c4countdown

Matt Bayfield

Clearly a typo for "Expectorant". Jen and Adam will be providing players with covert Tecwen Whittock-style assistance... *cough*

Matt Bayfield

Co:parkrun recap for Saturday 23 May 2015. C1: Matt Bayfield (13 parkruns, 1 win). C2: Gevin Chapwell (11 parkruns, 0 wins). C3: Lauren Hamer (13 parkruns, 0 wins). R01: King's Lynn, parkrun #194 And now a brief interlude before our main feature: SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOIL...

Matt Bayfield

Small "p" noted and appreciated, Gevin.

Also, flattered that I am that my footballing talents have been recognised, it seems strange that I replaced Antonio in the Nottingham Forest line-up. He is clearly a right-winger and I am left-footed.

Matt Bayfield

Ooh, and looking at recent Great Notley results... nice work on the improving parkrun PB, Gevin...

Matt Bayfield

Feature request: arbirtrary groupings via the Parkrun website - would be fun to be able compare my times to those of fellow apterites/korfballers/whatever. I've run 13 of the buggers since 2010, so I'm hardly a prolific parkrunner, but I do use them as time trials every now and again. I'm parkrun a...

Matt Bayfield

How many people voted on the 11 shortlisted games? Either it was just 3 people, or maybe 6, or it's a nice coincidence that all the points averages are multiples of one-third.

Matt Bayfield

Well, there's quite an unusual feat - I finished in exactly the same tied position (equal 9th) at both COLIN XI and The Hangover.

Matt Bayfield

I paid £66 when I booked for 2 nights. I booked on 7 September.

Graeme, you should collate stats from this thread and plot a graph of price vs date of booking. Together we can all beat the system...

Matt Bayfield

The standard gets higher every year. I can see at least one player in the Top 50 of ProRanks who will be in the bottom group of seeds for Round 1.

Matt Bayfield

Ben, can you check that there are enough vowels in the board games for my annual 9-round vowel-fest against Jon Corby?

Matt Bayfield

Gevin and Jon: to answer your queries above, I retired from Co:events after CoBliviLon 2013, and moved on to playing games which use other dictionaries. I didn't make an announcement, although I thought people may have worked that after 3 years of me barely missing an event, last year's Lincoln was ...

Matt Bayfield

I like the idea - it's the sort of thing I'd've loved to have had a go at, before I retired from these sort of events. Potential obstacles, which might be good questions for people to consider of themselves: (a) Are the top 8 (or enough of the top 8) really going to be bothered to turn up to the end...

Matt Bayfield

[Dennis Pennis] Humorist or satirist, who cares? You're definitely some kind of "-rist job"... [/Dennis Pennis] Actually, the blog is perfectly well-written, though any humour it contains is very gentle, and not always especially original. But writing humour isn't easy. Stick with it. As l...

Matt Bayfield

Ben, this is excellent.

Excluding "Prune", how many different players have played at COLIN over the 10 years (including the Hangover, which I presume adds 1 to the total)?

Matt Bayfield

Peter: I had a go at these on sporcle; thanks for sharing. Spoiler: For WATERFALL, I went for Atlantic Ocean before thinking of the Stone Roses, but I'm guessing you dismissed them as too obscure. Or maybe they were included in the Word version of the quiz.

Matt Bayfield

Ben: thank you for another fantastic weekend of unofficial Countdown competition. With the entry list and standard of play ever-growing, you should be very proud of this wonderful event you've created and nurtured. As always, I enjoyed the chance to play some folks I've not encountered before (inclu...

Matt Bayfield

Take Melanie's excellent, undefeated, performance out of the table... and those results are pretty stark reading for the non-apterite Edinburgh club members.

Matt Bayfield

Cracking work Graeme. Thanks for that addendum.

Matt Bayfield

Okay. Who are you, and what have you done with Matt?

Just because I have no interest in solving the arithmetic rounds in Countdown, doesn't mean I'm not interested in Maths and statistics...

Thanks for the thorough answer to the question!

Matt Bayfield

Graeme: I'm interested in how Numbers skills have evolved over the series of Countdown, specifically with regard to the Numbers round picks that contestants have selected. I seem to recall that in the early days, when Countdown was dominated by Scrabblers, it was very rare that anyone would pick any...

Matt Bayfield

I can find no reference, in any online or printed English language dictionary, to the pronunciation "noy-ter". Every dictionary I have consulted lists the IPA pronunciation as "njuːtə" i.e. "nyu-ter" (British pronunciation), or "noo-ter" (American pronunciatio...

Matt Bayfield

Ha, cheers Matt. I did think about re-running the video to check the times, but didn't consider it paramount to the recap.

Anyhow, having watched the clip back, I reckon I buzzed on 8 seconds, and after the restart, Andy's buzz would've been about 10 seconds. So I wasn't far out.

Matt Bayfield

Next, in my fourth game, Andy Platt hands me an asswhupping on a crucial conundrum. Countdown recap for Saturday 26 January 2013. Table 3, Game 6 C1: Challenger Matt Bayfield. C2: Challenger Andy Platt. DC: Conor Travers. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: T E R O T O W E I R02: L E V A G I Z Y W R0...

Matt Bayfield

I suspected at the time that you'd scored a max game here, though you were too modest to agree. Well played! Ta Jon - think it's the first max 9-rounder I've had at a Co event. A nice landmark, especially after being denied one on a conundrum by James Robinson at the first CO:LON a couple of years ...

Matt Bayfield

Countdown recap for Saturday 26 January 2013. Table 1, Game 3 C1: Challenger Matt Bayfield. C2: Challenger Jon Corby. DC: Tracey Mills. OT: Other words or solutions. R01: B I P I R I W A P R02: T A S I H O Z E Y R03: Q E P E T U T O I R04: 5, 1, 2, 75, 25, 50. Target: 454. R05: N E S A R E R E D R06...

Matt Bayfield

Ben's posted the very last game of COLIN 2013... so here's the first. Tracey and I, as unseeded players, were drawn in the triplet with number 1 seed Jon Corby, so this was a rare chance for us to play on Table 1. Countdown recap for Saturday 26 January 2013. Table 1, Game 1. C1: Challenger Tracey M...

Matt Bayfield

It's a sorry-looking results table for the over 30s this year. Damn you young whippersnappers with your sponge-like brains, your asymmetric haircuts, your talents with a pool cue... ;-) Cracking event, as always, Ben. I'll be back next year, but with a new ambition - to finish as the highest-ranked ...

Matt Bayfield

Anyone who does have a board game which exceeds the legal limit of shitty letters, is welcome to use it on whichever table I'm on, especially for when I'm picking my traditional 17 vowel selections against Jon Corby.

Sadly, I don't have a board game I can bring. Well, not a Countdown board game.

Matt Bayfield

Thanks Adam.

The Way of The Kid, is indeed for Goatdown Jnr, although skill points only began to be awarded for The Way of The Kid, around 2 months ago.

Matt Bayfield

A mere 1168 days after bringing all my skills up to level 3, today I've become the first person to reach a minimum of level 4 for each of the 13 skills currently available (Dog, Tadpole, Millipede, Giraffe, Centipede, Coyote, Wolf, Tanngrisnir, Parrot, Bat, Goat, Mole and Kid). Why did I set such a ...

Matt Bayfield

Mark Deeks wrote: What's a Z worth in Polish Scrabble? One? Matt Morrison wrote: I won't pretend to understand Polish, but either 9 or 5 points depending on the variation of Z (or depending on which one you meant). Just to clarify this: the normal letter Z is worth one point. The two accented Z cha...

Matt Bayfield

Loz and I have gone through Charlie's crossword... thank you for sharing. We agree with Jayne, and think 33 across might be (3, 7) rather than (10).

Matt Bayfield

#1 seed Innis Carson surprised nobody by being top of the table with 404 points. In one game he achieved a score of 99 which included three nine-letter words. Not only is this a new co-event record for a 9 rounder, but in the 20,739 9-round games played on apterous to date, the highest is 97. Not s...

Matt Bayfield

On the subject of the Saturday evening entertainment at the Fox & Hounds, in 2011 we had karaoke (and Shane); and in 2012 we had an average live band (and no Shane). The karaoke was much more popular amongst COLIN attendees; and in 2012, I vaguely remember someone asking the landlord of the F&am...

Matt Bayfield

Oh, the inevitability that this would happen the day after Andy posts his cartoon.

Matt Bayfield

*LIKE*

Guilty as charged...

Matt Bayfield

Mark Deeks wrote:BIOGAS is valid.

Ooh, result. Ta.

Matt Bayfield

I got 101, assuming that BIOGAS (which I declared R9) is invalid. If I'd've stuck with a safe 5, I'd've moved up to 106. My solution to the first numbers was ((100+75)/25 + 2 + 50)) x 4 . I couldn't get the second numbers spot on in 30 secs. Right, that's my Normal 15-rounder for the month of Octobe...

Matt Bayfield

Ha... LIKE for Graeme's .GIF!

Matt Bayfield

Jim, that's precisely why I've always thought it was an unlikely #1. There were plenty of dance records topping the charts around that time, but for one as spectacularly average as The Real Thing to climb to the top... well, it was huge surprise to me when the chart was counted down on Radio 1.

Matt Bayfield

I love the Gotye & Kimbra single.

And if we're totting up unlikely number one singles, I'm tossing in The Real Thing by Tony di Bart.

Matt Bayfield

I'm not interested in any of the above (so haven't voted), but good luck Adam, hope it's a success.

Matt Bayfield

When that muppet Andi Peters was given charge of producing Top Of The Pops in 2003, he re-vamped it as a live show including a phone-in question for viewers. The first re-vamped show was an absolute disaster on so many levels, but the most glaring balls-up was that none of the three proposed multi-c...

Matt Bayfield

I'd be delighted to accept the invitation, Ben - it'll be a novelty for me not to have to qualify. Nice to see Rob, Andy P and I sneaking in without having been on-screen!

Matt Bayfield

Oh, for god's sake, that one about the Polyphonic Spree is bad for so many reasons: 1) Adding "Texan band" makes it practically impenetrable. 2) There aren't even exactly 20 members in the band anyway. The number in the band has varied over the years. Wikipedia lists 21 current members. 3)...

Matt Bayfield

I noted that the image is a 36 x 36 grid, and if I replaced the black squares with 1, and white with 0, I ended up with 36 lines of binary (seems more logical than setting black = 0, white =1, given the large areas of white space). I then tried breaking down each line into groups of n bits (ideally ...

Matt Bayfield

Yes please to lunch. Casserole and apple pie sound grand.

I can send a cheque if you really want, though seems a bit of a faff if you don't mind waiting for cash on the day.

Matt Bayfield

I'll happily be in for a cooked lunch if one is going to be available.

Matt Bayfield

A delayed reply in this thread... but a belated big thank you to Michael, The Count, Charlie, the engraver of the winner's trophy for not raising an eyebrow, and anyone else who helped to organise CO:LON 2011. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and as always it was a pleasure to meet with a bunch of such ...

Matt Bayfield

Tom was unlucky with the round order in this final, having to declare first in rounds 2 and 7. I had written down both REPENTER and CONFABS (not being quite sure of the validity of either), but Tom's declarations made it easy for me to go for the safe 7 and 6 respectively. Had the declaration order ...

Matt Bayfield

I don't like the idea of there being a top 2 or top 4 play-off after the Swiss stages, but since any such final would never involve me anyway, my argument here is somewhat theoretical. Before Gev gets in here, I'd like to point out that at no point in this thread, did I ever say the above. In hinds...

Matt Bayfield

I waited approximately 12 years from taking up darts, before I threw my first 180. Admittedly, I didn't play at all for about 6 of those years, but even so, you'd've thought I'd've cut my losses and taken up a different sport.

Matt Bayfield

Martin: I was referring to Swiss style formats, which I believe have less potential for shock results. Because, yes, I did unexpectedly make the final of CoLei3 [of which I'm mighty proud], though the first three rounds of the day were drawn randomly, so I only had to win two knockout games against ...

Matt Bayfield

I prefer the Edinburgh style, simply because I like to be able to pick my own letters and numbers. In the Bristol style, you're at the mercy of someone else's picking over 90% of the time, which denies you the tactical element of picking potentially high- or low-scoring selections depending on the s...

Matt Bayfield

Now that could be interesting! Those who follow the UK Scrabble scene will certainly know of Jessica's achievements. I'm surprised she's keen on trying Countdown, with its different dictionary to CSW - but good luck to her. And indeed, good luck to any other Scrabblers who give Countdown a go.

Matt Bayfield

The "Others" column in this Spoilage Letters Round looks wrong to me, considering that it only used the first letter of the selection, when there is clearly a shorter word (as offered by me) which uses the first two letters. This is the first time I've seen this happen.

Matt Bayfield

Ha, clearly no-one posting in this thread plays much Aegilops on apterous. Yes, CUNJEVOI is a fairly regular max in that variant... so I've also seen the word many times. [brag] Hence I spotted that 9 instantly, probably as Damian did. Very much a case of if you know the word, it practically leaps o...

Matt Bayfield

Just seen the latest news on the apterous homepage. Thanks for listening, Charlie.

Matt Bayfield

Thanks for the responses, Ciaran and Gev, although I'm not going to be drawn into a lengthy debate on whether Numbers or Letters rounds are more interesting. My feelings on that are well-known, and one of the reasons I don't watch dCedL any more is the increased emphasis on arithmetic compared to Co...

Matt Bayfield

I can guarantee the loss of at least 1 viewer, if the proportion of Numbers Rounds in a game were to be increased beyond the current 20%. I already FFWD through the numbers games as it is. Of course, losing me as a viewer may be offset, by people who like the Numbers games and don't already watch Co...

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