How about in each round you get 8 letters and a blank, where the blank scores no points but can be used to construct a longer word. The tiles are randomly assigned a score of 1-8, and rather than having the number of points on the tile, each tile is a different colour, which corresponds to a colour code which changes every five seconds in the round. Also, the tiles swap positions every five seconds, but the colours remain in the same position. Obviously the players have different tiles or the thing just becomes too complicated. Now, if you use double letters you get double points, and if the double letters are contiguous in the word you get quadruple points, and if they're contiguous on the board you get octuple points (obviously, as all contiguous board letters nets you double). This is where it gets interesting and I use Dmitry's idea. There are now six piles of letters: vowels, consonants, non-consonanting vowels, non-consonanting consonants, non-vowing vowels and non-boweling incontinence. You must pick one from each and no more than six from each pile to counteract defensive tactics when one gains the lead. Blanks vowels must be used as vowels except in bullet where that would complicate issues. In Goat you can select a * as your final letter by pressing the Insert key, and you can pick *V and *C by pressing the ¬ and ¦ keys respectively. Haha, that would be silly though, tactics-wise. Words are only declared once the game is over to nullify the tactical advantage of picking. Ending round early qualifies you for a bonus round, the maximum score of which is in proportion with the length of the round to how far through the round you were when you ended it early, RELATIVE TO THE ROUND IN THE MATCH, as obviously towards the end you will probably be braindead from trying to remember all these rules and the advantage should decrease forthwith. There is just one nuance to buzzing for conundrums, which of course makes no sense now that the first letter of it is not static. Rather than typing a letter to buzz, you actually type the colour of the object the conundrum refers to, with the first Google Image result taking precedence (SafeSearch off, lol). Numbers are the same.

That still actually makes more sense than Dmitry's idea.

What do mean ¬ and ¦?!

How about Point variant? Each letter scores you different amount of points, but there are some "blank" or "*" cards that score NOTHING which can substitute EVERY letter, much like in Scrabble. The word with the most points wins, BUT in case of a tie, longest word still wins. Longest word and word with most possible points (best word) scores DOUBLE the points and if the word is BOTH the longest possible and the best possible it scores QUADRUPLE the points (it's just because they're multiplied by 2*2)!
Conundrum
This is an exception to the general Point variant scoring rule. Although the correctly guessed conundrum always is both longest and best word possible, it only counts DOUBLE the points.
There are two variants: no "voweling-consonanting" (NVC) and with "voweling-consonanting" (WVC).
NVC
there are "regular blank" cards, or simply "*" in deck
WVC
There are "blank vowel" or "*V" cards in vowels deck and, you guessed, "blank consonant" or "*C" in consonants deck.

P.S. NOTE: this variant is only suitable for letters and conundrums. If you have an idea about how to make such numbers or targets score more points, please post it here

P.P.S. With "voweling-consonanting" means than the player choose between vowel or consonant. No "voweling-consonanting" means that that isn't player's choice, but instead it's indeed random.

Double what? Is conundrum scoring dependent on the letters that come out?

Yes, it's double the points of all letters in the conundrum.

How's the coding for Dmitry's variant coming along Charlie?

WHO'S CHARLIE???!!!

Did you just seriously ask that question, Dmitry

Charlie-deniers are scum.

But does "Charlie" really exist? I think "he" is a government conspiracy to keep all countdowners stuck on their computers and laptops rather than out on the streets causing havoc. I'll ask Richard Brittain, i'm sure he knows the answer

WHO'S RICHARD BRITTAIN???!!!

I think his real name's Ecclesiastes Myanmar.

THE TRUTH is out there.

Is this topic for variant ideas or what?!

Don't know where you got that idea!

Dmitry's idea is that it isn't, so fits perfectly.

MY IDEA IS THAT IT IS, YOU LITTLE!!!!!

How about pot-black 15 rounders? I.e. regardless of the score after 14 rounds, whoever gets the conundrum wins?

Actually, better than that, a scoring system where only the winner of the previous round can score, such as it used to be in badminton.

And sticking with a sporting theme, some sort of Stableford (golf) system might be interesting, although probably not different enough from flat scoring really. It might work quite well in hyper/unlimited variants however, where sub-optimal scoring is much more common.

Yep, maybe add some "par" here

I like this idea a lot! Clearly, handicaps will have to come into play. I'm pretty certain that this would enable me to beat Kirk finally even if he manages a hatful of nines and I declare pitiful sixes and sevens (working on the basis that he will be a scratch player and my handicap will be about as impressive as my real golf handicap which is 33!).

I do like the way you play for skins on the Tiger Woods golf game. This could work as a scoring system, whereby you get a point for winning the round, but if the round is drawn, no one gets that point until the next round has been won. This could work with 1 point per round or the usual points system, which wouldn't be totally fair, but a bit of a laugh!

And on sports, you could have a Formula One system where some people get better letters all the time. The better results someone gets, the more likely they are to be rewarded with better letters next season, but there's no guarantee, and some people can be outperforming their letters for years but with nobody with any say bothering to notice.

Dreidel scoring?

I'm not sure Dreidel scoring (good name) really adds a great deal, but since it's been at least a year since we had a new scoring system (and it's got the topic back on track), I'll consider it.

Do you have permission to reply?! About rights and permissions, see below

PLEASE POST SOMETHiNG!!!!!!!! I even give you permission!

Maybe nobody has any ideas today. I'm sure your chivvying will help though.

Tomatoes are fruits.

There, happy?

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!

Kids version
Letters
6 letters drawn
Numbers
1 each of 1-10, 4 numbers drawn. 2-digit target

That's just a shit version of Junior. Dmitry, why not have a look at apterous.org before posting any more of these? There's already a lot of variants in existence and in all likelihood anything you think of has already been implemented, at least to some degree.

Is this five separate ideas? I think the second and fourth ideas might catch on, but I think we'd need something else to finish off the show, although I've no idea what.

Hoping to drag this away from anything to do with Dmitry and his little 'nuggets' of wisdom...

I've had an idea for a variant called 'alps', though obviousl'y I'm open to any better names.

Much like aegilops, you have between 2 and 4 letters, and much like aegilops, they must be used in the same order they come out, but the difference is that the first letter out must be the first letter in the word declared, and the final letter out must be the final letter in the word declared.

For example-

TY- TRY would be a valid answer, but STY wouldn't.

CED- CRED would be a valid answer, but ICED & CEDE wouldn't.

Where this is impossible, the 'last letter' rule is relaxed first and it becomes a regular aegilops round, but with the restriction that the first letter in the selection must always be the first letter in the answer declared. Even if it's an X.

Conundrums are fairly obvious- much like aegilops but with the first and last letters always present. As such they should also be 'nasty'

For numbers, I'm thinking regular aegilops but with omelette rules, or hyper aegilops (the larges can be any number between 25 and 200 inclusive).

I fully admit this idea is an answer to a question no one asked- namely 'how do we make aegilops harder?'.

Okay, a question no one besides Matt Bayfield asked. Still though, it could be fun.

^ I like this. They used to do something similar on TV (can't for the life of me remember the show ).

Is it time for an Ultra version? I've been looking and no word (that I can find) has more than 15 unique letters, these being some of the offenders:
• radioimmunoelectrophoresis - RADIOMUNELCTPHS
• psychoneuroendocrinological PSYCHONEURDCIGL
• hepaticocholangiogastrostomy HEPATICOLNGSRMY
• spectrophotofluorometrically SPECTROHFLUMIAY
It would allow words like SENSELESSNESS to be pencilled in (I'm honestly not obsessing about that word ), and with an Unlimited variant and 15 letters at your fingertips the whole dictionary would be available. However, to make it a little more interesting I suggest a minimum score of 8 letters before scoring. 15 letter conundrum and Numbers as Hyper, cos otherwise it's just insane, if it's not already.

Off surfing for sadism.

Lesley: you're probably thinking of Catchword, the old BBC2 show hosted by Paul Coia.

Re: Ben's proposal, I'm certainly not looking for a way to make Aegilops Letters Rounds harder. Plenty of the Letters Rounds (for 3 or 4 letter selections) are difficult enough as it is. I also fear that the restriction of starting with the first letter will lead to a lot of selections where the max ends up only using the first two letters of the selection, rather than 3 or 4, and I don't think this is conducive to great gameplay. (Especially as 2-letter Aegilops is largely trivial, give or take a few odd words you need to learn.)

The Numbers Rounds though - well, you can Hyper those or do what you like - I have no comments either way there!

How about this one then...

A solitaire variant where every player has the entire distribution of letters at their disposal, but only gets 9 at a time under the usual Countdown rules. The trick is they must make words out of the letters as they come out, and after each round, the unused letters from the round carry over to the next one- adding a Scrabble-style element of strategy.

To prevent people banging out 2s and 3s, scoring would be biased toward rewarding longer words, e.g. at the top end, 7 letter words would score 18 points, 8 letter words would score 25 and 9s would score 40. Any letters unused at the end of the game would result in points being deducted from the final score.

Anticipating a couple of problems with this, so here are my solutions- invalid words declared would result in a zero score as normal, and the letters used in the word would also be lost, and if the selection gets totally bogged down in crap, the player has the option to declare nothing for the round and get a whole new set of letters for a small forfeit score.

I'm sure I've ripped off something or other here so feel free to tell me, but I personally think this'd be rather good. It's also easily adaptable to hyper and junior, and even across dictionaries (Scrabblers would love it).