c4countdown

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Phil Reynolds wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 5:05 pm "Similarly spelt words in English pronounced differently" shock.

Well, you started it:

Phil Reynolds wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:59 pm
Noel Mc wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:26 pm What other way is it pronounced??
Mary, the way it's spelled. Rhymes with hairy.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

AGTERSKOT in Round 10

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Phil Reynolds wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 11:56 pm
Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 5:33 pm Looks to me like it's spelt to rhyme with Ferrari.
Whereas it looks to me like it's spelled to rhyme with wary.

What about Gary?

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I can't remember the exact wording of the rules, but I always thought the opposite of Graeme here. I though there was a rule saying that the shuffle only has one valid anagram unless it has 2 in which case the shuffle itself will be one of those anagrams. FWIW here are the rules they sent me earlie...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2020 8:32 pm Or indeed if you are outside somewhere and bump into some other people. Could two groups of six who just happen to coincidentally encounter each other keep swapping members and changing which six people are in which group?

Priti Patel would report you to the police for doing this.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:55 pm When is this guy going to make his debut?

Never heard of him.

(I think what happened is that I signed up intending to join my local one at the time but then realised I couldn't actually be bothered cycling 5 miles across town just to get to the start line)

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

David Williams wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2020 7:29 am Anyone can run any parkrun course any time they want in perfect safety.

They can, but won't. The real attraction of parkrun for most people is the competitive aspect and group participation that gets them running when they wouldn't otherwise be motivated to.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

So according to this post , Apterous has terms of service, and presumably I agreed to them when creating an account. I've been away for a while and I'd like to be able to read what I signed up for, just to make sure that I haven't agreed to be an indentured servant to the Reams household or anything...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I mean, there's also this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54081131

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I also did the same thing for the Nasty large numbers: 4 Large - 27492: 316 = ((62 * 12 - 1) * 37 + 1) / 87 3 Large - 32451: 877 = ((62 * 6 + 1) * 87 - 2) / 37 2 Large - 22950: 918 = (62 * 37 * 10 + 10) / (5 * 5) 1 Large - 10440: 580 = 87 * 8 * (8 + 7) / (9 + 9) I briefly wondered what the results ...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Better post this link then in case anyone else doesn't know all the keyboard shortcuts yet: https://www.apterous.org/help.php?page=65

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I have a confession to make. In R11 I had written down DICTATOR and only decided to go for TORNADIC (which I had not written down) because Jay declared DICTATOR and I couldn't be bothered showing him my paper. I expect Jono to write a strongly worded letter to Damian requesting that I be disqualifie...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Thu Sep 03, 2020 4:37 pm People don't care about other people's children. Everyone knows this until they have their own children for some reason.

After becoming a parent, I suddenly found that I was interested not only in my own child but also those of my friends. I think this experience isn't uncommon.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

On the Adele thing, I think it's the intention rather than the act itself which matters. It's the same as the difference between wearing a sari at a traditional Indian wedding (obviously appropriate) and wearing a sari at a fancy dress party because "haha wouldn't it be funny if I wore those fu...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Today's show actually had two conundrums. The first was ADDRESSEE (I can't remember the scramble) and Malcom buzzed in incorrectly with ADDRESSED. Instead of turning the bottom panel to reveal the INCORRECT graphic, it instead revealed the actual answer and we had to go again with a different conund...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Each time Rhys posts in this thread I do an even bigger face palm than before... But not when Sam posts?! Seriously, the stuff he is coming out with sounds like it is from a Monty Python sketch! I was actually only joking when I said "assuming she's black enough" about Naga Munchetty... T...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I do worry that we’ll end up with Romesh Ranganathan and Nish Kumar, which may well be unwatchable. Probably not since neither of them are black. By the same token, Lewis Hamilton has a white mother. No, not relevant. Romesh Ranganathan has Sri Lankan heritage and Nish Kumar is of Indian descent. N...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I also generally think that the idea of explicitly separating people out into "races" can be counterproductive. I have an Indian father and am "non-white" but I don't spend any time thinking that I'm "different". Obviously that's not to say we should ignore racial prej...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Rhys Benjamin wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 9:16 am I do worry that we’ll end up with Romesh Ranganathan and Nish Kumar, which may well be unwatchable.

Probably not since neither of them are black.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Shout-out to today's MVP - the person who decided to edit out the cringeworthy TAIHOAED aftermath:

Nick: "How on earth did you know that?!"
Me: "I read it in the dictionary."

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 5:20 pm I had quite a few female Scrabble friends complaining about being harassed.

Ian Volante wrote: ↑Tue Aug 25, 2020 12:41 pm Strange, nobody's spoken to me at all apart from a small amount of relevant in-game chat. What am I doing differently?

Emphasis mine.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Howie Myers wrote: ↑Tue Aug 25, 2020 9:54 am just wondering, does anyone know whether there is an audience in the studio, or are they using "canned" applause?

No studio audience, but the crew are told to applaud at appropriate moments.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Tom S wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:50 am
Ian Fitzpatrick wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:41 am Did Nick say he had beaten a 5 times winner to get there?
Yup.

Presumably by the transitive property of "beating at Countdown".

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Has there ever been an episode in the 15-round era in which every letters selection contained only 3 vowels?

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Does Phil get his own words? He seems to act like he does and if so he's really good. But I thought the facade might have slipped a bit today when he got INFECTUM and Susie said it doesn't mean what he might think and I thought he looked a bit embarrassed, and then in the next round he said OVER-OV...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

On Susie's OOW slot: who's going to tell her about this?

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Regardless of your position about the offensiveness of a word taken out of context or used in a quotation, there is still a double standard here. Strong swear words are expressly forbidden before the watershed in any context but this word is not. Whatever process deemed the F-word unsuitable for bro...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:58 am Why do we say things like PIN number and ATM machines when the last word in both acronyms are the same ?

It's called RAS syndrome

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

This is a perfect example of why Nick should swap the order when asking for the words. If C1 is asked for their length first, and they're the same length, C2 should be asked for their word first. This is the system my wife and I use when we play against each other at home. We can't be bothered with...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I suppose the thing that annoys me about it is that people treat it like it's an objective thing. You might get a quiz question asking how many colours there are in the rainbow or what's the fifth colour etc. But these aren't proper facts about rainbows. Yeah, agreed. When I wrote a quiz recently t...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Tom S wrote: ↑Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:06 am Total Maxes: 98/120 (81.7%)

Are you sure? I just looked through the games on the wiki, and although I don't trust my count as I got different answers each time, I counted 95 the first time and 94 the second, both of which are quite far from 98.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Why is purple not one of the "official" named colours of the rainbow? If you look this up, you get answers like "There's no such thing as purple light." etc. But they're missing the point. Look at the last colour of the rainbow. It's purple. That's the colour it is. Indigo and v...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Wed Jul 22, 2020 9:43 am Next question - what is the correlation between octotal and standard deviation?

Very little correlation. The Spearman's rank coefficient comes out as -0.15, based on the data Graeme has provided.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I don't actually think coefficient of variation is the best measure. If anything there's a ceiling effect which means that you'd expect lower variance with higher average score. This would probably be approximately true if 9 letter words didn't score double. There's also the differences between the...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

reckon i'd be quite high up on your list sam, got a standard deviation of 4.95 and a higher mean than most of the people on that list Nice. Your higher mean brings the coefficient of variance down below both Tom's and Kai's. Looks like you and Hargreaves both have a range of 13 too, which is a good...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Which octochamp has the smallest range of scores? Which has the smallest coefficient of variation?

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I also did the same thing for the Nasty large numbers: 4 Large - 27492: 316 = ((62 * 12 - 1) * 37 + 1) / 87 3 Large - 32451: 877 = ((62 * 6 + 1) * 87 - 2) / 37 2 Large - 22950: 918 = (62 * 37 * 10 + 10) / (5 * 5) 1 Large - 10440: 580 = 87 * 8 * (8 + 7) / (9 + 9) I briefly wondered what the results w...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I can corroborate Graeme's 4-large result. His hunch is correct, there aren't any games outside of 4-large for which such a large intermediate result is necessary. Here are the largest unavoidable intermediate results for each of the 5 selections: 4 Large - 99600: 996 = ((50 + 3) * 25 + 3) * 75 / 10...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

No, it would be a great loss to the game. There's a huge tactical element, particularly late-game, in deciding whether to match, attempt to beat, or undercut your opponent when declaring second.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:50 pm Edit - some further discussion.

Enjoyed reliving that thread. Sadly I think I've lost the raw data I produced while masquerading as Dave.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Next time you go bowling , sometime in 2023/4 , try to bring extra footwear , play two games , one with bowling shoes on and one without and compare scores Eh, more like play multiple games with each and compare how your knees feel after each set. Of course, to make it a fair test, you should take ...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Elliott Mellor wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:14 pm Wonder how C2 could only get a 3 from a selection

Can you find a 3 from CUCUCUCUA?

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Yes, it was shown at the usual time.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

As long as each player gets two numbers picks. We're not savages.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

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.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

If I had for example noted lacquerer and relacquer without being sure of either, and my opponent went for one, I'd go for the same one every time. Note that, as Gevin has been alluding to, if it's at the end of the game and you're more than 20 behind, declaring the one that your opponent didn't dec...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

It's the final letters game. C1 declares 8, and C2 declares 9. C1 says their word is NEMATOID, C2 says their word is MONRADITE. Points to C2. Later on, as the contestants shake hands for the crucial conundrum, C1 catches a glimpse of C2's paper and notices that DOMINATER is written in large letters,...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I had put on weight, but I just shaved for the first time since lockdown and that must have shed the weight again.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

The hyphen Our IT helpdesk at work also decided that the hyphen was a joke item, and introduced a new rule meaning that it wasn't allowed in anyone's name. Boy was that fun for me. The number of internal processes that just don't work for me any more is ridiculous. The best one was when we rolled a...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

An additional advantage of doing 75 + 50 is that you get to watch Rachel awkwardly convert the "1" that she's prematurely written on the whiteboard into a "7"

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:49 am How do you say 15 days in French?

Quinze jours de boulanger

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

It maybe goes without saying, although I will say it, that this effect manifests itself almost entirely unconsciously, and most people won't realise they do it. It's human nature to feel wary of people who are marked as different, and language is one way that happens. Sadly this means that people wh...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

I pretty much agree with you there Callum, although I don't quite understand the last paragraph. I was thinking less though about language like your f) for which a good case can be made of its unsuitability in various contexts, and more about things like the two examples Gevin has given in this thre...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Its the idea that there is one true "right" way to speak and write English, which happens to roughly correspond roughly to the form of English spoken and written by the white southern middle classes. Historically, by the way, there's a popular theory that much of the grammar and vocabulary...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

People who make judgements of character based on prescriptivist grammar rules that aren't even universally accepted.

People who use language to reinforce the class and cultural boundaries that disproportionately disadvantage BAME people.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Thanks for doing the homework for me.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Inspired by today's replay of Episode 5646 - how often has a contestant offered a conundrum answer containing more than 9 letters? What is/are the longest guess(es) ever offered?

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Maybe they've been listening to Rhys and decided that VIRULENCE was too close to the bone.

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

Yeah, I kinda went down that route - you're looking for 29 * 75 divided by 3, but since there was no 3 anyway I then looked at doing 58 * 75, and dividing by 6, which luckily turned out to be fairly easily achievable. Good technique. I'll make sure I don't forget that. On tenterhooks waiting to see...

Sam Cappleman-Lynes

This is a good way of setting up filters to ignore emails from particular online services: if you know you aren't going to care about emails from the Doohickey Company but they force you to sign up with an email address to buy a Doohickey from them, then use joebloggs+doohickey@gmail.com and filter ...

Search found 266 matches