CoC Grand Final Spoilers For Friday January 22nd 2016

James Robinson · Post by **James Robinson** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 12:13 am

Ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls, I cordially welcome you all to the grand final of the 14th Champion of Champions tournament.

We have had some amazing matches throughout these last 3 weeks. Who can forget the amazing first match between Tom Cappleman and Glen Webb, when both players got three 9's apiece??, the dramatic up and down match between Andy Platt and David Barnard??, the turnaround performance by Giles Hutchings on Tom Cappleman, and of course the MEGAMATCH between Andy Platt and Dylan Taylor, when not even 125 points was enough to win the game

I'm sure we all have our favourite moments throughout this short, but more than memorable event, maybe you'd like to mention them here....

But, for now, we do have a grand final to take place. The winner will become the first Champion of Champions for 7 years, and who will make their 15th appearance a memorable one

Dylan Taylor has certainly had the harder of the 2 runs, having had to endure crucial conundrums in his last 2 games against Andy Platt and Giles Hutchings, but can he do what he did he didn't quite do against Callum Todd in the Series 69 final.... Only 2 of the 13 previous CoC winners have been past series runners-up, compared to the 6 who have won a series, which must be news to the ears of Dan McColm, who pulled off a great win in yesterday's semi-final against Jen Steadman, mainly thanks to possibly the best winning word of the series so far, ROSMARINE.

But, can he do the double and not only be a series winner, but a CoC winner too........

The stats show a slight advantage for Dylan, but stats are there to be broken.

Statistics Corner:

Firstly, Series 69 Runner-Up Dylan "The Malpas Mutilator" Taylor - 14 Games, 13 Wins, 1,684 Points. (Average: 120.29)
Highest Score: 129 vs. Leone Mitchell (6th Game)
Lowest Score: 108 vs. Gemma Church (Quarter-Final)
9's Achieved: 7/10
Total Points/Max/%: 1684/1826 (92%)
Letters Points/Max/%: 1062/1135 (94%)
Numbers Points/Max/%: 542/551 (98%)
Conundrum Points/Max/%: 80/140 (57%)

Secondly, Series 71 Champion Dan "The Kineton Kolossus" McColm - 14 Games, 14 Wins, 1,634 Points. (Average: 116.71)
Highest Score: 137 vs. Harry Jarrett (6th Game)
Lowest Score: 92 vs. Ben Hodgson (2nd Game)
9's Achieved: 9/10
Total Points/Max/%: 1634/1812 (90%)
Letters Points/Max/%: 1034/1118 (92%)
Numbers Points/Max/%: 500/554 (90%)
Conundrum Points/Max/%: 100/140 (71%)

Join Anthony for the final recap of this Champion of Champions later.

Johnny Canuck · Post by **Johnny Canuck** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:32 pm

No recap from me today -- apparently so many people are tuned into my streaming servers that they're being overloaded and the game has been frozen on Dylan's face for like 5 minutes.

James Robinson · Post by **James Robinson** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:37 pm

Johnny Canuck wrote:No recap from me today -- apparently so many people are tuned into my streaming servers that they're being overloaded and the game has been frozen on Dylan's face for like 5 minutes.

Lucky for me that I'm already well ahead of you. The bonus of having Friday afternoons off work, and having already been in the audience for this.

Awesome spot of METACONID, possibly the save of the series.....

Johnny Canuck · Post by **Johnny Canuck** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:45 pm

Ah, thanks very much for recapping! And METACONID now occupies, at the very least, the #2 spot on the Best Letters Games of All Time.

James Robinson · Post by **James Robinson** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:47 pm

Giles informed us all of the hidden 9 in round 12, he seemed very disappointed that Dan didn't spot it, he was pumping his arms like mad when Dan only said 7.......

James Robinson · Post by **James Robinson** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:49 pm

WELL FREAKY SEEING ROSMARINE AGAIN!!!!

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:54 pm

i can't wait to blow kisses to the audience at Colin every time i get a valid word.

Johnny Canuck · Post by **Johnny Canuck** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:56 pm

Decent.

Philip Jarvis · Post by **Philip Jarvis** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:57 pm

Brilliant play by both Dylan and Dan throughout this tournament.

Congratulations to Dylan and becoming a deserved champion.

Bradley Cates · Post by **Bradley Cates** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:03 pm

Fantastic final! I thought it was going to be a bit anticlimactically one-sided but when Dan spotted METACONID, it really spiced things up.

Brilliant performances by Dylan and Dan, and congratulations, Dylan, on becoming the Champion of Champions!

Jojo Apollo · Post by **Jojo Apollo** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:07 pm

Super, smashing game, well fitting of a C of C final, congrats lads, both brilliant players and the two best of the series.

Many congrats Dylan on becoming champion of champions, it must have been tough to keep your nerve under such pressure, very well done sir, you are in the Countdown hall of fame now.

Well done Dan on becoming champion of champions runner-up, at one point I thought it was going to be a runaway win for Dylan but you kept in there right to the end and pushed it to the conundrum.

Well done to the players and Countdown crew on another splendid series, throughly enjoyed watching that, don't leave it too long for the next C of C. Don't worry Rachel you didn't take anything away from the players, you never got the last numbers in time either.

Thomas Cappleman · Post by **Thomas Cappleman** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:12 pm

Great game by both, Dan's recovery keeping it tense to the very end. Fantastic spot by Dylan on the conundrum to take it.

Was a great competition to watch/be part of, with the new words and the suspiciously kind letters arrangements leading to some very interesting scores.

Steven M. McCann · Post by **Steven M. McCann** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:26 pm

Terrific final, very well done Dylan, commiserations Dan, now the 64,000 dollar question.... would Dylan have got ROSMARINE if Dan hadn't flagged it up for the nation in his semi-final, even Nick got it!

Tracey Anne Mills · Post by **Tracey Anne Mills** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:29 pm

I have no shame in losing to eventual winner Dylan Taylor a competition that I am very proud to watch and be part of, A huge congratulations and an excellent performance from Dylan throughout the whole contest and winning champion of champions. But take nothing away from the runner up Dan McColm who performed admirably and came up with lots of excellent spots. Well done to everybody who competed in the CofC14 and a big thank you to the countdown crew for making this possible.

Dan McColm · Post by **Dan McColm** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:34 pm

Absolutely fantastic game and tournament to have taken part in, so thanks first of all to the Countdown Team for inviting me and making this possible. And thanks Damian for letting me reappear on TV - not even in my wildest dreams did I think I'd go from losing my first heat game to being a CoC finalist! I don't think anyone can argue that Dylan was the best player of this tournament, he is a very deserving winner. Fair play to Dylan as well for his excellent conundrums in this tournament - conundrums were his weakness in his regular series and he certainly strengthened them. Dylan told me that he wouldn't have seen ROSMARINE had it not appeared in my semi-final - but if it hadn't come up, I would've lost to Jen, so I'm glad it did!

Tony Atkins · Post by **Tony Atkins** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:36 pm

Well done to Dylan and also to Dan.

Next week will feel a bit lame.

Jennifer Steadman · Post by **Jennifer Steadman** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:37 pm

Steven M. McCann wrote:now the 64,000 dollar question.... would Dylan have got ROSMARINE if Dan hadn't flagged it up for the nation in his semi-final, even Nick got it!

Almost certainly not. Dylan was the only semi-finalist who hadn't learned over a thousand of the new words, and neither Giles nor I spotted ROSMARINE despite having seen it prior to the competition (so many new words, so few memory cells... if only METACONID had come up in the semi final instead

). Given how many new words there were and how few of the contestants had gone through and learned a load of them, I suspect Dan was probably the only person in the competition who saw it in the semi-final.

Top work to both though. Good comeback by Dan, who was significantly more composed than during his series, and Dylan was obviously a worthy winner - his conundrums were outstanding in the competition. Cheers Countdown Team for putting this on (and coming on some of the post-filming nights out

).

Jojo Apollo · Post by **Jojo Apollo** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:37 pm

I don't suppose another Supreme Championship is in the works, how many Champion of Champions have there been since the first Supreme Championship?

Jack Worsley · Post by **Jack Worsley** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:59 pm

Brilliant final! Dan got himself back in the contest out of nowhere with a great (although nonsense

) nine and it could have gone either way from there. Very rapid speed from Dylan on a tricky conundrum to seal a well-deserved title. Well done to both of you for a memorable final, as well as to everyone else in the CoC. The games were all of an excellent standard and it was a real pleasure to be in the audience for two of the three recording days. Each and every one of you was a worthy participant and I'm sure there are plenty more who missed out who would also have merited their places. Unfortunately there was only room for sixteen.

I hate to be negative on such an occasion but I'm afraid it has to be done. To a small extent, some of the games have been ruined for me by the silly new words (GENIUSED - WTF?). You can't blame the contestants or the Countdown crew for this but now we've all hopefully seen the damage they can do. Games between strong apterites and normal contestants were generally one-sided enough anyway and over time, I think the new dictionary will only widen the gap, which may turn viewers away. As much as I like to see sky high scores, that would be a disaster for the show. I thought the whole point of upgrading to the ODO was to keep up with modern language trends but the new update has taken language back several centuries with all of the archaic words. Missing out a handful of modern words which clearly should be in the dictionary (TWERK, SELFIE etc.) is nowhere near as bad as including thousands of nonsense ones. I really hope the current dictionary gets ditched soon (the ODE3 printed version or even the Scrabble dictionary would be more sensible alternatives) for the good of the show. Hopefully, the team are at least considering it.

Anyway, rant over. Thank you to the entire production crew for allowing this wonderful series to happen and I really hope that it doesn't take another seven years to see an event like this happen again.

Jojo Apollo · Post by **Jojo Apollo** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:10 pm

Wise (not nonsense/nidiotic) words from Jack.

Dan McColm · Post by **Dan McColm** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:17 pm

Rachel: "Going 1 large to try and force a crucial which Dylan is notoriously good at, good luck with those tactics" - at 7 points behind a crucial conundrum was the best case scenario!

Johnny Canuck · Post by **Johnny Canuck** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:22 pm

Jojo Apollo wrote:I don't suppose another Supreme Championship is in the works, how many Champion of Champions have there been since the first Supreme Championship?

Six, but only one has happened since the 30th Birthday Championship, which I believe is still too fresh in people's memories for another event of such a scale just yet. I'd say Mr. C. Team has definitely changed his mind about ending large televised tournaments though (unless the viewing figures during the past three weeks were inexplicably much lower than usual), and I definitely wouldn't rule something like that out in the future.

Johnny Canuck · Post by **Johnny Canuck** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:25 pm

Johnny Canuck wrote:No recap from me today -- apparently so many people are tuned into my streaming servers that they're being overloaded and the game has been frozen on Dylan's face for like 5 minutes.

It was a sign! I just knew it!

Jojo Apollo · Post by **Jojo Apollo** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:28 pm

Johnny Canuck wrote:
Jojo Apollo wrote:I don't suppose another Supreme Championship is in the works, how many Champion of Champions have there been since the first Supreme Championship?
Six, but only one has happened since the 30th Birthday Championship, which I believe is still too fresh in people's memories for another event of such a scale just yet. I'd say Mr. C. Team has definitely changed his mind about ending large televised tournaments though (unless the viewing figures during the past three weeks were inexplicably much lower than usual), and I definitely wouldn't rule something like that out in the future.

Cheers Johnny, good to hear.

Jojo Apollo · Post by **Jojo Apollo** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:31 pm

Dan McColm wrote:Rachel: "Going 1 large to try and force a crucial which Dylan is notoriously good at, good luck with those tactics" - at 7 points behind a crucial conundrum was the best case scenario!

Yes definitely, I don't know why she said that. I bet the more they said how cool/composed you were, the more it made you more nervous/irritated, unless you blocked it out.

Kirk Bevins · Post by **Kirk Bevins** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:55 pm

Great to follow this series and well played to both. Some outstanding spots and great work on all the new word learning!

Innis Carson · Post by **Innis Carson** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:05 pm

Great match, very exciting to watch. Like Bradley I thought after a few rounds that it was going to be a bit of an anticlimax, but METACONID was a superb spot which turned a fairly unremarkable game into an absolute classic. Very well done to both of you for great performances throughout the tournament and for a very well (and pleasantly) contested final, and congratulations to Dylan on a well-earned and thoroughly deserving victory - pulling out such a fast conundrum solve in such a tense situation takes some real nerve.

Jon O'Neill · Post by **Jon O'Neill** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:18 pm

Brilliant game, brilliant series. CoCs never fail to disappoint.

Fred Mumford · Post by **Fred Mumford** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:23 pm

Jon O'Neill wrote:CoCs never fail to disappoint.

Harsh.

Jon O'Neill · Post by **Jon O'Neill** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:29 pm

Fred Mumford wrote:
Jon O'Neill wrote:CoCs never fail to disappoint.
Harsh.

Haha, whoops.

CoCs always disappoint.

Countdown Team · Post by **Countdown Team** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:42 pm

Thomas Cappleman wrote:Great game by both, Dan's recovery keeping it tense to the very end. Fantastic spot by Dylan on the conundrum to take it.

Was a great competition to watch/be part of, with the new words and the suspiciously kind letters arrangements leading to some very interesting scores.

Haha - couldn't let this go without replying.

Suspiciously kind letters arrangements. Er.....the contestants pick the selections, not the people working on the show. If you're suggesting anything was 'done' to facilitate high scores, you're a billion miles off the mark.

As much as we love our stage crew, at times, the best we can hope for is that they get the vowels and consonants in the correct boxes, so anything beyond that, in terms of 'arranging' the letters to help with high scores, is an absolute joke.

Suggesting the letter 'arrangements' were suspicious actually takes away from the incredible talents of those who took part. Ridiculous.

Paul Erdunast · Post by **Paul Erdunast** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:53 pm

Superb game - METACONID was a fantastic spot by Dan - I missed it. Dylan played a pretty much perfect game - I missed EULOGIST too - the numbers and conundrum work were top top drawer.

Jack Worsley wrote:
I hate to be negative on such an occasion but I'm afraid it has to be done. To a small extent, some of the games have been ruined for me by the silly new words (GENIUSED - WTF?). You can't blame the contestants or the Countdown crew for this but now we've all hopefully seen the damage they can do. Games between strong apterites and normal contestants were generally one-sided enough anyway and over time, I think the new dictionary will only widen the gap, which may turn viewers away. As much as I like to see sky high scores, that would be a disaster for the show. I thought the whole point of upgrading to the ODO was to keep up with modern language trends but the new update has taken language back several centuries with all of the archaic words. Missing out a handful of modern words which clearly should be in the dictionary (TWERK, SELFIE etc.) is nowhere near as bad as including thousands of nonsense ones. I really hope the current dictionary gets ditched soon (the ODE3 printed version or even the Scrabble dictionary would be more sensible alternatives) for the good of the show. Hopefully, the team are at least considering it.

To take the other side: how "disastrous" would this really be for Countdown? 90% of games this won't matter. Most players will get normal words. Apterous players will still play words people don't know at home, it's just as well as STERADIAN there'll be METACONID, etc. That'll make no difference to the casual viewer - it makes no difference that the dictionary buff getting a word they don't know has got one from the new update or not. And perhaps the higher scores owing to a higher concentration of 7s 8s and especially 9s will lead to more exciting score building ("he/she beat the all time best score" is exciting for any lay viewer), and perhaps more games which flip-flop like the games in CoC have done because the number of words now makes the dictionary even harder to master. It is a shame that there are a lot of nonsense words, but I think much of the reaction to it in Apterous circles is because U was one of the first letters updated, so all the stupid UN- words (which account for about 75% of the ludicrous non-words - those which a lay person will work out what they mean but say they're a joke - like geniused, unpriest, etc) accounted for most of the new lexicon people learnt at first.

tl;dr: the new and old dictionary have stupid words people who learn words will get, and people at home won't know them. I don't think the new changes make as much of a difference as people suggest.

Gavin Chipper · Post by **Gavin Chipper** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:54 pm

Great game, great series, as others have said. Dan's excellent spot of METACNOID saved the day certainly, as others have also said. I think after winning this, Dylan has certainly earned himself a place in the top 50 players of all time, which is what he wanted.

JimBentley · Post by **JimBentley** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 7:21 pm

Paul Erdunast wrote:Superb game - METACONID was a fantastic spot by Dan - I missed it. Dylan played a pretty much perfect game - I missed EULOGIST too - the numbers and conundrum work were top top drawer.

Can't echo this enough...

Jack Worsley wrote:the silly new words

Sorry Jack, but I think they just seem silly because they're new and not necessarily "known"; they're no more "silly' than, I don't know, AHOLEHOLE or KRUMMHOLZ, which've been valid forever (if you accept my definition of forever "as long as I can remember", that is) and as you pointed out, STERADIAN isn't exactly an everyday word.

Jon Corby · Post by **Jon Corby** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:39 pm

Well done guys, great final. Like others I was worried it might be a bit disappointing in terms of a contest when Dylan took a commanding early lead, but Dan did really well to pull it back round. Very fitting end to a great tournament. Congratulations to both of you, but obviously more to Dylan for actually winning.

Fred Mumford · Post by **Fred Mumford** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:24 pm

Fabulous end to a wonderful competition, well done to all who took part. It was obvious that the games would be of a ludicrous standard, but it was maybe a little surprising how many of them had twists and turns that hopefully alleviated any worries about the entertainment element of an all Apterite tournament.

One question for Mr Team - why wasn't there a presentation of some kind at the end? That was the only thing in the entire competition that was a bit of a let down.

Gavin Chipper · Post by **Gavin Chipper** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:58 pm

Fred Mumford wrote:One question for Mr Team - why wasn't there a presentation of some kind at the end? That was the only thing in the entire competition that was a bit of a let down.

Yeah, I thought they would all be standing at the front at the end with Dylan holding his trophy aloft. Alas, it was not to be.

Thomas Cappleman · Post by **Thomas Cappleman** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 2:45 am

Countdown Team wrote:
Thomas Cappleman wrote:Great game by both, Dan's recovery keeping it tense to the very end. Fantastic spot by Dylan on the conundrum to take it.

Was a great competition to watch/be part of, with the new words and the suspiciously kind letters arrangements leading to some very interesting scores.
Haha - couldn't let this go without replying.

Suspiciously kind letters arrangements. Er.....the contestants pick the selections, not the people working on the show. If you're suggesting anything was 'done' to facilitate high scores, you're a billion miles off the mark.

As much as we love our stage crew, at times, the best we can hope for is that they get the vowels and consonants in the correct boxes, so anything beyond that, in terms of 'arranging' the letters to help with high scores, is an absolute joke.

Suggesting the letter 'arrangements' were suspicious actually takes away from the incredible talents of those who took part. Ridiculous.

Apologies for this - both my wording and thinking behind what I was trying to say appear to be slightly off. I definitely didn't mean to say that the letters were hand-ordered to give particular words, or group nice ones together. And I absolutely wouldn't want to take away from the talents of the contestants (would be really ridiculous in my position).

My original thinking was that duplicate letters seemed to be unusually rare, with most games having no consecutive letters the same in either pile (proof that I should write what I'm thinking more clearly). While this is staggeringly unlikely with a pure random shuffle, picking some random games from other series shows that it's not new for this series (proof that I should look into things more before throwing accusations around). So it looks like there genuinely was some combination of good picking/new dictionary, as there was definitely a much higher rate of 9s available than normal - more than 1 per game on average, compared to 1 per 2 games on Apterous.

One slightly related thought for any statisticians: how much effect does the contestants' picks actually have on the max? In a given round you only really get to pick 2 letters, giving 3 possible selections. Could probably run something over a load of rounds, keeping the first 4C/3V the same and use the next round to determine the possible selections. Would be nice to see how much is down to the new words, and how much down to deliberate picking.

In short, I write idiotic things on Friday afternoons, and rambling things early Saturday mornings. Apologies for both, especially for any offense to the Countdown team, for whom I have great admiration and gratitude for this last year.

James Robinson · Post by **James Robinson** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 9:11 am

Gavin Chipper wrote:
Fred Mumford wrote:One question for Mr Team - why wasn't there a presentation of some kind at the end? That was the only thing in the entire competition that was a bit of a let down.
Yeah, I thought they would all be standing at the front at the end with Dylan holding his trophy aloft. Alas, it was not to be.

Probably due to the fact that they've never done that for a CoC before..., although I would've loved to have seen Dylan get his glory shot, as he thoroughly deserved it.

Countdown Team · Post by **Countdown Team** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 10:28 am

Thomas Cappleman wrote:
In short, I write idiotic things on Friday afternoons, and rambling things early Saturday mornings. Apologies for both, especially for any offense to the Countdown team, for whom I have great admiration and gratitude for this last year.

Oh no offence taken at all. Just trying to set the record straight and defend the show where needed.

Julian Fell set the record score over 3,000 shows ago, which in terms of time is about 14 years. If we wanted to see it broken and attempted to aid this by tinkering with the letters, then the likelihood is it would have happened by now, and we wouldn't be setting AMARYLLIS and SHOTCRETE as series final conundrums if we were keen to award easy points.

Rose Boyle · Post by **Rose Boyle** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 1:02 pm

Congratulations to Dylan, well deserved. And congratulations to Dan and everyone else who took part, was a great tournament and amazing standard with lots of great matches

Jon O'Neill · Post by **Jon O'Neill** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 2:22 pm

James Robinson wrote:I would've loved to have seen Dylan get his glory shot, as he thoroughly deserved it.

Filth!

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 2:27 pm

hahah

Jack Worsley · Post by **Jack Worsley** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 3:39 pm

JimBentley wrote: Sorry Jack, but I think they just seem silly because they're new and not necessarily "known"; they're no more "silly' than, I don't know, AHOLEHOLE or KRUMMHOLZ, which've been valid forever (if you accept my definition of forever "as long as I can remember", that is) and as you pointed out, STERADIAN isn't exactly an everyday word.

Words like STERADIAN and KRUMMHOLZ may not be the words the average person knows but they do seem to be used nowadays. My understanding is that words are added to the dictionary (or at least they used to be) on "common usage" and not on how well-known they are. While there are some odd words that have been in for a long time, it does at least seem that it was kept under control to a large extent. However, since the huge update, it seems that all rules previously in place have just gone out of the window and there are no longer any real limits to what can go in. Recently, I've been helping apterous to get the lexicon up to date, which involves looking through definitions of head words and I've noticed a lot of them are labelled "now rare" or "archaic". This would suggest that words are no longer being selected by "common usage". Furthermore, it appears that new entries are often incomplete, due to virtually none of the new nouns being labelled as a "mass noun" when they clearly should be, many adjectives not having an adverb form specified and many other flaws. Perhaps common sense could be used where necessary but it's a dangerous game with so many new words and in my opinion, makes this dictionary unsuitable for Countdown.

Paul - Perhaps it wouldn't be disastrous but I really doubt it will improve the show. I think more than 10% of the games will be affected. Apterites have always offered obscure words, so that won't be changed here but I was talking more about the one-sidedness of some of the games. I also don't think the average viewer cares that much about records being broken either.

Graeme Cole · Post by **Graeme Cole** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 3:59 pm

Congratulations to Dylan on the victory, and fair play to Dan for the huge comeback to take the game all the way to the end. Also thanks to the Countdown Team for putting it together, and let's hope there are many more CoC tournaments in years to come.

Best bit: Jen's reaction, and the audience reaction, to winning a round with MOMENTAL.

Regarding the dictionary, the sheer number of new entries isn't a problem in itself, and there have always been obscure words on Countdown. As long as all those new entries and variants are genuine words in current usage, it's fine. But when the dictionary no longer marks mass nouns as such for new entries, it becomes difficult to use it for adjudications; and when it includes a variant spelling of EARTHMAN which uses a letter that hasn't been used in English for 700 years, it gets very difficult to argue that the dictionary as it stands is a useful reference for current English usage.

Jennifer Steadman · Post by **Jennifer Steadman** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 5:02 pm

Graeme Cole wrote:Regarding the dictionary, the sheer number of new entries isn't a problem in itself, and there have always been obscure words on Countdown. As long as all those new entries and variants are genuine words in current usage, it's fine. But when the dictionary no longer marks mass nouns as such for new entries, it becomes difficult to use it for adjudications; and when it includes a variant spelling of EARTHMAN which uses a letter that hasn't been used in English for 700 years, it gets very difficult to argue that the dictionary as it stands is a useful reference for current English usage.

+1

JimBentley · Post by **JimBentley** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 5:24 pm

Graeme Cole wrote:...and when it includes a variant spelling of EARTHMAN which uses a letter that hasn't been used in English for 700 years, it gets very difficult to argue that the dictionary as it stands is a useful reference for current English usage.

Haha, that is pretty amazing. I had no idea (but then again I don't know any of these new words).

Gavin Chipper · Post by **Gavin Chipper** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 7:21 pm

By the way, STERADIAN, which has been bandied about a lot recently, is not the best example of some super-obscure word that was already in the dictionary. It's used in maths, and I've encountered it. There are far worse words out there.

Gavin Chipper · Post by **Gavin Chipper** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 7:34 pm

James Robinson wrote:Only 2 of the 13 previous CoC winners have been past series runners-up, compared to the 6 who have won a series

So five didn't even make the final?

*checks*

Champions:

1. Harvey Freeman
2. Nic Brown
3. Wayne Summers
4. Don Reid
5. Scott Mearns
6. Graham Nash

Runners up:

1. Mark Nyman
2. Chris Rogers
3. Paul Gallen
(4. Dylan Taylor)

Neither:

1. Clive Freedman (semi-final)
2. Tim Morrissey (semi-final)
3. Natascha Kearsey (semi-final)
4. Steven Briers (quarter final*)

So it was actually six to three, and four that didn't even make the final, one of whom didn't even make the semi-final.

*For some reason I've always hyphenated "semi-final" but not "quarter final".

Thomas Cappleman · Post by **Thomas Cappleman** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 11:23 pm

That earthman case is just bizarre. Neither definition could have made sense in the Middle ages, and yet it has a spelling and earliest use from then.

Dan McColm · Post by **Dan McColm** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 12:11 am

Thomas Cappleman wrote:That earthman case is just bizarre. Neither definition could have made sense in the Middle ages, and yet it has a spelling and earliest use from then.

It would've made sense as "inhabitant of the planet Earth", even though it's mainly used in science fiction nowadays. I found a text from 1225 (St. Margaret of Antioch) that uses the word: 'iþeinet of engles & of eorðmen wið-uten ende' (served by angels and earthmen without end)

Graeme Cole · Post by **Graeme Cole** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 12:24 am

Dan McColm wrote:
Thomas Cappleman wrote:That earthman case is just bizarre. Neither definition could have made sense in the Middle ages, and yet it has a spelling and earliest use from then.
It would've made sense as "inhabitant of the planet Earth", even though it's mainly used in science fiction nowadays. I found a text from 1225 (St. Margaret of Antioch) that uses the word: 'iþeinet of engles & of eorðmen wið-uten ende' (served by angels and earthmen without end)

I found the same thing - I guess you found this and this, which alone make up two of the four Google results for eorðman. (The other two are ODO's entry and Jen tweeting about it.)

For some reason I'd assumed "engles" meant "the English", but angels makes more sense.

Dan McColm · Post by **Dan McColm** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 12:53 am

Graeme Cole wrote:
Dan McColm wrote:
Thomas Cappleman wrote:That earthman case is just bizarre. Neither definition could have made sense in the Middle ages, and yet it has a spelling and earliest use from then.
It would've made sense as "inhabitant of the planet Earth", even though it's mainly used in science fiction nowadays. I found a text from 1225 (St. Margaret of Antioch) that uses the word: 'iþeinet of engles & of eorðmen wið-uten ende' (served by angels and earthmen without end)
I found the same thing - I guess you found this and this, which alone make up two of the four Google results for eorðman. (The other two are ODO's entry and Jen tweeting about it.)

For some reason I'd assumed "engles" meant "the English", but angels makes more sense.

Yes, that's what I found. I can't even find the singular eorðman in the Michigan Middle English Prose and Verse corpus, and the plural was rare even in the 13th century - not sure why this alternative spelling is included.

Peter Clarke · Post by **Peter Clarke** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 11:17 am

Just caught up on this. Excellent final, well done Dylan!!

Well done Dan too, when you got METACONID Dan that really made it more exciting like others have said.

JackHurst · Post by **JackHurst** » Tue Jan 26, 2016 11:26 pm

Brilliant competition. I thoroughly enjoyed watching all of those games and it made me wish I could have been there in the audience. Dylan was a superb Champion and I'm really happy for him. He did incredibly well to not wilt under the pressure of Crucial conundrums in his last three games.

Well done and thanks to everybody that made this happen!

I will be very impressed if we ever get to see another regular CoC of that standard.

Jon Corby · Post by **Jon Corby** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:30 am

Thomas Cappleman wrote:My original thinking was that duplicate letters seemed to be unusually rare, with most games having no consecutive letters the same in either pile (proof that I should write what I'm thinking more clearly). While this is staggeringly unlikely with a pure random shuffle, picking some random games from other series shows that it's not new for this series (proof that I should look into things more before throwing accusations around). So it looks like there genuinely was some combination of good picking/new dictionary, as there was definitely a much higher rate of 9s available than normal - more than 1 per game on average, compared to 1 per 2 games on Apterous.

Nah, you're right. Were they even any duplicated letters in the whole thing? It began to get quite predictable ("ooh, you just need an O for... oh wait, the last vowel was also an O, not even worth trying), and pretty sure it would make the selections more likely to yield longer words (compare to the last CoC)

Jon O'Neill · Post by **Jon O'Neill** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:27 am

Jon Corby wrote:
Thomas Cappleman wrote:My original thinking was that duplicate letters seemed to be unusually rare, with most games having no consecutive letters the same in either pile (proof that I should write what I'm thinking more clearly). While this is staggeringly unlikely with a pure random shuffle, picking some random games from other series shows that it's not new for this series (proof that I should look into things more before throwing accusations around). So it looks like there genuinely was some combination of good picking/new dictionary, as there was definitely a much higher rate of 9s available than normal - more than 1 per game on average, compared to 1 per 2 games on Apterous.
Nah, you're right. Were they even any duplicated letters in the whole thing? It began to get quite predictable ("ooh, you just need an O for... oh wait, the last vowel was also an O, not even worth trying), and pretty sure it would make the selections more likely to yield longer words (compare to the last CoC)

The last CoC was the anomaly - not this one. See http://www.c4countdown.co.uk/viewtopic. ... 88#p140706

Jon Corby · Post by **Jon Corby** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 1:03 pm

Fuck off

Gavin Chipper · Post by **Gavin Chipper** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 1:45 pm

There's nothing special about CoCs anyway when it comes to letter distributions. If you think the letter distribution was weird, compare it to any other games, not just other CoCs.

Jon Corby · Post by **Jon Corby** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 2:27 pm

Gavin Chipper wrote:There's nothing special about CoCs anyway when it comes to letter distributions. If you think the letter distribution was weird, compare it to any other games, not just other CoCs.

Can you do that please? It really did seem like there were fewer duplicate letters than normal.

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