c4countdown

Matt Bayfield

I was thinking plain total, i.e. for a player who'd spotted RELATIONS, RELATIONS and RAINSWEPT, that would count as a total of 3, not 2.

Matt Bayfield

Request for an addition to the already jam-packed Statland: I'd be curious to see a leaderboard of the top 30 players who've declared the most valid 9s in Normal variant, ODE play, listing how many 9s they've declared. I have a feeling Innis will be top, but behind him, I'm not sure. Possible extens...

Matt Bayfield

There seems to be an oddity when I play bots in a Conundrum Attack, in as much as I never get high difficulty conundrums. In fact, often most of the conundrums generated are exactly the same difficulty, never higher than 6/10. For instance, these games are typical: Against Waldorf, conundrums are mo...

Matt Bayfield

DUN is listed as an adjective in ODE3, but DUNNER and DUNNEST are missing from the apterous ODE lexicon, which looks like an error.

Matt Bayfield

Very nice, Lesley and Phil.

I have to admit, in all my years of gig-going at the Astoria and Heaven, I've never stayed on for that particular clubnight. It's always seemed to be an exceptionally young crowd queueing outside, maybe that's what has put me off.

Matt Bayfield

Actually, in Goatdown duels, I think the goatletter is picked Rex style (i.e. picked to give the longest possible max word, but if several goatletters give the same max length, a goatletter which gives as few as possible alternatives, preferably a darren, will be picked). Prune's picking is differen...

Matt Bayfield

It's a tricky one. The problem with auto-declaring is that it makes fudging an opt-out rather than an opt-in, which I suspect is currently enough to dissuade most people from trying it. It has been suggested before that the interface give you some kind of heads-up if you haven't declared anything w...

Matt Bayfield

A Numbers Interface plea. Please, for my sanity, can the Numbers Rounds be changed so that you automatically declare the exact target (and thus get a chance to enter your solution via the number-clicking) if you have otherwise made no declaration. (In other worse, you should automatically start in ...

Matt Bayfield

Ha, inevitable! Ta for the shout though, you can take credit for that one then.

Matt Bayfield

Ta Phil. That makes sense.

Matt Bayfield

Oh, and incidentally, if anyone could explain to me what YAKBV means (since it appears five times in this thread, and I'm still none the wiser), that would be appreciated. I've even googled it, and the only semi-relevant hit seems to be that YAKBV plus a blank yields no longer word than YAKBV.

Matt Bayfield

Latest idea- Apterous 'Fusion', basically combining elements of lockdown and aegilops. In letters rounds, you pick 11 letters, but the catch is that letters 2 & 3 and 9 & 10 are 'fused', basically meaning if used in a word they must be used in the order in which they came out or not at all....

Matt Bayfield

Matt Morrison wrote:In my experience, the Frigging Olympics happens way more often than once every four years too.

Really? How often do they come then?

Matt Bayfield

There is a link that automatically goes to the user page of the person who has won the most pencils in the last 30 days, although doesn't give a full ranking - http://apterous.org/mostpencilsinlast30days Where's the "Like" button gone? I'm touched, I didn't think anyone ever noticed my pe...

Matt Bayfield

Curious. Does the same thing occur in not-Spanish Goat Jnr? Or non-Jnr Spanish Goat? I've just tried an experiment. It also happens in ODE play, in either Goat Jr or Goat practice. Seems to be a quirk of practice mode, then, since I can quite happily set up and play custom Goat formats as rated gam...

Matt Bayfield

I've just started playing a practice Spanish Goat Junior Letters Attack, and there appears to be a very minor bug when it's my pick of the letters. After picking the penultimate letter, a dialogue box pops up: An error was encountered. If you'd like to report the error, see: <URL>. Error type: java....

Matt Bayfield

...doesn't allow conundrum skill to be reflected very effectively in Duel scores overall. This is my principal objection to the current system. When all the conundrums are very difficult, it's slightly demoralising for the mid-range players, as it doesn't give them much chance to show their conundr...

Matt Bayfield

Matt wrote: Also it turns out lookalikes are much harder to spot but we did see two Charlie Reamses (both Western sadly), an Indian Matt Bayfield and an Indian Jono. Ha, even low-grade occupations like being Matt Bayfield have now been outsourced to India. Genius. And glad you both enjoyed the jaunt!

Matt Bayfield

I don't remember, but I do remember getting a conundrum ALUMINIUM sometime in the early to mid 80s. Back then, it was extremely rare for me to get a conundrum.

On checking with the wiki, this must have been Episode 161!

Matt Bayfield

Charlie, can we please stop having only new conundrums whenever the Duel is Normal variant? Considering there are still getting on for 1000 more new ones still to be seen in the Duel, this could mean Duel competitors only see new (i.e. almost invariably, incredibly difficult) conundrums for about th...

Matt Bayfield

One disadvantage of that, Gev, is that on the rare days when apterous is down for a considerable period of time, and only 20-odd people can enter, it gives a huge advantage to the few who are are able to log on and play the Duel, as they'd score up to an extra 80 points. Plus, although your scoring ...

Matt Bayfield

Not a bug, but an interesting oddity of Stepdown scoring for impossible Numbers games. When you can't get within 10 of the target, then you can score points by declaring any old rubbish. For example, here the target was 469 and I declared 480 . And here I got 10 points per round for daft declaration...

Matt Bayfield

Apparently there was an "M" in the selection, the way Ben was pronouncing "N". ;-) I thoroughly enjoyed myself yesterday, with my total of 5 wins (4 during CoNot, then one in darts against Tom C-C), so thank you to all who made the day so much fun. And Ben, let's have a look at t...

Matt Bayfield

when I sat back down I saw Matts Morrison and Bayfield in the seats ahead of me. Hmm, two bald, white, heads. You've either been websurfing for the mid-00s Everton midfield, or for Jordan's tits. (With apologies to Thomas Gravesen & Lee Carsley.) First time I've looked at this thread btw, and I...

Matt Bayfield

I've generally been avoiding posting in this thread - once I get started yapping about music, I'm unlikely to stop. I see a lot more live stuff (up to 730-odd concerts now, since '95) than I listen to recorded music, but here are some records which I love and which get a lot of airplay round mine. A...

Matt Bayfield

Ta for sharing. Especially as I learned a new word (3 Across) whilst solving this.

Matt Bayfield

That prize is pretty damn cool.

Matt Bayfield

This only really affects Unlimited variants on apterous, but now that I've got an ODE3 and can look at the entry, I think KINNIKINNICKS should be allowed, as the second definition of KINNIKINNICK clearly states "count noun". In any case, the plurals of the two alternative spellings (i.e. K...

Matt Bayfield

There are plenty of people on c4c far more qualified to advise on calculating probabilities, but since I'm first here: You can estimate the likelihood of a Scrabble word appearing from your rack, on the first turn, as follows: For PIZAZZY, you need to draw P I Z A Y blank blank. The chance of drawin...

Matt Bayfield

Huh, someone told me that when the lag is too much games vs. bots that started X time ago get wiped. Faced with a complicated and opaque system, people make up lots of crap . Old games don't get wiped deliberately, ever. Oops - I think this was my fault. What I posted in chat, was that when you hav...

Matt Bayfield

Fantastic final, and it was a joy to be in the studio to watch it live.

It's been mentioned before, including by Adam, but I'd echo that Ed's numbers solve in R5 was the best solve/spot I can remember from the whole series.

Matt Bayfield

A load of carbolics.

Matt Bayfield

I was passing Regent's Park recently, where I saw London Zoo signposted. As the zoo is part of the Zoological Society of London, the sign read "ZSL London Zoo".

"Ooh," I thought, "that's VIZSLA in Aegilops..."

Matt Bayfield

Ha - I appear to be ineligible for this due to my ridiculously-inflated provisional rating of 180 following the Peterborough tourney! But good luck Ben - hope it's a success. I would of course encourage anyone remotely interested to give it a go - playing real-life tournament Scrabble is about 10 ti...

Matt Bayfield

James - re: your comment on R4, I imagine the valid word which Stuart had in mind was CREATINE. As a boxer, Stuart may have heard of creatine supplements.

Matt Bayfield

My general music fandom encompasses the Eurovision experience, so yes, I'll be watching. In fact, I'll be at a friend's Eurovision party. And his Eurovision parties are legendary - even a Eurovision-hating mate loved it last year. A lot of the music is pretty bland, but I love the silly traditions a...

Matt Bayfield

Rest in peace Ted Lowe. A household name to anyone who followed snooker any time from its early tv appearance in the '60s until the mid '90s.

Matt Bayfield

By "neutral position" I assume Jon means no player has an easy pot on or is snookered etc. Nowadays I'd expect one of the top 8 players in the world to make a 70 break (which is basically what you need to win a frame) from a reasonably open table, about half the time at the World Champions...

Matt Bayfield

Ok, I agree with the principle of variation between Duels. Where we differ in view is that I think we already have plenty of variation across time limits, number of rounds, and variants, as well as LNC permutations - and this is endorsed by the fact that we have quite a large range of winners - e.g....

Matt Bayfield

I think it would be a good idea to have a numbers only duel once a week (which can be any variant). It's probably come up before, but I'd probably have fewer conundrums in most of the duels. I find it a bit annoying when I think I'm doing quite well and then a conundrum comes along and can make or ...

Matt Bayfield

In R11, dictionary corner's offering of CULTURA^ is valid in Spanish. It's not in ODE3. Karen was reprising her perennial Rafael Nadal impression by giving a Spanish word.

And for anyone wondering about the validity of LARDARSE^ in R8, the only acceptable spelling in ODE3 is LARDASS.

Matt Bayfield

Cheers Ben... you can't beat raw figures...

Matt Bayfield

One for the stattos - possibly not a bug, I'm not sure: In Statland, is the new bar chart for Most played variants really showing "Games per month: Number of games played in each variant per month, counting from when that variant was launched"? It must be some kind of game count divided by...

Matt Bayfield

Favourite console? For sheer enthralling gameplay, I vote for the Atari 2600 . When I were a lad, I bought one second-hand for £25 and hooked it up to a tiny black-and-white tv. It had a dodgy power cable, so you had to avoid getting too frantic with your joystick-waggling. If you yanked too hard, t...

Matt Bayfield

I'm a statto, so was interested. And if you have the whole list of COLIN average ppg for the 95 players, please feel free to share.

Matt Bayfield

Not a particularly important observation (certainly not worthy of either a Bug Report or Feature Request), but I notice that on Superstats Unique Words page , my lists of unique words are sorted into alphabetical order for English (ODE), French and German (with umlauted vowels placed at the end of t...

Matt Bayfield

I'm not sure that "celebrity" is entirely the right word, but it would be easy to mistake famous criminals/prisoners Charles Bronson and Charles Manson. The fact that the former shares his name with a famous actor merely adds to the confusion.

Matt Bayfield

What amused me most was that after Dictionary Corner suggested FLATLINE for 8, Jeff commented "a couple of 8s there". So it sounds like Susie offered FELLATIO as well, but this was edited out of the broadcast.

Those who attended the recording will presumably know for sure!

Matt Bayfield

Could Lockdown please be added to the list of formats which appear under a user's "Nines" tab and Superstats Nines?

Matt Bayfield

From the Jan 2011 apterous history: Facts and Figures This month, apterous gained 96 new users, taking us to 2318 in total. A total of 275339 rounds were played over 19077 games. The Duel was won by Innis Carson with 5317 points from 64 games. Second was Matt Bayfield with 4913 points from 64 games,...

Matt Bayfield

I may be mistaken, but I vaguely remember someone with an ODE3 (I think it may have been Hugh) telling me that BOSS is now also listed as an adjective (meaning "good", in Northern English colloquial usage) in ODE3. In which case, I reckon BOSSER and BOSSEST (both currently listed as invali...

Matt Bayfield

Result of Qualifying Round 1 Game 10:

Matt Bayfield 94 - 57 Andy Wilson
Andy Wilson 63 - 106 Matt Bayfield

Matt Bayfield

Regardless of what MENSA might say, I would be very surprised if listing MENSA membership on your CV would help you at a job interview. Having been on panels for recruiting university graduates for a number of years, I would find it odd if a graduate felt the need to mention that they were a MENSA m...

Matt Bayfield

If I could briefly interrupt the discussion of rude words with a (non-critical) feature request: Charlie, perhaps this List of Completed Ascensions could be restricted only to each player's first Ascension, i.e. their only Ascension of the full 9060 metres? Now that the list contains subsequent Asce...

Matt Bayfield

The Flaming Lips did something similar when they released Zaireeka in 1997. A four disc album where you were meant to play up to all 4 of the discs simultaneously. Not entirely successful on a commercial scale, as in the age of the CD, I imagine there weren't too many people with 4 players and the ...

Matt Bayfield

Matt, you write well. I love the minutae and attention to seemingly off-topic detail. Worth the wait; absolutely fab to read. Great pics too. By the way, the "local ginger maniac" sighted at McDonald's had been in the pub with us earlier in the evening. I recall him doing one or two karaok...

Matt Bayfield

NEEDLES

Matt Bayfield

I'm probably not thinking in the right way to get either of those.

I know that Michael Barrett is the real name of Shakin' Stevens, but that doesn't seem to help me at all. And with the reference to the peephole, I keep trying to crowbar in "Glory Box" by Portishead.

Matt Bayfield

James R has already posted recaps of my third and fourth games. These are my other four games: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Countdown recap for Saturday 29 January 2011. (Table 9, Game 2) C1: Challenger Matt Bayfield. C2: Challenger Rob Foster. DC: Dominic Gallagher. OT: Other w...

Matt Bayfield

I don't play in any of the other online tournaments, because it always becomes a bit of a drag arranging matches 5+ weeks in a row. But this is a tournament I love to play in, because of the quality of the field. Plus I don't expect to last more than a week or two. Please put me down for the qualify...

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