Spoilers for Thursday 22nd June 2023 - Series 87 2nd Quarter-final

[Philip A]

Octochamp Cillian VS 6-time winner Dave. The winner plays again on Wednesday.

[Philip A]

These have been good games so far with high combined scores. Well done Dave. Well played Cillian and best of luck for Wednesday’s semi-final.

I had MIDFACES in Round 2 and it took me 16 seconds to spot INOCULANT.

[Ronan M Higginson]

Great game to watch live from the dressing room just after recording my game vs Andrew. Dave put up a very good fight.

[Steve Hyde]

The look of joy on Dave's face as he won the GOODLIER round was lovely to behold. Really good contest

[Johnny Canuck]

FYI I'm on vacation tomorrow so today's and tomorrow's recaps can be grabbed by someone else

[Andres Sanchez]

FYI I'm on vacation tomorrow so today's and tomorrow's recaps can be grabbed by someone else

Got a start on it with the fact that it's 2 nearing 2:30am here, but if there's any other person that can fill in the gaps then feel free to do so.

[Ryan Lam]

Late post as I'm busy with work, but the improtant thing is I get this in before the next episode airs. It's nice to see Ronan sharing his thoughts about his episode yesterday in the Daily Chat and while he may not be there for his remaining match (or two!), I'm sure yesterday's match was enough to up our expectations in terms of the performance of the contestants! Also, let's be honest, if Ronan hadn't been in this Series, Cillian would surely be the #1 Seed and if he does face him next week, I can only think of what the end will bring us...

Letters: Bam! A nine in R1 already with RANTOONES by Cillian, but scampie is ruled invalid in R2 as Dave catches up.

The look of joy on Dave's face as he won the GOODLIER round was lovely to behold.

Dave does the trick again with GOODLIER in R5 to reduce the margin to a mere three points and yes, that smile was brilliant and I bet Cillian on the other hand must be facing the pressure now! However, the latter doesn't buckle and regains some ground with IRONIAS in R8! Afterwards, with the margin at 20 points, it looked like the Final Numbers Round was going to be the make-or-break round but with a great spot from EUCRITES in R13, Cillian is safely through to the Semi-Finals!

Numbers: Easy start like yesterday with Cillian sticking with 1 Large in R3. Then, after catching up in R5, Dave goes for a gamble with 4 Large in R6! Oh dear, he's really going to regret his choice now as Cillian finds an exact solution! Afterwards, R9 and R14 were manageable for a Finals match, so well done to both for getting the remaining 20 points each in this aspect!

Conundrum: The scrabble initially made me CONTINUAL-ly fixated on it, duh, because it's an actual word. However, I got it quite quickly thanks to my memory during, guess what, COVID-19 times when the answer was flying all over the place when it comes to the Vaccine and believe it or not, I unintentionally found out that this was an anagram. Both draw a blank, oh well, just like some of us in terms of our memories during the multiple lockdowns we've had...

Wow, if the first two Quarter-Finals have this fierce competition already, you can only imagine what the other two will bring us. That was an exciting game just like yesterday but of course for very different reasons, with Dave at one point almost overtaking Cillian! I predicted the margin to be around 40 points but the margin is even closer at 28 points!

Great game to watch live from the dressing room just after recording my game vs Andrew. Dave put up a very good fight.

Echo Ronan's words here and Dave, I'm sure that while it's the last time we'll see the Cappleman's on this show for now, I bet your whole family is incredibly proud of what you have achieved, not just your son Tom, but also his and your wife, Ruth and Catriona respectively. I'm sure you can look back at 28 (coincidence, right?) years worth of appearances that all of you have made and smile with pride making it this far and no shame in losing like your wife did all those years ago in the Quarter-Finals. I wish your family well and hope that all of you will be lifelong fans of the show!

Normally, I would wish everyone to rest well over the weekend after the second Quarter-Final, but like I said yesterday, the Grand Final is on a Thursday, so we've got one more to go before the weekend. To end off the week, we have "Picture on Apterous makes it look like he's celebrating Christmas every day" Peter Burke (Tbf, it was a day when everyone in the studio wore sweaters last year) against "A high scoring Six-time Winner only to be outdone by a Maths genius" Greg Pearce. We could potentially see another rematch if the former goes through!

Progress:
QF1 (21 June 2023): Ronan Higginson (#1) vs Andrew Barrett (#8) (122 - 70)
QF2 (22 June 2023): Cillian McMulkin (#2) vs Dave Cappleman (#7) (109 - 81)
QF3 (23 June 2023): Peter Burke (#3) vs Greg Pearce (#6)
QF4 (26 June 2023): Graham Moonie-Dalton (#4) vs Adam Dexter (#5)
SF1 (27 June 2023): Ronan Higginson (QF1 Winner) vs (QF4 Winner)
SF2 (28 June 2023): Cillian McMulkin (QF2 Winner) vs (QF3 Winner)
GF (29 June 2023): (SF1 Winner) vs (SF2 Winner)

[Howie Myers]

r12: UPSTREAM