Ronan Higginson

Ronan Higginson octochamp statistics
Final position	Champion
Seeding	1
Points total	1,041
Conundrums solved	7

Ronan Higginson in Series 87.

Ronan Higginson holding the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy after winning Series 87.

Ronan Higginson was an octochamp in and the champion of Series 87. At the time of his appearances, he was an A-level student at Ursuline College, Westgate-on-Sea, from Ramsgate in Kent. He is also an Apterite who has reached number one on the Apterous Pro Rank leaderboard.

Appearances on the programme

Series 87 heats

Higginson made his heavily anticipated TV debut on 17 May 2023, against five-game winner Jonathan Seal. With both players having spotted two nine-letter words BATTERIES and REPOSTING, Higginson won with a strong 132 points to Seal's still comparatively impressive 98 points. These two scores helped make the highest joint score in a preliminary game under the new 15-round format – a record unbeaten for nine-and-a-half years.

Higginson then rattled off seven more sublime performances, which were also all centuries, and included further nines such as NEOTERIST, ARAGONITE, RITUALITY, AMBROSIAN and ALPENROSE to become only the second octochamp of the series after Cillian McMulkin nearly four months prior. Of particular note, in his fifth match, Higginson achieved only the thirteenth max game with 135 points being both the max and his score. This was the second time within a year this had occurred – Tom Stevenson's record-breaking performance in Episode 7860 being the last one. And, in his sixth game, he equalled Elliott Mellor's four-year-old record for the highest margin of victory in a game of Countdown when he defeated challenger Aaron Sutton by 133 points – this game also confirmed his qualification for the series finals and his joint-highest score of 143. He also showed exceptional skill in his conundrum solving ability, with not only the variety of difficulties faced, but also with four of them each being solved in under a second.

Higginson finished off his heats and established himself as the number one seed, with a 13-max performance against Richard Clingen. This game also marked the fourth time he had held an opponent to under 30 points and the fourth time he had won a game by over 100 points – the former being an all-time joint-record. He ultimately finished with 1,041 points and an average of just over 130 per game – this, along with making him the 31st member of the 900 club and only the fifth person to score at least 1,000, also gave him the second-highest octotal of all time, with only Elliott Mellor having more points. Colin Murray, by this point, had also given him the title 'The Hurricane' owing to his performances on the show.

Finals

Higginson returned for the series finals on 21 June 2023, against number eight seed Andrew Barrett, where a 12-max performance, and a spot of IGNORABLE for nine helped him to finish with a high score of 122 points to qualify for the semi-finals, although Barrett had the last word by solving the conundrum. His semi-final face-off against fellow Apterite, Adam Dexter, was a much closer affair, but with wolfman ☓ and epistema ☓ being unfortunate misfires from Dexter, this kept Higginson 14 points ahead after the last numbers round. Although both players could have made a closer figure to the target in the first numbers game, Higginson unravelled the conundrum with a trademark flourish to achieve his second maximum-scoring game – he is the first person ever to achieve this feat twice in a regular series, and the first to do it more than once since Conor Travers did it thrice in the 30th Birthday Championship.

In the grand final, both 'The Hurricane' and Cillian McMulkin scored immediately off the blocks, spotting IGNORABLE for nine. However, Higginson began to pull away either side of both players finding another set of nines, and then in Round 10, Higginson claimed a symbolic coup de grâce with the fantastic spot of PECORAITE for his third nine-letter-word of the game. With the match wrapped up before the final numbers round, Higginson signed off by unscrambling SOULPARTY to PULSATORY to win the series with an astonishing 150 points, matching Zarte Siempre's 150 in the quarter-finals of Championship of Champions XV in 2019. He lifted the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy with an astounding xicount total of 1,435 points – the highest of all time, beating Luke Johnson-Davies's previous 11-game record by a hefty 51 points.

Preceded by Tom Stevenson

Series winner Series 87

Followed by Harry Savage

ZoomDown

Prior to appearing on the show, Higginson participated in ZoomDown Series 3, triumphing against fellow Countdown alumni Philip Aston but losing to Tom Cappleman in Episode ZD81. He later appeared in Series 4, winning two games before losing on a crucial conundrum to Ahmed Mohamed. But after tetrachamp Adam Beach was unable to participate in the series finals, Higginson qualified for the finals as number eight seed.

In the quarter-finals of Series 4, Higginson caused an upset when he defeated number one seed Brendan Whitehurst on a crucial conundrum, winning with 99 points to Whitehurst's 88. He then went on to beat number five seed Adam Dexter with 112 – 81, thus making a spot in the grand final against Rachael Montgomery. However, Montgomery gained the lead when Higginson had coatage ☓ disallowed and also got to one away on the numbers round that followed, whereas Montgomery got the target spot on. He did eventually claw back with COWRIES – forcing a crucial conundrum – but Higginson had buzzed incorrectly with scramload ☓ with only 0.8 seconds left, thus resulting in him taking the runner-up spot.

Despite this loss, his success in the series had him qualify for the Championship of Champions. He had been drawn to play against Conor Travers, and both had started pretty well in the first quarter of their game by maxing the first three rounds. However, two disallowed words and Travers' words like OSTEOID and APRONFUL helped Travers secure one of three 14-max games throughout the tournament. The scoreline was left 125 – 86 in Travers' favour, helping him progress onward to win the series.

Co-events

Higginson made his Co-event debut at Co:Lon 2022, and made his first grand final at Co:London 2023, becoming the runner-up to Ahmed Mohamed.

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
8019	17/05/2023	P	Jonathan Seal	98 – 132	Ronan Higginson	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Annie Macmanus	Susie Dent	143
8020	18/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	110 – 64	Brian Cookson	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Annie Macmanus	Susie Dent	124
8021	19/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	126 – 12	Greg Raine	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Annie Macmanus	Susie Dent	133
8022	22/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	130 – 50	John Waterhouse	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Vick Hope	Susie Dent	135
8023	23/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	135 – 27	Martin Peirce	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Vick Hope	Susie Dent	135
8024	24/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	143 – 10	Aaron Sutton	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Vick Hope	Susie Dent	166
8025	25/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	143 – 57	Andy Sheppard	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Vick Hope	Susie Dent	151
8026	26/05/2023	P	Ronan Higginson	122 – 17	Richard Clingen	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Cally Beaton	Susie Dent	124
8044	21/06/2023	QF	Ronan Higginson	122 – 70	Andrew Barrett	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Marcus Brigstocke	Susie Dent	135
8048	27/06/2023	SF	Ronan Higginson	122 – 98	Adam Dexter	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Maggie Aderin-Pocock	Susie Dent	122
8050	29/06/2023	GF	Ronan Higginson	150 – 83	Cillian McMulkin	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Maggie Aderin-Pocock	Susie Dent	155