c4countdown

And here it is - the game you've all been waiting for!

Well done to Martin and unlucky to Andrew who would have been okay a few dictionaries ago with airdate.

At least one beater around today (R7), but I only managed URNFIELD as an alt in R1.

Alt second numbers (9x75)+100 + (3x6) +4
Alt last numbers (via the standard method) (75-50)x25 +100 -4+3

Very well done Martin on winning the title Your numbers rounds throughout the series were great. Well played Andrew on becoming series runner-up. Also well done the Countdown team on another splendid series.

Great game and great series etc. Both finalists did a very good job. Congratulations to both, and especially Martin for winning it.

Nice conundrum.

Congratulations indeed Martin for a very solid and assured performance throughout the series, and for coming out on top amongst an impressive set of finalists.

Congratulations Martin on the win and excellent play throughout - a more than worthy successor

Awesome trophy capture by Martin! Also a very worthy runner-up performance by Andrew, particularly on the final numbers game.

URNFIELD as a singularly Platty alternative in Round 1 (edit: beaten to it).

I also enjoyed that conundrum, since the scramble was topical to the solution (edit: come to think of it, "topical" is topical to it too!).

Thanks everyone

All of the planets very much aligned for me in terms I was very fortunate to avoid some of the top Apterites that have either appeared in the last few series or are rumoured to appear over the next couple of series, and that all the players I faced in the finals (as I'm sure they would admit) weren't at their best against me.

Myself and Andrew both made mistakes in the final - his just ended up being more costly unfortunately for him. It was a bit of a war of attrition with just 7 maxes apiece and certainly won't go down as a classic final, but I'll certainly take the outcome

The whole experience has been a real whirlwind - I didn't even know I was allowed to go back on the show (having been a previous contestant in 1997 as a naïve and woefully under-practiced 17 year old) until 22nd February this year (just 10 months ago!) when one of Paul Erdunast's prelim opponents (Ben Dali) mentioned on the show he'd been a contestant in the Richard Whiteley era. After a little bit of persuasion from my wife, this prompted an email to Countdown to confirm I could re-apply, followed shortly by an application and discovering Apterous, followed a few weeks later by a telephone audition, and then a few months later (after about 4 hours average of practice on Apterous per day and learning/remembering words, stems etc from post-its stuck to my monitor at work) it was suddenly time to film! I have to say, attending the FOCAL event in St Albans shortly before I filmed my prelims was very useful as well (was great "live" practice as well, with the bonus of having the privilege of meeting some top players and people).

One strange thing though about the finals is that no mention of any of the prizes were aired at any time? IIRC Nick talked about the prizes (Dictionaries/Laptop for the winner and Laptop for the runner-up) quite a few times in the introductions on a few of the finals matches, and prior to the GF a lot of shots were filmed of the prizes from various angles with great effort, but no mention/shots of the prizes ended up being shown. I wonder why this was?

Really well played, Martin, you were the best player of the series, played solidly through the finals and held your nerve well in the final against a very dangerous opponent.

Cracking play Martin, you thoroughly deserved that win! Can't wait for 3rd January!

Just want to add my congratulations to Martin here, a well deserved series champion. You played very well all the way through and held your nerve against a strong opponent.

Loved the conundrum, though I have to admit to being a bit disappointed that Martin didn't buzz in with gandiseeg when he didn't know the answer. I actually managed to solve the conundrum, though it was a bit of guess. But that's irrelevant, well played Martin, you deserve your win!

For some reason Andrew always made me think of Father Fintan Stack, from an episode of Father Ted. Grossly unfair, because he didn't really look all that much like him, and he seemed to be a nice guy, but there you go.