Ben Wilson (Countdown)

Ben Wilson (born 22 March 1983) is the 46th Champion of Countdown and an ABSP rated British Scrabble Player. Before becoming famous, he was educated in Lincolnshire at Robert Pattinson School.

Countdown

Ben first appeared on Countdown on 6 November 2001, and quickly won the then maximum six heat games to finish in a tie with Phil Wass to become the number one seed, each player having 570 points. Ben was given the top seeding since he had the highest single score of the two players.

He faced the number eight seen in the quarter-final and won narrowly, and beat Paul Ryan by an equally narrow 21 points to set up a final with number six seed, Steve Sandalls.

The game against Steve was close but low scoring, not helped by difficult numbers selections. Ben pulled into a 17 point lead after a successful numbers and beating Steve with BONNIES. He fell to four next round and gave an invalid solution to the numbers to leave him one point behind going into the conundrum. On Christmas day, the conundrum was SANTASITS which Ben unravelled in three seconds to spot ASSISTANT and become the 46th Champion in the history of the show, 84-75.

Champion of Champions

Ben returned for Champion of Champions XI, but was not considered a likely winner because of the presence of other champions of the show such as Chris Wills and Julian Fell. He dispatched of Loz Sands - the only female contestant - before meeting Tom Hargreaves in the quarter-final.

The game turned out to be the highest scoring game in the history of 15-round Countdown. Both contestants played extremely well, but Tom pulled ahead slowly and capped the performance by solving the conundrum almost instantly. The final score was 131-98, a total of 229 points which was equalled the next day by Graham Nash and Julian Fell. This cumulative total remained unbeaten until a game between Matthew Shore and Mark Tournoff finished with an aggregate total of [http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/c4countdown/message/9761 241] , coincidentally once again in a Champion of Champions quarter final.

crabble

Since being on Countdown, Ben has started playing at Lincoln Scrabble Club and has an ABSP tournament rating of 162 (03/31/2008) joint 112th in the ABSP official British rankings.

External links

* [http://www.thecountdownpage.com/exp-ben-wilson-1.htm An interview with Ben]
* [http://www.thecountdownpage.com/final46.htm Ben's final against Steve Sandalls]