Countdown Finals Seeds

[Peter Thomas]

I was just wondering how many times a number eight seed has beaten the number one seed and also how many times they have gone on to win the final.

[Philip A]

Questions like this should go here http://www.c4countdown.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=9519

No 8th seed has yet won a Grand Final, 7th is the lowest (most recently Callum Todd in Series 69).

No 8 knocked out No 1 in the following series:
Series 05 (1984)
Series 21 (1991)
Series 24 (1992)
Series 30 (1995) the only No. 7 vs No. 8 final (and 1st series to adopt 3 vowels 4 consonants rule)
Series 44 (2001) the penultimate 9-round series
Series 55 (2006)

It is worth noting that seed upsets were more common in 9-round games than in today’s 15-round games, and No. 1 winning a series in the 9-round era was relatively rare.

[Johnny Canuck]

Semi-finalist seeds have deviated from 1,2,3,4 only twice in the past ten series, with those being 1,2,3,5 and 1,2,5,6.

Series 88 was the most by-the-book finals stage ever. I don’t have any statistical proof but I’m telling it’s true. Big margins in each game.

[David Roe]

Questions like this should go here http://www.c4countdown.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=9519

No 8th seed has yet won a Grand Final, 7th is the lowest (most recently Callum Todd in Series 69).

No 8 knocked out No 1 in the following series:
Series 05 (1984)
Series 21 (1991)
Series 24 (1992)
Series 30 (1995) the only No. 7 vs No. 8 final (and 1st series to adopt 3 vowels 4 consonants rule)
Series 44 (2001) the penultimate 9-round series
Series 55 (2006)

It is worth noting that seed upsets were more common in 9-round games than in today’s 15-round games, and No. 1 winning a series in the 9-round era was relatively rare.

Interesting to speculate as the reasons for this. Possibly the shorter form makes it more likely to get an upset because there is less time for class to tell, but my guess would be that in the early days there was no Apterous (and in the very early days, no home computers) so there were fewer chances of getting a "super-computer" contestant.

[Rhys Benjamin]

You have to remember that until 1998 points was the only criterion for seedings and series were three months long, not six. This often meant a 7-time winner would outscore an octochamp and get a higher seeding, and also the threshold for entering finals was lower.