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Pete Cashmore

From Countdown
Revision as of 21:17, 11 April 2011 by JohnnyCanuck (talk | contribs) (major S35 & COC9 markup - close to featured article status?)
Pete Cashmore during the Championship of Champions IX
Pete at the World Scrabble Championship 2005

Pete Cashmore, known as Peter during his original series, first appeared on Countdown on 7 April 1997 at the age of 24, beating the late Alan Cannon 60 – 43 in the 6th heat game of Series 35. He won four more games, including three scores over 60; one of his notable strong points was his ability to do numbers games featuring six small numbers. However, in his next appearance, he went down 46 – 34 to Natascha Kearsey.

His 5 wins were enough to see him into the final rounds as #3 seed, where he defeated Stuart Barker 56 – 46 in the quarter-final. Pete took an early lead, but Stuart caught up with CLEMENT and the final numbers game, making the scores dead level going into the conundrum DUBLLZERO. Pete solved it to move on to the semi-final, where he beat Natascha Kearsey in a rematch of their heat game. The players were fairly evenly matched in the seedings. However, Natascha failed to score in any of the last four rounds, thus setting up a grand-final encounter between Pete and Dag Griffiths. The final was a closely-contested affair of a high standard, featuring spots such as KLAXONS, and Dag was leading by just 3 points going into the crucial conundrum. GIANTUSDJ was displayed on the conundrum board, and Pete's buzzer was the first to light up in just one second. He correctly answered ADJUSTING to become the 35th champion of Countdown.

Pete returned for Championship of Champions IX, and got off to a shaky start against Paul Peters after he had leadouts ☓ and unbraid ☓ disallowed. However, he unscrambled both the regular conundrum and the sudden death conundrum meaning he won the match 56 – 46. He next beat Harshan Lamabadusuriya in the quarter-final. A double niner (IDOLATERS/STEROIDAL) promised a high-scoring finish for both players, but Pete had already won before the conundrum. In the semi-final, he defeated Simon Pryde after the crucial conundrum PANTIMERS went unsolved, taking him into the grand final, which happened to be a third game against Natascha Kearsey. This game was very evenly matched, with the players beating each other in alternating numbers games and finding words of equal length most of the way through. In the end, Pete found himself just two points behind going into the crucial conundrum, but this time, neither contestant was able to unravel COMEDYCAR in the time, meaning Natascha won the championship of champions whilst Pete had to settle for runner-up.

Pete would return to the Countdown studios one more time, in 2004, to record a special episode, facing Dag Griffiths once again in a rematch of their grand-final. This time Dag would be victorious, but Pete's entertaining antics (and disallowed words, such as blokiest ☓) left an impression on many a Countdown viewer.

Although he is a writer, he is not to be confused with the journalist of 13 years his junior who founded the influentual social networking blog Mashable.

Preceded by
Huw Morgan
Series winner
Series 35
Followed by
Tony Baylis


Preceded by
Kenneth Michie
Champion of Champions runner-up
Championship of Champions IX
Followed by
Kate Ogilvie

Episodes

# Date Type Contestant 1 Score Contestant 2 Presenters Guest Lex Max
1978 7/04/1997 P Alan Cannon 43 – 60 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Rob Scriven
1979 8/04/1997 P Charles Spence 31 – 65 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Rob Scriven
1980 9/04/1997 P Margery Boudge 44 – 54 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Rob Scriven
1981 10/04/1997 P Malcolm Rothery 47 – 71 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Rob Scriven
1982 11/04/1997 P Tom Bradshaw 54 – 64 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Rob Scriven
1983 14/04/1997 P Natascha Kearsey 46 – 34 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Rob Scriven
2033 23/06/1997 QF Peter Cashmore 56 – 46 Stuart Barker Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Ken Bruce Catherine Stokes
2036 26/06/1997 SF Natascha Kearsey 27 – 62 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Terry Wogan Catherine Stokes
2037 27/06/1997 GF Dag Griffiths 88 – 95 Peter Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Ken Bruce, Terry Wogan Catherine Stokes
2163 29/12/1997 CP Pete Cashmore 55* – 45 Paul Peters Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Denis Norden Mark Nyman
2172 9/01/1998 CQF Pete Cashmore 65 – 52 Harshan Lamabadusuriya Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Gloria Hunniford Mark Nyman
2175 14/01/1998 CSF Simon Pryde 41 – 47 Pete Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Tom O'Connor Mark Nyman
2177 16/01/1998 CGF Natascha Kearsey 72 – 70 Pete Cashmore Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Tom O'Connor Mark Nyman
S15 14/06/2004 S Pete Cashmore 66 – 107 Dag Griffiths Richard Whiteley Carol Vorderman Geoffrey Durham Susie Dent
* includes 10 points from a tie-break conundrum


Championship of Champions Runners-Up

I : Joyce Cansfield | II : Peter Evans | III : David Trace | IV : Tony Vick | V : Gino Corr | VI : Chris Waddington | VII : Damian Eadie | VIII : Kenneth Michie | IX : Pete Cashmore | X : Kate Ogilvie | XI : Chris Wills | XII : Mark Tournoff | XIII : Charlie Reams | XIV : Dan McColm | XV : Bradley Horrocks | XVI : James Haughton

External Links

I won Countdown with the word 'panties', The Guardian, 7 November 2010