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The 30th Birthday Championship was an eight week long mini-series held to celebrate Countdown being broadcast on British television for 30 years. Series producer Damian Eadie posted details of the tournament on the c4countdown forum in September 2012, and over 200 former contestants expressed their interest in participating. This was whittled down to just 41, spanning 63 of Countdown's 67 series and including 15 series champions. The structure of the mini-series was nine preliminary games followed by a best-of-32 knock-out tournament. Early fallers included: Series 46 champion Ben Wilson, one of only six viscounts in the history of Countdown; and Nick Deller, a four-times winner in Series 28. Despite spending 12 years away from Countdown to focus on playing Scrabble, Deller lost to Series 52 champion Mark Tournoff by just one point.
Notable moments in the first round proper included Series 60 champion Kirk Bevins scoring 130 points out of a possible 130, the second 15 round perfect game in the history of Countdown, and Series 63 champion Jack Hurst missing out on beating the show's highest ever score of 146, after the invalid declaration spousing ☓ gave him a total of 143. Round 2 included another perfect game as Series 54 champion Conor Travers beat Mark Tournoff by 119 out of 119. The second round also featured two consecutive tie-breaker conundrums – David O'Donnell unscrambling BAGOGLORY to defeat Chris Davies, and Kirk Bevins solving BARRYDICK to claim victory over Innis Carson. The quarter-finals saw Jonathan Rawlinson and Jack Hurst progress, and contained two more perfect games – Conor Travers achieved a second on the bounce, and Jon O'Neill amassed a perfect 122 in spite of no nine-letter words being available.
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