c4countdown

Philip A

Howie Myers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 6:59 am r1: STORABLES

Not a noun, sadly.

Philip A

As discussed elsewhere, there is currently a bug in Oxford Premium which is preventing dozens of -IER and -IEST from appearing. They have not been removed per se. They do still in appear in ODP’s database. Without the bug, PEATIEST and TANGLIER would have been accepted. Unfortunately, it looks like ...

Philip A

Howie Myers wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 7:04 am r7 alt: OUTLEARN and OUTFLARE

‘Outflare’ is not in the dictionary.

Philip A

R13 Alt: FIBULA

RAZORFISH took me a second dead to unravel.

Philip A

Judging by his body language, the winner was taking it way too seriously in my view. Feel sorry for James, especially as he chose a subject that was congruent with his PhD studies.

A few weeks ago, a heat winner previously appeared 45 years ago, and was a fantastic advert for Mastermind.

Philip A

What I like about Countdown is that I can put it on every weekday and see a unique show without fail. Put on Pointless or The Chase and there's always a chance it could be a repeat. I do find this repeat trend very irritating. It’s even more irritating when there are more repeats than new episodes....

Philip A

Sam Cappleman-Lynes wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 7:38 pm James Haughton on Mastermind tonight.

His third appearance, I think.

Philip A

Toby McDonald wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 10:52 pm
Philip A wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 6:53 pm ((100-7)*75+50))/25=278
That makes 281, unfortunately.

Ah yeah, 93*3 is not 276 of course.

Philip A

There was, and as of now still is, a bug in the dictionary which is preventing dozens of -IER/-IEST words from appearing, hence why ‘peatiest’ was disallowed. The bug was noted after recording. Without the bug, the word would have appeared and given valid. Hopefully the bug will be squashed soon. Al...

Philip A

Howie Myers wrote: ↑Sat Mar 04, 2023 6:48 am r1 alt: WOOLIES

American spelling, so not allowed – WOOLLY and inflections have two Ls in the British spelling. Strange but true.

Philip A

DOTAKU in R6 too.

Philip A

samir pilica wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 11:52 am consistent in applying 5 year rule re reappearances.

I wish Countdown was like that, as I expressed elsewhere.

Philip A

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was of its time. That time was 1998. I just don't think it has enough to keep the excitement over a long period of time. I think in any country it’s shown, a first jackpot win is a conclusion to the anticipation and makes the show less and less relevant. It did used to...

Philip A

Actually, having thought about it a bit more, it's probably the case that all quiz shows are game shows but not all game shows are quiz shows. Which means the Chase is the best overall for me. I wonder would it survive without Bradley though in the way Countdown did without Richard? I still love Th...

Philip A

All the shows mentioned are good in their own right, BUT… Why is Millionaire the most successful game show format in the world? Over 120 countries have adopted this Great British export. For sure, the jackpot is the main attraction, but it’s not won by picking lottery numbers. Answer 15 questions of...

Philip A

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? - question and answer in purest form. Win lose or fold, the end result is always entirely your own responsibility even with the guidance of the lifelines.

Philip A

Good win for Dan. Now the Spinks finally have a teapot.

The usage of ‘moule’ individually is very rare, especially in English, but the ‘moule’ entry suggests it is still as reasonable as the usage of ‘mussel’. I think they need to double-check more habitually.

Philip A

Clarkson’s next series will be his last.

Update: no it won’t!

Philip A

I would allow COZIES. COZY is the North American word for the sleeves wrapped around drink cans, as are COOZIE and KOOZIE.

1.2
(cozy)
North American English
An insulating sleeve used to keep a canned or bottled drink cold:

Philip A

The target generator is darker than it was before. It does look better, actually.

Philip A

Jamelia joins Dictionary Corner.

Philip A

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 7:17 pm I use ANISOLE on my SEALION

We use ALOINES.

Philip A

We don't need that US rule of course... And that out-earn / sea lion thing is a fault with Oxford. It doesn't matter which is more common. The question is whether outearn and sealion are common enough in their own right. Oxford always picks one or the other, which is stupid and very unhelpful for C...

Philip A

Johnny Canuck wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:27 pm Smithers is Montgomery Burns' "assistant". Suuuuure.

I thought it was a smart clue.

Philip A

@Dame Since Countdown did use to use Lexico which is now gone: the existence of the Google Dictionary supplied by Oxford Languages (found by Googling ‘dictionary’) makes me wonder whether this source is worth using to crossover if a word (especially an inflection) is not in Oxford Dictionaries Prem...

Philip A

Howie Myers wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 3:55 pm r1 alt: ROADIES or CORDAGE
r7 alt: APLOMB
r 1 alt: TROVERS

I had IDOCRASE and UMBONAL.

Philip A

@Dame Since Countdown did use to use Lexico which is now gone: the existence of the Google Dictionary supplied by Oxford Languages (found by Googling ‘dictionary’) makes me wonder whether this source is worth using to crossover if a word (especially an inflection) is not in Oxford Dictionaries Premi...

Philip A

Chris Hawkins runs Duplicate Scrabble meetups on Zoom. I can recommend Duplicate Scrabble if you prefer a word game with no luck involved like Countdown (though Duplicate Scrabble does partly take away the social aspect, so has some downsides). Duplicate Scrabble is vastly more popular in French tha...

Philip A

You could get a top bot (Quackle or something?) to play itself millions of times with different scoring systems, and see which gives the most balanced results. Yep, exactly that. I think Quackle is the favourite but there’s another machine called Elise. You’ll be surprised what you miss when you en...

Philip A

ODP giving FAUNAS as the only plural of FAUNA is just silly, the other plural faunae x is so common!

Philip A

MATRONAL in R1.

Philip A

I think this is a poor take on Scrabble. I'm on about the game itself, not the dictionary. You say Scrabble has evolved, but then go on to talk about things that have nothing to do with Scrabble (the game), evolving. The point values for the X J Q Z are wrong. Alfred Butts created the game without ...

Philip A

While i'm here taking a kicking, let's talk about Scrabble. A game probably intended to kill those intermediate hours at Xmas between the main meal and evening piss-up. These days, they have a world championship, they take themselves seriously, but the larger world has thankfully seen through it. C...

Philip A

While i'm here taking a kicking, let's talk about Scrabble. A game probably intended to kill those intermediate hours at Xmas between the main meal and evening piss-up. These days, they have a world championship, they take themselves seriously, but the larger world has thankfully seen through it. C...

Philip A

Think Dictionary Corner had a slight off day in missing ADHESION and TITANIUM.

Philip A

I did well today, though went for ownages x which is not countable. MALIGNANT took me a couple of seconds to check, but it wasn’t a gimme.

Philip A

R5: NUGATORY - of no value, useless, futile.

Philip A

Maybe a years subscription could be offered to winners insttead of a teapot as an option. 😊 That’s a no from me, but I think they did use to offer lifetime subscriptions to Oxford online to series champions. Unsure if they still do that now, but still a good prize especially now the OEDs are out-of...

Philip A

Prediction: Colin Murray will be host by 2040. A fine presenter who’s getting better all the time.

Philip A

R12: MITOUT

Philip A

R9 Alt: 7*75+25*4+9+1=635

Philip A

I'm finding Wordiply quite addictive and I think where is, some scope for an afternoon game show out of it. Maybe like lingo start with 3 letter sets and come up with longest words, starting with, including and ending with to score points then increase to 4 letter sets with the same formula and may...

Philip A

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sat Feb 18, 2023 12:40 pm Series 24 seems to have stalled after one episode.

Some series do stop midway through, or delay transmission of episodes. Some recordings are shelved for more than a year or even two years. Have viewers been switching off?

Philip A

R12: IMPORTEE

Philip A

Is it definitely only an issue for comparatives and superlatives of derivatives, or one affecting derivatives generally? There used to be several aspects of derivatives needing some dictionary corner common sense input because there was no information in the dictionary. I remember coming across &qu...

Philip A

Noticed recently the goodie bag isn’t mentioned anymore, giving an impression it’s been scrapped.

Update: reliably informed they are still given.

Philip A

OUP have said these words and others haven't been 'removed' as such - there's a software bug that is preventing them from showing. They're still in the database and they're working on the technical side to fix things. We had to disallow PEATIEST recently and after raising a query, the glitch was di...

Philip A

Ryan Lam wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 2:41 pm We're back on, they just restarted from just after the first Teatime Teaser...looks like we're going to end late today

Good decision to restart the show from the beginning of part 2 rather than at the point when transmission was interrupted.

Philip A

Unfortunately, a technical problem at Channel 4 has halted the programme during part 2.

Philip A

The bright shirt-wearing Andrew Barrett returns for his 7th game. Will he finally attain a century score?

Philip A

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 8:37 pm Wonder who the oldest contestant is? I suppose it's hard to say as not all ages are revealed

Believed to be Geoffrey Green. https://wiki.apterous.org/Geoffrey_Green

Philip A

Adam Dexter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 8:37 pm Wonder who the oldest contestant is? I suppose it's hard to say as not all ages are revealed

Believed to be Geoffrey Green.

Philip A

Enjoyable episode. Unlucky, Denis - just hit the post on the conundrum.

Philip A

Nice going from Andrew in the letters, maxing 7 of them.

Philip A

R12: AZURITE, a blue mineral

Philip A

R5: VOGUEST, most fashionable
R6 alt: (75-25-10+1)*10-8=402

Philip A

Sorry for my bizarre take, but just to be clear re RUINATE: the first definition of ruinate 2 is an exact match as it appears in the OED: - Forms: 1500s rewynate, 1500s–1600s ruynate, 1500s– ruinate, 1600s ruinate (past participle), 1800s– ruinaayte (English regional (Berkshire)), 1800s– ruineyat (E...

Philip A

There’s no perfect solution. I wouldn’t go back to a paper dictionary - so much more convenient to search for words online now. CSW21 already contains its own bizarre content, plus extremely rare plurals of nouns which are commonly mass nouns, so that’s also a no from me. I can understand the reason...

Philip A

It has come to my attention that comparative and superlative forms of adjectives (ending in -y, especially) listed under derivatives in Oxford Dictionaries Premium have been removed! Just a few examples; MOPIER and MOPIEST, OAKIER and OAKIEST, OATIER and OATIEST, FUMIER and FUMIEST - search for thes...

Philip A

Toby McDonald wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:49 pm R14 alt.: (25-6)*50+8*4+1 = 983

Also (50-6-4-1)*25+8

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