Dan Byrom

Dan Byrom octochamp statistics
Final position	Champion
Seeding	1
Points total	967
Conundrums solved	4

Dan Byrom in Series 85.

Dan Byrom holding the Richard Whiteley Memorial Trophy after winning Series 85.

Dan Byrom was an octochamp in and the champion of Series 85, the third octochamp to be crowned in under five weeks, and a semi-finalist in Championship of Champions XVI. A member of Apterous from Sheffield, he was a gap year student, part-time tutor, and business development assistant for his father's audiology firm at the time of his Series 85 games. At the time of his Championship of Champions appearances, he was a PhD student at the University of Warwick.

Appearances on the programme

In the audience

Byrom made his TV debut on 6 November 2017 as the audience member who solved the conundrum after a failed attempt from both contestants.

Series 85

When the Emmanuel College, Cambridge graduate himself became a contestant on 27 January 2022, he scored 140 points – the highest ever debut score in Countdown history. In his second game, he maxed the first 14 rounds, but his opponent Dave Root prevented him from achieving only the 12th ever max game by solving the conundrum. Byrom equalled his personal best of 140 in his fifth game, before seeing off stiff competition against fellow Apterite, Gabriel Thallon, in his sixth. Byrom completed his run of eight games undefeated, all with centuries, and climbed to the top of the seed table with 967 points – a total shared with Zarte Siempre.

Finals

Maintaining his number one position in the seed table, Byrom comfortably won his quarter-final match against five-time winner Craig Fawcett by a 79-point margin. His semi-final affair against Ryan Carlsen was much closer – both players matched each other in all 10 letters games, and Byrom found himself seven points down after losing the third numbers round. Crucially, though, he turned ISNOMERCY into CRONEYISM to march on to the grand final against number two seed Matt O'Connor.

In a very close and nail-biting grand final, it was O'Connor who came off the blocks first with OCTOPINE to lead Byrom eight points to zero. However, Byrom took a large chunk of points off the opposition by solving a six-small numbers game in Round 3, followed by a brilliant nine in EMPAESTIC to establish a 20-point advantage. In the third numbers round, Byrom declared two away from the target – however, his method was actually revealed to be the desired target of 684. The gap swung back and forth many times from then on but, after both players missed the final numbers target by one, Byrom – by a mere three points in the end – clinched the title, with his xicount total across his 11 games being 1,251 points.

Championship of Champions XVI

Byrom returned in January 2023 to participate in Championship of Champions XVI where fellow Series 85 finalist Steve Hyde took him on in the preliminary round. Both players equalled each other at first, until Byrom made a definite break with spots like LETTIGAS and PATRONNE, securing his tenth century game, even though a nasty conundrum RICETRAIL was missed by both players. Thus, he moved onto a quarter-final matchup against Elliott Mellor. In a closely fought battle, Byrom took an early lead after cracking a six small numbers round that Mellor missed, and never relinquished the lead after that, although Mellor got closer after Byrom's offering of onlier ☓ backfired. A crucial conundrum was left unsolved, which meant Byrom progressed at Mellor's expense and remained unbeaten going into the semis, where he faced his predecessor Ahmed Mohamed.

In another nail-biting encounter, it was impossible to separate either player, with both of them scoring the same points in the first 14 rounds, in possibly the greatest match ever played in the 15-round format. Unfortunately for Byrom, it was Mohamed who very quickly solved the crucial conundrum and advanced to the grand final, relegating Byrom to his only defeat on the show, but he still bowed out with a highly impressive score of 111 and a final total of 1,576 points from 14 appearances (with an average of roughly 112.5 points per game).

ZoomDown

Prior to his Countdown debut, Byrom participated in Series 1, 2 and 4 of ZoomDown.

Preceded by Ahmed Mohamed

Series winner Series 85

Followed by Tom Stevenson

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
7685	27/01/2022	P	Crispin Salfarlie	41 – 140	Dan Byrom	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Ruby Wax	Susie Dent	153
7686	28/01/2022	P	Dan Byrom	123 – 74	Dave Root	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Ruby Wax	Susie Dent	133
7687	31/01/2022	P	Dan Byrom	117 – 54	Joe Slade	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Ruby Wax	Susie Dent	150
7688	01/02/2022	P	Dan Byrom	121 – 50	Heather Marsh	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Tim Vine	Susie Dent	134
7689	02/02/2022	P	Dan Byrom	140 – 59	Stuart Fenwick	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Tim Vine	Susie Dent	143
7690	03/02/2022	P	Dan Byrom	108 – 87	Gabriel Thallon	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Tim Vine	Susie Dent	125
7691	04/02/2022	P	Dan Byrom	114 – 32	David Moseby	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Tim Vine	Susie Dent	129
7692	07/02/2022	P	Dan Byrom	104 – 40	Iain Andrews	Anne Robinson	Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon				Lucy Summers	Tim Vine	Susie Dent	146
7780	09/06/2022	QF	Dan Byrom	106 – 27	Craig Fawcett	Anne Robinson	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jay Rayner		none	124
7784	15/06/2022	SF	Dan Byrom	97 – 94	Ryan Carlsen	Anne Robinson	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jay Rayner		none	120
7786	17/06/2022	GF	Dan Byrom	81 – 78	Matt O'Connor	Anne Robinson	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Robert Rinder		none	136
7928	10/01/2023	CP	Steve Hyde	70 – 108	Dan Byrom	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Heather Small	Susie Dent	135
7931	13/01/2023	CQF	Elliott Mellor	102 – 106	Dan Byrom	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Heather Small	Susie Dent	124
7935	19/01/2023	CSF	Dan Byrom	111 – 121	Ahmed Mohamed	Colin Murray	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rick Edwards	Susie Dent	122