I've been practising 5-small since I arrived on Apterous. Started practising 6-small last week I think (you should be able to see cos I was playing 6-small against bots, and losing them all the time til I got the hang of it). This week I've started work on 4-large, but not got very far with that yet (any tips, methods etc would be gratefully received).

I played a couple of games last night against real people where I was choosing 6-small, and in one of them I think it gave me a real advantage. I won by quite a high margin, and I think the 6-smalliness was partially responsible.

Clare, do the Countdown audition team give you any tips on practising, or even point you towards apterous and this forum?

No Ian, they don't. I found this place through Google after having vaguely remembered seeing someone mention something on the show itself (I realise now it was probably Charlie, but was only watching with half an eye at the time, while cooking tea for kids).

Tips on 4 large? Best one IMO is that 25 x 25 = 625. You can use (100-75) or (75-50) to get one of the 25s; you've got 100 or 50 left to add or subtract; and you've still got 2 small numbers to fiddle about with for the detail. Anything between 510 and 740 or so and that's my first stop.

If it's a big target and the 2 little numbers are both smallish, don't add the little numbers together to multiply by 100. Add two or more big numbers to multiply by just 1 of the little ones. Then you've got the other little one spare.

A Jerry Humphreys and Jono O'Neill co-production at http://jerryh.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/coun ... umbers.htm is pretty much all you need to know about 4 large.

Jon O'Neill? He of the "methods don't help, you just need to practise?" school. Surely not.

That's really useful David & Gary, thank you.


A brilliant one I just got courtesy of Apterous Rex is this: Sometimes you want to use the divide-by-25 rule more than once, e.g. you want a 2 from 50/25 and a 3 from 75/25. Well, it can be done. Just save the 25 and use it later.
For instance if you have 100,75,50,25,5,3 and a target of 289.

97x3 = 291,
so you need two 3s (so you can do (100-3)*3)
and a 2 (for 291-2 = 289).

75/25 is 3, 50/25 is 2.
So you do the following: ((75x97) - 50)/25.

Because if you divide all terms by 25 you can see that (75a - 50)/25 is the same as (3a - 2)/1, or indeed 3a - 2.

It looks fearfully scary and clever, but it's actually just basic arithmetic.

I think what Jono meant is that there's other stuff that's way more important first. It's not really worth learning the minutiae of 4 large numbers games when you have a month or whatever to go until filming. The chances of it making any difference whatsoever are really tiny, and your time will be better spent just playing regular games and improving your word spots and 1-large/2-large games like that.

This is what I said earlier in the thread. Even if you don't agree with all this stuff, you can't say it's not interesting! Hmm I think I'm out of tips now. Having said that, re vocabulary, a lot of people say they have a good vocabulary when they start playing Scrabble. The problem is, there's basically no relation between usefulness of words in real life and for Scrabble. One of the mosty useful Scrabble words EUOI is also one of the hardest to find in any dictionary that you look in. But I do think for Countdown this sort of word learning isn't necessary - knowing all the four-letter words won't help much, for example!

[quote=".....

75/25 is 3, 50/25 is 2.
So you do the following: ((75x97) - 50)/25.

Because if you divide all terms by 25 you can see that (75a - 50)/25 is the same as (3a - 2)/1, or indeed 3a - 2.

It looks fearfully scary and clever, but it's actually just basic arithmetic.[/quote]

There was a contestant on a couple of years ago who used to do the big number calculation for Carol and then the divisions at the end, so he often had intermediate numbers in the thousands before he ended up with the answer.

Erm, wasn't that Jon O'Neill?

I don't know, perhaps it can be confirmed. I just remember he was very entertaining, I didn't remember names in those days!

It was. 25 50 75 100 1 10 Target 813 was probably his greatest hour. Or 30 seconds.

((25x(75-10))+1)/(100/50)?

The lovely 937.5 rule - which surprisingly I've known about for a while now, cos Kirk told it to me on Apterous a few weeks ago.

Actually what bothers me about this kind of thing, but also much simpler sums, is that I tend to think strategically for numbers. So for instance, if I have 75, 7, 2, 5 and I'm aiming for 516, then I'll think to myself, 7x75 = 525, now I need to find 9, OK that's (14 - 5), I can get 14 by 7x2, which means taking the 2 from the 75, then I'll add 5 at the end.

The sum in my head has now become "(7x(75-2))+5", and I neither know nor care what the intermediate totals are. So then I'd say to Rachel, "Take the 2 from the 75, then multiple by 7..." and she'd be saying, "7 x 73 is..." and I haven't a clue what 7 x 73 is! OK so I could work it out, but my mental arithmetic is surprisingly slow, and my brain just doesn't work like that. So just imagine, if this is what I'm like for small numbers, if I had to read out the sum above - which I worked out very quickly using similar principles - I'd be buggered. I haven't (offhand) the faintest clue what 25 x 65 is, I just know it's a necessary stage to reach 813.

I reckon one of the great unanswered questions is whether you need to know what 25x65 is. That sort of thing doesn't happen very often, and usually the contestant won't have worked it out. As you say, you don't need to. In the past, if the contestant just went quiet Carol would supply the intermediate figure. But Rachel never gets ahead of a contestant's explanation, which is good, but it will be interesting to see what happens when this situation comes up. Will she and the contestant just stare at each other?

I always let her complete my sum, just in case I'd screwed it up, and also because it used to annoy me when I'd go to say it myself and Carol talked over me.

Yes, 937.5 rule. Jono decided to say the last step a little differently, multiplying by 50 to get to 81,300, then dividing by 100.

For the "simple" ones like "7 x 73 is...", well you know the next and final step is "And add the 5" so it has to be 5 fewer than 516 meaning you can say "7 x 73 is 511" with confidence. You might be losing the double-check of actually doing the direct maths, but as long as you are sure of the steps you'll be fine. And that comes down to (wait for it...) practice.

lolcats

Nice.

Probably worth stating for those that don't know: (75*25)/(100/50) is 1875/2, which is 937.5. No use on its own cos of the fraction, but you only need to add an odd number to the top half (or rearrange as (50*75)/(100/25) and add 2n, where n is odd) to make it all lovely. As with the 813 example above, you can tinker it to get many different high numbers.

I had the same set of numbers three times in a row on my own choice of numbers on Apterous earlier:

100, 75, 50, 25, 10, 3

The first time, the target was 314, which looks alright until you try it. Towards the end of the time, I came up with this:

75 * 100 = 7500
10 - 3 = 7
7 * 50 = 350
7500 + 350 = 7850
7850 / 25 = 314

Basically it's a modified 300 rule. (75*100+50)/25 = 302. But if you want, you can multiply the 50 by either of both of the other two numbers, and then when you divide by 25, that number is doubled. So obviously 14, that's 7*2 so if you can get 7 out of the small numbers, it works! You could do some seriously insane stuff with this, if you wanted to:

100, 75, 50, 25, 9, 7, : TARGET 426

75 * 100 = 7500
50 * 9 * 7 = 3150
3150 + 7500 = 10650
10650 / 25 = 426

Again, if you're asked to work out on your own what the intermediate answers are, you're a bit f*cked.

I would have thought (though not from experience) that if you don't know the intermediate stage, you could say just that but tell them you can dictate the whole sum (with brackets) and the total will be correct. You'd surely find that (i) you got the points, because there's nothing in the rules that says you have to provide subtotals, only that you need to arrange the numbers to get the final totals; and (ii) if the whole sequence made an embarassing mess, it will be edited out and re-shot after the game, when they'll probably feed you the necessary sub-total.

In case you haven't already realised, Clare, (and I don't know if you're bothered anyway!), if you do anything stupid (God forbid!) it will be edited out. For example, in one of my shows, I gave my numbers solution and then Carol said something to Richard and paused for effect - I thought she was waiting for an answer from me and mumbled something that I can only remember was a right load of tripe - and in the show as shown on TV, there was a perfectly smooth transition with this incident not there at all. And the same thing with any controversial or long-winded judging, no doubt.

(100 + 75/25) * 3 + 50/10 = 314.
Can't do the second one, though.

Since David tried solving them, I'll say my solution (inside 30 secs):

(50-7-100/25) x 9 + 75 = 426. It's the rule of 9.

Clare, looking at your apterous stats, you are maxing around half of the numbers games. Not bad at all, but given that you are well acquainted with so many of the tricks (937.5 indeed) ought it not be higher? If I was coming up to the filming of my shows I would not spend time posting so much on this sub forum, but would be on apterous improving my game and putting these skills to the test. No?

I think if I were ever to apply, I'd definitely do a lot of four large training. Just looking at the "standard techniques" - I don't really know or use any of them. I've always considered myself quite good at numbers but I definitely lack the tools of others with four large. I often go for six small - not because I have any particular technique - but because I think quite a few people seem a bit phobic about them.

Seriously, I have the 6 small and 4 large tricks in my armoury but just do 1 large. It's the word power that gets you past most contestants and a lot of contestants are afraid of even 1 large! Adding before you multiply? What??

Spoiler.

....from playing the game at home against the contestants on the TV. Man. Gevin-police are out already.

[against]

Spoiler.

Haha yeah Gevin was shit at the numbers on the show. I think he bottled it.

I am an idiot.

I've written up a How-To Guide WITH SPOILERS here.

Many apologies to those that got here before I edited this post.

For fuck's cunting sake. I deliberately avoid the spoilers board and I still have it spoiled for me.

Yeah, when I saw this thread had been updated at the same time as her show, I avoided it until I'd seen it. I've been burnt too many times before by this place.

Sorry.

Like I said in the other thread, I've never been much good at keeping secrets. I'm amazed I lasted this long. But anyway. Sorry. and

BUMP

I was just fiddling around with the 4 larges to see which multiples of 25 you can get using them:
Sorry its formatted horribly.

(50/25)*75+100=250
(50/25)*100+75=275
(75/25)*100=300
325
(50/25)*(100+75)=350
375
400
425
(100+50)*75/25=450
475
100*(75+50)/25=500
((75-50)*25)-100=525
550
((100-75)*25)-50=575
600
(100-75)*25=625
650
((100-75)*25)+50=675
700
((75-50)*25)+100=725
750
775
800
825
850
875
900
925
950
975
1000

I thought I'd post the list in this topic to see if any of the hundreds of numbers pro's out there could fill in any gaps. Also, if anyone has any links to other 4 large lists and tips, id be interested to have a look at them plz.

75 x (100 + 50) / 25 = 400

Thats 450.

This is what I typed out all that time ago when I was preparing:


150 = 50/25 * 75 multiplier of 2
75/25 * 50 multiplier of 3


200 = 50/25 * 100 multiplier of 2
100/25 * 50 multiplier of 4


250 = 100 + 75 + 50 + 25
75/25 * 50 + 100 multiplier of 3
50/25 * 75 + 100 multiplier of 2


275 = 50/25 * 100 + 75 multiplier of 2
100/25 * 50 + 75 multiplier of 4


300 = 75/25 * 100 multiplier of 3
100/25 * 75 multiplier of 4


350 = 50/25 * (100+75) multiplier of 2
(100+75)/25 * 50 multiplier of 7

100/25 * 75 + 50 multiplier of 3
75/25 * 100 + 50 multiplier of 4


450 = 75/25 * (100+50) multiplier of 3
(100+50)/25 * 75 multiplier of 6


500 = 100/25 * (75+50) multiplier of 4
(75+50)/25 * 100 multiplier of 5

525 = (75-50) * 25 - 100

575 = (100-75) * 25 - 50

625 = (100-75) * 25
(75-50) * 25

675 = (100-75) * 25 + 50

725 = (75-50) * 25 + 100