c4countdown

Happy Valentine's Day everybody. And it's a good day for Adrian Day, our new champion. He'd like to end the week on win number 2, but he does have a hurdle in his path. That hurdle is apterite Brett Davids, who we've been waiting to see for awhile. Let's see what happens.

Join Anthony for the recap later.

ROUGHENS in R5

Fun way to do the second numbers: (((50-6)x2)-6)x10-7

I stupidly went for JOINDERS (JOINDER is a mass noun) but got the 3rd numbers same as Rachel.

MELODEON in R11

Tony Atkins wrote:I stupidly went for JOINDERS (JOINDER is a mass noun)

MODALIST in r12

MODALIST in round 12

ZARTE

UNOWNED in R13

R14

((7+2)*8+25)*8+5 = 781

Very comfortable there Brett, not just in margin of victory, but also in demeanour, been on TV before?

Never heard guacamole pronounced that way before, maybe I've only heard the US version or something.

Bradley Cates wrote:MELODEON in R11

I saw that too, but stupidly went for MOONLETED^ instead.

Well done Brett, very solid debut performance. Some nice spots, particularly with EXACTORS and the conundrum. Hopefully you can go on a good run.

OUBAAS in round 2.

Andy Platt wrote:Never heard guacamole pronounced that way before, maybe I've only heard the US version or something.

What way?

Rhyming with whack-a-mole

Thanks for all the kind comments guys!

It was a nice game to come into, as Adrian was a fantastic bloke who I'd spent all day with. We'd got on really well and he was a calming presence both in the green room and in the studio, which certainly helped to prevent the nerves getting the better of me too much. Instead of feeling hypercompetitive, it felt like two guys trying to get the best performance out of the other, which I suppose is easy to say when you're winning but is the feeling I had through both/all (delete as applicable) my games.

Never been on telly before in my life - so I'm glad I came across OK to the viewer.

Overall I was pretty pleased with my performance, the numbers didn't go too badly given how I'd seen people struggling under the lights earlier in the day/week, bar the last one when I was too busy thinking in my head "I'VE WON I'VE WON I'VE WON" to even look at them for the first 20 seconds, I could maybe have bodged 4 away but was happy to giggle and let it go. I suppose a super-critical me would bemoan the miss of STIFADO as I've played it on Apterous before, but I wouldn't have got many of the other alts listed above, nor indeed MOONLET, even at home.

As for the pronunciation of guacamole, I've got no idea if I'd purely rhymed it with whack-a-mole in my head, if it's an obscure Leicestershire pronunciation, or if the South African side of my family had an influence, but it's the way I've always pronounced it, and I guess the studio were happy enough with it said that way to keep it in. Watch out for another mispronunciation on Monday - there's definitely one there! I'm just very, very glad GIAOURS didn't come up. I wouldn't even know where to start on pronouncing that one.

Also, a close viewing of the last couple of rounds may reveal my eyes are streaming. Some of the make-up had run down and into them. I am definitely not crying!