Discuss anything that happened in recent games. This is the place to post any words you got that beat Dictionary Corner, or numbers games that evaded Rachel.
Jordan F wrote:I guess this series of events along with a couple of other past posts perhaps leads to certain questions.
To what point should talking about contestants go? What's too far? What makes rational sense to say and what doesn't? I'll leave the floor open, but I guess I'll explain my thought process with my comment. I had made a comment that I didn't understand that Helen didn't get at least 500 with a 100 and a 5. What my thought was in that is; one, I genuinely didn't understand what part of the nerves took over or something like that. And two, I had only brought up a point about her performance in one round, nothing about herself, her personality, etc., which I feel is sort of the point of these threads, to talk about Countdown as it's happening. So I felt what I said wasn't so bad. But, I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last. Which is also why I'm sort of encouraging this sort of discussion.
What you did was fine. You weren't rude about her. You could argue I was a bit rude, sort of brushing her aside when defending the champion. I think Stewart was the main culprit. Jack was more on about the "constonant" thing than anything else, but he still comfortably ranks at number two in this thread, especially after he quoted Stewart to agree. I could start a thread for everyone to post a full ranking list if there's enough demand. Dave Preece would put his list as well, and you'd all join in.
I also disagree that she was any "worse" than Danny a few days ago because he was enjoying it. I'm sure she went on to enjoy herself too. And maybe she succeeded.
None of this bothers me too much though. I think it's fine to discuss contestants' performances, poor or good - just look at how you do it.
Were you saying I questioned Countdown's procedures? Hell, I was trying to say that it wasn't their fault.
Helen... well, I dunno. Nerves? Played awesome or got lucky on the audition?
It just didn't seem quite right. A little incongruous compared to the previous games in the week and Series 69.
But yeah let's move on. It happens once a series or so. Next week will be better and quite frankly I'm looking forward to seeing some games between players we don't know. I just hope the games are closer or we get more Dannyesque characters.
My personal opinion is that with the exception of what Jordan has already said, questioning the inability to at least get within 3 when you have a 5 and 100, I personally don't really CARE what the standard on the show is. I play more against the letters that appear than care about what the contestants are up to.
That having been said, I personally found her excruciatingly annoying. But I'm judging her on the basis of about 35 minutes of air time. She may well be a lovely person, but I really struggled to watch, because there was something between her, her translation on TV and my eyes/ears that went horribly wrong and made me want to scrape my nails down a blackboard in preference.
Having said that, whilst SHE irritated me, more contestants who, irritating or not, have actual personalities greater than a lot of the people that end up doing well on the show (before anyone says it, it's a broad comment, I'm not suggesting anyone in particular) wouldn't go amiss.
Possibly the first contestant to accelerate with a mic clipped...
I've been watching Countdown from the beginning and one of the pleasures is getting what the contestants missed, but I think it could be very different if I was on the show - which is one of the reasons I don't go on. Helen must have known she wouldn't be the strongest contestant, but she was willing to have a go, seemed to enjoy it and was a sporting loser.
In my defence, I had never heard of SPOORER and I wouldn't have spotted LATTICED in a million years (terrific spot by my opponent)! So, personally, I wouldn't have beaten the record.
In my defence, I had never heard of SPOORER quote]
Just as well, as it's no longer in the current dictionary, although it is in the ODO. So you could only have equalled the record.
For me the purpose of a spoilers thread is for people to post their reactions to interesting things that happen in the episode and for others to share their opinions on such happenings. For me there were two main points of interest from today's show:
1) I found the challenger very irritating to watch on tv (as did both of my Grandparents with whom I was watching it with at the time)
2) All the nines that kept coming up, leading to a whopping potential high score
With respect to 1) I think it is perfectly reasonably for me to share my views about that on here. If you are in a situation in real life with a friend, and a stranger pisses you off in front of that friend, then naturally you will talk to your friend about it afterwards. In a way that's what I am doing here, but am sharing my view with the other people who watched the episode who are the people commenting on this spoilers thread. The key difference is that everything here is public. Well at least it's readily available to anybody who cares enough about today's episode of countdown to track down a forum topic about it and read it. But then those people are pretty much exactly the ones who watched the episode, and they are exactly the ones I want to share my views with.
With respect to 2), I am one of those people who loves to see new records set, whether is be 9.57s for the men's 100m or a 147 made in 5:19. A lot of records require the right conditions to be set before you have a chance of smashing them, with wind speed and the table layout being two such conditions which apply to the mentioned records. Of course, you never look at a snooker table where the balls are laid out nicely and expect whichever player is on to get the fastest ever 147, and then complain when they only make a break of 136 in ten minutes. Nor do you complain when the guy wins the race in 9.80s even when he had a favourable tailwind. The difference I suppose is that with countdown, you know that with the right conditions (i.e the nines sprouting out) that a top quality player is going to have a good go at breaking that record and it's going to be entertaining to watch even if they don't break it. So of course I am going to be disappointed to see playing conditions set up but not for the right players. That's a perfectly natural feeling, and there's no way I should have to hide it by not pointing it out in the place where I share most of my feelings about countdown.
I find it very disappointing to see people get so quickly shot down for sharing their opinions. Indeed most of this came conveniently after a member of their countdown team quickly popped their head in to show their disapproval for this thread. It doesn't mean everybody else has to flood in and save the day by telling the wrongdoers off! There was no wrongdoing. It just so happens that for some episodes, the most interesting talking points for that show might be of a negative nature, so the majority of comments in a spoilers thread for a day might be a bit negative. I will still want to talk about them, as do many others.
TL:DR: Sometimes the main talking points about something are negative, meaning for some episodes the comments might end up being more negative than positive. The talking points today were about how irritating the challenger was, and how we all love to see records broke, so it was disappointing to see all the 9s needed for the record to be smashed, but no contestants capable of challenging the record. With this in mind, its perfectly reasonable for today's spoilers thread to be quite negative, and there is nothing wrong with that, and we shouldn't be made to feel bad about sharing our views.
All I can think after reading this thread is how funny it would be if Kirk were to turn round to Phil Taylor and say "mate, stop throwing, I can't remember what 60 + 57 + 20 is" And for countries that are words, rusher?
Jon O'Neill wrote:Why is Egypt so surprising? If you've got nothing else it's not a bad guess. You can have japan, china, mali, morocco, brazil, chile, chad, guinea, panama, turkey and probably more.
What about Oxford, is that a country?
Eoin Monaghan wrote:
He may not be liked on here, but you have to give some credit to Mark
JackHurst wrote:For me the purposethough.a spoilers thread is for people to post their reactions to interesting things that happen in the episode and for others to share their opinions on such happenings. For me there were two main points of interest from today's show:
1) I found the challenger very irritating to watch on tv (as did both of my Grandparents with whom I was watching it with at the time)
2) All the nines that kept coming up, leading to a whopping potential high score
With respect to 1) I think it is perfectly reasonably for me to share my views about that on here. If you are in a situation in real life with a friend, and a stranger pisses you off in front of that friend, then naturally you will talk to your friend about it afterwards. In a way that's what I am doing here, but am sharing my view with the other people who watched the episode who are the people commenting on this spoilers thread. The key difference is that everything here is public. Well at least it's readily available to anybody who cares enough about today's episode of countdown to track down a forum topic about it and read it. But then those people are pretty much exactly the ones who watched the episode, and they are exactly the ones I want to share my views with.
With respect to 2), I am one of those people who loves to see new records set, whether is be 9.57s for the men's 100m or a 147 made in 5:19. A lot of records require the right conditions to be set before you have a chance of smashing them, with wind speed and the table layout being two such conditions which apply to the mentioned records. Of course, you never look at a snooker table where the balls are laid out nicely and expect whichever player is on to get the fastest ever 147, and then complain when they only make a break of 136 in ten minutes. Nor do you complain when the guy wins the race in 9.80s even when he had a favourable tailwind. The difference I suppose is that with countdown, you know that with the right conditions (i.e the nines sprouting out) that a top quality player is going to have a good go at breaking that record and it's going to be entertaining to watch even if they don't break it. So of course I am going to be disappointed to see playing conditions set up but not for the right players. That's a perfectly natural feeling, and there's no way I should have to hide it by not pointing it out in the place where I share most of my feelings about countdown.
I find it very disappointing to see people get so quickly shot down for sharing their opinions. Indeed most of this came conveniently after a member of their countdown team quickly popped their head in to show their disapproval for this thread. It doesn't mean everybody else has to flood in and save the day by telling the wrongdoers off! There was no wrongdoing. It just so happens that for some episodes, the most interesting talking points for that show might be of a negative nature, so the majority of comments in a spoilers thread for a day might be a bit negative. I will still want to talk about them, as do many others.
TL:DR: Sometimes the main talking points about something are negative, meaning for some episodes the comments might end up being more negative than positive. The talking points today were about how irritating the challenger was, and how we all love to see records broke, so it was disappointing to see all the 9s needed for the record to be smashed, but no contestants capable of challenging the record. With this in mind, its perfectly reasonable for today's spoilers thread to be quite negative, and there is nothing wrong with that, and we shouldn't be made to feel bad about sharing our views.
Stewart Holden wrote:The most agonising part of this excruciating viewing experience is that with the third 9 just having come up, if the contestants were actually competent they could have had an enormous score.
Even I got 119 and i'm shite compared to you boys!
I think there's a conflation of whether or not this woman was a dickhead, which I don't know because I haven't watched it, and the fact that she's bad at Countdown. There are enough dickheads who are good at Countdown to prove that there's no correlation between these two things, so you can easily go at her personality without going at her Countdown ability. If the first one is your thing, then fine. If the second one is your thing, you're going to get shot down because it comes across as completely arrogant and fucking embarrassing really.
JackHurst wrote:Indeed most of this came conveniently after a member of their countdown team quickly popped their head in to show their disapproval for this thread. It doesn't mean everybody else has to flood in and save the day by telling the wrongdoers off! There was no wrongdoing.
This is also embarrassing. It reminds me of the racist people who blame any counter-argument to their retarded views as "The PC Brigade". I count a solid 20 (TWENTY) negative posts before anyone weighed in. Negative isn't necessarily bad - only about 5-10 were of the magnitude of cuntiness that inspires me to post. But don't act like it's just a normal spoiler thread.
I don't think taking issue with quality of play is unreasonable, because for most people here, it does actually make for a less enjoyable watch if contestants are missing very easy numbers games, trying proper nouns, whatever, and there's really nothing wrong with hoping or expecting one of your favourite TV shows (regardless of genre) results in a good episode. Sometimes a bad one just gets through the net.
Andy Platt wrote:How does someone who either can't spell trio, or thinks it's 5 letters long, get on to the show? Hmmm...
^ Apologies if that is too far, but I don't think it is particularly unfair. However, I'd tend to agree that the line should probably be drawn not too far after and maybe some let it get a little out of hand.
Dave Preece wrote:I'm surprised Callum hasn't been on yet, sucking off Jen and all the other do-gooders!
Andy Platt wrote:I don't think taking issue with quality of play is unreasonable, because for most people here, it does actually make for a less enjoyable watch if contestants are missing very easy numbers games, trying proper nouns, whatever, and there's really nothing wrong with hoping or expecting one of your favourite TV shows (regardless of genre) results in a good episode. Sometimes a bad one just gets through the net.
So this thread came up in discussion in aptochat so I read it and this is the point I agree with. I though her standard was incredibly poor and I'm basing that on the guy who was at my audition. He had tied numerous times to get on and couldn't so it baffles me that she could. I don't begrudge her an appearance, I say the more the merrier and if people are eager to go on they should be allowed but if the auditions are in place to set a standard then how she got past that ahead of the guy at my audition is a bit inexplicable to me. Also Callum's cock sucking leaves a lot to be desired.
Mark James wrote:I thought her standard was incredibly poor and I'm basing that on the guy who was at my audition. He had tried numerous times to get on and couldn't so it baffles me that she could. I don't begrudge her an appearance, I say the more the merrier and if people are eager to go on they should be allowed but if the auditions are in place to set a standard then how she got past that ahead of the guy at my audition is a bit inexplicable to me
Standard is what someone is capable of, performance is how they play on the day. Her standard was good enough to pass the audition, that is beyond question, otherwise she wouldn't have been there.
Re the rest of the thread, it's just a bit unnecessarily brutal in places. Someone plays a poor game, okay, but to be the subject of a testosterone-fuelled mauling from people who should know better isn't that pleasant. One poster even included the champion in one of his remarks. To her credit, she smiled throughout even though she was probably suffering a bit inside with how things were panning out. There are plenty of males, some within this thread, who would be in tears at the end of a defeat like that.
The other strange bit is some saying Rachel's numbers solution was 'needlessly complex'. No such thing. You get the answer how you get the answer.
Whilst some people on here may have found it uncomfortable to watch - whether through mispronunciation or quality of play, it did lead me to consider an interesting moral dilemma.
I can by no means claim to be of the quality of many of the contributors here - I am well aware of my limitations as a player - but I found myself in the rather uncomfortable position of having beaten the challenger in every single round.
The question I would have had to asked myself having got, say, 80 or 90 points ahead, is would I have been so focused on maximising my own personal score to leave her with a score of nil? Personally, I don't think I could.
Brett Davids wrote:Whilst some people on here may have found it uncomfortable to watch - whether through mispronunciation or quality of play, it did lead me to consider an interesting moral dilemma.
I can by no means claim to be of the quality of many of the contributors here - I am well aware of my limitations as a player - but I found myself in the rather uncomfortable position of having beaten the challenger in every single round.
The question I would have had to asked myself having got, say, 80 or 90 points ahead, is would I have been so focused on maximisng my own personal score to leave her with a score of nil? Personally, I don't think I would have had the heart.
It's not a position I'd be comfortable with but I would never go easy on anyone. Every point could make a difference in terms of your final seeding so you should be focused on maximising your score, whether or not you'd feel like that in the studio is another question. I never played anyone on TV anywhere near as poor but if I had, I'd have shown no mercy during the game and felt sorry for them afterwards.
It's a good question and it has been raised before. Last time the consensus was that you should never give anybody sympathy points because it's patronizing towards them, and it damages your own score. Thinking back, I am surprised that that was what most people agreed with. A lot of people watching at home will see it the other way and want you to help the other person get on the score board. I think it's OK to do either. It's your game so you can do what you like within reason, If you chose to sacrifice a point to avoid the awkwardness of having your opponent score nothing in the game then that's fine, though do it tastefully and don't make it blatantly obvious that you had something longer. On the other hand if you care more about maximizing your score and you want to take no prisoners then I guess that's fine too.
It's interesting that since the argument last came up, I think my opinion has moved over to the other side. If my opponent is on 0 in round 12 and declares 5 from AUIOODTTD, then I might stick with DITTO instead of OUTDID. In that case you could even say you had a 6 but didn't want to risk it because it might be two words. I guess part of the decision depends on whether you like the other person or not.
Countdown Team wrote:
The other strange bit is some saying Rachel's numbers solution was 'needlessly complex'. No such thing. You get the answer how you get the answer.
It wasn't me that said that but I do agree, however if I had said so on here it would have been as a standard spoiler comment, as in providing my own solution, and obviously not intended to cause Rachel any offence. In the 2nd and 3rd numbers games today there would have been much simpler solutions by using the 11 times table - in both cases. So I conclude Rachel showed a distinct dislike of the 11 times table! And that's a light-hearted comment
The other point I want to make about the standard of today's programme is just I wonder if it will persuade more viewers in my position [ie not sure whether to apply or not] to do so. The problem with that being that by the time any of those people appear, standards will most likely be different. And no, I'm still not sure!!
Ryan Taylor wrote:Upon reading this thread I think Martin Thompson should go on Countdown. Seems like such a charming sort, and excellent at the game too.
Thanks. I'm recording on the last slot next Wednesday.
Countdown Team wrote:
The other strange bit is some saying Rachel's numbers solution was 'needlessly complex'. No such thing. You get the answer how you get the answer.
It wasn't me that said that but I do agree, however if I had said so on here it would have been as a standard spoiler comment, as in providing my own solution, and obviously not intended to cause Rachel any offence. In the 2nd and 3rd numbers games today there would have been much simpler solutions by using the 11 times table - in both cases. So I conclude Rachel showed a distinct dislike of the 11 times table! And that's a light-hearted comment
The other point I want to make about the standard of today's programme is just I wonder if it will persuade more viewers in my position [ie not sure whether to apply or not] to do so. The problem with that being that by the time any of those people appear, standards will most likely be different. And no, I'm still not sure!!
In isolation, a poor performance doesn't do any harm, but if we get a string of players who fail to produce the goods on the day, then it does encourage players of a lower standard to apply. Re the numbers, wasn't sure if the 'unnecessarily complex' comments were meaning she was deliberately showboating, or one or two just being mildly critical of how the answer was attained. If Rachel were to look for 'regulation' solutions as a matter of course, she'd probably miss many more of the harder solutions, because they are not 'regulation'. Thinking outside of the box and doing things in an unorthodox way is more often than not the key to solving the really difficult numbers games. Don't really see how her having a different thought process to others is such a shock to some.
Brett Davids wrote:
The question I would have had to asked myself having got, say, 80 or 90 points ahead, is would I have been so focused on maximising my own personal score to leave her with a score of nil? Personally, I don't think I could.
That wouidn't bother me. I would be more likely to lose out on maximising my score because of a tail-off in concentration.
Countdown Team wrote:The other strange bit is some saying Rachel's numbers solution was 'needlessly complex'. No such thing. You get the answer how you get the answer.
When Jack said that for one of the numbers, I found it quite amusing that her next solution was quite complex as well, so I thought it would be quite funny to carry it on, and then later with "needlessly far away".
Two occurrences of thrice-repeated vowels (three consecutive Os in round 1; three consecutive Es in round 13). Has this ever happened before?
I'm not dead yet. In a rut right now because of stress from work. I'll be back later in S89. I also plan to bring back the Mastergram - if I can find a way to run a timer or clock through pure MediaWiki without having to upload to Vimeo every time.
Andy Platt wrote:You wouldn't watch a football match and see the referee disallow a goal because he thought it was offside but he couldn't really remember the ruling on it at the time.
Andy Platt wrote:You wouldn't watch a football match and see the referee disallow a goal because he thought it was offside but he couldn't really remember the ruling on it at the time.
Best use of the owl I've seen in yonks. That's made my day.
Possibly the first contestant to accelerate with a mic clipped...
It was an interesting one because I was fairly happy at the time that Gouffran having to actively duck out of the way meant he was "interfering" since Hart could claim the ball would have struck him if hadn't "interfered" by moving out of the way, but it would seem that the rule no longer states "interfering" but is pretty specific that the offside player has to a) challenge for the ball, b) challenge an opponent or c) block the line of sight of the defending team. Or so I've been told, I haven't actually checked the rule myself. Entertaining stuff, not least to hear Pardew say "shut your noise, you fucking old cunt" to Pellegrini.