Dylan Taylor

Dylan Taylor octochamp statistics
Final position	Runner-up
Seeding	1
Points total	974
Conundrums solved	5

Dylan Taylor in the Series 69 grand final...

...and in Championship of Champions XIV.

Dylan Taylor was an octochamp in and the runner-up of Series 69, and the winner of Championship of Champions XIV. He is also an Apterite. As of his TV appearances, he was from Cheshire. He is one of the most talented and consistently high-scoring contestants ever due to his exceptional vocabulary, solutions to difficult numbers games and lightning-fast conundrum spots.

Away from Countdown, Taylor likes to keep fit and train for half marathons. He and his mother are from Honduras but moved with his family to the UK in 1998, after Hurricane Mitch devastated the nation. This also likely makes him the first Championship of Champions winner, born outside the British Isles.

Appearances on the show

Heat games

Taylor first appeared on 6 August 2013 as a seventeen-year-old against future Series 78 and Championship of Champions XV winner Zarte Siempre, and showed strong word knowledge with findings of SARDIUS and PATRONNE. He was one point off a max game in his impressive debut.

In an octorun that never looked in doubt: he continued to show his strong word knowledge with AMORETTI, ELASIPOD and SEPTARIUM and solved difficult numbers games (particularly in number selections of six small) in spectacular fashion to seal crushing victories. Remarkably, all his wins but one included scores of 120 or above.

Taylor set numerous records en route to becoming an octochamp: his cumulative octotal was 974, beating the previous record set by Giles Hutchings by nine points. He also recorded the then-highest number of maxes during an octorun with 101 out of 120 maxes, beating Edward McCullagh's best by five maxes. His aggregate winning margin over his eight preliminary games was 628, an improvement on the previous record held by Andy Platt. Taylor was also the show's highest scoring numbers player based on preliminary games, scoring 311 points in 32 numbers games during his heat game run. All of these records were broken by Elliott Mellor in May 2019.

Finals

Taylor returned for the December 2013 finals as the No. 1 seed.

In his quarter-final against Gemma Church, he faced difficult letters selections but maxed every round apart from the conundrum to win with a low score of 108.

His semi-final against Bradley Cates was a tougher battle, but he eventually avoided a crucial conundrum after he beat Cates in the Round 6 numbers game and the Round 10 letters game.

In the grand final though, Taylor lost by a score of 116 (the then-highest losing score in a series final) to non-octochamp Callum Todd's 126 (the then-highest winning score in a series final) in a thrilling grand final which also recorded the then-highest combined score in a series final (excluding 30th Birthday Championship). In that game, Taylor maxed the first round with TERATOMA but Todd immediately equalised it with SOUVENIR to give them one max and eight points each. Both players then went on to max every round prior to the conundrum. This time, the crucial conundrum proved to be Taylor's downfall as Todd solved IHURTPALM in five seconds to become the first non-octochamp to win a series (notwithstanding Ben Wilson, who was a viscount due to the 15-round format being introduced late in the year). Taylor totalled an outstanding 1,319 over his eleven appearances nonetheless, the then-highest ever xicount total achieved in a single series.

Championship of Champions XIV

Taylor returned to the show in January 2016, as one of sixteen participants that took part in Championship of Champions XIV.

He went up against Tracey Mills in his preliminary. Here, he proved to have lost none of his edge – Taylor maxed all but one of the letters rounds (as he found impressive word spots like PARIETAL and MOUTHER), beat Mills on a tricky Round 10 numbers round and wrapped up by solving the conundrum of SURLYVICE in just over one second to net 120 points out of 124.

He then faced Andy Platt in his quarter-final. Both players were dead level on the max score up until the third numbers game when Taylor made a ten-point breakaway after an error by Platt. Platt regained the lead, three rounds later by way of his word spot URNFIELDS but Taylor remained in contention with the score standing at 125 – 117 to Platt when going into the crucial conundrum. Taylor then solved MINUTEPUN in three quarters of a second, relegating Platt to the show's highest-ever losing score (until it was broken by two points by Charlie Harrison) and also setting up the then-highest joint score ever achieved in the new 15-round format. Taylor hereby advanced to a semi-final against Giles Hutchings, setting up a clash between the two highest scoring octochamps by heat game totals in the show's history at the time.

In his semi-final, Hutchings and Taylor matched each other in all the first fourteen rounds (a first in Countdown history) before Taylor solved the conundrum of TEARCLOTH to win the match by 118 – 108.

In the grand final, he played against Dan McColm. After establishing a 25-point lead after six rounds, McColm pegged himself back with thanks to his word spot of METACONID. Both players then remained seven points up until the crucial conundrum where after 1.5 seconds, Taylor unravelled NICETASTY into INTESTACY to become the fourteenth Champion of Champions.

Remarkably, Taylor scored points in all sixty numbers games that he faced on the show across his fifteen matches to give him the longest run of consecutive numbers games unbeaten and without scoring zero points; he scored maximum points in 56 of them and was one away from the target in the other four.

Co-events

Taylor made his Co-event debut at CoChest in 2011. He won his first event at CoChest2 in 2012, beating Jack Worsley in the grand final and has won numerous tournaments since.

In 2025, Dylan won a record-breaking ten events in a single FOCAL season (out of the thirteen that he attended) plus the finals.

Other Appearances

Taylor also appeared near the end of Series 5 of ZoomDown, winning both his games against Ahmed Mohamed and Ethan Mahal before being placed aside for the finals.

Preceded by Andy Platt

Series runner-up Series 69

Followed by Andy Naylor

Preceded by Steve Briers

Champion of Champions Championship of Champions XIV

Followed by Zarte Siempre

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
5744	06/08/2013	P	Zarte Siempre	81 – 120	Dylan Taylor	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dan Walker	Susie Dent	121
5745	07/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	124 – 30	David Howard	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dan Walker	Susie Dent	146
5746	08/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	121 – 67	Tony Izzard	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dan Walker	Susie Dent	132
5747	09/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	113 – 47	Dominic James	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gloria Hunniford	Susie Dent	122
5748	12/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	122 – 55	Mark O'Regan	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gloria Hunniford	Susie Dent	135
5749	13/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	129 – 22	Leone Mitchell	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gloria Hunniford	Susie Dent	143
5750	14/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	124 – 27	Mike Thompson	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gloria Hunniford	Susie Dent	126
5751	15/08/2013	P	Dylan Taylor	121 – 17	Russ Millhouse	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gloria Hunniford	Susie Dent	125
5833	12/12/2013	QF	Dylan Taylor	108 – 76	Gemma Church	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dan Walker	Susie Dent	118
5837	18/12/2013	SF	Dylan Taylor	121 – 103	Bradley Cates	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Richard Madeley	Susie Dent	133
5839	20/12/2013	GF	Dylan Taylor	116 – 126	Callum Todd	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Richard Madeley	Susie Dent	134
6281	07/01/2016	CP	Dylan Taylor	120 – 73	Tracey Mills	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gloria Hunniford	Susie Dent	124
6287	15/01/2016	CQF	Andy Platt	125 – 127	Dylan Taylor	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	John Inverdale	Susie Dent	145
6290	20/01/2016	CSF	Giles Hutchings	108 – 118	Dylan Taylor	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Naga Munchetty	Susie Dent	122
6292	22/01/2016	CGF	Dylan Taylor	121 – 104	Dan McColm	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Naga Munchetty	Susie Dent	154

External Links

• Article on Taylor and his Series 69 achievements.
• Compilation of Taylor's Countdown best bits on YouTube.