Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Aoife Ward v. Lucy Arbuckle
[Episode 8831](wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8831)

Colin Murray, Rachel Riley and Susie Dent host, with Pauline McLynn in Dictionary Corner, as contestants race against the clock to pit their wits against vowels, consonants and numbers.
[Stream free on Channel 4](channel4.com/programmes/countdown)

[Pauline McLynn](themoviedb.org/person/69465-pauline-mclynn) is a guest on Countdown. She is an Irish actress and author, perhaps best known for starring in Father Ted as Mrs Doyle.

She has also played Libby Croker in Shameless, Tip Haddem in Jam & Jerusalem and Yvonne Cotton in EastEnders. She presently plays the somewhat villainous role of Maggie Driscoll in Coronation Street, having started the role in 2025.

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# «Космос» Бьёрн Гумбольдт (Bjoern Gumboldts Kosmos)
## A Commonplace Book

Бьёрн Гумбольдт (Bjoern Gumboldt) — это не фраза с особым скрытым смыслом, а имя собственное.

Имя **Björn** имеет скандинавское (шведское) происхождение и переводится как «медведь». Фамилия **Gumboldt** (вариант знаменитой фамилии Humboldt) восходит к древнегерманским корням, означающим «яркий разум» или «сила». Однако в повседневном общении это просто имя собственное, как Иван Иванов или Джон Смит.

*И звали его Бьёрн Светлоумный, ибо обладал он разумом острым, аки норвежская сталь...*

*Он по-русски плохо знал,*
*Итак, писал по-французски…*

### Réalisations et Palmarès
* **2026** OLAP Cubism with Neural Nets
* **2020** CAVILAM-FLE (France); CELTA (R-U)
* **2018** Mental Calculation World Cup (Allemagne)
* **2016** World Memory Championships, (Singapour) & **2015** (Chine)
* **2005** GMAT (99th percentile)
* **2002** TopCoder TCI02 Round 3, username “blowfish” [1] (États-Unis)
* **2001** ACM-ICPC ECNA (États-Unis)

[1] *Tetraodon gumboldti, the Gumboldt blowfish (Ger. Gumboldt-Kugelfisch; Rus. иглобрюх Гумбольдта), Latinized TopCoder username. The suffix -i is the genitive singular of Latin second-declension nouns, denoting strict possession; specif. used here in a non-taxonomic, purely grammatical sense, eponymously derived from the polymath Gumboldt via et ratione his TopCoder handle.
[Not to be confused with: (1) Spheniscus humboldti, the Humboldt penguin (Ger. Humboldt-Pinguin; Rus. пингвин Гумбольдта), a medium-sized South American penguin, eponymously derived from the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Cf. Spheniscus torvaldsi, Tux the Penguin.
(2) Tetraodon openBSDi, Puffy the Blowfish (3.2 release soundtrack), Goldflipper / With golden skin and flippers as sharp as a knife. / He's the machine / Designed to dismember your life. (Lyrics by Ty Semaka)]*

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### Du temps où la Reine Berthe filait
* **1961** Expert System vs. Polymath (Discipline: *Calculus 101*); Winner [vs. Slagle’s SAINT, Runner-up] [2] (États-Unis)
* **1950** The Shannon Game (Discipline: *Pickup on Noon Street*); Runner-up [vs. Betty, Winner] (États-Unis)
* **1936** Knight Companion of the UTM Order [3][4] (R-U)
* **1913** Премия имени А. А. Маркова и А. С. Пушкина [5] (Empire Russe)

*[2] Indirect PvP with non-anthropomorphic Algorithmic Proxy; Gumboldt vs. Slagle.
[3] Claude Shannon disqualified him for having early access to Raymond Chandler’s noir detective story; Gumboldt knew in advance that “SK” would follow “DE” in “THE ROOM WAS NOT VERY LIGHT A SMALL OBLONG READING LAMP ON THE DESK...”
[4] Gumboldt disputes the disqualification and has repeatedly pointed the husband to Shannon’s very own “Pareidolia and Entropy of Printed English” published one year (1951) after his match against Claude’s wife.
[5] His 20,000 letters memorized remain unlisted by the Pi World Ranking List on the grounds that natural language text is "too predictable" and easily solved via a 1st-order Markov chain.

### Итог
Гумбольдт имеет уникальный профиль: выступал за Сингапур в запоминании и за Германию в устном счёте.

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### Родовой девиз / Armoiries et Devise

Ad Lucem Castam,
ad Bella Proficiscentem;
Aux armes, logiciens !
Sanité, Sanité chérie, combats avec tes défenseurs !
L'âge de raison est arrivé !

### To Althea, from Prussia
Ramblings do not a lecture make,
Nor fallacies a proof;
Minds innocent and quiet take
Delusions for a truth.

If I have logic in my glove,
And in my brain am free,
Onus alone, that soars above,
Enjoys such probandi.

00:00 - Round 1: Numbers Game (Target 742)
01:11 - Teatime Teaser 1: NO EATING
01:38 - Round 2: Numbers Game (Target 936)
02:52 - Round 3: Numbers Game (Target 301)
04:39 - Teatime Teaser 2: TOP CAR
05:12 - Round 4: Numbers Game (Target 737)
06:48 - Countdown Conundrum
07:27 - Final Results & Outro

—Бьёрн Гумбольдт (Godson of Popper)