Greek Arktos
Antarctic (No bears)

I like this one!

Adam Gillard

Also, password reset doesn't seem to send an email, or at least didn't when I was unable to log in but did provide the correct email address linked to my account.

Adam Gillard

Thanks Ben and Gevin, I had followed the advice in this thread and also in George's apterous thread but it didn't help me. I never suspected my account had been deactivated, but just that it was affected by these wider login issues. I think I may have actually raised my first Board Administrator req...

Adam Gillard

I finally got back in today! Been locked out for about 4 months even though I was using the correct username and password.

Does anyone read the Board Administrator messages?

Adam Gillard

For any vegans reading this, do recent scientific findings such as plants "screaming" when they are cut or uprooted, and other signs of sentience in plants (I googled this and saw a number of scholarly and newspaper articles) hold any weight with you when compared to the pain and sentience...

Adam Gillard

I don't understand this post! I took it to mean that, as there are a few people called Adam who attend co-events, there is now some game called "adam vs octochamp" where you count the number of Adams and the number of octochamps at an event and see which number is higher. That makes sense...

Adam Gillard

I think 2 London, about 3 St Albans and about 3 Hangovers in North Hykeham. So my c-index is 2. About half of those were as observer rather than player. you haven't been since adam vs octochamp (what will there be more of at a co event) was vaguely a thing. Admittedly you'd be useless whether you t...

Adam Gillard

I think 2 London, about 3 St Albans and about 3 Hangovers in North Hykeham. So my c-index is 2. About half of those were as observer rather than player.

Adam Gillard

Didn't someone write a book on stuff and consciousness? I don't think it was Harari.

Adam Gillard

There are still people alive whose parents got married before 1900 Consider very remote places where they're virtually unaffected by even large-scale world events In some such places it's even possible to have children out of wedlock so you might need to extend your criteria and roll back your time...

Adam Gillard

I couldn't figure out the dance move my 4-year-old was doing to Black Lace's Superman until she explained she'd heard the instruction as "hit your eye" instead of "hitch a ride".

Adam Gillard

When you're driving at 28 or 29 mph and a digital display flashes up "30 Slow Down".

Adam Gillard

The Little Miss series of books is all about (Mr) men. The female characters are almost always defined by their role with respect to male ones in the book, normally a subservient or inferior role. We actually realised this a few years ago but have now had this independently corroborated by a 4 year ...

Adam Gillard

Possibly an unanswerable question, but.... has anyone ever 'pencilled' a new word on Countdown (i.e. made the first declaration of that word, as a max winner) before it was pencilled on Apterous. After apterous had bedded in, of course 2000 so before Apterous but MYOGLOBIN is the one that sticks in...

Adam Gillard

That's still one very messy hung Parliament. [...] A Labour/Green/SNP/PC coalition gives 291, whilst a Conservative/Reform coalition gives 249. The Lib Dems would have to jump in with that incredibly busy coalition on the Left, giving that bloc 367 seats and a majority of 84 (with a 326 threshold)....

Adam Gillard

That's still one very messy hung Parliament. [...] A Labour/Green/SNP/PC coalition gives 291, whilst a Conservative/Reform coalition gives 249. The Lib Dems would have to jump in with that incredibly busy coalition on the Left, giving that bloc 367 seats and a majority of 84 (with a 326 threshold)....

Adam Gillard

This is the really interesting bit for me - a player capable of hitting 154+ is now much, much less likely to encounter a max high enough to break the record during their octorun. Plus the players who are of a high enough level to get near a max game have a lot of unlearning to do As someone that's...

Adam Gillard

Think about kids. They learn words first, then how to string them together with grammar by usage. Know the vocab, then go far Grammar. Not quite - if I recall correctly from my studies, the grammar comes pretty early on around the babbling and single word stage. By the time the child has enough voc...

Adam Gillard

Admittedly I haven't seen the last 10 series or so, but the best performing contestant for me is Conor Travers. My favourites were ones who resonated with me as most of my viewing time was while I was primary school age, namely Tanmay Dixit and Kai Laddiman.

Adam Gillard

The lyrics to Chain Reaction are proper filthy!

Adam Gillard

I guess drawing the line over what is a used word and what isn't is what I'm finding a bit weird. And classifying current usage. There's a thing called the Oxford Corpus which is basically a big list of words and how many times they appear. It is heavily biased towards traditional print media, e.g....

Adam Gillard

Callum Todd wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 1:31 pm Regional accents probably changed the answer for that one too. For example I would consider OUR and HEN to be valid answers in my dialect but not in Queen's (King's?) English

Hem and Hex alongside Hen in that case

Adam Gillard

I'm sure the British press will be all over this, particularly if the Mendy case goes to trial and he is convicted They are decidedly not all over this. The coverage of Ronaldo's return and re-debut today has been nauseating. There is still an open civil case in the US, I wonder if Man United will ...

Adam Gillard

And on the high jump / pole vault thing, surely nowadays they could have a system of laser beams or something to measure the height you reach, so each jump is properly measured, rather than having to get over each set height! Aye, but you can't ask people to jump over nothing. The bar provides a po...

Adam Gillard

What is the most successful first name in countdown (if we say at least 3 people have to have been called this and do it by percentage of games won) My money is on Tom/Thomas. Or maybe Mark. My gut is it will be a more unusual name. Lets say there's been 2 random people called Innis pop up over the...

Adam Gillard

Thomas Carey wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2024 6:56 am
Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 11:28 pm Kelvin Kiptum has died in a road accident. Shit. I mean, fucking hell.
These are the kinds of celebrity deaths that get me the most. I struggle to really care when someone old dies, but he had so much ahead of him

Horrible and shocking. Similar happened with Sammy Wanjiru in his prime.

Adam Gillard

SHAMPOO

Adam Gillard

People who put the squash/Ribena/whatever in AFTER the water. what in god's name are you thinking When at leisure, I put the squash in first and then the water, like a normal person. However, when there's a queue behind me at the office for the taps, I go mixologist style with the water and the squ...

Adam Gillard

Ian Volante wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 12:49 pm I just can't believe that Bluey's dead.

To be honest that was the main take-away from the article for me too.

Adam Gillard

Losingest

Adam Gillard

Bradley Horrocks wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:11 pm Humankind purposely negligent from my run

Sounds like a veiled statement from the conundrum setter/s there! Loving this thread; this is my favourite set of three so far

Adam Gillard

Mark Deeks wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 7:55 pm What happens to old men that sees them become unable to shut their mouths properly?

Proliferation of nose hair?

Adam Gillard

That's how it's pronounced in our house. I don't understand how else it would be pronounced, I assume the 'correct' makes it sound like "tight least". Title-ist? I mean, I've not heard of it before this discussion. Yes, one time I heard an advert during the golf coverage that pronounced i...

Adam Gillard

Johnny Canuck wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2023 7:38 pm I thought Microsoft had misspelt Tilting in the name of the font Perpetua Titling MT, or I was like "what the hell is a tit-ling"

Watching golf on the TV I'd occasionally see players sporting the brand 'Tit-leist', which I parsed similarly (second half rhyming with 'heist').

Adam Gillard

I think Adam G's comment was fair. But I appreciate people understanding where I was coming from. My comment was directed more towards the stereotype of people who leave university, get a comfortable job and blindly follow a standard career path without stepping back and thinking about the potentia...

Adam Gillard

Exactly. What I'm asking is, does it really have to come to that or not? If I know the minimum buffer time, I'd be able to determine. If quitting were what I'd need to do then forget it. I'd be a pretty trash human being if I did that. Why would quitting your job to do something you're passionate a...

Adam Gillard

My sister, a guide leader, recently discovered that more than half of her group (many of whom are in secondary school) were completely incapable of reading an analogue clock, and in an activity that involved some basic maths (like, 12x4 level of basic), where they insisted phones were put away, a l...

Adam Gillard

Is it better to fill a kettle with cold water or warm water? Why? Well it's said that hot water freezes more quickly so maybe cold water boils faster. But how are you warming the water? If it's from the hot tap it's probably not drinking water. Only if its from a water tank rather than the mains Ho...

Adam Gillard

Is it better to fill a kettle with cold water or warm water? Why?

Adam Gillard

1) "Outside in" is not the opposite of "inside out".
2) "Match of the Day" is (likely) a play on words based on "Catch of the Day".

Adam Gillard

Also I re-read that post a few times before posting it as I feel more pressured to be word-perfect in case I imply something that I didn't intend. That's because I'm not a disinterested observer in this and I do worry about a backlash. I'm still not entirely happy with the post but I felt like I was...

Adam Gillard

Yes. You can also be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, and vice versa. It's very easy to sympathise with the other cause if you sympathise with one, as they are so similar. Both are peoples with a valid claim to the same land, who have been rejected and oppressed for many ye...

Adam Gillard

That Britney Spears one and ELEVEN PLUS TWO = TWELVE PLUS ONE are the two more oft-cited that came to mind for me.

Adam Gillard

"Click and collect". What's the point of it? Who's using it? There are two main ways to buy something. You could go to an actual bricks-and-mortar shop, and get it the same day but have the inconvenience of having to go all the way to the shop. Alternatively, you could order it from a web...

Adam Gillard

Is there no intrinsic value in the activities one would undertake to achieve the award?

Adam Gillard

Everyone at the (Last Night of the) Proms is white. Performers, audience, everyone. Watched about half an hour and must have seen 400 different faces, maybe 6 weren't white*. Ironically the conductor was talking about diversity and inclusion. *I know that 394/400 is not equivalent to "everyone&...

Adam Gillard

A highly intelligent young woman with a history of charitable work and campaigning, including against domestic abuse and other issues impacting women, has spoken out about a public case related to domestic abuse.

But I wonder what Gevin has to say on the matter?

Adam Gillard

Cracked the 400:

#BigBenGame for

23:19:46
422 points

Longest word: CHEAPENERS
https://vole.wtf/big-ben/

Adam Gillard

Another brag:

#BigBenGame for

18:46:49
394 points

Longest word: UNDERSIZE
https://vole.wtf/big-ben/

Adam Gillard

Nice one! I've had a couple of 12s but not finished the board on either occasion. The latest one (SERENENESSES) I had 340 without finishing the board; I think the previous one was REPRESENTING.

Adam Gillard

That's fun that my game has been made replayable. I beat my own score by a few points just now by tweaking the shorter words I did at the end.

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