Spoilers for Thursday 10th December 2020 (Series 82, 1st Quarter-Final)

[Thomas Carey]

literally how do we not have a spoiler thread yet. luke v david. someone will chuck in some stats i'm sure

[Tom S]

Many congratulations to Luke on the fabulous display and max game. David put in his best performance, there too, and got his 1st 9 of his run, so I'm sure he won't be too disappointed with that!

[Thomas Carey]

casual

[Paul Anderson]

Fabulous from LJD! A slight shame they didn't announce his max game

[Ryan Lam]

Well, this year, 2020 has dealt blow after blow to all of us, but let's just end of the year and hope for more optimism in 2021 shall we? But before we do so, if you were here last year, yeah, you guessed it, the Christmas decorations are the same, but that shouldn't come as a surprise given that it's hard to get new decorations this time round. Oh well, hopefully with a new host next year maybe we'll see something different? Who knows...alright on to the main business!

Letters: Luke gets a first round advantage with SCIAPODE and then decides to go with HELOTRY in the next round which left all of us on the Countdown Daily Chat in aw. Oh, but that's not the end, MAGNESIC and RIDGETOP in Rounds 4 and 5?? Oh comeon, slow down!! We can't keep up!! (Not to mention VOCABLE in Round 11 as well). Perhaps the high point in this game was when both players spotted DETAILING in Round 13, excellent work!

Numbers: Hmm let's just hope the curse of easy numbers round that happened two years ago in Series 79 isn't back; all the four rounds were manageable today for such an episode. Both contestants decided to stick with what they know best and I thought that was the wisest choice from them (Fun Fact: Sam Cappleman-Lynes did mention both players did not have their solutions written down in R6, and to hear them being so confident in the final take just goes to show the amazing editing skills the producers have.)

Conundrum: I thought the Conundrum was going to be a difficult one by default but no, it's not! Luke buzzes in with confidence with the correct answer and with that, apart from this TV SERIES being the longest in history, HISTORY IN ANOTHER FORM HAS BEEN MADE, because this is the first maxed out game in a long, long while!!

Perhaps, this was probably the best ever first Quarter-Finals I've watched since I began having an interest in the show in 2013. It was not the sort of usual "thrashing" one would expect where the #1 Seed easily overpowers the #8 Seed, it was a brilliant match to the very end and finally after six years, the wait for a maxed out game is OVER!! (Up until now, the closest we ever came to that was three years ago during the first Semi-Finals of Series 77 with Tom Chafer-Cook falling short by a single point) Luke surely still had that stamina from all those months ago and if today's performance was over the moon, then we can surely expect the same in the first Semi-Finals too! As for David, he put up a very commendable fight and to have him still also have the skills despite the suspension of the Series due to the first lockdown all those months ago is terrific! I think both players can pat themselves on the back, and I'm sure this will be one of many games that will forever be written in history on the show!

Overall, I predicted Luke would win by around 50 points and it was quite close with a 47 point margin. David held Luke considerably well and he should be proud to have made it this far. You should not be ashamed of losing to such a powerful player, you should be proud that you got to witness history first-hand and that you did your very best, that's important.

Up tomorrow for QF2, it's "yet another player with a hyphen in his name" Sam Cappleman-Lynes vs the "200th Octochamp since the 15-Round era began" Damien Doughty. Hopefully, this will be another good match...

Progress:
QF1 (10 December): Luke Johnson-Davies (#1) vs David Kempshall (#8) (136 - 89)
QF2 (11 December): Sam Cappleman-Lynes (#2) vs Damien Doughty (#7)
QF3 (14 December): Leo Smith (#3) vs Phil Hulme (#6)
QF4 (15 December): Ian Volante (#4) vs Ryan Styles (#5)
SF1 (16 December): Luke Johnson-Davies (QF1 Winner) vs (QF4 Winner)
SF2 (17 December): (QF2 Winner) vs (QF3 Winner)
GF (18 December): (SF1 Winner) vs (SF2 Winner)

[Rhys Benjamin]

The wiki is a nightmare to update on shows like this.

As well as the usual:
- Series 82
- Luke Johnson-Davies
- David Kempshall
- Episode 7407
- Template:DATE December 9

There was also:
- List of 15-round scores over 125
- List of 15-round joint scores over 200
- Max game
- Episode 4904

(I think that's it...)

[Gavin Chipper]

That was a great game and David did about as well as a non-Apterite can be expected to do.

The wiki is a nightmare to update on shows like this.

As well as the usual:
- Series 82
- Luke Johnson-Davies
- David Kempshall
- Episode 7407
- Template:DATE December 9

There was also:
- List of 15-round scores over 125
- List of 15-round joint scores over 200
- Max game
- Episode 4904

(I think that's it...)

Nice work - keep it up! Never let it be said that Conservatives are all bad. Just most of them.

[Paul Anderson]

David is an Apterite, and showed a nice improvement I thought

[Rhys Benjamin]

In his initial run David had a raw score % of 69.7% (785 / 1,127) and today he scored a raw 115 / 136, 84.6%, so much betta.

Lukey boy upped his percentage from 90.7% to 100.0%, mind you.

[Callum Todd]

Amazing stuff. When the big dictionary update happened I thought max games might be a thing of the past, or at least become an extreme rarity. It took apterous about 2 years to get back to seeing them fairly frequently, but the first max game in 6 years on screen is a huge achievement by Luke. Hopefully it's not the last one of this series! I had a sneaky feeling Sam might topple Luke in these finals as he was improving so much in the run up to them, but if Luke was in this form at filming then surely he will be unstoppable.

[Thomas Cappleman]

Conundrum: I thought the Conundrum was going to be a difficult one by default but no, it's not! Luke buzzes in with confidence with the correct answer and with that, apart from this TV SERIES being the longest in history, HISTORY IN ANOTHER FORM HAS BEEN MADE, because this is the first maxed out game in a long, long while!!

It's a difficulty 9/10 on Apterous, so not a gimme. It's a good finals one - enough potential suffixes and repeated letters to take a bit of thought to solve.

[Owen Carroll]

Very good game! Well done Luke but David did well! I didn't watch the countdown finals last year but I'm back at it! Glad to have got to see a max game on tv!

[Toby McDonald]

Excellent start to the finals Luke! Congrats on the max! MAGNESIC, RIDGETOP and VOCABLE in particular were brilliant spots.

[Gavin Chipper]

Fabulous from LJD! A slight shame they didn't announce his max game

I suppose it's because it's just an unofficial thing that us in the "community" verify. There's no official Countdown word list.

[Rhys Benjamin]

Except Rachel has mentioned max games in the past.

[Gavin Chipper]

True, but has she ever done it on the day of the game? She'd need to at least find out for herself.

[Rhys Benjamin]

True, but has she ever done it on the day of the game? She'd need to at least find out for herself.

Yep - the Kirk/Josh Ashmore game in 30BC

[Conor]

Amazing stuff Luke, supreme performance. MAGNESIC in particular was nowhere near.

True, but has she ever done it on the day of the game? She'd need to at least find out for herself.

She announced I was on for a max game after rd 13 vs Chris Hawkins.

[Gavin Chipper]

I suppose with COVID, James Robinson isn't in the studio with his "ON FOR A MAX GAME " banner, which Rachel probably uses to find this stuff out.

[Carl Harrison]

I can't see how they would know in the studio whether it's a max game, as Susie is often beatable on the letters rounds so presumably no-one is checking the Apto dictionary at the time