Adam Latchford

Adam Latchford Octochamp Statistics
Final position	Champion
Seeding	3
Points total	732
Conundrums solved	7 (+1 tiebreak)

Adam Latchford in Series 83.

Adam Latchford holding the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy after winning Series 83.

Adam Latchford was an octochamp in and the champion of Series 83, and a quarter-finalist in Championship of Champions XVI. He's an Accounts Assistant who lives in London, but is originally from Bolton. He became an Apterite after recording his heat games.

On-screen appearances

Heat games

Latchford first appeared on 1 February 2021 against Conor Morgan, winning the game on a tie-break conundrum with 82 points. From here, he continued an unbeaten run of 7 more wins, including a personal best of 115 points. In his seventh game, he was three points behind at the crucial conundrum against Arran Smith, but after Smith buzzed in with an incorrect guess, Latchford buzzed in with half a second left with TARANTULA to win. Ultimately, he became the second octochamp of the series with a total of 732 points.

Finals

Latchford returned for the finals in June as No. 3 seed, despite officially having 6 points fewer than No. 4 seed Louis Ross. Latchford's practice on Apterous clearly paid dividends, as he took a dominant victory in the third quarter-final over No. 6 seed Declan McGurk without losing a round. He next squared off against No. 2 seed James Burley in the second semi-final, and achieved a seeding "upset" by building a good lead early on and winning by 17 points to advance to the Grand Final against top-seeded prospect Luke Boynton.

In the Grand Final – Nick Hewer's last show as presenter – Latchford held his nerve and immediately led 6 – 0 after Boynton had pawless ☓ disallowed in the first letters round. Latchford then took another 10 points off Boynton in the first numbers game, won two more letters rounds, and only lost one letters round throughout the game. Latchford beat Boynton in the last numbers round prior to the conundrum WASNOMORE, which Boynton solved, and Latchford lifted the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy at the end of the show after winning 86 – 101. He is also the last recipient of the Oxford English Dictionaries, which have since been axed from the show due to the books being out of date.

With a total of 1,014 points – an average of 92.18 per game – Latchford has the lowest cumulative series point total for a champion of a 15-round series (Series 46 notwithstanding as only a maximum of 6 preliminary wins were allowed then).

Championship of Champions XVI

Latchford returned to the programme in January 2023 for Championship of Champions XVI, where he faced Tom Stevenson in the preliminaries. In an ultra closely fought encounter, Adam took an early lead through TITANIC, becoming the second contestant to beat Stevenson on a round, and an excellent solution to a 4-Large numbers round. But Stevenson snatched it back when Adam had teaslings ☓ disallowed along with an unfortunate gamble on foreshot ☓. This lead to a crucial conundrum which Latchford quickly unscrambled to BROCHETTE to snap Stevenson's unbeaten record, preserve his own, and advance to a quarter-final matchup against James Haughton.

In the said game, it was extremely hard to separate both champions, with both players maxing out the rounds to the second commercial break. The only break in the scoring was the spotting of the darrenic URANATE from James, but Adam, unfortunately, could not close the gap any further. After another unsolved crucial Conundrum in the championship, it meant Latchford suffered his only defeat but still bowed out with his second-highest score of 102 points.

Latchford's back-to-back wins over Boynton and Stevenson mean he is the only person in Countdown history to win twice against members of the "1,000 club" on TV, and is therefore considered to be a giant killer in the Countdown circuit. His final point tally is 1,213 across 13 games, with an average of about 93 per game.

Co-events

After winning his series, Latchford made his Co-event debut at Co-Blackpool 2021 and also participated in the first episode of Series 4 of ZoomDown.

Preceded by Luke Johnson-Davies

Series winner Series 83

Followed by Ahmed Mohamed

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
7434	01/02/2021	P	Conor Morgan	72 – 82*	Adam Latchford	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Adrian Chiles	Susie Dent	137
7435	02/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	87 – 49	Aneesh Aggarwal	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Adrian Chiles	Susie Dent	121
7436	03/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	115 – 51	Jacky Treacy	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jenny Eclair	Susie Dent	148
7437	04/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	95 – 56	Chiedza Mutongwizo	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jenny Eclair	Susie Dent	126
7438	05/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	96 – 40	Charles Biggs	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jenny Eclair	Susie Dent	122
7439	08/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	100 – 62	Louis Moen	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jenny Eclair	Susie Dent	123
7440	09/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	82 – 75	Arran Smith	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jenny Eclair	Susie Dent	155
7441	10/02/2021	P	Adam Latchford	85 – 70	Jeremy Bradley	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Pasha Kovalev	Susie Dent	145
7534	21/06/2021	QF	Adam Latchford	99 – 40	Declan McGurk	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rufus Hound	Susie Dent	137
7537	24/06/2021	SF	James Burley	65 – 82	Adam Latchford	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rufus Hound	Susie Dent	118
7538	25/06/2021	GF	Luke Boynton	86 – 101	Adam Latchford	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rufus Hound	Susie Dent	125
7926	06/01/2023	CP	Tom Stevenson	95 – 97	Adam Latchford	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Richard Osman	Susie Dent	136
7933	17/01/2023	CQF	James Haughton	109 – 102	Adam Latchford	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rick Edwards	Susie Dent	121

* includes 10 points from a tie-break conundrum