Spoilers for Monday 21st June (Series 83, Quarter Final 3)

[Martin Long]

Postbag in 2nd letters round.

[Tom S]

Pearten- R7

[Gavin Chipper]

Two pointless teatime teasers today.

[Gavin Chipper]

Weird they both thought boogery might be a word. Though it sounded like Adam was saying "buggery" so maybe he thought it was spelt like that.

[Gavin Chipper]

Also I remember when Rufus Hound seemed like a breath of fresh air. Long time ago...

[Ryan Lam]

Five more episodes to go before Nick Hewer retires, and as the tributes have started pouring in to mark his tenure on the show, Channel 4 seems to be quite keen on promoting his successor Anne Robinson who will be making her debut next Monday! It's certainly an exciting time to be here and it truly is the beginning of the end for the former.

Letters: Declan stumbles early on with an invalid declaration of gumsier in R1 and unhide in R4, not to mention the agony in R2 when he had BOUTS and Adam had ABOUTS Fortunately, he scored points in R7 and R12 but that was it. Adam took the day with CAROTIDS in R5 and NUISANCE in R10. However, all this was in between more invalid declarations such as loomiest, boogery and woulted (In fact, some people were debating on the Daily Chat if this episode holds the record for the most number of invalid declarations for a Finals Episode at seven).

Numbers: It was very brave of both contestants to step out of their comfort zone with "3 Large" in R3 and "4 Large" in R6 and R14 despite barely encountering these selections in their Preliminaries. Declan's gamble in R6 backfires when he misdeclares but he wouldn't have made it as Adam got closer and the selection in R14, well it fell flat but hey, at least the former got ten points to boost his score and you can't really complain!

Conundrum: The conundrum wasn't as difficult as I thought, maybe it's because I've been watching Court cases on YouTube of late (don't ask me why ) so the answer came pretty fast for me. As for Adam, he writes down and manages to unscramble it successfully. At least it paid off here rather than using muscle memory to decipher it!

Given that Louis was supposed to have faced Declan here, based on today's performance, I would say Louis would have won but by a much wider margin of around 60-70 points. As for the predictions wise here, I predicted Adam would win by around 40 points but it was significantly larger at 59 points. Poor Declan, he never really stood a chance from the beginning of the show and unfortunately his practise on Apterous did not pay off here However, being able to make it into the Finals is good enough and to get that piece of "Kryptonite" is at least some consolation there. Hopefully should he be shortlisted for the next Championship of Champions more practise would do the trick, we'll anticipate that!

Adam is off to face James on Thursday but who will take on Luke the following day? One last Quarter-Final to go and although Rachel rightly says it is the "most likely" chance to have an upset there, given the incorrect seeding that chance may be less likely. Will it be "Final Octochamp of the Nick Hewer era and barely made it out alive" Louis Ross or "Actress on Doctor Who" Coral Heath (I remembered she had an IMDB page when I searched up her credentials when she first appeared on Countdown but somehow it's been deleted, I wonder what happened) that does so? Tune in tomorrow!

Progress:
QF1 (17 June): Luke Boynton (#1) vs Dave Lomax (#8) (99 - 47)
QF2 (18 June): James Burley (#2) vs Tom Vincent (#7) (100 - 66)
QF3 (21 June): Adam Latchford (#3)* vs Declan McGurk (#6) (99 - 40)
QF4 (22 June): Louis Ross (#4)* vs Coral Heath (#5)
SF1 (23 June): Luke Boynton (QF1 Winner) vs (QF4 Winner)
SF2 (24 June): James Burley (QF2 Winner) vs Adam Latchford (QF3 Winner)*
GF (25 June): (SF1 Winner) vs (SF2 Winner)

[Toby McDonald]

PETRAEAN in R7

[Philip A]

Hate to say it, but I doubt Declan will be picked for a Championship of Champions, because he was only a quarter-finalist. Jen Steadman was a quarter-finalist, but was chosen as she was statistically the best female player between the 30BC and CoC XVI, and she narrowly lost to the eventual series champion.

Having said that, I think Latchford was the more dedicated of the two practisers on this occasion. He didn’t lose a round.

[Thomas Carey]

Hate to say it, but I doubt think Declan will be picked for a Championship of Champions, because he was onlh a quarter-finalist. Jen Steadman was a quarter-finalist, but was chosen as she was statistically the best female player between the 30BC and CoC XVI, and she narrowly lost to the eventual series champion.

Having said that, I think Latchford was the more dedicated of the two practisers on this occasion. He didn’t lose a round.

Yeah, no reason why he should be tbh (sorry Dec). Jen also got one of the highest octotals of all time (3rd ever at the time). I still maintain that Toby McDonald was robbed by not getting a place in our CoC - sure, he was a losing quarter finalist (and not much of a demographic breaker), but the only reason he lost his QF was (similarly to Jen) because of a 7th seed that only ended up that low by running into the champion, and he was clearly the 3rd best player in that series (better than the other two guys from that series who played in CoC for some reason). But I've banged this drum enough times.

Two pointless teatime teasers today.

I know kielbasa as the sausage, not as a countdown word. It's not super ubiquitous but you can get it in any of those euro shop things. It scored about 6 on Pointless recently if that's any sort of benchmark for well known ness.

Not sure how I feel about obscure words as teasers generally, although that's gonna be a lot of the declarations in the finals anyway, so I don't really care. I definitely prefer obscure nouns to stuff that's like, obvious what it means, but not sure it should be a word (e.g. HURTIEST)

[Gavin Chipper]

Not sure how I feel about obscure words as teasers generally, although that's gonna be a lot of the declarations in the finals anyway, so I don't really care. I definitely prefer obscure nouns to stuff that's like, obvious what it means, but not sure it should be a word (e.g. HURTIEST)

I've always thought they should be gettable by the vast majority of people, and when you don't get one, it should all click with the clue and you go "Oh yeah...". The odd obscure one is just about OK but they seem to be more common recently and two in the same show is too far. I think it misses the point about what they're for.

[Rhys Benjamin]

Stats before today, for the sake of completeness:

ADAM LATCHFORD
Highest score: 115 vs Jacky Treacy, game 3
Lowest score: 72+TB vs Conor Morgan, game 1
Score: 732
Average: 91.50
Max faced: 1,077
% score: 70.0%
Raw score: 765
Raw average: 95.63
Raw % score: 71.0%
Conundrums: 8/9

DECLAN MCGURK
Highest score: 117 vs Danny Lofthouse, game 4
Lowest score: 66 vs Coral Heath, game 7
Score: 616
Average: 88.00
Max faced: 975
% score: 63.2%
Raw score: 692
Raw average: 98.86
Raw % score: 71.0%
Conundrums: 2/7

[Graeme Cole]

Two pointless teatime teasers today.

Very well done if you got those at home.

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

I still maintain that Toby McDonald was robbed by not getting a place in our CoC

Incorrect.
It was Robin McKay who was robbed of a place in that CoC.
Toby's a nice person and a top player... but you'd have to shoulder away Jeff Clayton, and Stephen Briggs (and arguably a few more SFists) before Toby would have been due a call up from the subs bench.

[Gavin Chipper]

Two pointless teatime teasers today.

Very well done if you got those at home.

Very nice. I wonder if Tom Carey's Pointless reference was intentional. One for the coincidences thread if not.

[Adam Dexter]

I know kielbasa as the sausage, not as a countdown word. It's not super ubiquitous but you can get it in any of those euro shop things. It scored about 6 on Pointless recently if that's any sort of benchmark for well known ness.

Yeh I use Kielbasa for Currywurst - not sure if ethnically correct but seems to work well enough and the price is right at Lidl