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Adam Latchford

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Adam Latchford
Octochamp Statistics
Final positionChampion
Seeding3
Points total732
Conundrums solved7 (+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. He's an Accounts Assistant who lives in London, but is originally from Bolton. He became an Apterite after recording his 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.

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the last recipient of the Oxford English Dictionaries, which have since been axed from the show due to the books being out of date.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).

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

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 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 wins over Boynton and Stevenson are two of only three occasions in Countdown history where a member of the "1,000 club" has been defeated on TV, along with Dinos Sfyris's Series 80 Grand Final defeat of Elliott Mellor.


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