Stewart Holden first appeared on Countdown on 23 February 2004 and having swiftly dealt with one-time winner Philip Aelberry by virtue of a 115-45 win, he soon settled into the champion's chair for a long spell which included five further centuries, including a score of 137 (the third highest ever) in his last preliminary match. Having amassed 870 points, he returned for the quarter-finals in June as number one seed, but had to fight hard against Nicole Hutchings in order to secure his place in the semis. After that game eventually ended 110-105, he had a slightly easier time against Richard Pay, despite only scoring ten points from the three numbers games. The final against Steve Graston was another close game, Stewart ending up the winner with a scoreline of 104-81.
This article was originally written for the UK-Scrabble Mailing list. I'm grateful to Stewart for passing it on for publication here.
I'm grateful to the people who have emailed me to say 'Well done' for my Countdown success. Here's a report for UK-Scrabble mailing list... I'll copy this email to a couple of other mailing lists and friends, if they'll forgive the fact that it's written for Scrabble players so some of it will seem like Greek! An asterisk denotes a word not allowed in Scrabble.
Before going to film my first appearances, back in January, I did very little preparation except for some numbers practice. I was hoping to just ride along with Scrabble knowledge and was lucky to do so, although I was caught out several times with OUTLEARN, UNMAILED, UNDERLIT and a few other words from the Scrabble word book being given the thumbs down by Susie Dent. I realised I had gotten away with this against regular contestants but, with numbers games already a weakness, if I was going to go back for the finals I couldn't have words disallowed at the same rate and expect to come home with a complete Oxford English Dictionary under my arm (er, figuratively speaking).
At the end of January I bought a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of English (£19.99 from Amazon) and, despite having said to myself for years that I was never going to take Countdown as seriously as competitive Scrabble, I decided that since you only ever get one shot at Countdown, and I knew I'd be going back for the finals at the start of May, I was prepared to put in the effort to win. If something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing, as they say!
I had seen Julian Fell on Countdown a couple of years ago and, like everyone else, was particularly impressed by the words he produced. It was obvious to me that Julian had spent some time with the Oxford dictionary picking out the most useful words in the same way Scrabble players have done with Chambers Dictionary over the years. I printed out the top 2,500 sevens and top 2,000 eights allowed in Scrabble, using the very handy study free study software Lexpert. I then went through the Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) twice, once checking the sevens and once checking the eights. The 'hit rate' of Scrabble words that are allowed on Countdown is about 70%.
There are several sets of letters that are great in Scrabble which don't make anything in the ODE, for example none of the Scrabble favourites ENTOILS, LIONETS or ONLIEST would be allowed on the show. I started out my ODE study vowing not to learn any more Scrabble phonies than absolutely necessary, but I did come across some wonderful Oxford-only words I just had include in my study lists. A variety of soil types all ending in -SOL all seem to spring from otherwise unproductive sets of letters: ENTISOL*, ANDISOL*, ANDOSOL*, ARIDISOL*, VERTISOL*. Other Scrabble phonies deemed "too good not to learn" made their way into my separate list of Oxford-only words, viz SEALIFT*, MARINISE*, ERMINOIS*, SOULMATE*, RAINFAST*, PASTORIE* and SEPTORIA*, ROUTINED*, SOIGNEUR*.
I took another trip through the ODE looking at high-probability nines, although in the end I didn't spend as much time studying these as I would have liked. This was fortunate, in retrospect, since throughout all seven games of the finals there was only one nine-letter word available and it wasn't even in one of my games. If/when I go back for a Champion of Champions I certainly hope more nines are available!
I typed the results of my ODE-reading into Notepad files and copied these into personal word list slots on JumbleTime (www.jumbletime.com). I am so grateful to David Johnson for having created that site and introduced me to it at just the right moment. Lexpert is useless for self-testing with anything other than offical Scrabble word lists, but JumbleTime lets you input any words (or even symbols) you want to practice anagramming. I spent every available moment on that site for nearly two months, going over and over the 7s, 8s and 9s to reinforce the Scrabble vocab that was in the Oxford dictionary, together with learning the new Scrabble words I had picked up from the ODE, and carefully memorising the few Oxford-only I had decide to include.
William Tunstall-Pedoe has a fantastic Countdown numbers game creator and solver on his website (www.williamtp.com), which was another regular haunt in the run-up to the finals. My fellow Nottingham Nomad Clive Spate gave me a few numbers game sessions, which is rather like being invited round for putting practice with Tiger Woods. Countdown producer Damian Eadie answered countless emails from me querying the validity of certain words whilst resisting the temptation to write back with "Go and get a life, man!". I must also thank David Sutton for having a program for converting several of my Notepad files into alphagram+answer sheets that I could cart around and use to test myself when standing in long queues, sitting on buses, on lunchbreak from work, in front of the TV, etc.
And so the 4th May dawned and it was time to return to Leeds. I had done the preliminary games by myself but this time my wife Julie and my dad came along for the experience (and moral support). Being #1 seed for the Finals is nice but it adds to the pressure; other Scrabble players had been following the series and told me that they 'expected me to win comfortably', which was no comfort at all!
I had been chatting to #3 seed Gary Male by email and MSN Messenger so it was nice to meet him in person - we have become good friends ever since, probably helped by the fact that we never had to play each other! All the other finalists were easy-going and the atmosphere in the green room was friendly and chatty amid the obvious feelings of nervousness and expectation.
Nicole was probably good enough to make it to the Final, it's as simple as that. I know from Scrabble never to underestimate an opponent based on rating (or ranking) and that if you don't give it 100% every time you can find yourself in "deep sheep". Nicole put in a solid performance which certainly left all the other finalists reeling. "If she's number eight seed and she can play like that, what am I doing here?!"
After Richard introduced me as the 'Nottingham Nobbler' I replied with "I hope that doesn't get abbreviated", a quip which I was disappointed to realise must have ended up on the editing floor. I found the letter selections slightly flat in the Quarter-Final, with many sets offering obvious 7s or 8s but nothing longer... for example AGEEHMOSX and ABEINOQRT. However I also failed to capitalise on the opportunities that did exist, missing both CORDIALS and OPTICIAN and chickening out of saying the lovely ACUPOINT (a term from acupuncture). I was eventually able to pull away with PENTODE and MANICURE but then botched the conundrum (O-C-A-T-I-C-K-L-E), thinking of 'COCKATEEL' after two or three seconds, telling myself that that was how the bird was spelt so that couldn't be the answer, then spending the rest of the time looking for something different. After twenty seconds Nicole buzzed in a said "COCKATIEL". Oops. All credit to Nicole; if my Achilles Heel, the numbers games, hadn't been so easy I could have been out on my ear thanks to a very strong player, not to mention a very nice lady.
It was little surprise to see #7 seed Steve Graston win his Quarter-Final; I had watched Steve's performances back in January and had commented to several people in the run up to the finals that I considered Steve to be "the man to beat" despite his difficult first pairing against the #2 seed, Sweyn Kirkness, whose appearances had only recently been filmed and so was something of an 'unknown quantity' for the rest of us. Sweyn's performance failed to live up to expectations and the #7 seed was through to the Semi-Finals.
Having filmed three of the Quarter-Finals that was the end of Day One, so nearly all the finalists went to the pool club next to the hotel and shared pints and stories. The atmosphere amongst all the players was superb - nobody was taking it too seriously (or admitting to) and there was plenty of joking around and laughing about the games that had happened so far. Inevitably, we also swapped some anagrams and chatted about the vagaries of the Oxford Dictionary of English. Even though none of the others were 'Scrabble players', most people had old copies of Offical Scrabble Words and/or a computer program like Lexpert and knew that Oxford permitted some words but not others. "Ah yes, like MARDIEST is fine, and READMITS", said Richard Pay, "but you're not allowed MISRATED on Countdown".
Richard played Nik Von Uexkull in the last Quarter-Final twelve hours later, had the selection ADEIMNRST and promptly offered MISRATED. The jaw of every other finalist in the audience simultaneously hit the floor and Richard kicked himself pretty hard when he got back to the green room! Despite this slip-up Richard had beaten Nik and, somewhat unfairly, had to play his semi-final immediately.
BEAUTIES and DINOSAUR gave me a comfortable 24-8 lead near the start and Richard was always struggling to get back into the game. A true kick-self moment came in the second part of the show when the only sevens I could find were the well-known Scrabble pair LEGATOS / GELATOS. I knew only one of them was in the Oxford dictionary , wrote them both down and then "bottled it" worse than your average Swiss footie referee by picking the wrong one. Fortunately Richard had made the exact same mistake and his one chance to outscore me had passed him by. My numbers games let me down slightly, but by the end of the second part I was confident of a place in the Final.
Given the choice I would probably not have watched the second semi-final, but I was obliged to sit in the 'hot seat' throughout and thus experience the sheer terror of seeing Steve Graston spot the nine-letter word RESILIENT in the opening round. Sitting next to my dad, I whispered 'Oh bloody hell, I didn't see that' only for my dear father to reply 'Really? I did'. Thanks, dad.
Steve blistered ahead with CUSTOMER (didn't see it) and DISARMED (saw it at the very last second), while I sat in the audience quietly jibbering to myself over the prospect of what was to come. I vaguely remembering sitting in the canteen with Clive and Sheila Spate (who, like the great people they are, had travelled up by themselves to watch and support). Just don't ask me what I had for dinner or what day of the week it was, as the finer details of that period of time are a slight blur.
It's reassuring when your opponent gives you a 6-0 lead after the first round, but there then followed yet more dull letters selections which once again failed to give me a chance to put my ODE knowledge into practice. We must have had the only ever Countdown final not just lacking in 9s but with only one 8-letter word available in the whole match. Sitting at home over the preceding weeks I had been beating Dictionary Corner at least once per show on average, but here it was easy 7s and no 8s all the way. OPSIMATH was in one of my JumbleTime study lists but is difficult to spot at the best of times, and so went the only chance either of us had to get an 8-letter word at any time. Steve got slightly closer than me to a difficult numbers target and took a 64-63 lead at the end of the second part, and we both knew a crucial conundrum was almost inevitable.
I won't go on and on about what happened next, but having spent an estimated 50 hours working through the ODE and a further 200-300 hours on JumbleTime I was starting to wonder whether it was going to pay off at all... however when it did come good, it came at just the right moment. Lexpert suggests SALTOED or SOLATED from the Round 12 selection (AADELOSTW), I knew that neither were in the Oxford but that WALDOES* was the word for me. It's a phrase I never thought I'd write, but God bless remote-controlled robotic arms.
Steve was very gracious in defeat and all the players, their friends and most of the Countdown production team were soon drinking and being merry courtesy of Yorkshire Television's free bar (re-opened for one night only). Richard Whiteley gave a slightly self-aggrandizing speech about how pleased he was that Countdown had had its contract renewed for another few series. I found Carol and Susie both very easy to talk to, just the same off-screen as you would expect and hope them to be. Richard, on the other hand, seems keen to avoid any real interaction with the players and has perfected the art of replying to your comments without actually looking at you, as if to reinforce the fact that he is the star and you are just another contestant. A lot of people had asked me to ask Richard to drop the term 'Octavian' and go back to using 'Octochamp', which was widely preferred. I tactfully mentioned this to him in the bar. "F**k off", was Richard's reply. Someone please give that man an OBE, I did not think.
Keeping the result a secret over the next few weeks was sometimes difficult, although helped by the fact that the leather-bound Oxford English Dictionary presented on the show is only a display version and I was told that OUP would be in touch shortly to arrange delivery of my set. After three weeks I hadn't heard anything so I emailed them directly, which led to a phone call from a girl who promised me she would order the dictionaries right away. However, she said, they are custom made and take 10 weeks to produce, so I shouldn't expect anything before July. I asked her why they didn't realise they would need a set to give away every six months. She didn't know, but this was her last day at OUP, maybe her successor would be able to tell me. After more than six months of faffing around, including the wrong books being delivered, I finally received my prize just before Christmas. The complete Oxford English Dictionary is beautiful and will sit proudly in the dining room for years to come.
There is one person I haven't mentioned much until now, and it's a case of saving the best for last. I am quite sure that if my wife Julie doesn't see another edition of Countdown for a few months she won't miss it too much, having not only put up with but admired, encouraged and supported my devotion to taking part in the show over the last six months. I'm not going to say "I couldn't have done it without her", but I couldn't have done it and ended up anywhere near as happy as I am. I'm not sure if it was shown on TV, but as the clock ticked down in the last numbers game of the Final I know what I was saying under my breath.
"You lucky sod!".
Stewart Holden
[This article was written in June 2004; minor amendments made January 2005]