Matthew Brockwell brings us a summary of our two day romp in Rugby

The Countdown posse made its way to Rugby for a double-header of tournaments, returning to the West Indies Association. Notably there was a bar downstairs with friendly, rapid service but let’s deal with the Countdown first!

Friday’s event was attended by 16 of us, so two Prunes were needed to bring the numbers up to a multiple of three. I drew Eddy Byrne and one of the Prunes – Eddy thought it was Goatdown like last year but it wasn’t! He still beat me though, nailing the MISSHAPEN conundrum with good speed for a big 61-37 win. The selections were kinder in my game against Prune than his, and I got the nine CLOISTERS, which proved to be important later.

The second round saw me drawn against Adam Dexter and Steven Grady, both bringing great banter and quality Countdown. MAIDANS and SPIRAL helped me to a 64-41 win against Dexter, and then I entered the conundrum against Grady behind after his good spot of FILCHED. Luckily DEDICATOR was spotted quickly for a 62-59 win. I then hosted an excellent game between them that they maxed up to the conundrum apart from the hard MEGACITY. A tie-break was needed for Adam to secure a 72-62 win.

I was pretty confident I wasn’t in the final – but somehow I scraped in over Maus (Tom Carey) by one point to face the unbeaten Dylan Taylor.  We both played well making no errors (including spotting the only solution path to the 6 small game 10 10 9 6 2 1 -> 844), leaving us on for a double max game going into the conundrum. ARSYHOLED was the scramble; both of us tapped the buzzer in about a second, but who buzzed first? It was Dylan, who claimed the win with HYDROLASE.

Saturday was a much bigger event, both in terms of entrants (35) and number of rounds (4, for a total of 8 games). I was drawn against a Baker and our hosting vicar in the first round – I beat MSR with CRUSADER which irked him considerably! 2 wins placed me on a table with Sean Fletcher and Mike Lee (not the film director) and I needed 2 crucials to reach 4 wins.

At lunch, Dylan and Ronan were both also on 4 wins, so we were placed together on table 1. I achieved revenge when I beat Dylan to the conundrum ELECTRODE and then Ronan solved ASYSTOLIC to beat Dylan with his trademark lightning speed. My game with Ronan was wild – I beat him with NUCLEI, FORESTAY and ARGUFIED, he beat me with PEPPIER and a good six small solve. This left us on a crucial, and Ronan worked out RATEPAYER in about 8 seconds to take the win. I would later spot OVERFED against George, revealing how I felt after devouring Gregg’s £5.90 bargain pizza box at lunch!

Ronan went on to win all 8 games and despite Dylan’s two losses he acquired a mega win scoring 94 points against Tim Down to secure the other final spot. Ronan took the lead in the final with EMERGE in round 1, before they both spotted SONATINA, ECOFREAK and a straightforward 6 small game. Dylan moved into a 1 point lead with LADDOOS, and held that lead going into the conundrum. ENRAGEMSR was unscrambled in 2 seconds by Dylan into MERGANSER, and he completed an excellent double of event wins!

Afterwards we returned to the bar, and the post-tourney hijinks began with groups playing pool, darts and discussing future events. We all agreed that Saturday’s event was excellent – especially due to Adam Beach and MSR’s hosting skills. For many of us London is calling for our next event…