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 was an Accounts Assistant originally from Bolton, but now lives in London. He became an Apterite after his heat games were recorded.

On-screen appearances

Heat games

Latchford first appeared on 1 February 2021 against Conor Morgan, winning the game on a tiebreak conundrum with 82 points. From here, he went on to achieve seven more wins with a personal best of 115 points. In his seventh game, he was three points behind going into the crucial conundrum against Arran Smith. But after Smith buzzed in with an incorrect guess, Latchford buzzed in with half a second left with the correct guess of TARANTULA to win. Ultimately, he became the second octochamp of the series with an octotal of 732 points.

Finals

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

In the grand final – Nick Hewer's last show as presenter – Latchford held his nerve and led 6 – 0 after Boynton's pawless ☓ got disallowed in the first letters round. Latchford then took another ten 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 that Boynton solved as a last consolation. Then, Latchford lifted the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy at the end of the show after winning 101 – 86. He is also the last recipient of the Oxford English Dictionaries, which had since been axed from the show due to the books being out of date.

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

Championship of Champions XVI

Latchford returned to the show in January 2023 for Championship of Champions XVI, where he faced "The History Maker" Tom Stevenson in the preliminaries. In an ultra-closely fought encounter, Adam took an early lead through TITANIC to become the second contestant of beating Stevenson in a round and an excellent solution to a four-large numbers round. But Stevenson snatched it back when Adam had teaslings ☓ disallowed along with an unfortunate gamble on foreshot ☓. This led 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 his CoC quarter-final, 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 tournament, it meant that 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 that he is the only person in Countdown history to win twice against members of the 1,000 club 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.

ZoomDown

Latchford participated in the first episode of Series 4 of ZoomDown. He also took part in Series 5.

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