c4countdown

Philip A

61 episodes and 4 years and I’ve still never made it to the 1% Club.

Philip A

Very high standard game between two lovely people. Could easily have gone to a crucial.

Third numbers was hard to do.

In the past two series prior to this, only 1 conundrum was solved in the finals. This series, 2 out of 2 solved already.

Philip A

No. 2 seed Brett Davids vs the last non-returnee standing, Mark Allen.

Philip A

samir pilica wrote: ↑Thu Dec 11, 2025 4:05 pm R6 IDIGBOS (if it's still valid).

Yep, still in.

Philip A

Very good score from Jase and good spirits from Shemina. I got CONFUTES, didn’t know ENSWATHE, but got the last numbers using Rachel’s way and I also got the conundrum in 1 second. I only had SOLIDI for 6 in the LIBIDOS round. CHILLAXED reminded me of a TV show that had a short run: 101 Ways To Leav...

Philip A

No. 1 seed Jase Cullen plays the only non-octochamp, seven-time winner Shemina Kirby.

You know the drill… the conundrums get harder!

Philip A

Fiona T wrote: ↑Thu Dec 11, 2025 10:22 am https://www.tiktok.com/@daddylmg/video/ ... 3641101591

Crikey! Mental arithmetic must be his bread and butter! Numberblocks helping?

Philip A

Also I make it 89 of the 118 prelim matches to feature at least one returnee, meaning just under 25% of prelim matches have been between two non-returning contestants.

Philip A

10 maxima from Megel: 9 letters games and the conundrum.

As I write this, he’s still practising on Apterous!

Philip A

The other ‘extreme’ way to make 625, that doesn’t use a 25, is 50 * 75 = 3,750 which can then be divided by 6.

Philip A

R14:
828 is also 18 * 46:

828 / 6 = 138
138 / 3 = 46

So:

(8*5+4+2)*3*6

Philip A

I hate Rock, Paper, Scissors. I got 40% wrong.

Philip A

Actually, Susie, CONIES and CONEYS both correct, I believe. Typing ‘conies’ does not direct, but according to the page: coney Pronunciation: /ˈkəʊni/ (also cony ) NOUN (plural coneys ) 1 ARCHAIC or Heraldry A rabbit. So, going by the second spelling, which is written in subscript: cony > conies. Aft...

Philip A

Steve Hyde wrote: ↑Mon Dec 08, 2025 2:37 pm
Philip A wrote: ↑Tue Dec 02, 2025 6:57 pm 11 teapots is a record as well, I think.
Series 90 had 11 as well - Kirby, Roe and Newnham all had teapots from previous appearances. Fiona Wood was also a previous winner, but from the pre-teapot era

Ah, thanks - so a joint record then.

Philip A

A reminder The 1% Club Rollover starts tonight at 9:00 pm.
This is a 5-night event and will air on 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th of December - 5 nights of shows!

14th December is a repeat. A new Christmas edition will at on 25th December.

Philip A

Jon Stammers wrote: ↑Mon Dec 08, 2025 8:02 am
Philip A wrote: ↑Tue Dec 02, 2025 6:57 pm 11 teapots is a record as well, I think.
Interesting post Philip, this was the only bit I didn’t get.

Jase, Brett and Ricky are previous winners, so they have 2 teapots. So, 8 + 3.

With three heats to go, 25 people have had a second go this series and 39 this year.

Philip A

Good to finally a new contestant do well - relatively new Apterite who also loves his dominoes and Scrabble!

Diving 660 by 3 to make 220 makes that difficult first numbers game easier.

Philip A

25 returning contestants in Series 92 now. Are they running out of contestants?

Philip A

SPONDAIC for 8 in the second letters game.

Philip A

Third numbers: The first way I saw: (100/2-10-7)*8=264 The second way: 100*2+10*7-6=264 ... I saw your (very simple) second way in a couple of seconds and I'm no maths whizz - Rachel must have spotted it Does she deliberately miss easy solutions for some reason? I doubt she deliberately misses easy...

Philip A

I don't pay much attention to the in-round shots but when I saw it slowing zooming out from the clock in one of the rounds, I didn't think I recognised it. What does Philip say? Have they changed anything recently? That zoom out shot has been done sporadically a few times this year, typically durin...

Philip A

They've done it again. Another invalid comparative not specified in the dictionary goes unchecked by Dictionary Corner. 'Littler' is not listed and 'little' has 2 syllables, so as per Countdown rules 'littler' is invalid. It should be in the dictionary (littlest pet shop) but it isn't! Why does this...

Philip A

Over 34,000 on 15-1 vs over 10,000 for The Chase.

Honourable mention: children’s favourite 50/50 had 11,800 contestants. The 1% Club needs to get to 119 episodes to surpass that.

Philip A

Can confirm: 7 returnees in the finals is a record, and Series 92 has also set a new record for the most returnees with 23 (and counting); 2025 has had 37 returnees (and counting), also a record. Over 325 people have now had a second go. 2025 is also the first year in which all Dictionary Corner gue...

Philip A

Third numbers: The first way I saw: (100/2-10-7)*8=264 The second way: 100*2+10*7-6=264 By the way, prior to today Ricky nothced up enough wins to push John Pakenham down to 9th! A shame, as John’s average of 99 is the highest among new contestants this series. His 5 wins weren’t enough in the end, ...

Philip A

Assuming Countdown is not a general knowledge quiz show technically (i.e. sets puzzles rather than asks questions on facts) and also discounting the interactive TV quiz game Bamboozle (over 6,000 shows) and radio quizzes like PopMaster - no, that’s not because they’ve all got 9 letters in their name...

Philip A

Ian Fitzpatrick wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 10:56 am Rather spookily i was catching up with Only Connect last night from earlier in the month and came across the 5KS performing well.

Yeah they’ve been amazing to watch. Also thank goodness for the repechage, otherwise they’d only be on for 1 show!

Philip A

Based on recent media news items for Series 29, Rob Beckett is now permanent team captain. Judi Love will also be regular guest captain. In other words, Rob will have the most airtime of all the players with Judi Love in second. So we should have fewer rotating guests, especially captins. Jon Richar...

Philip A

Delete if not allowed. We shook hands when we met in the green room during the recording of the 2019 Champion of Champions and the first thing said to me was, “Nice to meet you in person.” He was eccentric, but did not seem dangerous in any way shape or form at the time. I wasn’t aware he had schizo...

Philip A

Rachel Riley will appear on The Festive Finish Line, along with Christopher Biggins, on 15th December at 5:15 pm. This is a week of celebrity specials of the Roman Kemp/Sarah Green-fronted quiz show.

Philip A

Martin Hurst wrote: ↑Mon Nov 24, 2025 3:29 pm Celebrity Sabotage looks like a proper turkey - feels like a rip off of Impractical Jokers, but with the same tired old faces.

As Chris Tarrant put it in a Telegraph interview, how on earth do these ideas get commissioned? Maybe we need more 1%s and BBC Two quiz shows.

Philip A

Apparently this is the reason why: They were originally going to air a new reality entertainment programme called Celebrity Sabotage, but due to cost cutting reasons, ITV have delayed it to 2026 and instead chucked in an old 1% Club. Deal or No Deal has also been pushed back to 2026 and will also ai...

Philip A

‘Minuter’ is just not used enough. It’s a simple as that really.

I think from now on you really do have to spot everyday words. Risking words is more likely to punish you for mistakes now.

Philip A

For goodness sake. It took me 45 minutes to realise 22nd November 2025’s episode was a repeat!

Ah well. We got the Rollover episodes on the 8th of December. The current series has paused after 6 episodes.

Meanwhile BBC Two will next week be repeating a game show from 2008.

Philip A

TV Ark has reported that Andrew Wood passed away on 16th November, 2025.

He, along with comedian Norman Vaughan, created the legendary game show Bullseye.

Philip A

I did 665 Rachel’s way, but as she wrote it I realised that you could have just done ((75+50)/25) to make 5…

…then do (100-5)*7=665.

Funny how our brains work.

Philip A

I tend to think a quiz show a television programme that presents asking contestants questions on well-known facts and subjects. You get questions and you are (most of the time) rewarded for correct answers and disadvantaged for incorrect answers. They try find the most suitable contestants who can s...

Philip A

Two shows in and I’ve just spotted a flaw. You can scrape through the head-to-head 1 point to 0 with LESS money. That is completely wrong. Instead, it should be three questions and arrows each, and each correct hit should be worth £100. The team with the most money overall should win. This would sav...

Philip A

Love the choice of themes and the updated game menu too. Would like to suggest a 1982 theme with the cards and CECIL resembling Episode 1.

Philip A

It’s only on for half an hour, so it’s quite difficult to explain everything properly in all the cuts. The editors have to decide which cuts work best on the spot.

Impressive quizzing so far. The format is again proving that Mastermind is missing a trick in a lack of repechage.

Philip A

Just wondering if there was a minor error in the last numbers game, chosen by the challenger. Both contestants declared different numbers but were equidistant from the target. Challenger was 1 above and Champion was 1 below; the Champion said ‘Not Written Down’ but the Challenger gave his solution f...

Philip A

https://youtu.be/reNXj7s3w1k?si=PUe340QiKKOpboNn Episode is now on YouTube courtesy of ITV.

Philip A

Slightly better, but that head-to-head round on the Yorkshire board was rubbish. I thought that round was a good addition, and fits in well with the rest of the show. For anyone who didn't see it, each team in turn is asked a question to which the answer is a number 1-20. The dart player and non-da...

Philip A

Slightly better, but that head-to-head round on the Yorkshire board was rubbish.

Philip A

Series 93 is about to begin recording so hopefully the next Champion of Champions will be recorded in the latter half of 2026 to air in 2027. Previous tournaments from 2003 were held 3 years apart, with the 30th Birthday Series airing 4 years after the 2009 CoC and 3 years before the 2016 CoC, but t...

Philip A

It’s back for 4 more shows plus a Christmas special, starting Sunday 9th November @ 8:00 pm on ITV 1. Luke Littler will again feature in the first show, but there will be a different professional player in each of the other shows. Hopefully it won’t be quite so raucous this time.

Philip A

It’s probably best not to ask for real names of people who prefer to use usernames or pseudonyms on the app to protect their identity. Just saying.

Philip A

Very surprised outpour(s) isn’t in Oxford Dictionaries Premium. I’m sure I’ve heard of emotional outpours; seems the dictionary just has ‘outpouring(s)’.

Philip A

Would anyone be kind enough to enlighten me as to why Countdown always disallows words which only appear in a combinations of words or phrases? In this case, you can’t have ‘elkhorn’ because it only appears in ‘elkhorn coral’ (as Susie explained), and for another example you can’t have ‘curlies’ bec...

Philip A

I wonder how much longer Joel Lane-Smith’s “Marmaduke” selection of 4 large numbers coupled with the leftmost and rightmost small numbers from the second row will catch on. It’s a fun way to pick 4 large either way.

Philip A

The 5ks will return on 10th November in a rematch against the Showstoppers. mebbes aye, mebbes naw - they seem to have lost a game (Whitley Baes v Pear Trees). Guess we'll find out...! Fair enough, that’s the provisional date anyway. I know they sometimes change billed episodes. Either way we won’t...

Philip A

The 5ks will return on 10th November in a rematch against the Showstoppers.

Philip A

Yes, I think ‘minuter’ (which is now only in the historical dictionary) has returned to the list of common Countdown pitfalls such as ‘Pilates’, ‘con-man’, ‘-monger’, and ‘elations’. Some of these have anagrams (in this case, RUNTIME) but unless practised it’s very easy to go for the wrong ones.

Philip A

R9 alt for 803 which is 73 * 11 so: 100 - 5 * 5 - 2 = 73 8 + 3 = 11 73 * 11 = 803 Unusual way but that was the first way I saw. ‘Minuter’ being disallowed is unfortunate. I think Susie made it clear as to why it’s not in the dictionary compared to MINUTEST, but very unlucky nonetheless (even if it d...

Philip A

Dubious record I’m trying to work out. Today, Ryan scored 84 in all non-numbers games (that is, 10 letters + conundrum for a total of 11 anagramming games). This included his 9-letter word of CREMATION and his conundrum solve. In contrast, he scored 0 in all four numbers rounds, which is unfortunat...

Philip A

Dubious record I’m trying to work out. Today, Ryan scored 84 in all non-numbers games (that is, 10 letters + conundrum for a total of 11 anagramming games). This included his 9-letter word of CREMATION and his conundrum solve. In contrast, he scored 0 in all four numbers rounds, which is unfortunate...

Philip A

Tough Round 1 but I spotted WEIGHS for 6 on the bell.

Philip A

Paul Worsley wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 11:09 am Prunella Scales, actress, aged 93 RIP

She died on 27th October which is also John Cleese's birthday.

Philip A

I got the conundrum in one second, but unless you've been practising, it's actually not an easy word to unravel. Common word doesn't always mean it's dead easy for everyone. It's quite a party trick, doing anagrams.

Philip A

In case you're wondering, the plural of GENUS is GENERA — not genuses as you might think. I discovered this and got null points. So there's your 'false-agram': NEGUSES. I've always wondered are 'false-agrams' actually useful, or are you better off just learning the correct word (since you are reinf...

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