Spoilers for Monday 18th May

[Ray Folwell]

MENTIONS in R2

[Ben Wilson]

Jeff's dislike of the 'team' prefix is well-documented.

[Paul Howe]

ANOMIE in rd 1. Can't be too many times when that's come up (presumably) as a darren.

[Douglas Wilson]

Maize as a contestant beater in R1.

[Mark Kudlowski]

2nd numbers alts:

(100 x 10) - ((25 + 1) / 2)

(( 100 + 25 ) x 8) - (10 + 2 + 1 )

[Paul Howe]

HALESOME

[Mark Kudlowski]

3rd numbers alt:

(50 - 5 - 2 ) x (10 + 10 - 4)

[Matt Morrison]

3rd numbers alternate: 50+10+5+4 = 69, x10 = 690, -2 = 688

I think Jimmy's quite clearly going to win the award for Greatest Number Of Utterly Nice Guys Beaten In Octorun.
Glad that missing those two 'a bit tragic' 9s didn't turn out to be any more painful than kicking yourself under the desk usually is.

[John Bosley]

Surprised that gradates came to him but not graduates which IMO is a much more common word. Maize is v common as well and no one seemed to have got there - bit corny really!

[Clive Brooker]

Spotted this last Friday. I thought it was an interesting view.

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/mu ... xperience/

[Matt Morrison]

Spotted this last Friday. I thought it was an interesting view.

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/mu ... xperience/

Cheers for that Clive. A good read, and good work leaving mentioning it until today. Nice bit of bigging up Charlie too.

[jeff wharton]

How about curliest in round three,for eight.

[Charlie Reams]

Spotted this last Friday. I thought it was an interesting view.

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/mu ... xperience/

Yeah, Gerry is a really nice guy,and unlucky to come up against a good 'un.

[Ben Hunter]

Surprised that gradates came to him but not graduates which IMO is a much more common word.

You've touched upon the inner workings of the Countdown mind.

[Kirk Bevins]

Spotted this last Friday. I thought it was an interesting view.

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/mu ... xperience/

Good find Clive, thanks. It's cheered me up reading that as there were several mentions of my hero, Mr Reams and it also mentioned me a couple of times which was nice.

I was pleased with ANOMIE and HALESOME as beaters today but Mr Howe is just too relentless and has beaten me to posting them so I'll end it here.

[Howard Somerset]

Jeff's dislike of the 'team' prefix is well-documented.

And I'm with him all the way on this.

[Keith Bevins]

Linnets R2
Curliest R3
Slurred R6
(100-2)*10+8-1 second numbers

[Paul Howe]

Spotted this last Friday. I thought it was an interesting view.

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/mu ... xperience/

Interesting article, nice find Clive.

Jimmy, I know you're probably following Clare's sage advice of not forgetting to buzz for conundrums, but you have to know the answers first! I'm sure she only neglected to mention this because she didn't want to state the bleeding obvious.

[Phil Reynolds]

Spotted this last Friday. I thought it was an interesting view.

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/mu ... xperience/

An excellent read, and notably free of the little inaccuracies that normally litter local press features - so much so that I suspect it was written by Gerry himself.

[JackHurst]

I wanted an M as the last letter in the second round for COSTUMIER and an M as the last letter in a later round for MANIFESTO

The challenger was a nice bloke, he really looked like bobby davro too.