Craig Beevers

Craig Beevers octochamp statistics
Final position	Champion
Seeding	1
Points total	907
Conundrums solved	7

Beevers holding the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy after winning Series 57.

Craig Beevers was an octochamp in and the champion of Series 57. He was from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham.

He was the second contestant to score centuries in all eight heat games, and also the second to score over 900 points. He scored three further centuries in his three appearances in the finals. He is known for his composed demeanour and incredible consistency, especially in the letters games.

Appearances on the programme

Heat games

Beevers' appearances began with a crushing victory over Baz Hunt, including impressive finds like TOEHOLD and EXTREMA. He continued to a seven further victories in an octochamp run that never looked in doubt, with further flourishes like ICEBOATS, TANDOORI, DOPAMINE and RUMINATED and a top score of 128. Solid performances on the numbers rounds and seven solved conundrums saw Beevers' cruise to eight centuries and approach Julian Fell's long-standing points record of 924. However, an unfortunate shortage of available nines left a maximum total of 987, one of the lowest ever, and Beevers did well to make 907 – percentage wise, the best octochamp run on record (91.89%) until Series 69.

Series finals

Inevitably, Beevers returned for the finals as top seed, beating Mikey Lear and fellow octochamp, David Edwards, without ever looking under serious pressure. The grand final, against Jeffrey Hansford, was a closer game – AMMONITE and SNIFTER handed Beevers a 15-point advantage going into the first break, and maximums in the next eight rounds left him with an unassailable lead of 23 with two rounds to play. Hansford declared nothing on the final numbers game, but adopted his favoured tactic for the conundrum, buzzing as soon as RULEAGAIN was revealed and answering correctly to leave a final score of 105 – 82. Beevers had dropped just thirteen points in the whole game, taking his all-games total to 1,236 – at that time, the second-highest xicount score.

CoC XIII and Apterous

Beevers opted out of Championship of Champions XIII, just as fellow Scrabble grandmaster, Stewart Holden, had done for the previous Championship of Champions event.

Beevers occasionally played Countdown online on Apterous, and for a long time held the number one human position.

Scrabble

Beevers playing Scrabble.

Away from Countdown, Beevers has worked for the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP) and the World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association (WESPA), and has been Cleveland Scrabble Club champion on multiple occasions. He holds grandmaster status, and has organised tournaments for a living. He began playing competitive Scrabble in 2003.

In the preamble chat with Des O'Connor, he stated his intention to be a future World Scrabble Champion. He took his first step toward this on 18 October 2009, when he became the UK National Champion, beating fellow former Countdown contestant, David Webb, at the National Scrabble Championship final. He later became the 2014 World Scrabble Champion on 23 November, at the Scrabble Champions Tournament in London, when he defeated American Chris Lipe 3 – 1 in the final to become only the second Briton to win the title after Mark Nyman in 1993. He also won his second national title in 2015 at the National Scrabble Championship finals in Milton Keynes, winning 15 games out of 17 (the best-of-five final was scrapped in 2014). Since winning the world title, he has written a book about Scrabble entitled Word Addict: Secrets of a World Scrabble Champion.

Preceded by Nick Wainwright

Series winner Series 57

Followed by David O'Donnell

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
4465	23/10/2007	P	Baz Hunt	48 – 108	Craig Beevers	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Barry Norman	Susie Dent	121
4466	24/10/2007	P	Craig Beevers	109 – 24	Thomas Baldwin	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Barry Norman	Susie Dent	121
4467	25/10/2007	P	Craig Beevers	103 – 33	Chris Bibby	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Barry Norman	Susie Dent	120
4468	26/10/2007	P	Craig Beevers	128 – 36	Peter Watts	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Barry Norman	Susie Dent	134
4469	29/10/2007	P	Craig Beevers	104 – 70	Martin Larter	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Paul Zenon	Susie Dent	121
4470	30/10/2007	P	Craig Beevers	118 – 71	Stuart Hamilton	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Paul Zenon	Susie Dent	120
4471	31/10/2007	P	Craig Beevers	120 – 57	Allan Millington	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Paul Zenon	Susie Dent	121
4472	01/11/2007	P	Craig Beevers	117 – 40	Shemina Kirby	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Paul Zenon	Susie Dent	129
4502	13/12/2007	QF	Mikey Lear	69 – 106	Craig Beevers	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Henry Blofeld	Alison Heard	118
4506	19/12/2007	SF	David Edwards	60 – 118	Craig Beevers	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Pam Ayres	Alison Heard	131
4508	21/12/2007	GF	Craig Beevers	105 – 82	Jeffrey Hansford	Des O'Connor	Carol Vorderman				Lucy Summers	Pam Ayres	Alison Heard	118

External Links

• Craig Beevers on Wikipedia.
• Beevers' Countdown experience on his personal website