George Ford

George Ford

George Ford was an octochamp in Series 71.

Ford began his octochamp run with a controversial victory against two-time winner Jonny Rye. In the game, Rye's offering of HEADWAYS was disallowed by Susie Dent. This has since been recognised as a mistake by the Countdown team, who will be inviting Rye back to continue his run in Series 72. Ignoring the controversy, Ford emerged with a strong debut score of 102, the first of seven centuries. His next game proved to be the strongest of his run, spotting the niner CAPONIERS and by solving a numbers game with a method involving going up to 97,500 and coming back down again. Ford continued his unorthodox numbers solves throughout his run, even managing to stump Rachel Riley on a few occasions. The remainder of Ford's games were relatively consistent with Ford spotting words such as AGISTED, CONDUITS and AVIATOR. Ford also only dropped below 100 in one game, against Stewart Fraser. Fraser was also the only challenger to beat Ford in a numbers game, however Fraser wasn't as strong in the letters rounds and only managed to score 5 over all 10 of the letters rounds - the lowest of any competitor playing under the 15 round format. Despite the lack of niners present (only CAPONIERS from his 2nd game), Ford finished his run with a very strong cumulative total of 832 - averaging 104 per game. Despite the strong score, Ford only qualified as 5th seed for the finals, making him both the highest-scoring octochamp with only one niner available, as well as the highest-scoring 5th seed in the history of the show.

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
6017	23/10/2014	P	Jonny Rye	92 – 102	George Ford	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dave Myers	Susie Dent	125
6018	24/10/2014	P	George Ford	114 – 68	John Payne	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dave Myers	Susie Dent	132
6019	27/10/2014	P	George Ford	101 – 61	Ita Moynihan	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dave Myers	Susie Dent	122
6020	28/10/2014	P	George Ford	100 – 36	Kathy Richland	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	John Inverdale	Susie Dent	121
6021	29/10/2014	P	George Ford	95 – 25	Stewart Fraser	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	John Inverdale	Susie Dent	124
6022	30/10/2014	P	George Ford	107 – 56	Jonathan Lee	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	John Inverdale	Susie Dent	122
6023	31/10/2014	P	George Ford	112 – 32	Sue Edgar	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	John Inverdale	Susie Dent	124
6024	3/11/2014	P	George Ford	101 – 77	Tom Pettinger	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	John Inverdale	Susie Dent	118
6053	16/12/2014	QF	Mark Davies	78 – 90	George Ford	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	David Baddiel	Susie Dent	122