Elo elo elo, what's all this then?

There's been some talk among all the top memory people about rating the Extreme Memory Tournament competitors, using something along the lines of the Elo system in chess. Or for that matter in othello, which uses basically the same principles.

Until I looked it up last week, incidentally, I always thought it was the ELO system and the letters stood for something (although probably not Electric Light Orchestra), but it turns out it was named after a man called Elo. Anyway, the basic idea is that your rating goes up by a bit if you win a game and down by a bit if you lose. How big the bit is depends on the difference between your rating and your opponent's.

Now, the othello ratings are calculated by David Haigh, who's the only person in the universe who knows how it works. Well, him and all the people who've read his detailed explanation of how they're calculated and understood it, but I don't fit into that category. I've got a vague idea, but that's about as far as it goes. Not daunted by this, I've crunched some numbers and drawn up a rating list to see what it would look like.

People start out with 1400 points, for no good reason except that that's what the othello ratings start with, and increase/decrease by an amount that is 16 points if the memorisers have identical ratings, tending towards 0 or 32 depending on how big the gap between their ratings is. The change goes on a normal distribution (I don't entirely know what that is, I'm not a mathematician, but I put numbers into Excel's normal distribution formula until it comes out with the same kind of numbers as David quoted in his article). The othello ratings work differently for people who've played few or no matches before, but since everyone is starting from scratch here, and since I don't understand the calculation of provisional othello ratings (no, seriously, I'm not a mathematician, I'm an accountant and financial analyst, it's an entirely different discipline) I haven't done that.

Anyway, this arbitrary ranking makes a list that looks like this:

ALL	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Simon Reinhard	61	1616
2	Johannes Mallow	73	1601
3	Boris Konrad	55	1537
4	Jonas von Essen	54	1509
5	Christian Schäfer	44	1503
6	Alex Mullen	36	1497
7	Katie Kermode	25	1476
8	Enhkjin Tumur	25	1470
9	Johannes Zhou	21	1409
10	Marlo Knight	15	1407
11	James Paterson	12	1399
12	Gunther Karsten	12	1395
13	Andi Bell	12	1385
14	Mark Anthony Castaneda	45	1381
15	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	19	1375
16	Marwin Wallonius	32	1374
17	Ben Pridmore	38	1371
18	Erwin Balines	12	1369
19	Yanjaa Altansuh	20	1366
20	Lance Tschirhart	15	1357
21	Ola Kåre Risa	37	1354
22	Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan	15	1337
23	Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar	15	1320
24	Annalena Fischer	31	1314
25	Anne Reulke	15	1313
26	Norbert Reulke	15	1306
27	Bat-Erdene Tsogoo	12	1293
28	Johann Randall Abrina	27	1287
29	Tuuruul Myagmarsuren	15	1279

Obviously with there being so few matches for some people (like James, who won six out of twelve in 2014 but didn't qualify for the knockout stages), it's not super-scientific, but I think it still makes interesting reading. I would've hoped to be higher than 17th, since I basically made up the rules myself here, but that's how it worked out.

Incidentally, if you didn't know, you can see all the matches in the wonderfully-interactive XMT Live sites. Here's 2014 and here's 2015. If you want to see all Simon's matches, for example, type 'Simon' into the bar at the top. If you want to see all of Anne's images matches, type 'Anne images'. And so forth. It's great!

But the thing about the XMT is that there are five different kinds of match - six, if you count the surprise task. Some people are good at some disciplines but bad at others. Really, if you want to analyse who's good at the XMT, you might want a ranking system for each discipline. So even though there are so few matches as to make the whole thing pretty meaningless, that's basically what I've done here...


Cards!

CARDS	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Simon Reinhard	10	1505
2	Ben Pridmore	8	1488
3	Mark Anthony Castaneda	10	1478
4	Johannes Mallow	15	1473
5	Alex Mullen	8	1465
6	Christian Schäfer	7	1418
7	Lance Tschirhart	3	1417
8	Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan	3	1416
9	Gunther Karsten	3	1416
10	Jonas von Essen	11	1409
11	Yanjaa Altansuh	4	1402
12	Enhkjin Tumur	4	1401
13	Ola Kåre Risa	9	1388
14	Marlo Knight	3	1388
15	Anne Reulke	3	1387
16	Andi Bell	3	1387
17	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	3	1385
18	Bat-Erdene Tsogoo	3	1384
19	Erwin Balines	3	1384
20	Norbert Reulke	3	1382
21	Boris Konrad	10	1380
22	Johannes Zhou	4	1371
23	Marwin Wallonius	6	1368
24	Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar	3	1356
25	Tuuruul Myagmarsuren	3	1356
26	James Paterson	3	1355
27	Annalena Fischer	7	1352
28	Katie Kermode	4	1345
29	Johann Randall Abrina	6	1344

That's more like it! Second place in the card ranking! I have tended to win all my matches there, which is why it's always my first choice in the knockout events. Possibly even against Simon, though I'll have to think about my strategy there. The interesting thing is that Mark Anthony comes in third - I never really thought of him as being a cards specialist, but looking back at his results, he's very consistently good at it. And also improved quite a lot between 2014 and 2015, too. Be worried next year!


Images!

IMAGES	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Johannes Mallow	8	1517
2	Christian Schäfer	5	1443
3	Boris Konrad	6	1435
4	Katie Kermode	6	1431
5	Simon Reinhard	5	1415
6	Enhkjin Tumur	5	1415
7	Mark Anthony Castaneda	3	1415
8	Alex Mullen	6	1407
9	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	4	1403
10	Marwin Wallonius	4	1401
11	Ben Pridmore	4	1400
12	Johannes Zhou	4	1399
13	Annalena Fischer	4	1397
14	Jonas von Essen	4	1397
15	Marlo Knight	3	1387
16	Norbert Reulke	3	1385
17	Yanjaa Altansuh	3	1385
18	Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan	3	1384
19	Lance Tschirhart	3	1384
20	Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar	3	1384
21	Ola Kåre Risa	3	1355
22	Anne Reulke	3	1353
23	Johann Randall Abrina	3	1353
24	Tuuruul Myagmarsuren	3	1353

Did you know Hannes won eight out of eight images matches in 2015? See, the cool thing about these ratings is that they show that kind of trivia. Enkhjin was unquestionably the fastest when it came to images this year, but the XMT is about beating your opponent and making sure you get it right every time.


Names!

NAMES	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Simon Reinhard	14	1542
2	Jonas von Essen	14	1512
3	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	3	1446
4	Christian Schäfer	9	1443
5	Ola Kåre Risa	9	1428
6	Marlo Knight	3	1419
7	Enhkjin Tumur	5	1417
8	Andi Bell	3	1416
9	Erwin Balines	3	1416
10	James Paterson	3	1415
11	Johannes Zhou	5	1411
12	Anne Reulke	3	1404
13	Alex Mullen	5	1404
14	Katie Kermode	4	1403
15	Johann Randall Abrina	6	1401
16	Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar	3	1398
17	Yanjaa Altansuh	4	1389
18	Tuuruul Myagmarsuren	3	1384
19	Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan	3	1383
20	Marwin Wallonius	7	1377
21	Johannes Mallow	15	1373
22	Annalena Fischer	6	1373
23	Mark Anthony Castaneda	11	1365
24	Lance Tschirhart	3	1358
25	Boris Konrad	12	1357
26	Bat-Erdene Tsogoo	3	1353
27	Gunther Karsten	3	1353
28	Norbert Reulke	3	1352
29	Ben Pridmore	9	1307

Oh, come on! I'm not THAT bad at names, am I? Really? Sheesh. Let's move on.


Numbers!

NUMBERS	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Christian Schäfer	10	1449
2	Johannes Mallow	12	1447
3	Enhkjin Tumur	5	1447
4	Katie Kermode	4	1433
5	Alex Mullen	6	1430
6	Andi Bell	3	1416
7	Gunther Karsten	3	1416
8	James Paterson	3	1415
9	Tuuruul Myagmarsuren	3	1411
10	Ola Kåre Risa	7	1409
11	Jonas von Essen	9	1409
12	Boris Konrad	12	1408
13	Johannes Zhou	4	1406
14	Johann Randall Abrina	6	1401
15	Annalena Fischer	6	1401
16	Ben Pridmore	8	1398
17	Yanjaa Altansuh	4	1397
18	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	4	1397
19	Marlo Knight	3	1387
20	Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan	3	1387
21	Norbert Reulke	3	1385
22	Lance Tschirhart	3	1385
23	Simon Reinhard	13	1384
24	Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar	3	1384
25	Erwin Balines	3	1384
26	Bat-Erdene Tsogoo	3	1383
27	Marwin Wallonius	7	1368
28	Anne Reulke	3	1353
29	Mark Anthony Castaneda	9	1310

Hmm, here's a weak spot for the unstoppable Simon, it seems... although kind of a weak spot for me too, so taking advantage of it might be a problem. Numbers is the easiest discipline to make a mistake in and fail to get the perfect 80, so it probably favours people who are just the right amount of careful...


Words!

WORDS	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Simon Reinhard	11	1545
2	Johannes Mallow	14	1534
3	Jonas von Essen	11	1520
4	Boris Konrad	9	1477
5	Christian Schäfer	10	1452
6	Katie Kermode	5	1420
7	Johannes Zhou	3	1416
8	James Paterson	3	1416
9	Gunther Karsten	3	1400
10	Alex Mullen	7	1394
11	Mark Anthony Castaneda	8	1391
12	Lance Tschirhart	3	1390
13	Ola Kåre Risa	7	1387
14	Marlo Knight	3	1387
15	Annalena Fischer	7	1385
16	Erwin Balines	3	1384
17	Norbert Reulke	3	1382
18	Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar	3	1381
19	Enhkjin Tumur	4	1377
20	Yanjaa Altansuh	4	1374
21	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	4	1370
22	Marwin Wallonius	7	1366
23	Ben Pridmore	7	1360
24	Anne Reulke	3	1358
25	Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan	3	1356
26	Andi Bell	3	1355
27	Bat-Erdene Tsogoo	3	1355
28	Tuuruul Myagmarsuren	3	1353
29	Johann Randall Abrina	6	1315

Now, if I could find a way to get 47 every time in words, I could fight my way back up the rankings, maybe...


And finally, those Extreme Memory Tasks...

SURPRISE	Name	Matches	Rating
1	Simon Reinhard	8	1480
2	Boris Konrad	6	1458
3	Alex Mullen	4	1430
4	Katie Kermode	2	1430
5	Marwin Wallonius	1	1417
6	Jonas von Essen	5	1414
7	Enhkjin Tumur	2	1403
8	Ben Pridmore	2	1399
9	Akjol Syeryekkhaan	1	1384
10	Annalena Fischer	1	1384
11	Christian Schäfer	3	1383
12	Yanjaa Altansuh	1	1383
13	Johannes Zhou	1	1382
14	Mark Anthony Castaneda	4	1371
15	Ola Kåre Risa	2	1369
16	Johannes Mallow	9	1312

Not really enough data here to go on, especially since the surprise tasks are different every time...


And so that's that. Comments, queries and suggestions are very welcome!

The last of the Peanuts

Here we go with episode five of "which characters appear most prominently in the Peanuts comic strip". The four previous episodes can be found here:

1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s

At the time it was published, nineties Peanuts tended to generate a reaction, if at all, of "is that still going on?" After it ended, it gets more of a sense of sadness as we see landmarks like the move away from four-panel strips to three or fewer in 1992 (Charles M Schulz was struggling with shaking hands by that point), the first-ever five-week break in new daily strips in 1997 and the inevitable final appearances of beloved characters as we get to the end. The end is actually on January 3rd 2000 (with a few more Sunday strips afterwards) - it's actually quite impressive that after all those decades drawing Peanuts, Schulz realised he wasn't going to live to see the fiftieth anniversary and brought it to an end a few months short. And of course the whole thing's still going on, the movie's coming out imminently, it never ends...

All the major characters have been long since established by the start of the nineties, with one notable exception - Rerun, after twenty-plus years in the background, is elevated to a starring role for the last five years of Peanuts. By the end of the series, he's seen more often than anyone but Charlie Brown and Snoopy (who, fittingly, end dead level in the appearances-in-the-last-year stakes). As I've said before, I've got a great fondness for the nineties stories, it's a shame they came too late for the 21st-century creators to homage them. Maybe in another few decades. Meanwhile, the likes of Frieda, 5 and Roy have permanently disappeared by the final decade, although Patty and Violet keep popping up every once in a blue moon. The new characters introduced in the 90s aren't particularly memorable, though.

We start with Fred, another Beagle Scout Woodstock-a-like, before the introduction of Peggy Jean, love interest for Charlie Brown who does actually like him back, more or less. Minor characters Larry (from Sunday School), Cormac (from summer camp), Royanne (baseball player) and Ethan (summer camp again) come and go without making much of an impact. Andy, the fuzzy one of Snoopy's brothers, is more funny, and sticks around until the end as a double-act with Olaf. Andy has the unique distinction of being introduced in the animated cartoons before he showed up in the comic strip, which is sort of symbolic in a way - when it started in 1950, there were a lot more people who read newspaper comics than watched television. Peanuts spanned a whole lot of changes over the years, didn't it?

Emily, another love interest for Charlie Brown who might possibly be a figment of his imagination, is another interesting one. "Joe Agate", whose name is always written in quotation marks, only shows up for one storyline. Rerun's classmate, the pigtailed girl, never gets a name, but she so consistently appears over the final five years of the strip, she deserves a mention here anyway. Even the most ardent Peanuts fan could be forgiven for not knowing who Justin is - he's a schoolmate of Peppermint Patty, who namechecks him in one strip. Roy, meanwhile, is another Beagle Scout who gets mentioned by name once. He's no relation to the human Roy, presumably. And the last ever new character introduced is Naomi, who briefly takes care of Spike in his last big storyline.

And so that's that - I like the charts, even if nobody else finds them quite so fascinating. So let's see what else I can play about with statistics for next...

There will be more

More lengthy blogs, that is. I'm off work for the next three days, I'll see if I can go into greater length about things.

Fog's gone

Since this blog can apparently command the weather now, I'd just like to remind everyone how much I like warm sunny days, even in November.

That's enough now

See, I've just gone and encouraged the fog now. Say something nice about a meteorological phenomenon and it sticks around for a full 24 hours until everyone's heartily fed up of it.

Actually, the factory where I work in Kegworth is a sort of fog magnet - many a time I've driven there in clear skies only to find the place cocooned in its own private fog bank. It's a bit spooky, really.

Pea soup

Really foggy out there this evening, shrouding the streetlights in mist in a way that makes me think I'm in Victorian London (only not so poisonous). Still pleasantly warm for November, though - I might go out and solve mysteries.

They think it's all othellover

Congratulations to Yusuke Takanashi on his fourth World Othello Championship! I really need to play more othello. Maybe I'll make that a new year resolution? Remind me in two months, because I'll have forgotten by then.

Othelloing all over the world

The World Othello Championship is happening right now in Cambridge (traditional home of British Othello, but it's never been the venue for the WOC before - it was in London the previous times it was held over here). It's a competition that illustrates a lot of things that the world of memory sports would do well to copy. The competition moves from one country to another every year; it's been held in no end of different nations over the 38 years it's been going. The companies who sell othello sets traditionally foot the bill, with the finer details of organising generally being done by the players themselves. The prize of $3000 for the winner is pretty much set in stone as an age-old tradition (and inflation be damned) and is a token thing that nobody really cares about; it's all about winning and having fun.

Qualification tournaments all around the world provide the best three players in each country, which nicely prevents more than the top three places on the leaderboard being taken up by the all-conquering Japanese; players pay for their own travel and accommodation and don't grumble about it. A lot of the players have been at the top level of the game for decades, but a lot of others have more recently started and quickly dominated competitions with new strategies and approaches. It's something people can and do play online on many different sites (which nimbly avoid the trademarked name Othello by calling themselves 'reversi') where you can always be sure of finding an opponent of a similar skill level, however good you are or aren't.

It's thirteen rounds of Swiss-system matches over the first two days, then the top four play in semi-finals and the grand final on day three - as it stands at the moment reigning champion Makoto Suekuni is topping the leaderboard with eight wins out of nine, with three-time winner Yusuke Takanashi, Nicky van den Biggelaar and Takuji Kashiwabara a point behind. Still all to play for - top Briton David Hand is on 6.5, Imre Leader on 5.5 and Steven Robinson on 5. That puts us joint second in the team competition, too.

There's never been a British winner (nine of the last ten have been Japanese, it's not that often that anyone else gets a look-in), though our players have come second a few times (Imre first did it in 1983) and won the team title on occasion, though the last time was 1997. Let's all cheer them on and wave a flag or two!

Hook a duck

There's a really quite big funfair squeezed into the small market place car park just up the road from me. It's got four hook-a-duck stalls. Fairs were so much better in the olden days when they had arcades, full of all the coolest new video games of two or three years previously (with the volume cranked up to deafening levels and most or all of the buttons not working). Nowadays, they're just dull. Ghost trains seem to be out of fashion, too...

Bathtime

I like baths. Can't start a day without one. But why isn't the standard bathtub size "big enough so you can stretch out your whole body in one"?

Meanwhile, I got under 20 seconds twice in a row today in XMT images, and got closer to consistently nailing a 21-22 second pack of cards too...

I really should cheer for Sheffield Wednesday

And not just when they're 1-0 up against Arsenal. Supporting the Owls is sort of a Pridmore family tradition. Come on you Owls!

XMTeeing-off

Hmm, how to maximise my qualifying scores for the XMT? I need to be scientific about it. Qualifying will start in January, apparently, and almost certainly be based on the same 100-points-for-the-world-record system as last year, so obviously I need to consider which disciplines can get me the most points and also which ones will give me the biggest edge over my potential rivals...

Cards - world record 52 in 23.34 seconds. That's fast. And although sub-30-second times are becoming more and more frequent lately, it's fair to say most of the memorisers in the qualifiers still can't do it. If I can get myself somewhere near that time of Simon's, it'd give me a great head-start. I did three tries at everything today and my best time was 25.38 - it'd be good if I could get it into the 24s or 23s consistently by January.

Images - world record 30 in 14.40 seconds. That's not just fast, it's freaky-fast. And quite a lot of people have been going very fast in training, apparently. I need to work on whizzing through the images more quickly than I do at the moment, because I think they'd stick in my memory just as well if I didn't consciously think about them quite as much. In three goes today, my best time was 21.64; let's see if I can get down into the teens consistently.

Names - world record 28 in 60 seconds. Yeah, I need to work on this quite a lot, don't I? The best I managed today was 12, though I know I can get up to the dizzy heights of 15 or 16 if I carry on in my usual way. But instead, what I really have to do is sit down and think about it; start pre-preparing mental associations for common names and facial features, make a proper effort to do it. I need to make a short-term resolution to get above 20, and then move on from there...

Numbers - world record 80 in 21.01 seconds. Very fast, but the problem with numbers is you don't get any prompting for the possible sequence in the recall like you do with cards and images, so it's easy to make mistakes. I know this from experience, since my three tries today all had errors in the recall, but the third one was 24.16 seconds and I just carelessly typed one digit wrong (if I'd bothered to go through and read what I'd typed instead of just clicking 'finished' I would have caught that - no more laziness, even in practice, from now on). In qualifying it's going to have to be a safe-ish time first to make sure I get all 80, then go for fast after that, but I can hope to aim for a time of 22 or better.

Words - world record 49 in 60.00 seconds. Someone's going to get all 50 in 2016, I'm sure. My best today was 40, but having got a freaky 47 in the actual XMT itself this year, I don't see why I shouldn't do it again some time. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be during the qualification? Or maybe, rather than relying on luck and flukes, I could work on it a bit more seriously? I'm pretty happy with my technique here, actually, but I could concentrate on pinpointing the optimum number of words to read before repeating, and so on. Let's aim to get consistently into the mid-40s here.

Science! Dedication! Let's keep it up! (I'm being my own cheerleader here; I think that'll help.)

Extreme Memory Training

Since I can't go to the world championship for money reasons, I think I need to dedicate my time to practicing for the XMT next year. For one thing, that's the only kind of training I've been able to get excited about for quite a while now. I don't know if I'd ever be able to come close to winning the thing, but you never know what you can do until you try...

When time it went back

It must be officially winter, or at least autumn, because the clocks go back tonight and people are already setting off fireworks. I would say that time flies, but on the other hand 2014 seems like so long ago I can barely remember it, so I guess not. Still, can't we keep summer going a bit longer?

It's time to get Extreme again!

Dates have been set for next year's Extreme Memory Tournament, which now has a brand new and unbelievably extreme logo! Go and check it out!

I'm excited about it already, although perhaps I shouldn't be, since I'll have to qualify for it this time (unless they change the rules - nothing's really been set in stone yet) and that makes me a little nervous. In all my long experience of memory competitions, they've all either invited me specifically or else been open to everyone; qualification is a pretty new innovation in the memory world. Possibly I won't be very good at it.

An underappreciated Doctor Who villain

I've been re-watching the seminal Doctor Who adventure The War Games, an episode a night, for the last week. People say it's too long and dragged out, but I've always liked it a lot. And a main reason for that is the evil Time Lord, the War Chief. Quite brilliantly played by Edward Brayshaw, very much like Roger Delgado at his best, he's confident, intelligent, nasty, a great villain all round.

I do like the theory that he's an earlier incarnation of the Master, fannish though the idea is, and even though it clearly wasn't intended by the writers at the time (the War Chief is shot dead towards the end of his only adventure, and it was many years before it was decided that a violent death causes a Time Lord to regenerate into a different actor, rather than just to die) - but really, what's the point of being a Doctor Who fan if you can't make up your own back story for a favourite character?

Back To The Future Day

Actually, it's tomorrow. See, they arrive in the future at 4:29pm, California time, which is half past midnight tomorrow morning in Britain, so we can't celebrate yet. It's still not the future.

Here come the muppets tonight!

The new series of Muppets has finally arrived on Sky 1 - they've been hyping it for months, obviously seeing it as a big priority for them, with marketing including making sure it's talked about prominently on social media, which really sums up the whole 21st-century muppet experience: it's unapologetically modern. Which is a good thing; muppets are a timeless concept, they shouldn't be locked in the 1970s. The new show is actually quite a lot of fun, I was pleasantly surprised. The format might turn out to be a bit too restrictive, I can see it getting repetitive, and obviously the general tone is more American than previous series, but all in all it's really enjoyable and I recommend it to anyone, even if they're not muppetationally obsessive!

Good grief, more Peanuts

Ah, the 1980s. The decade when I was around the same age as the characters in Peanuts are supposed to be - although the idea that they're children has long since been abandoned by this point, of course. By 1980 the strip has settled on its central cast, and not many others get a look-in...

Shermy is gone and forgotten by this time, and it's become very rare to see Patty, Violet, Frieda, Roy or 5, but we get a bit of a resurgence for the ones who are still showing up in the animated cartoons - 1980 sees a storyline with Pig-Pen (he goes out with Peppermint Patty) and one for Schroeder (going to music camp in Snoopy's doghouse aeroplane). The biggest rise to prominence comes from Snoopy's brother Spike, though - the mid-80s is the time we see him most, still living alone in the desert. He basically takes over a share of the strips that was previously given to solo Snoopy stories, which has the interesting effect of reducing Snoopy's appearances down to just about exactly the same level as Charlie Brown's - from here on in, their lines stick close together at the top of the chart.

Eleven new named characters make their debuts in the 1980s, starting with Harriet, another of the Beagle Scouts. Although still indistinguishable from Woodstock and the others, she's female. Harriet and Bill get married in 1983 and apparently leave the scouts at that point; immediately after the wedding there are more strips with four scouts, but a year or so later their names are given as Woodstock, Conrad, Olivier and Wilson, so I'm taking the view that it's Wilson with them from the wedding until Bill and Harriet are namechecked again in 1986. It makes very little difference, I know, but Wilson never gets enough credit among birdwatcher Peanuts fans.

Joe Richkid is Snoopy's golf opponent in one story, "Bad Call" Benny is his tennis opponent in another. Marbles, meanwhile, is another of Snoopy's brothers - he never really catches on like some of the others, but his short visit produces some classic funny moments. After that, we move away from the period when everything revolves around Snoopy and start to meet some new characters who don't just exist as his supporting cast...

Harold Angel basically exists to be a punchline to a Sally storyline, but then we get the first human to become a regular recurring character for many years - Lydia, Linus's irritating and fascinating classmate. One of those who really deserve a cameo in the upcoming movie, but I guess she showed up too late in the day for that. Maynard, who briefly tutors Peppermint Patty, is more forgettable.

The great time-capsule moment of the decade comes in 1986, with Tapioca Pudding. Remember that brief period when Strawberry Shortcake merchandise was absolutely everywhere? It came and went pretty quickly, but it's immortalised in Tapioca Pudding for a few months. It's interesting, really - back in the fifties, things like the craze among kids for Davy Crockett got a reference or two in Peanuts, but contemporary fads of the eighties seem to have passed Schulz by. Not a single joke about the toy-commercial cartoon mania that gripped us youngsters back then, but we did get jokes about Tapioca Pudding...

Our last two new faces of the decade are animals again - Raymond joins the Beagle Scouts, and you can tell him apart from the others because he's shaded in with the same greyscale as used with Franklin's skin (hi-tech shading, not done by hand, is a new innovation in the eighties Peanuts strips; Raymond is probably more of a reaction to that than to any racial issues of the time - his different colour isn't mentioned at all, in any way). And finally we get Snoopy's brother Olaf, the ugly one. Unlike Marbles, he sticks around until the end of the strip, but his partnership with Andy doesn't come along until the nineties. Stay tuned for the last decade in this thrilling series of blogs!

That's a lot of ones and noughts

My super-longstanding 30-minute binary record is no more! Johannes Mallow beat it in Spain today, with 4356!

I'm really surprised it took anyone eight years, to be honest, but now onwards and upwards! Who'll be the next to beat it?

I'm Big Ben, and I'm coming!

Remember that extremely cool promo video for Chinese TV earlier this year? I'll hopefully be filming something similar along those lines in a month or so. I need to assemble all these things into a compilation of video clips just about me - there's more than enough of the things out there...

Rugger

I keep meaning to watch rugby and get more than a sort of vague understanding of the rules. I mean, I know how it works, broadly speaking, but since most people who occasionally watch the game only have that kind of basic knowledge of it, I can't help thinking it would impress people with my sportiness if I actually knew what offside is...

Flight of Dragons

Soar in the purple light, in the sky, or in my mind... I've had the seminal 1980s cartoon movie on video for years, but haven't watched it for ages. I put that right today, and it's still a classic! Go out and find a copy, everyone, and watch it too. I insist!

And we'll paint by numbers till something sticks

Check out what Nelson's been up to! A children's memory book!

Hmm.

I'm very nearly 39. This isn't good.

Mustn't grumble

I get annoyed by the way that I always have just barely enough money these days - whatever my income at any given moment, there's always some expense that matches it exactly with nothing to spare. But I can't really feel like I'm desperately impoverished, because then I remember that I've had trips to America and China this year that have been paid for by memorising a few numbers, which you'd have to say makes me a lucky kind of person.

I could still do with winning the lottery, though.

Whoof

I've been working for the last two weeks straight without even a weekend off, but tomorrow's my last day at it, so then I get to spend three days in bed. And the middle one of them is my birthday, too!

It's getting wintery...

I really prefer summer. One of these days, when I'm a millionaire, I'll spend winters in Australia or somewhere like that. New Zealand, maybe, because everyone goes to Australia and I wouldn't want to be accused of following the herd.

Have I mentioned that I like muppets?

Oh yes, that's right, several times. So as someone who thinks the world always needs more muppets on television, I'm currently being cautiously optimistic about the new series, and basically trying to avoid hearing anything about it until it debuts on Sky the Monday after next. It might be really good, you never know.

Brief, you say?

Perhaps my recent blog posts have been a bit on the minimal side, but I've been working without a break for the last couple of weeks, covering for a colleague who's on a cruise. I'll have more time on my hands soon. Meanwhile, people might want to remember it's my birthday next Wednesday...

I'm feeling better now.

Junk food cures all ills.

I'm not well

And I blame dieting. It never does anyone any good. Right, from now on, nothing but junk food!

False memories

I woke up this morning from a dream about remembering something I'd forgotten and trying to work out whether I was remembering it from a dream or in real life. It was terribly confusing. It may be my subconscious mind trying to tell me to do more memory stuff. Or maybe less memory stuff, I don't know. My subconscious mind is as bad as my conscious mind when it comes to explaining things.

Peanuts in the Seventies

Presenting part three of the brilliantly unnecessary feature on which characters show up the most frequently in the long-running comic strip Peanuts.

The lines here are a lot more messy than the sixties chart, and there are a lot more characters on it as we enter into a phase of more than just the regulars showing up - a lot of named characters figure into one storyline and then go away again. But we can see the comic strip by the middle of the decade settling on the eight prominent characters who would sustain it right through to the end at the start of the year 2000 - Snoopy, Woodstock, Charlie Brown, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty and Marcie. The originals are still around, of course, but in very diminished roles - Shermy shows up only once in the 70s (and that's more of a probably-Shermy than a definite sighting) and Pig-Pen only twice. Patty, Violet and Frieda are relegated firmly to the background, along with the likes of 5 and Roy.

The seventies is Snoopy's decade. He's now the central driver of practically every storyline (and the strip now focuses on storylines, rather than one-off gags), with the others supporting him in his adventures. This reduces the role of Lucy and Linus from their heights of the 1960s, and leaves Charlie Brown clear in second place.

The first big "new character" of the seventies has actually been around for a while - in 1970, Snoopy finds out the name of "that annoying little bird" who's been hanging around with him lately, and for a while Woodstock is a constant presence. He fades away a little, but only a little, after a year or so, and stays around as his friend of friends' sidekick for ever after.

Peppermint Patty has been around for a while, and adds another other-side-of-towner to her gang in 1970, the wonderfully unpleasant Thibault, but she finally gets what she needs to make her complete in 1971, when she meets her ever-loyal sidekick Marcie. The two of them form maybe the greatest double-act in newspaper-comic history and a lot of their appearances are just the two of them, separately from the other major characters.

Rerun, the little brother of Lucy and Linus, is born in 1972 (though we don't see him till the following year) and sets a new world record for remaining as a seldom-seen background character before growing up and joining the central cast in the mid-nineties. It was a strange decision to add another Van Pelt to the dynamic, and I get the feeling Schulz quickly wished he hadn't done it, but it all works out in the end - there are some classic three-handed comics in the nineties that show what a great idea it was, all along.

Poochie, an old friend who comes to visit in 1973 and is surprised by how Snoopy looks now, is pretty forgettable, as is Loretta, who sells girl scout cookies. Neither of them stick around. 1974, though, sees the debut of the strangest Peanuts character - the school building. It communicates, sort of, with Sally on a regular basis - for the purposes of this chart, only strips where we see that particular corner of the building and it has thought-bubbles are counted as 'appearances', although any other strip set in the school could technically count as well. The school building commits suicide in 1976, but the line on the chart includes its replacement, and also Peppermint Patty's school when Sally temporarily goes there and talks to it, too. Plenty of other inanimate objects follow the school's example and have thoughts of their own as Peanuts gets increasingly surreal, but the school is the only one with a real personality and a sort of name. It's also probably what elevates Sally to starring role status - she becomes much more frequently seen at around the time she starts talking to the school, and takes her place in the big eight central characters.

Spike, Snoopy's brother, makes his debut in 1975, and he's a strange one. Though his first storyline involves him coming to visit, after that he goes back to live in the desert with just the rocks and cacti for company, and when he appears in a strip he's almost always the only character who shows up, entirely disconnected from the rest of the Peanuts cast. At first there's usually a framing sequence of him writing to Snoopy, but after that it's just Spike on his own again. He stays around for the duration of the strip, and we'll see more of him in the eighties. Snoopy's sister Belle shows up as well in 1976 (as does her son in one strip, though he doesn't have a name). Other siblings come along in later years as the dogs steadily elbow aside the humans and take over the comic.

1976 also brings us Floyd in the now traditional summer camp storyline of that year, and then 1977 gives us four short-lived named characters in the diminutive Austin, Ruby, Leland and Milo, who look up to Charlie Brown for baseball advice. Later that year we meet Molly Volley, Snoopy's tennis partner, who continues to make occasional recurring appearances (during tennis season) for many years.

In 1978 we get our first introduction to the Beagle Scouts - with Snoopy as scoutmaster, he leads a quartet of identical birds on expeditions. Their names are given as Woodstock, Bill, Conrad and Olivier. Since all birds who appear in Peanuts from the seventies onwards are physically identical to Woodstock, it's difficult to tell who's who. Generally (because I was sure you'd want me to) I've credited Woodstock with appearing in any strip with one or more unnamed birds, and Bill, Conrad and Olivier with also appearing in any Beagle Scout or Foreign Legion strips, even if their names aren't mentioned. It all gets a bit more complicated in the eighties and beyond, with new Woodstock lookalikes appearing, but for the seventies it's comparatively simple...

Eudora, Sally's sidekick, shows up for the first time in 1978 and hangs around quite regularly (sometimes as support to Snoopy's flying ace, too) for the best part of a decade. "Crybaby" Boobie, Snoopy's tennis opponent, also continues to pop up infrequently for many years to come.

Which leads me into a tangent about major characters - the really quite brilliant Peanuts Wiki considers seventeen characters to be 'major'; a list which (indefensibly in my opinion) includes Eudora but not Spike. Peanuts.com goes with a slimmer list of eleven (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Franklin and Pig-Pen), omitting Eudora, Shermy, Original Patty, Violet, Frieda and Rerun from the wiki's list. The website for the awesome-looking upcoming movie restores Shermy, Patty, Violet and Frieda to starring roles, and also adds the little red-haired girl (whose 'thing' throughout the comics and most of the cartoons was that she was talked about a lot but never seen) and newly-created-for-the-movie dog Fifi.

This just illustrates that the old characters from the fifties always get remembered by the nostalgia buffs, while the likes of Rerun (whose five years of fame were the last five before Schulz's death) always get ignored. Which is a shame, because the comics from the nineties were some of the funniest, if you ask me.

To my mind, the 50-appearances-in-a-year line on the chart above are a good indicator of who's a major character and who isn't. If you're showing up in the comic at least once a week on average over a lengthy period, you've made the big time. So my list of the thirteen major Peanuts characters would go: Charlie Brown and Snoopy (throughout), Lucy and Linus (mid-fifties until the end), Woodstock, Sally, Peppermint Patty and Marcie (seventies until the end), Patty, Shermy, Violet and Schroeder (in the fifties; Schroeder's unique in continuing to show up more rarely all the way to the end) and Rerun (late nineties). Spike peaks at 49, by my count, and Frieda at 46. Eudora, Franklin and Pig-Pen don't even come close.

Stay tuned for the 1980s as Peanuts moves into modern times - by the end of the seventies it's safe to say we've already met all the memorable characters, but the next decade does introduce us to Lydia, Marbles, and... Tapioca Pudding.