c4countdown

EVACUANT in R2.

Nice to see another octochamp but I don't think she'd be at all pleased with today's performance. The challenger today had a bit of a mare and even then he looked like he still might nick it before blobbing the final letters.

Corrina should rightly be proud of her achievement and very well done to her.

You can only play the opponents you're given, and she was better than them

Fiona T wrote: ↑Wed Aug 07, 2019 2:16 pm Corrina should rightly be proud of her achievement and very well done to her.

You can only play the opponents you're given, and she was better than them

Sure, and I think she was a good player overall, which was why today's game was notable. If I thought she was poor throughout, I probably wouldn't have mentioned it.

Corrina did really well. It must be hard to keep playing at the same high standard for eight games.

Congratulations to Corrina on eight wins.

Here's an unusual Countdown first, which I post merely as a curiosity and not as any kind of comment on the ability of either player - I just thought it was interesting.

When a player declares the length of their word but then doesn't offer a word, as Chris did in round 2, this is marked on the wiki as having been misdeclared. It's not a "real" misdeclaration (which is when you offer a word with the wrong length), but we'll go with it for the purpose of this post.

There are four reasons a word can be disallowed - not in the dictionary, not in the selection, misdeclared, and not written down. Assuming we accept round 2 as misdeclared, today was the first time all four of them happened in the same episode.

Also a blank declaration (by Chris in R13) and a numbers mistake (R14). Quite a comedy of errors, this one!

3 Octochamps in the first 6 weeks of the series! If this rate carries on, I wonder if we could see more than 8 Octochamps in total - would this be the first series it has ever happened in?

If this happens, then I presume it's just tough luck to any Octochamps who don't make the top 8 - so they would just retire undefeated?!

Just made me wonder as at the end of this episode Nick was saying "see you in the finals" to Corrina, but with her relatively low Octochamp score I'm not at all sure this is certain...?!

Carl Harrison wrote: ↑Thu Aug 08, 2019 2:54 pm 3 Octochamps in the first 6 weeks of the series! If this rate carries on, I wonder if we could see more than 8 Octochamps in total - would this be the first series it has ever happened in?

If this happens, then I presume it's just tough luck to any Octochamps who don't make the top 8 - so they would just retire undefeated?!

Just made me wonder as at the end of this episode Nick was saying "see you in the finals" to Corrina, but with her relatively low Octochamp score I'm not at all sure this is certain...?!

9 octochamps has never happened. I've been waiting for it since we first had 8 of them in series 47 in 2002!

So there have now been 4 octochamps, with only just over 1/3 of the series heats broadcast so far. I'd say it's looking increasingly likely now for more than 8 octochamps for the first time. So I'd be fearful for Corrina to make the finals with quite a low score - although that might mean she at least remains undefeated!).

Having said that, except James Haughton the standard of octochamps hasn't been generally nearly as good as many previous series - with James on 958 and the other 3 on around the 700-mark, he's going to have a walkover in the finals if the standard doesn't improve